Iris Yamashita

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Iris Hitomi Yamashita ( Japaneseア イ リ ス ・ ヤ マ シ タ; born April 1965 in Missouri ) is a Japanese - American writer and screenwriter .

Life

Iris Yamashita was born in Missouri, in the American Midwest . Her father, a native of Japan, had come to the United States as part of the renowned Fulbright exchange program . She grew up in Hawaii and attended the University of California at San Diego and Berkeley , each of which she graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in biotechnology and a master's degree in mechanical engineering . Later Yamashita studied at the University of Tokyo the subject virtual reality . In addition to her scientific and technical studies, she warmed herself to writing and celebrated her first successes with short stories. Yamashita twice won the international short story competition of the Japanese airline All Nippon Airways , which included a publication in its in-flight magazine Wingspan . Her first screenplay, Traveler In Tokyo, was also recognized and won the Big Bear Lake Film Festival screenwriting competition in California . Then the renowned Hollywooder Creative Artists Agency (CAA) became aware of Yamashita and signed her. The CAA has artists from all areas of the US entertainment industry among its customers, including well-known filmmakers such as the actors George Clooney , Tom Hanks and Nicole Kidman .

The young Japanese-American, who also lived temporarily in Guam , was working as a full-time web programmer in 2005 when she came into contact with screenwriter Paul Haggis . Haggis had been commissioned by Clint Eastwood to write a screenplay for the war drama Flags of Our Fathers about the Japanese perspective on the World War II battle for the Pacific island of Iwojima .

The American, who had already written the film script for Eastwood's successful boxer drama Million Dollar Baby (2004), was working with LA Crash on the post-production of his own cinema debut as a director. Haggis was looking for another scriptwriter for Eastwood's project, which Yamashita's agency CAA found out about. She sent him some of the scriptwriter's work, who then met with Yamashita and recommended her to Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood liked the very first draft based on a story developed together with Haggis. He bought the script, which after some changes by Yamashita was filmed in Japanese in 2006 under the title Letters from Iwo Jima in the original locations. The fifteen million US dollar war drama starring Ken Watanabe in the lead role of commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi (1891-1945) was a success with critics and audiences and was number one in the US box office for several weeks when it was released in December 2006. Hailed by the Los Angeles Times as a grueling, psychological-poetic war film, Letters from Iwo Jima received the Golden Globe Award for best foreign language film of the year .

At the 2007 Academy Awards on February 25, the film was nominated in four categories, but could only prevail against the competition in one technical category. Among the nominees were Iris Yamashita and Paul Haggis, who were considered together in the Best Original Screenplay category , but ultimately lost to Michael Arndt ( Little Miss Sunshine ).

Filmography

Awards

Oscar
  • 2007 : Nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category for Letters from Iwo Jima
Further

Chicago Film Critics Association Awards

  • 2006: Nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category for Letters from Iwo Jima

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Iris Yamashita at radaris.com , accessed November 18, 2012
  2. ↑ cf. Fernandez, Jay A .: Scriptland . In: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 17, 2007, Calendar, Calendar Desk, Part E, p. 1
personal data
SURNAME Yamashita, Iris
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Yamashita, Iris Hitomi (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Japanese-American writer and screenwriter
DATE OF BIRTH April 1965
PLACE OF BIRTH Missouri , USA