What is it about Oscar-nominated films that always seems to bring out greed and jealousy from those who were involved? In the last year or two there have been lawsuits connected to both Crash and Brokeback Mountain where people felt they had not been compensated fairly, and now it appears that the success of Babel has driven a rift between the film’s writing/directing duo of Guillermo Arriaga and Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. In this case, they aren’t arguing over money, however.

Arriaga claims that Inarritu is trying to steal credit for his work on Babel “by listing himself in the credits as the movie’s creator”. Inarritu, on the other hand, has written a letter to Arriaga (signed by some of the film’s cast members) criticizing him for trying to get media attention. “It’s a shame that in your unjustified obsession to claim sole responsibility for the film, you seem not to recognize that movies are an art of deep collaboration.” I tend to agree with Inarritu on that point, but sometimes you can’t help but feel for writers, whose contributions are constantly overshadowed by the director of a film. Either way, it seems like a pretty poor reason for their 9 year partnership (which included the previous movies 21 Grams and Amores Perros) to come to an end. And to think, it didn’t even end up winning Best Picture!