As part of the film industry’s annual Oscar campaign, last week both Universal and Paramount’s Vantage division posted the scripts of potential nominees online. Some of these scripts are for films that haven’t been released yet. Click here if you can’t wait till Nov. 2 to find out what happens in American Gangster, and here for a sneak preview of Noah Baumbach’s latest, Margot At The Wedding.
One of these scripts—the controversial adaptation of Khaled Hosseini’s novel The Kite Runner—has actual news value. The film, which features unknown Iranian and Afghan actors, was originally scheduled for release Nov. 2, but the premiere was delayed over a scene depicting the sexual assault of the character Hassan, a preteen boy. The father of Ahmad Kahn Mahmidzada, the young Afghan actor who plays Hassan, asked Paramount to cut the scene (which is fairly central to the plot) out of concern for Ahmad’s personal safety. A former Central Intelligence Agency agent sent by the studio to the Middle East to assess the risk reported back that the father’s fears were well-founded. As a former Afghan ambassador to the United States explained to Slate’s Kim Masters, “to be raped or to be gay over there—it’s unfortunately absolutely unacceptable,” even when it’s merely a dramatic simulation. The controversy pushed the film’s release date to Dec. 14 so that Ahmad and two other child actors who participated in the scene could finish the school term before Paramount relocated their families to Dubai, which is presumably safer. All three are expected to help promote the movie.
What does the film actually show? We can’t know for sure. But the script tells us how the scene was filmed. Whether that’s been altered in the editing process is anybody’s guess. The attack comes in the script’s 39th scene and takes up four pages (below and on the following three pages) of the 122-page screenplay.
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