WSF

Starring Julia Roberts as Gilbert, Eat Pray Love tells the story of a woman who goes in search of herself across the globe. She leaves her husband (Billy Crudup) and lover (James Franco) behind in New York and first visits Italy for four months, where she falls in love with the language and the food. She then spends the next four months in an ashram in India, learning to still her mind. Finally, she ends up in Bali, where she is drawn to a relationship with a charming resident (Javier Bardem). Adapting the book couldn’t have been an easy task; aside from its picturesque locations, much of the book is comprised of Gilbert’s inner monologues. For example, a large part of the Pray section deals with her trying to meditate without distraction. Yet Murphy and Salt have crafted a funny, touching fable that still manages to stay true to Gilbert’s distinctive voice.

How did Ryan Murphy bring Eat Pray Love to you?

He was just reading it as a reader. He just picked it up in a bookstore. He’s a very big reader, Ryan. He reads a book a week. It wasn’t the big phenomenon yet. And he said to me, “Oh my God, I’m reading this book. You should read it. A lot of the time, she reminds me of you.” So I read it, and of course I fell in love with it. Then one night we were all in offices, getting gussied up at the end of a long day to walk across the lot to the premiere of that season of Nip/Tuck. He just walked into my office and said, “Somebody’s getting the rights to Eat Pray Love, and I want you to write it with me.”

And how did you react?

Oh, I was so excited, I was sort of jumping up and down and my heart was pounding. I’m sure I threw my arms around him — that’s what you do, right? He’s not the most physically effusive person, and it was really funny.

Where did you even begin? Because it really is three separate stories in a way — four, if you include the New York section.

We started by talking a lot. Talking and talking and trying to figure out an overall way of attacking it that kept a certain amount of story alive all the way through. Structurally, we really considered doing things that were much more radical than we ended up with in the movie.

How did the partnership work? Did you and Ryan sit down in the same room together and write or did you pass versions to each other?

We sat down and talked over outlines of things. Then we passed versions back and forth.

How many drafts do you think you went through?

I can’t even begin to answer that. So many. I mean, we did so many before we handed in even the first time to the producers, and then we did so many for them, and then we did some for the studio, and then we changed studios and they wanted their ideas and Julia had her thoughts. I can’t even tell you. It was very many.

Were you intimidated, knowing what a huge phenomenon this story had become? Did you worry fans were going to rebel if you changed anything?

Well, when we first started working on it, it hadn’t become the phenomenon it ultimately became. By the time it became that, I was so deeply immersed in the process of getting it right that I was a little less obsessed by that. I think at the point towards the end when we were moving into the greenlight phase, there was a lot of talk about, “This is an iconic scene, this is an iconic scene. Fans want this, fans think that.” We became aware of all of that and those things had to be considered, but I think when we were really building the structure we felt pretty free.

What was the hardest scene for you to write; was it something you had to adapt from the book or something you had to create from scratch?

I think the biggest concern was how to get it right that a woman who is married to a  lovely guy and lives in a lovely house wants to toss it all out the window and run away for a year. How do you square that with audiences? How do you keep her from being sort of a willful, spoiled, privileged character that puts people off? How do you make his character more than someone you’re just glad to be rid of? How do you create the sorrow in leaving and the need to leave without infidelity or without demonizing him? That was so tricky. That took a lot.

That’s a tough one. So how did you do it?

We did it by doing it over and over and over. By getting it wrong a hundred times before we got it right.

Was it a matter of making her more sympathetic or just creating such a three-dimensional character that people could relate to her?

I think ultimately it was about finding that pitch where you understand what she needs without judging her. You understand how she feels without hating anyone. That’s a very tough thing to find. I don’t know how to explain to you what we did other than we wrote it a million times.

What is your writing process like? Do you only work specific hours? Do you find music helps? How disciplined are you?

Well, songs will definitely inspire work once I’m into it. I will get obsessed with a song. I wish I had a better work ethic. I wish I was more organized about the time I put in and when I do it and how I do it, and I’m constantly swearing that next week I’m going to get up at seven and work every morning until noon. I swear it every week of my life, but so far it’s never happened. But I do honestly have to say that the best work is early in the morning. Especially when you’re really at the beginning of something, and it’s hard. You’ve got to do it early in the morning. Once the ship has set sail and you’ve got some wind behind you, I can just keep going and work any time. But when you’re in those early phases, or when you’re in the stuck phases, the early morning is a great time. Then I will be very rigorous about getting up at like six and blasting through.

Do you ever get writer’s block and if so, how do you push through?

For me, my philosophy is that if you have writer’s block, you have to get up earlier in the morning to attack from kind of a different energy. And writer’s block usually means, for me, that I’m on the wrong track. That I have to go from sitting where I’m sitting to somewhere else and entertain the idea that it’s the wrong scene or the wrong something big.

What are you working on now?

As a screenplay, I have a book called While I’m Falling that I’m adapting on my own; I might try set it up somewhere, but at the moment I’m just working on it myself. It’s a novel about a mother and college-age daughter — I find the story very funny and sad, the story about their relationship. And then I’m working on an HBO project; we’re developing a pilot, myself and Rachel DeWoskin, the writer of a memoir called Foreign Babes in Beijing. It’s about her time living in Beijing and about the expatriate world there.

Because you started writing after the death of your father, do you ever wish he could have seen your success as a writer?

I do, all the time. Very much.