Ben Hopkins

In 2021, Ben Hopkins wrote a novel called Cathedral. David Wiley in a review on the Rain Taxi, writes that Hopkins as a screenwriter and filmmaker, Hopkins also employs far more filmic allusions than literary ones, such as stone facedly referencing Monty Python at two very unfunny moments and making a few glancing nods toward The Princess Bride, another work of a great screenwriter/novelist. Nicknaming his jejune stonecutter “Rettich” and placing great stress on the association with the word radish, Hopkins almost certainly invokes the celebrated Chartres scene in F for Fake, during which Welles mistily refers to the contemporary human as a “poor forked radish,” an allusion to Thomas Carlyle's riff on Falstaff's description of Robert Shallow in Henry IV, Part 2. That's quite a thread of association from film to architecture to literature, and Hopkins dispenses with that thread on the novel's first page. Otherwise largely literature free in its associative language and aesthetic order, this brilliantly imagined, gorgeously designed, and deeply profound novel is nonetheless a magnificent work of literature itself. His other notable films include Lost in Karastan, written with Paweł Pawlikowski, and Inside, starring Willem Dafoe.

• Name — Ben Hopkins • Born — 1969 • Birthplace — Hong Kong • Occupation — Film director, screenwriter, novelist • Years Active — 1996–present

• Year — Title — Director — Writer • 1999 — Simon Magus • 2000 — The Nine Lives of Tomas Katz • 2008 — The Market: A Tale of Trade • 2014 — Lost in Karastan • 2023 — Inside • 2025 — Fuze