Book strikes sour note over Campion's 'Piano'

By PATRICK GOWER

On the eve of the 72nd Academy Awards, celebrated New Zealand film director Jane Campion is under attack, with calls for her to be stripped of her Oscar for The Piano screenplay.

An Australian newspaper has accused Sydney-based Campion of basing the screenplay on Jane Mander's novel The Story of a New Zealand River.

Comparisons with the 1920 novel are not new, but have resurfaced after the latest edition of the Oxford Companion to Australian Film cites The Piano as being "based on the novel, uncredited" - the first time such claims have been made in an official source.

Campion was not available for comment last night, but her agent, Viccy Harper, told the Canberra Times: "It is an original screenplay."

The Piano is New Zealand's most acclaimed film and widely viewed as the picture that put the now-blossoming local film scene on the international map.

Campion won her Oscar for the 1993 film for a "screenplay written directly for the screen."

Robert Macklin, who wrote the Canberra Times article, said Campion should have entered the category "screenplay based on material previously produced or published."

"The film, in my opinion, is based on the book," he said. "If [proved] true, it would cause a tremor through Hollywood and outrage in the film and literary communities of Los Angeles, Britain, Australia and New Zealand."

Macklin argued that if the claims about the film were correct, then the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences could force her to relinquish her Oscar.

No award winner in the history of the Oscars has ever been forced to return a coveted statuette.

Campion has refused in the past to acknowledge any debt to The Story of a New Zealand River. She has maintained that she was influenced "by about 20" books when writing the screenplay, the most important of which was Wuthering Heights.

Campion did not buy the film rights to Mander's book. But she had worked with two producers - John Maynard and Brigid Ikin - who did buy the rights and had sought to make the film.

Jane Mander's biographer, Rae McGregor, told the Herald last night: "I've always maintained that it would be a huge coincidence if the film wasn't based on the novel."