In an article in the Jan/Feb 09 issue of Script magazine, Simon Beaufoy tells how he went about writing "Slumdog Millionaire." First: he broke the rule, 'write what you know. He says,
"Where's the fun of writing what you know when you can instead dive headlong into the new, the exotic, the utterly unknown?"
Although the film is based on a book called "Q & A," structuring the film was a major challenge. The book is in effect a series of short stories, each one revealing how the boy came to know the answer to a specific question when he competes on the Indian version of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?"
The other problem was that the boy's drive was only to win the money. Beaufoy says, "I just can't get excited about money as a motivation in a film." That's why he made the driving force a love story. Danny Boyle, the director, eventually told him, "It has to be Romeo and Juliet, otherwise why bother?"
Even more interesting are his observations about how going to Mumbai, seeing the slums, meeting the kids who resembled the novel's characters, all changed his writing: "The usual, rather mealy mouthed English nuance and subtext (was) being replaced by something that bordering on melodrama," because that matched the atmosphere of the city and its people.
He was also involved in the casting and they discovered that the middle-class kids who spoke English well were not the right type nor were they good enough actors. Instead, they cast kids from the slums--meaning that about a third of the picture had to be in Hindi, with subtitles.
The whole story of how the film was made is rather heartening--few compromises, genuine passion, and--many Oscars!
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