Lights, camera, India

Buoyed by cheaper production costs, the sheer exotic flavour of our country made popular by the success of Slumdog Millionaire and the like and the popularity of books based out of India, Hollywood is now looking East to shoot its films. Coming up: Life of Pi, Midnight's Children and Anubhav Sinha-Paul Schrader's Xtreme City. Jai ho it is

Buoyed by cheaper production costs, the sheer exotic flavour of our country made popular by the success of Slumdog Millionaire and the like and the popularity of books based out of India, Hollywood is now looking East to shoot its films. Coming up: Life of Pi, Midnight's Children and Anubhav Sinha-Paul Schrader's Xtreme City. Jai ho it is

Loved Yann Martel's book The Life of Pi? You'll find the movie delightful and familiar too -- Ang Lee, of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and Brokeback Mountain fame, will soon be in Pondicherry to shoot his film adaptation of the Booker prize-winning book.


Illustration/Jishu Dev Malakar

He's not alone. Yet another Booker prize-winning novel, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, that dishes out a gripping tale of events before and after the partition of India, has caught the fancy of Canada-based director Deepa Mehta, who will be in Kashmir to shoot the film soon. This, despite her bad experience with Hindi fundamentalists who forced her to abandon the shoot of Water in Varanasi, ten years ago.

Danny Boyle too is reportedly set to make another India-themed film based on Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, which is another storyline depicting Mumbai with all its flaws and glory. It gets better.

Currently awaiting the release of the graphic-heavy, Shah Rukh Khan starrer sci-fi film Ra.One, director Anubhav Sinha has teamed up with respected Hollywood writer-director Paul Schrader (American Gigolo, Adam Resurrected) to script his ambitious next film, Xtreme City. Though the script is still being finalised, Schrader has already visited areas like Sion, Koliwada and Dharavi for developing the story of this cross cultural film.

Dev Patel in a still from Slumdog Millionaire, with Mumbai as a backdrop

Dev 'Slumdog' Patel recently concluded the shoot of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, in Rajasthan. Helmed by John Madden, starring respected actors such as Bill Nighy, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench and Tom Wilkinson, the film's story is set in Bengaluru and centres on the residents of an elderly home.

Call it the Slumdog Millionaire effect or a by-product of our booming economy, but of late, India seems to have decisively grabbed Hollywood's attention.

Desi, a rage with videshi
Julia Roberts' recent $80 million grossing Eat Pray Love, which depicted a writer gaining spiritual succour in India, and Jennifer Lynch's Hisss are just two such examples.

We now also take in our stride visits from Hollywood A-listers. Gerard Butler and John Travolta dropped in for personal visits last year. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were here while Jolie shot for A Mighty Heart in Pune in 2006.

And who can forget Mallika Sherawat's blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in Jackie Chan-starrer The Myth, for which they shot in Hampi, Karnataka?

"The West needs to explore fresh horizons and India is the flavour of the times; the new frontier!" enthuses Amitabh Bachchan while remarking on the changing scenario that has put India on western cinema's radar. The actor observes: "When a country does well economically, everything about it gets attention - its food, its music, its clothes, its culture, its politics and its films. Ever since the opening up of the economy by the Government, there has been a huge interest in everything Indian. It is but natural that creative interest shall also be prime."

'Book'ed by Hollywood
In recent years, India-based novels have made a mark the world over; and international filmmakers have shown an urge to translate these stories from paperbacks into film reels. Thanks to Danny Boyle's Oscar success with Slumdog Millionaire (based on Vikas Swarup's Q&A), Mumbai's throbbing underbelly grabbed international
attention.

Though Mira Nair's much awaited Shantaram, based on Gregory David Roberts's bestseller of the same name, starring Amitabh Bachchan, has been shelved for all practical purposes, the Salaam Bombay director will be back in Delhi, her home town, to shoot with a Pakistani actor for her adaptation of The Reluctant Fundamentalist, set in Lahore. Explains Nair, "Spiritually and architecturally, Delhi is akin to Lahore. But I'll be shooting in Lahore for 10 days as well. Then, four weeks in New York and four days in Chile. We start shooting in March."

Martel's Life Of Pi has been transformed into a screenplay by Lee, and the protagonist of this fantasy-
adventure film is a young boy from Pondicherry who is stranded for 227 days on the sea after having been caught in a shipwreck. And this is no lip service -- Lee also visited India last year for location scouting.

Bond with India goes back in time
Although Hollywood made sporadic attempts to have an India connect even earlier -- James Bond's 1983 spy thriller Octopussy was extensively shot at the famous Monsoon Palace in Udaipur -- it has became more pronounced, of late.

A still from Hisss, which brought the jungles of Kerala to Hollywood's notice

Though filmmaker Jennifer Lynch's Hisss lacked sting at the Indian box office, the film, about an Indian snake woman, showcased the jungles of Kerala (one of its shooting locales) for the global audience, having done the rounds of several film festivals including the film's promotion at Cannes.

And in 2007, western audiences got another taste of Indian flavour in Wes Anderson's Darjeeling Limited, which chronicled the journey of three brothers (Oscar winner Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson and Jason Schwartzman) on a path of spiritual self discovery.

India unexplored
Indian culture has always fascinated the West. Sinha elaborates, "India is one of the most unexplored cultures of the world, which makes it intriguing to the world. So, the big studio producers are trying to tell stories which are based in India but are still international." He shares an interesting analogy: "It is like the late 60s, when Italian mafia and European culture became international because they were novel. Now, the same thing is happening to India."

One of India's best known exports, Irrfan Khan (Slumdog Millionaire, The Namesake) vouches, "After The Namesake, I met an old woman in America who was terribly moved by the film. I had fans telling me they instantly wrote to their parents after seeing the film. After that film, there was a growing interest in India, which was compounded by Slumdog Millionaire."

Ang Lee with Anupam Kher, who he worked with in Lust, Caution. Kher was also seen in Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger as Freida Pinto's father

Anupam Kher, who has worked with Lee in Lust, Caution, reasons, "Today, Ang Lee is making Life Of Pi in India. Several other filmmakers are coming here to make films, because culturally we have always been rich. Also, India is now a big market. So, it suits them to make films here."

Cheaper production costs here
Like everything else, economics rule cinema as well. Economically, India is a cheaper location. According to Sinha, the cost of production in this part of the world is just a fraction of what it would be in the UK or America.

While one may argue that red tapism and bureaucracy may make shooting in our vast country a difficult process, Sinha begs to differ. He points out, "If you have to shoot in a lane in Vancouver, you have to go through a million departments. In our country it is simpler, through a lot of straight and not-so-straight processes. In smaller cities, you can do things very easily. If you go to shoot in a house in North America, you have to seek permission from the house members as well as the entire locality, since you are going to disrupt their daily routine."

Kher seconds Sinha when he says, "We have very efficient Executive Producers in India. If there are so many foreign film shootings being held here, I am sure there is less red tapism."

The flipside
Though India goes ballistic when biggies visit, their security becomes an issue. During Brangelina's Pune visit, their security guards got into a scuffle with the local media.
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Reportedly, Tom Cruise is scheduled to shoot in Rajasthan for Mission Impossible 4. So, if and when Cruise turns up, won't crowd control be a problem for the producers? Sinha has a different take. He reasons, "When SRK shoots, there is no bigger crowd control needed than for anyone else. A Tom Cruise shooting in Rajasthan would require lesser security than a Shah Rukh in Rajasthan."

What's next?
But lack of proper infrastructure is still a liability for India. Sinha confesses, "We are 20 years behind most of the world, but we are growing at a very rapid pace. We do not have infrastructure -- only a few suppliers have equipment which are of world standards." Bachchan has the last word: "The West is technically advanced and therefore, their bringing any technical know-how will benefit us. But we are developing extremely fast indigenously, and there are many areas where our latent expertise is surprising them."

With Indian-themed content catching the fancy of Hollywood and with India emerging as a viable shooting locale, Eastward Ho may well become the new credo.

Bollywood News Service

Films to roll in India

Life Of Pi
Director: Ang Lee
Cast: Gerard Depardieu, Tabu, Irrfan Khan, Suraj Sharma
Destination: Pondicherry, India, apart from Taiwan.

Maximum City
Director: Danny Boyle of Slumdog Millionaire fame
Cast: Aamir Khan
Destination: The self-explanatory title, Maximum City: Bombay Lost And Found, promises a narrative that explores the various aspects of Mumbai.

Xtreme City
Director: Paul Schrader
Cast: The buzz has it that Shah Rukh Khan will be seen in this one. For now, Anubhav Sinha divulges, "Shah Rukh just knows that I'm working on these lines with Schrader. I had introduced them to each other even before I had signed Paul."
Destination: Though the script is in progress, Schrader has visited places like Dharavi, Sion and Koliwada to develop the story.

Midnight's Children
Director: Deepa Mehta
Cast: While casting is still in progress, Irrfan Khan, Anupam Kher, Soha Ali Khan, Shabana Azmi, Seema Biswas, Nandita Das, Shriya Saran and Siddharth have been confirmed for the film.
Destination: Kashmir and Sri Lanka.