Author Green no fan of 'teen whispering'

John Green, author of The Fault in Our Stars, says that he had no desire to become a movie creator. [Photo by Richard Drew / AP]

When The Fault in Our Stars landed on bookshelves more than two years ago, John Green had no enthusiasm for a screen version of his story featuring teens with cancer.

"I had had some Hollywood experiences before that weren't great, and I felt like Hollywood would struggle to make a movie where the female romantic lead has nasal cannula tubes in her nose for the entire movie," he said.

Well, hello 2014 and Monday night's pre-miere of TFIOS, the movie. It's the first of Green's best-selling books to go Hollywood after he was won over by the script's dedication to his characters in the clutches of adolescence.

Oh, and it didn't hurt that one of the producers was a huge Liverpool soccer club fan like Green.

Already a rock star among young readers, mostly of the teen girl variety, the Orlando, Florida-raised Green, the guy who looks straight out of central casting as Unassuming Writer, now walks red carpets, clowns on morning TV and banters with new BFF Nat Wolff and the movie's other young stars, Shailene Woodley and newcomer Ansel Elgort.

In his plaid button-down shirt and conservative suit jacket, it was the bespectacled, 36-year-old Green - not the hunky, younger Wolff - who got the loudest screams on May 31 from several hundred girls who made their way to the publishing industry's annual BookExpo America.

Green leaped off the stage of the packed conference hall to bear-hug a 16-year-old amputee, Robert Berger of Damerest, New Jersey. Berger, a high school sophomore with a prosthetic like TFIOS love interest Gus Waters, made his way to a microphone to offer: "I'd like to thank you, John, for answering a lifelong question of mine, which is, whether during sex, I keep my leg on or off."