Jeff Kinney Video Interview On ‘Diary Of A Wimpy Kid’

I was a little bit of a wimpy kid at times. I was kind of an average kid but I had my wimpy moments. You know, I think in someways I was really flawed like Greg is. Greg's not really a bad kid, he's just a kid whose life is being documented at a terrible time and I would not have wanted my middle school years recorded.

The very first joke in the movie where Greg's older brother wakes him up, that actually happened to me in real life. He wakes him up and tells him it's his first day of school but he doesn't know, Greg doesn't know that he's being woken up in the middle of the night so Greg gets ready for school and then comes to find out that it's about, you know, 3 or 4 in the morning. I think that there are little parts of myself, my older brother and my younger brother in that older brother character in the books.

I think kids are reacting to the books because they don't have a protagonist whose the chosen one or sort of, this kind of almost divine being, he's just a kid and he's full of flaws and, you know, just like most kids are. And the stories I think are funny and I work hard at the humor so I think it's a combination of those two things.

I spent about four years just trying to write down everything I could remember from my own childhood and from the things that were happening around me. And it took me another four or five years to write the story and to illustrate it. Mostly it took along time because i knew this was going to be my opus, you know I knew it was my one great idea and I wanted to take my time and make sure I nailed it. I didn't want the opportunity to slip away.

I like the movie. I think where the movie really delivers is that it's got some emotional punch to it, which my books don't really have. I think that Zach Gordon does a really good job of inhabiting Greg Heffley. Greg is this guy who's kind of a jerk at times, he's a crummy friend but you've got to root for him or the whole thing doesn't work and Zach has, you know Zach's a good kid but he can play a cad pretty well and he's got a lot of charm so I think that he pulled it off.

My advice to any middle-schooler would be that this will not be the best time of your life but if you can get through it, life is gonna get a lot better.