Screenwriters Get No Limelight

While watching the screenwriter for Little Miss Sunshine at the Oscars, and watching interviews with the screenwriter of The Queen, it hit me that screenwriters usually get lost in the mix of things. Especially when they adapt a really famous person's book.

Take the upcoming film The Namesake, directed by Mira Nair, based on the novel by Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri. All the press is all about "Mira Nair's film" -- all films are like that. An apostrophe after the director's name. But in this case, most press is acting as if the book magically jumped from author to director. I looked, and of course there is a screenwriter. Sooni Taraporevala.

Ever hear of her? Her work is amazing- and a lot of it with Mira Nair- Missisissippi Masala, starring Denzel Washington; and of course the Oscar-nominated Salaam Bombay. All films dealing with identity, the diaspora, and all that. What a perfect team to do The Nameake. Both from India, both lived in the US for years (although I gather Taraporevala is now loving back in Mumbai). And what a hard job, to trim and trim from a dense novel ,into a screenplay that still feels like the book. I wondered how it was for Kal Penn, very familiar with the book, to act from that screenplay. See my comment to his Namesake blog at
http://thenamesake.typepad.com/blog/2007/02/back_from_the_l.html#comment-62204504

There's so many jobs in a film that get no recognition while the director basks in the limelight. But the screenwriter is so key. I really hope this film does well. If it does, it will be in large part because of the screenwriter.