In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Life of Pi author Yann Martel gave his stamp of approval for Ang Lee‘s 3D film adaptation. He said that Lee’s film is “incredibly faithful to the book” not only in plot, but also in “the idea, the intent.”

Prior to shooting, Martel met with the director to give feedback on the screenplay. After that, the author took a very hands-off approach with film production.

He explained in the interview: “Early on, I made very clear that I was willing to do whatever they wanted me to do and that I was stepping back because I know my limits. I’m a novelist; it’s my business to write words and construct novels, not to make movies — as much as I love movies. I grew up watching movies.”

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Pulitzer-prize winning biographer Stacy Schiff (pictured, via) has written about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (French aviator), Vera Nabokov (wife/muse to Lolita author Vladimir Nabokov), Benjamin Franklin (American diplomat/inventor), and most recently, Cleopatra VII (the last queen/pharoah of Egypt).

We caught up with Schiff to learn more about what it takes to write biographies.

Q: How does a biographer arrive at a subject to write about?
A: There are all kinds of explanations for a phenomenon that I find fundamentally inexplicable — like marriage. Biographies have been written on dares, as escapes, for money, out of transference. Your subject’s issues are your issues — or you hope to make them so. The explanation that rings truest with me is that you pick the subject that takes you where you want to go (and where you hope your reader might also want to go).

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