There was no single, unwavering arrow of narrative to take an audience all the way through apart from the game show. And somehow, a game show just wasn’t enough for me.
I just can’t get excited about money as a motivation in a film. It leaves me cold. My heart does not sing if the final shot of the film is a slum kid snapping on a Rolex, getting in his Porsche and driving off into the sunset. In fact, my heart sinks. So, how to make a rags to riches story that doesn’t revolve around money? There was only one way to find out: go to Mumbai.
This film just has to be a love story.
Whereas screenwriters are always being told “write about what you know”, documentary makers prefer to dig, investigate, deliberately court exactly what they don’t know. For me, it is the best way to work. Where’s the fun in writing about what you know, when you can instead dive headlong into the new, the exotic, the utterly unknown?
The structure of the book defeats me for weeks as I try to transform it into a script. The story constantly moves backwards and forwards in time. Three different timeframes: Jamal’s recent past on the game show, Jamal’s distant past and Jamal’s present as he recounts the story of his life to the police inspector after his arrest. This jigsaw leaves me puzzled for weeks. I set myself the task to avoid any sense of flashbacks. No “10 years earlier” captions, no sepia tones. The past must be as real and as urgent as the present. All the time, I have director Danny Boyle’s laconic advice hanging over me. “It’s got to be Romeo and Juliet, otherwise, what’s the point?”
罗伯特•艾德加-亨特《国际经典影视制作教程:编剧创作指南》、夏泉《马万祺研究资料汇编》、澳门大学澳门研究中心《全球视野下的澳门学》、让·波德里亚《游戏与警察》、吉姆·帕特森《戏剧的快乐》(第8版)、Michel Pruner《荒诞派戏剧》、威廉·尹迪克《编剧心理学:在剧本中建构冲突》、丽诺·德蔻芬《改变方向:影视戏剧指导演员实用方法》、桑迪·弗兰克《编剧的内心游戏:成功影片的故事形式》、珍·格里桑迪《故事情节设计:从生活中提炼创作的金点子》、卢炜《从辩证到综合:布莱希特与中国新时期戏剧》、(美)Eric S. Raymond 著《大教堂与集市》(开源运动的《圣经》,中文版首次出版)、 [美]D. B. Gilles《剧本创作与营销策略》(第2版)、余世存《家世:百年中国家族兴衰》、潘桦《当代经典美国电视剧叙事案例分析》、《渴求:英国当代直面戏剧名作选》、乔纳森•斯珀伯《卡尔•马克思:一个19世纪的人》、特里·伊格尔顿《异端人物》、阿尔布莱希特·维尔默《论现代和后现代的辩证法·遵循阿多诺的理性批判》、夏含夷《中国古文字学导论》。