Adrian Tomine vs. Wong Kar-Wai?




Comic whiz Adrian Tomine writes great, sappy stories about loners, difficult people and horrible relationships. Wong Kar-Wai is the brilliant Chinese director of such films as In the Mood for Love (one of Blank Screen's all-time classics). Both were made for each other, to say the least. In a recent issue of Japanese art magazine, Tokion, Tomine disclosed that he wrote the screenplay for what was supposed to be Kar-Wai's first English-language film. But, the project was abandoned for legal issues, credit issues and other dumb stuff.

He had this to say:"I just have to make it clear that I had no actual direct contact with him [Wong Kar-Wai], so I don't want to blame him for any of the problems I ran into. After doing a lot of work and submitting a draft to his people, my lawyer said to me, 'You know, the way this contract is set up, its possible that you won't get credit for your work.' And so we thought, 'This must just be some negotiation technique where their lawyers ask for the moon and then we bring them back to reasonable levels.' So we said, 'Okay, everything's fine, but we just need to make sure that I'll get appropriate credit for whatever amount of my work is used, even if it ends up being a co-writing credit.' And they refused, so that pretty much put an end to my involvement. It was a weird, exhausting experience."