I'm Lulu Allah I'm the writer and
director of the farewell and today we're
gonna look at a couple drafts of the
script don't lend the scene we're gonna
look at today is a scene that takes
place in a wedding photography studio
between Billy and 9.i which is Chinese
for grandmother and in the background
the bride and groom are having their
photograph taken one of the main things
we wanted to establish was the
relationship between Billy and her
grandmother 9ay and you know at the same
time we wanted it to be really visual
even though it's a dialogue heavy scene
I wanted to make sure that we were
always looking at something interesting
on screen and reminded that there is a
wedding that is supposed to be the focus
of the story even though for Billy her
mind is clearly on the impending loss of
her grandmother here is a version of the
Chinese script I speak both languages
and I understand both languages but I
don't write or read Chinese so I don't
really know what any of this says but as
you can tell the formatting is very
different instead of having this
indented dialogue that is traditional
for American or western scripts I guess
the dialogue here is written more like
in prose this says 9 I that I know and
then here is her dialogue I'm seeing now
that they've retained the brackets
meaning that this is in Chinese I think
the biggest challenge in writing a
bilingual script for me what I hear in
my head is not what I have the ability
to write down on the page I hear it in
my head in Chinese and I'm translating
it and writing it down in English and
then the translator would have to take
this English and translate it to Chinese
my mom she did a lot of work with me on
this where she would read through the
Chinese dialogue
and asked me is this what you heard in
your head or she would say it sounds
very formal this doesn't seem like the
way that 9i speaks to you we would make
corrections that way I would tell her
what I actually heard and then she would
go into the document and change it we
had professional translators and they
had their versions and then I would have
this side version from my mother I had
no way of distinguishing between them I
think that these soldered lines are the
scene headings this is Billie here this
is no neon Yan yeh that's in English
it's phonetically spelled out I mean you
can see this was very challenging for me
because I don't read Chinese but this
was given to the actors to read so that
we could cast them
I couldn't correct it on the page I had
to correct it once I heard them say it
at a table read or even on set so before
we started developing the script I
actually did an episode of this American
Life so for a long time I just called it
untitled tal This American Life Project
I originally wrote all of the Chinese
dialogue in italics you'll see in later
drafts that I actually changed it to
brackets because the italics are a
little bit confusing I'm kind of OCD so
I really like consistency throughout a
script so it just became easier to
create brackets around any dialogue that
is meant to be spoken in Mandarin the
name of the main character funny
coincidence was Norah and I don't
remember why I named her Norah and this
was way before I cast Aquafina and that
was a very weird coincidence I think
that the main reason I changed the name
to Billy was because Norah is a
difficult name to pronounce in Chinese
and so I wanted to have a name that
sounded the same in English as in
Chinese so this is the final shooting
script in the earlier drafts a lot of
these conversations happened in
different scenes 9 I had multiple
conversations with Billy you know here
you see it's nine eyes apartment and
then another conversation happens in a
car in the final film I condensed all of
the conversations that Billy and 9
into one scene at a wedding studio and
this is the main scene that you have the
dialogue between 9i and Billy this is 9i
complaining about the wife in this first
draft she says what is wrong with this
girl
there's a part of Billy that feels like
if she knew why this wedding was put
together she might have a little bit
more appreciation you know even here
Nora is defending ami the bride or Aiko
the bride her name also changed at some
point and then he or she Billy says she
seems really sweet so that was one thing
that I kept the same from the first
draft to the final shooting script was
always my eyes dissatisfaction in this
first draft 9i tells Billy when you were
little you were so generous you haven't
been yourself lately
perhaps because of your breakup there's
no longer a breakup in the final script
but this stays the same night I says
when you see people you should say hello
aunty hello uncle don't be young Union
so this is silly child here but
throughout the movie night I refers to
Billy stupid child it was one of my
producers who suggested we translated it
to silly child because stupid child
seemed very harsh in the context that
9.i is speaking to Billy she's saying
the word dumb or stupid but she doesn't
really mean it
and actually chef she uses shot to refer
to Eiko the Japanese bride
it's only for me within context of how
my grandmother is saying that word do I
not take offense to it I wanted to give
the audience that same moment of being a
little jolted by it but then relearning
the word through the context so this is
a really big moment that's been in every
single draft from the inception of the
scripts where nine Isis going to music
want a shot
Nana can his hope on you go corny and
other drafts of the script this line was
sort of interspersed in between other
dialogue here in the final shooting
script we end the scene with it and I
didn't really write you know the
reaction because I knew that I was gonna
shoot the reaction of Billy and that we
were really gonna linger on her face for
a significant beat as a reaction to nine
I saying this because of course she
knows that that day may never come