Interview with screenwriter David Magee (LIFE OF PI, 2013)

Interview with screenwriter David Magee for his adaptation of ‘Life of Pi’.

At the 85th Academy Awards the film won 4 Oscars (more than any other film nominated) including- Best Achievement in Cinematography by Claudio Miranda; Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures Original Score Mychael Danna; Best Achievement in Visual Effects by Bill Westenhofer, Guillaume Rocheron, Erik De Boer, Donald Elliott; and Best Achievement in Directing by Ang Lee.

Interview with David Magee took place January 26th in the Lobero Theater in Santa Barbara during 28th SBIFF.

Q: Can you explain why this (as opposed to the book) was the only way to tell the story of the movie?

DAVID: From the very beginning Ang Lee and I agreed that the story was not just be about religion. It was about the power of storytelling. It was about the power of stories that take you through the chaos in your life. So we were very attached to the idea that the older Pi was a storyteller. He was not just someone recounting what happened in his life, he was someone who was able to bring something to life in a magical way, which you wouldn’t have had if you were telling the story from the boy’s point of view, the younger Pi’s point of view, if he were recounting that to those Japanese investigators. If it were the younger Pi, he would have just recounted what had happened to him in the aftermath of great turmoil. It’s a very different story when something is told right after the fact than it is when it’s something that’s evolved over time, that you’ve remembered certain parts, that you’ve enriched certain parts of the story. It’s a different kind of story. So for us that was important. Also, the idea for us that it was one storyteller passing the story on to another storyteller became very important for us. Ultimately, that was what determined that, and we tried different variations along the way, but that was the strongest way to tell it.

Q: Now this might be a bit of a spoiler to those who haven’t read the ‘Life of Pi’ or seen the movie, so I’m assuming everyone has I hope. But at the end of the movie it is revealed that there are two versions of this story. Was there ever any consideration, given that it was a fiction movie, of abandoning story number 2?

DAVID: We would never have abandoned story 2. No, the very point of the film is that no one knows what happened on that boat except for Pi. So, what story you believe says a lot about how you interpret what he went through; if you as a person believe that there is a god watching over us that will help us through the ordeals in our life, as Pi does, then that’s how you’re going to read that story, that’s how you’ll interpret what happened to you on that journey. And if you favor the kind of scientific- this happened and then that happened and this was a result of meteorological condition, this was an accident of nature, this was the failure of a ship’s haul in a storm, dry fact- then that’s how you’re going to read the story. We were not trying to tell you, “this is the right version or that’s the right version”. I was actually surprised in some reviews people said: “Well, obviously they came down on one side over the other”, and I don’t even know what side they thought we came down on. What we were trying to say was that everyone has a narrative that they bring to their lives- whether you’re a Christian, Hindu, atheist, scientist, whatever- you’ve built a safety net in the facts that you’ve concluded about why the world works the way it does and those are what get you through your ordeals.

Transcribed by Vanessa McMahon

view film's offiial website here: http://www.lifeofpimovie.com/