Marjorie David on Adapting READING LOLITA IN TEHRAN – Jennifer Green interviews

A book both beloved (over 100 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list) and banned (in Iran), Iranian author Azar Nafisi’s memoir, Reading Lolita in Tehran, was adapted to screen in 2023 by Israeli filmmaker Eran Riklis based on a script he co-wrote with American Marjorie David. In 2024, it won the Audience Award and Special Jury Prize at the Rome Film Festival, the city where it was filmed.

Reading Lolita in Tehran is set to premiere in the US on July 10 through Greenwich Entertainment. The delay is curious considering the book’s popularity in the US. “It was hard to get an American distributor for some reason,” David admits. “It got European distribution immediately. I don’t know why nobody picked it up here for so long. It seems nuts! It’s of the moment, it’s of special interest to women. It’s of interest to anybody interested in Iran.”

American interest in Iran could hit a new high this summer as a result of current events. Whether the ongoing US-Iran hostilities will help or hurt the film’s release is yet to be seen. One thing is for sure, though—Americans can and perhaps should gain insights into the people and culture of Iran from this story. And those who have read the book will appreciate how loyal the script stays to the true story at its core.

David is a Hollywood veteran. She’s written for some of contemporary television’s most memorable series, from Hill Street Blues to Chicago Hope, and from the 90210 revamp to Brothers & Sisters and Taken. She is also a prolific producer, with executive producer credits on these and nearly a dozen series in the last 25 years.

AWFJ had the chance to talk with David about her work adapting Reading Lolita, on which she also has an executive producer credit, how it fit with her career and what she hopes audiences will take away from the film.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Jennifer Green: This book was so popular in the US. It was over 100 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. That’s crazy!

Marjorie David: It’s crazy, and it’s a great book. And it’s interesting that it was even on there because it’s a literary book, and it’s very specifically referential when it comes to the books that she’s talking about. I think anyone could read and enjoy it, but I also think it’s enriched if you understand something about the literature.

She and I come from a similar place. We were both academics before we were regular writers, so that gave me a way of looking at books that wasn’t dissimilar to hers… And those vivid descriptions [in her writing] were absolutely essential in picturing where we were and who was in the story, because we can’t go to Iran. I have a joke that it’s the country I know the most about that I can never go to.

JG: You come mostly from the world of episodic television. How did you get involved in this project?

MD: Well, first of all, I started in movies and so it’s oddly like my career has come full circle now that I’m doing less. But I got into television because I had a couple of films out, with Andrei Konchalovsky actually, and a friend of mine—this is how things used to work—a friend of mine who was writing television said, ‘You wanna do a Hill Street Blues?’ And I was like, “Oh, I don’t know if I wanna do that.” But in fact, it was really fun.

Writers are much more on-the-ground participants in doing TV, and in the end, when I came back to work on a film, where I’m well aware that that’s a medium where the director calls the shots, I knew what I was doing—I’m a producer also now, and pretty good at it. And so, on that level, we never had a problem. I knew what was required. I knew how to avoid overstepping the kind of budget we knew we were going to have (and it ended up less than that).

I think I was more helpful now than I was at the beginning of my career when I was writing… I learned a whole other skill, which is producing. Television’s the greatest for that. Creators control television, so it was fun kind of to let go of it and let Eran do his thing.

JG: I highlighted a quote in the book that talked about what we search for when we read fiction, which is “an epiphany of truth.” For you, is there an ‘epiphany of truth’ in this film, a central or core message that you took from the book and tried to transfer to the film, that you hope audiences get out of this movie?

MD: You know, this is the kind of thing that changes as time goes by. Ultimately, what I felt was that it followed that invocation, I think it’s Snyder, of ‘don’t acquiesce in advance,” which she did not do. She didn’t do it, she just couldn’t do it. She had to do the right thing and did. I’m filled with admiration. I mean, the thing that’s amazing to me is that this is true… There was a certain point where I couldn’t make stuff up. Azar would’ve taken the book away, and I wouldn’t have blamed her. I mean, you had to go with what she said, which was interesting enough.

JG: Right, it’s a memoir. There’s a line, when they’re talking about Lolita in the book, where someone says Lolita was a ‘double victim’ because she had both her life and her life story taken from her. I wondered—was the author of the book involved at all in the process of writing the script for the film?

MD: Not really, but we liked each other a lot. So, in a way, she was always in my mind. I really think it’s important if you’re working with a living writer, as a writer yourself, that you respect their intentions and the things that they need. And that made it hard, you know, in a whole other way than adapting a book that’s so literary. But because it was Azar, it wasn’t, because she understood everything. It was just really a comfortable relationship.

But she never chimed in on writing the film. She was careful not to, I guess, interfere. If something had offended or upset her, we would’ve known. But I think she was pretty happy with the whole process. As I understand it, she was.

JG: Did she have any wishes or advice for you?

MD: She wanted us to be careful that we didn’t lie. The thing about making a movie of a book is you can cheat, but you can’t lie. That’s what I believe… I think there was a previous adaptation that she took the rights away from. I didn’t read the adaptation, so I don’t know, but I know one of the things that’s the immediate impulse if you’re a screenwriter is to want there to be a romance between her and the Magician, and that’s just not true. She’s a living person with a living husband who she loved and was with even then, and it was a thing that they went through together, and it really distorted the meaning of the book to put some romance in there that didn’t exist and was not important. And in fact, it was almost better that there wasn’t one between the two of them, to me… It’s more magical. He wasn’t there as a physical being to satisfy that part of someone’s life. He was there as this sort of voice of conscience and the voice of inner meaning, and when you let go and when you stay. He had a multiple function, and I think it would’ve been ruined if, if there had been some kind of sex thing.

JG: Backing up, tell me about the process. When you are given the task of adapting this book—it’s a big book—where do you start?

MD: I have to say, I talked to Eran a lot, and it was really helpful. He’s a great story guy, and nothing but kind and reassuring, and that just helped a lot. When I looked at it, I think we realized right away that we had to divide it [the story] up into the books, and that was a way of breaking it down right away so that it was in smaller pieces. So, the story didn’t have to be episodic, but… I had to figure out what things went with what author, which was certainly not part of the book itself. Although it was in a way, I mean, I’m sure she was well aware of all that as she was doing it. But there were some things that really belonged with F. Scott Fitzgerald, and there were some things that really belonged with somebody else. You know, you could run through all of them and find it.

And so, I broke it down that way and I made like a big chart of everybody and where they were and what happened to them. And in fact, there were eight young women in the book, and I put it down to seven because two of them had very similar experiences, and there’s only so much screen time. And Azar really regretted that we had to lose that character, which so did I. But there was just no way to handle it. It was huge.

So, there was that, and there was the fact that the literariness of it was so important to it. And so I agreed that that was true, and that was where we went. And it was a nice way to look at authors too and what they mean in people’s lives.

JG: How do you get across literariness in a film without putting your viewers to sleep?

MD: I think you think about what the authors of the literature intended, like what are those books really about?… I went to her intention. I mean, she set it up perfectly. I looked at the nature—the more you read that book, the deeper it is. It’s really a great book. I went back and was looking at what her life was. It answers the question, “What does literature mean in your life?” just by existing. It gave them a way to get through this mess they were in.

JG: There’s a lot of inner monologue in the book. Did you consider at any point having a narrator?

MD: Nah, I don’t like that. Sometimes it depends on the film—I mean, there’s some times I guess you need one, but not in this one. She told her own story, and the actions in the story made clear the things that she was trying to say.

JG: Would you say that this is a feminist film?

MD: Oh, sure. I don’t think I do anything that you couldn’t slap that onto. It also shows about how you can put a bag over women’s heads, but they’ll still come fighting out at book club. It gave some of them the strength to leave, and I also found interesting the person who didn’t leave. And it was true—those were the people who were in her group, so it was a nice panorama of how intelligent women dealt with this difficult situation.

JG: I imagine that in the adaptation process you have a lot of respect for the original source material, but when it’s a bestseller does that give you added pause?

MD: Being a bestseller would just mean that more people came to the movie. I think that’s an advantage. It makes people interested in seeing it portrayed. And I think even if no one on earth ever read it, I would have to be respectful of it and write the script that was written because that’s who it’s about. It’s a human being that it’s about and a real country with real people in it… It was very important to be honest about the book.