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All of this may undermine Kon-Tiki's value as an educational tool, but there's no denying its status as a rousing and thoroughly enjoyable Old Hollywood-style adventure. Little time is wasted on exposition; the filmmakers efficiently use a brief prologue on an icy Norwegian pond to establish Heyerdahl's status as an innate adventurer before rushing through his fundraising difficulties in order to get to the meat of the story: six men and a parrot facing death and despair on the high seas.

To their credit, the filmmakers do attempt to dig a little deeper than just that, trying to convey the righteous obsession and complicated motivations of the explorer. Heyerdahl eventually finds his funding after appealing to the vanity of the Peruvian president, and the film exhibits an ongoing interest in explorers driven by quests both noble (for knowledge) and vain (for immortality). Heyerdahl himself is spurred on by a near-religious faith in the guessed-at methods of the ancient mariners, which that first-mate character writes off as an insane obsession.

The more meaningful character explorations never quite coalesce, alas, mostly because the filmmakers are more interested in — and far more skilled at — the high-tension thrills they're manufacturing. It's difficult to blame them, given that their take on the trip is probably far more entertaining than a more realistic one. As one magazine publisher, reluctant to engage in what he sees as sensationalism, tells Heyerdahl, "Doubtless the story of Norwegians drowning in the Pacific will sell a lot of magazines." What's true for magazines is also true for movie tickets.

On how writing a novel differs from writing a screenplay

"This particular novel, this was one of the greatest creative experiences I've had in my life, because there were no restrictions in terms of budget. When you're writing a screenplay, you have to think 'this scene can only go on for three pages, because we're not going to be able to afford the fourth page, or we're not going to be able to do this' — I think it's a thematic sequel, in a weird way, to The Goonies. People have been asking me for years to write a sequel to The Goonies, and I could never find a way to write a sequel, so that's what House of Secrets has become. So for all those people who love The Goonies, this is closest you're probably going to get to it.

"For me, I love writing it because I can stop — I can get into a Monty Python-esque sequence where two pirates are arguing over whether one of the pirates' tattoo is a dolphin or a shark. I wouldn't do that in a screenplay."

On whether movie technology is making it harder to dazzle children

"I think it is getting more difficult. We're in an interesting place right now because the latest 3-D technology that we're seeing is going to be applied to The Great Gatsby. Now how amazing is that? I guess you have to keep pushing the boundaries. So you know, the images that are in this book — and the first image that really struck me — years ago, when I was running down by Crissy Field down in San Francisco, I got to that point that listeners will remember sort of looks like the Vertigo shot, by the Golden Gate Bridge with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. And I stopped and I'm looking around and I'm looking at these houses nearby that are dangerously close to the cliff and the ocean, and I thought, what if one of these houses slid off the side of the cliff and fell into the ocean and was floating? For whatever reason — I thought, that's an image I've never seen. I've never seen a house floating on the bay. And then it occurred to me how cool it would be to have a pirate ship attacking that house and the inhabitants of the house had to sort of race through the house as cannonballs were flying through the walls. And that image always stuck with me. And it's kind of the image you see at the front of the book, at this point. It's kind of come full circle."

On the plans for the second book in the series

"Ned [Vizzini] and I are 130 pages into Book 2, and it's incredibly fun. The concept for me of these characters, who look like they just escaped from the last episode of Game of Thrones, about to kill these kids, when suddenly a World War I fighter jet crashes directly over them and inadvertently saves their lives, and out steps a dashing 18-year-old fighter pilot. Being able to combine those two worlds in the second book and in, hopefully, a third book will enable us to bring other worlds into the House of Secrets series."

On why he's still working

"People say to me, 'Why don't you just stop already? You know, you've made a bunch of movies, they've been successful, why don't you retire and golf?' And for me, it's only the — I really feel like I have not accomplished what I want to accomplish. I really have not gone there yet. I don't feel like I've made a film that is as good as I want it to be. I always feel that, something has to be better. And for me, I much prefer dropping dead at a very old age — none of us want to drop dead at a young age — on a movie set. You know, I want to continue trying to do better work. I've seen Clint Eastwood do it over the years — he just keeps getting better and better, and he's someone I admire."

Read an excerpt of House of Secrets

On how writing a novel differs from writing a screenplay

"This particular novel, this was one of the greatest creative experiences I've had in my life, because there were no restrictions in terms of budget. When you're writing a screenplay, you have to think 'this scene can only go on for three pages, because we're not going to be able to afford the fourth page, or we're not going to be able to do this' — I think it's a thematic sequel, in a weird way, to The Goonies. People have been asking me for years to write a sequel to The Goonies, and I could never find a way to write a sequel, so that's what House of Secrets has become. So for all those people who love The Goonies, this is closest you're probably going to get to it.

"For me, I love writing it because I can stop — I can get into a Monty Python-esque sequence where two pirates are arguing over whether one of the pirates' tattoo is a dolphin or a shark. I wouldn't do that in a screenplay."

On whether movie technology is making it harder to dazzle children

"I think it is getting more difficult. We're in an interesting place right now because the latest 3-D technology that we're seeing is going to be applied to The Great Gatsby. Now how amazing is that? I guess you have to keep pushing the boundaries. So you know, the images that are in this book — and the first image that really struck me — years ago, when I was running down by Crissy Field down in San Francisco, I got to that point that listeners will remember sort of looks like the Vertigo shot, by the Golden Gate Bridge with Kim Novak and Jimmy Stewart. And I stopped and I'm looking around and I'm looking at these houses nearby that are dangerously close to the cliff and the ocean, and I thought, what if one of these houses slid off the side of the cliff and fell into the ocean and was floating? For whatever reason — I thought, that's an image I've never seen. I've never seen a house floating on the bay. And then it occurred to me how cool it would be to have a pirate ship attacking that house and the inhabitants of the house had to sort of race through the house as cannonballs were flying through the walls. And that image always stuck with me. And it's kind of the image you see at the front of the book, at this point. It's kind of come full circle."

On the plans for the second book in the series

"Ned [Vizzini] and I are 130 pages into Book 2, and it's incredibly fun. The concept for me of these characters, who look like they just escaped from the last episode of Game of Thrones, about to kill these kids, when suddenly a World War I fighter jet crashes directly over them and inadvertently saves their lives, and out steps a dashing 18-year-old fighter pilot. Being able to combine those two worlds in the second book and in, hopefully, a third book will enable us to bring other worlds into the House of Secrets series."

On why he's still working

"People say to me, 'Why don't you just stop already? You know, you've made a bunch of movies, they've been successful, why don't you retire and golf?' And for me, it's only the — I really feel like I have not accomplished what I want to accomplish. I really have not gone there yet. I don't feel like I've made a film that is as good as I want it to be. I always feel that, something has to be better. And for me, I much prefer dropping dead at a very old age — none of us want to drop dead at a young age — on a movie set. You know, I want to continue trying to do better work. I've seen Clint Eastwood do it over the years — he just keeps getting better and better, and he's someone I admire."

Read an excerpt of House of Secrets

When Edna O'Brien wrote The Country Girls in 1960, the book was acclaimed by critics, banned by the Irish Censorship Board and burned in churches for suggesting that the two small-town girls at the center of the book had romantic lives. Oh, why be obscure? Sex lives.