The screenwriter who shaped a geisha

Screenwriter Robin Swicord sought to transform herself into an “everyman” when she set out to adapt “Memoirs of a Geisha” for the big screen.

She simply had to trust her instincts as she sought to draw out the essence of the bestselling novel by Arthur Golden upon which the movie is based. “I had to go on the simple thought of, ‘What I loved [from the book] is what other people loved.’ In a way, it is kind of an act of faith,” she recounts.

The second feature for director Rob Marshall (“Chicago”), “Geisha” stars Ziyi Zhang as Sayuri, who goes from poverty in a fishing village to being one of the most celebrated geishas in pre-World War II Japan. It opens Friday.

Often, adaptations begin with a producer or studio executive picking a writer to get the project rolling. “In this case, Rob Marshall was hired before I was,” says Swicord, who has also penned adaptations of Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women” and Roald Dahl’s “Matilda.” He then requested to meet with her.

“I had to go absolutely unprepared to the first meeting,” she said. “I hadn’t read the book since it came out. When I came into the meeting, it was clear he had a movie in his head.”

After she left, she reread the book and began to take notes. “I wrote an outline of what the movie might look like,” she said. “Mostly, I wrote 18 pages of musing on aspects of the book -- the thematic lines that drove the narrative of the story. I e-mailed him that. He contacted me and asked me to come to another meeting.”

Hired the next day, Swicord spent six weeks working on a 70-page outline that resembled a screenplay without dialogue. “It was the film completely envisioned with casting and location breakdowns. The idea was that they would be able to take that and start going to work. Rob had to cast without a screenplay. It was intense.”

The key in writing adaptations, Swicord said, is that “you have to find the stuff that tells the dramatic story. Drama has a very rigorous form, and novels can be so many things. We had a process of trying to find the film, keeping in mind this is a beloved book and there were certain things we knew we couldn’t tamper with.”

Because Swicord was still off working on the script as rehearsals began, Marshall brought in scribe Doug Wright to make changes when needed.

“Some of the lines got tweaked,” Swicord says, adding that Marshall promised her that 99% of her script would remain intact.

“He was as good as his word,” she adds.