Life of Pi author Yann Martel was surprised - but tickled pink - when he received a phone call from the Oscar-winning director Ang Lee asking the Saskatoon writer to fly to Manhattan to chat about the script for the upcoming feature film based on Martel's Man Booker Prize-winning novel.
So in November, 2008, Martel and his partner, Alice, hopped a plane to New York to meet Lee at a Japanese restaurant in SoHo, where they spent hours pouring over the subtle nuances and spiritual undertones in the fantasy novel Life of Pi, about a young boy stuck for 227 days on a raft in the Pacific Ocean with a tiger.
"My involvement is purely informal, but they very kindly have kept me in the loop," says Martel, on the phone from his home in Saskatchewan. "But I have to say the fact he wanted to meet me kind of astounded me. He told me it was the first time he'd enlisted feedback [from an author of a novel he's adapted for the big screen] He didn't seek input from Annie Proulx, who wrote Brokeback Mountain, or Rick Moody, who authored The Ice Storm," adds Martel.
"I have no idea why he wanted to meet me. Maybe because it's more of a contemporary novel. But I'm touched. He had absolutely no obligation. He could have done anything with the script."
Life of Pi - which begins shooting in India and Lee's native Taiwan in January - has long been in the works. In 2002, M. Night Shyamalan ( The Sixth Sense) was attached to write and direct a film version, but apparently dropped out after struggling with the novel's twist ending. Alfonso Cuaron ( Children of Men) and Jean-Pierre Jeunet ( Amélie) also stepped down due to budget concerns and scheduling conflicts.
Martel says the book's long gestation as a feature film has been frustrating, but is also "totally understandable."
"Listen, as a movie, it's an incredibly complex thing to mount. It demands hundreds and hundreds of people, who all have to be available at the same time. And studios are always nervous, wanting the film done within certain financial parameters, which is hard given it's on water.
"But I trust Ang Lee and [screenwriter]David Magee [ Finding Neverland] who have done a fantastic job with the script. Both of them are very keen to keep to the spirit of the book. And even before I met Ang Lee, I'd long admired his work. I loved Brokeback Mountain, in which he did so much with so little. I think one of the most beautiful scenes I've ever seen in film was when Heath Ledger hugs that shirt [worn by his former lover, Jake Gyllenhaal]at the end. It broke my heart because of its grace and simplicity."
Lee, who won the Academy Award for best director for the cowboy love story in 2005, has said he committed to the film version of Life of Pi after figuring out that the way "to crack the book" was to film it in 3-D.
Martel says he, too, likes the idea of shooting in that format because "visually, it can be even more breathtaking." However, the writer adds there is one danger "and that is the temptation to make it a spectacle, and forget the story at the heart of it. But he and I have also discussed that, and I'm reassured he'll do justice to it because he's a filmmaker of substance who understands beauty is often in the barely discernible things."
For his lead, Lee has cast 17-year-old Delhi high-school student Suraj Sharma, who was chosen from 3,000 candidates to play Pi Patel, the young lad lost at sea. Twentieth-Century Fox plans to release the film in 2012.
Five months ago, Lee sent Martel another, more advanced version of the script, which prompted Martel to mail the director a 29-page document, suggesting changes and line-by-line tweaks. For one, he suggested the dialogue sound less English-American and more Indian. He also wanted to make sure Lee understood how the tiger should be portrayed. "In the book, he is an incredibly fierce, dangerous animal. I wanted to make sure he doesn't turn into some Disney animal."
"I guess Lee, who is an obsessive researcher, has been in touch because he wanted to see where I was coming from when I wrote the book," adds Martel. "I'm not sure if his interpretation of Life of Pi is exactly the same as mine, but I guess I'll find out when the movie comes out. Just like everyone else."