Actor interview: Khalid Abdalla, star of The Kite Runner

by John P. Meyer

Here's a distant-early preview insider's glimpse of The Kite Runner, the best-selling novel by Khaled Hosseini that's been made into a movie by director Marc Forster (Monster's Ball, Finding Neverland, Stranger Than Fiction).

The film doesn't open until Dec. 14 and it's already getting Oscar buzz. I can't post a review of the movie until opening day, but I can offer up a tantalizing hors d'oeuvre via this interview with lead actor Khalid Abdalla, who spent some time conversing with a roundtable of local press folk at the Adolphus Hotel on Monday (Nov. 5).

Here are highlights of topics covered in the interview:

* Conditions in Afghanistan, and why Forster and crew chose not to film there.

* The cast and crew represented 26 countries and spoke 46 different languages.

* Book author Khaled Hosseini couldn't understand Khalid's initial attempts to speak Dari so he (Khalid) immersed himself in the language for a month by living in Afghanistan and working with a native language teacher.

* Khalid Abdalla: "I will never do... a film that I think is misrepresentative, harmful or cheap."

* Khalid describes the movie thusly: "It's about people who have been brutalized rather than the people that do the brutalizing."

As we pick up the conversation, Khalid is talking about - appropriately enough - kite flying. His voice betrays the cultured British inflection derived from a Scottish upbringing; his word choice demonstrates a gift for poetry. Khalid is reportedly fluent in English, French and Arabic - and can now add a familiarity with Dari to his linguistic accomplishments.

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