`Doubt` Made Easy -- The Hard Way

Early reviews are mostly positive with the film ranking a 73 percent positive on review Web site rottentomatoes.com.

If there is anything that can be said about the new movie "Doubt," which debuted in major U.S. cities Friday, it is that there was never a big question over whether the film would get made.

The ease of taking "Doubt" from Broadway play in 2005 to movie is a rarity in Hollywood where film projects come and go as fast as box office sales rise and fall, and writer/director John Patrick Shanley whose past screen work includes "Moonstruck" and "Joe Versus the Volcano" should know.

But to hear Shanley talk about "Doubt," its evolution seems charmed. He told Reuters he wrote the play in about four months, and it was staged soon after he finished.

Once it became a Broadway hit -- it earned a Pulitzer Prize and Tony award, among others -- a film deal with producer Scott Rudin soon followed, and stars Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman signed on for starring roles.

If only it were always that easy and, in fact, it was not.

Shanley won the Oscar for best screenplay with 1987 romance "Moonstruck," which proved to be a box office hit and made the writer the toast of Tinseltown. Soon after, he was hired to make his film directing debut with 1990's "Joe Versus the Volcano," which he also wrote.

But "Joe" bombed at box offices with just $39 million in ticket sales and Shanley felt the impact.

"I had been working nonstop for 15 years. I was spiritually exhausted," Shanley told Reuters. "I didn't have anything to write about...and needed a break."

So Shanley went back to New York where he focused on family and on fighting a debilitating eye disease. He returned to writing plays, and his Hollywood days seemed behind him.

ROOTS OF "DOUBT"

The seeds of "Doubt: A Parable" were sown in the ashes of the Sept. 11 attacks and talk of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Shanley said at the time many political pundits in the media seemed all too certain of themselves about the existence of WMDs, and their commentary was "loud and noisy."

"It got to the point of real bombast and posturing," he said. "Doubt is about change. It's a quiet moment" of personal introspection.

While the play was easy to write, Shanley said adapting it to a screenplay was one of the hardest things he has done because he had to take what was mostly dialogue between two people and transform the words into a cinematic event with sets, action and numerous other characters.

Set in 1964 amid the turbulent civil rights battles waged in the United States, "Doubt" tells of a Catholic nun, Sister Aloysius (Streep), who accuses a priest, Father Flynn (Hoffman), of sexually abusing an African American student in the school where Aloysius and Flynn work.

But as a verbal battle of wits takes place between Aloysius and Flynn, audiences are never quite certain if the priest is guilty or just helping the boy who is constantly hazed by white students in a Catholic school.

"I wanted to foster, and have audiences be part of, an interesting conversation," Shanley said. "I would like for audiences to walk out and talk about their own uncertainty."

Early reviews are mostly positive with the film ranking a 73 percent positive on review Web site rottentomatoes.com.

On Thursday, "Doubt" earned five Golden Globe nominations, one each for Streep and Hoffman, as well as for Amy Adams and Viola Davis in supporting roles and Shanley for screenplay.

But as Shanley knows well, success in the movie business is judged by whether a film is a box office hit or miss. And until ticket sales are tallied, that question remains in doubt.