I was just watching the film The Departed. When I got to the end credits, I waited to see who it was written by, as I didn’t know. After Scorsese’s name comes up as director, it says that the screenplay is by William Monahan.

Well, if you know about film credit terminology, you know that “screenplay by” is not the whole answer to my question. A “written by” credit means that that person wrote the story and screenplay, that he is, in essence, the writer of the movie, as the credit suggests. “Screenplay by” means that that person wrote the dialogue and shaped the story for the screen, but someone else wrote the story (or at least someone else helped write the story). In some cases this is a result of a screenplay that was good in concept but bad in execution which gets rewritten, thus the “screenplay by” and “story by” credits are sometimes different, and when this is the case, the “screenplay by” credit will be shared; in most cases, however, a “screenplay by” credit means that the film was based on an existing property (i.e., a book, a video game, etc.). Typically, the “story by” credit or “based on” credit appears directly after the “screenplay by” credit.

In The Departed, however, it is not until after all of the producers, all of the actors, hell, even all of the stunt people are credited that the reason for the “screenplay by” credit is revealed: The Departed is based upon the Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs.

Come on, Marty. You’re going to make a very faithful English adaptation of a recent and not at all obscure foreign film, and then try to hide the fact from general audiences? Not cool. But hey, at least you’ve got that Oscar.