Life of David Magee

Making a film on the ocean is difficult. Making a film with a boy at the ocean, very difficult. And making a film with a Bengal tiger is impossible," quipped David Magee, when he first got a call from filmmaker Ang Lee to write a screenplay for the bestselling novel Life of Pi. Lee, however, convinced him over a couple of dinners and Magee came on board.

Given that it is one of the best-selling books of our time, it was important for Magee — the writer of Finding Neverland (2004) and Miss Pettigrew Lives for A Day (2008) — to capture the emotional quotient of the book in his screenplay. He wrote the first draft, after which he visited India to meet survivors of an actual shipwreck. Over time, he polished the draft and made several additions and subtractions. "It took me one and a half years to present it in totality," says Magee, whose favourite portion of the book is its ending.

Life of Pi is a fantasy adventure novel by Yann Martel, in which the protagonist Pi Patel, an Indian boy from Pondicherry, spends 227 days stranded on a boat in the Pacific Ocean with a Bengal tiger, after a shipwreck. Magee's biggest challenge was to decide on the narrator in the screenplay. "In the book, there are Japanese investigators who question Pi on his survival and there is also an author who interviews Pi. Initially, I was thinking of narrating the story from their point of view. But eventually, I decided to narrate from the older Pi's point of view. I thought his reflection on the event after several years would have the right perspective." Magee also made sure that the first part of the screenplay, much like the book, would be high on spirituality but not preachy, while the second part would focus on the emotional bond between Pi and the tiger. "There are very few times when Pi actually talks to the tiger. I had to make the silence work."

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