Steve:
It is my knowledge that the various types of "defacto standard" character LCD controllers offer 4-bit and 8-bit host interface paths. On the other hand the various types of graphics LCD controllers seem to offer 8-bit parallel interfaces and a type of serial interface that supports the data path. I used these serial interface data paths in the project described at: http://www.8052.com/users/mkaras/GraphLCD.phtml . Maybe you can get some ideas from the information I give there.

Michael Karas