Money makes uneasy allies of film capitals

Harry Sanna

• Last Updated: October 24. 2009 12:06AM UAE / October 23. 2009 8:06PM GMT

NEW DELHI, INDIA // The first day of shooting for the film adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling novel Eat, Pray, Love began in a quintessentially Indian fashion. A swami in full saffron regalia smudged a tikka on the forehead of the American crew and placed a garland of marigolds over the formidable camera lens.

With the film – starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem – blessed for a prosperous three-week shoot in an ashram south of New Delhi, the American team and dozens of their Indian crew members got down to business.

But, while setting up the very first scene, a workman tending to the background slipped and put his foot through a bookshelf.

The foreign crew, not strangers to the concept of a lawsuit, had little time to wince before the workman brushed off the glass and merrily got back to his assigned task.

Los Angeles never seemed further away.

Over the coming weeks, the once-placid grounds of the ashram witnessed the mighty effort to organise the hundreds of extras, mainly from nearby villages and New Delhi’s vast pool of bored expatriates.

During one hot afternoon, the two-time Academy Award winning cinematographer Robert Richardson, frustrated with the inevitable delays on set in India – a light reflector hit a low-hanging fan and panicked crew ran after wayward local extras – leaned back from the camera. With a sidewards glance to his American counterparts, he let out a faintly audible ‘Ommm’.

In a push to further globalise worldwide film production, the two formerly independent tyrants of the international film industry, Hollywood and Bollywood, are entering into a tumultuous love affair. With the recession biting in the West, Hollywood is also looking East to help trim its swollen budgets.

“Hollywood is very, very short on capital right now,” said Navi Radjou, executive director at the Cambridge-University based Centre for India and Global Business. “Because they are so short on cash, they are looking around asking ‘Where are our next growth markets?’”

Mr Radjou, an Indian-French national, recently hosted a seminar at the University of Cambridge’s Judge Business School on the globalising nature of the Indian film industry and the opportunities it presents for the West.

“The market is growing for Hollywood movies in India. Secondly, there’s a way to use Indian talent to reduce cost of production of movies. Thirdly, you can find potential partners who may be willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in your company.”

In July this year, Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios closed an US$825 million (Dh3.03bn) deal with Reliance Big Entertainment, headed by Indian billionaire Anil Ambani. Warner Brothers is also investing in, producing and distributing a number of big budget Bollywood and other India-based films marketed at global audiences.

AV Shankardass, a film financier with close to two decades of experience in the business, has recently set his gaze on India’s partnership with Hollywood. After a successful venture in Brazil, Mr Shankardass has set up a $100m fund that invests Indian equity in North American entertainment, mainly the film industry.

“North America has all the successful, profitable content but they have none of the money,” he said.

So confident in his new venture, titled Global Entertainment Partners, Mr Shankardass has invested $20m out of his own pocket.

“[Indians] have a penchant for entertainment, they are people who enjoy entertainment, entrepreneurially they respond to entertainment and they have the equity capital and the resources to be able to buy into the successful market space, which is North America.”

Allocating 80 per cent of the fund to foreign interests, the remaining 20 per cent will be invested in the Indian film industry.

With an already well-established pool of competent technicians and other production professionals in the country, coupled with a greater emphasis on the English language, the Indian film industry has emerged as fertile ground for the multibillion-dollar global entertainment machine.

As costs rise and revenues fall in the recession-battered climate of the US, India offers globally competitive prices for not only the production of films, but post-production editing and even animation.

“[The Indian film industry] is going to grow exponentially in the next 10 years and everyone wants to get in on the ground floor,” said John J Lee, Jr, Dean of Whistling Woods International, a film institute based out of Film City, Mumbai’s vast film studio complex.

“In a place like India, that has been landlocked culturally for so long, all at once now there is a new standard that every time a new benchmark is made, all the other pictures need to lift up to that benchmark.”

According to the ministry of information and broadcasting, at least 90 foreign films have been cleared for shooting in the past few years.

Prominent mentions include A Mighty Heart starring Angelina Jolie, Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited, the award-sweeping Slumdog Millionaire and, most recently, Eat, Pray, Love, which is produced by Brad Pitt’s Plan B Productions.

Few have experienced firsthand the surge in Hollywood projects in India like Tabrez Noorani. As head of India Take One Productions, the LA-based entrepreneur has provided equipment and manpower for such productions as Holy Smoke, Slumdog Millionaire, Eat, Pray, Love and the American TV comedy series Bollywood Hero.

“More things are coming to India now than ever before and not just India for India but India [as a location for] for Pakistan, Afghanistan or Dubai,” he said on a recent trip to India to wrap-up the production of Eat, Pray, Love.

“I think that even if you take out the filmmaking aspect, suddenly everyone seems to want to travel to India. It ends up being the fact that it’s an exotic land, costs can be very low and you can have a really good time shooting.”

Despite Bollywood’s unrivalled success rate at producing back-to-back entertainment for a primarily Indian audience, many observers acknowledge there are some bumps in the road ahead for the Hollywood-Bollywood union.

Perhaps the greatest hurdle is the insular and occasionally chaotic modus operandi of Bollywood productions. Factionalism and unionism are rife in the industry, complicating the production process and leaving deadlines ambiguous.

“In India, the actor might come at 11am and have lunch first. Then, if he chooses so, he might shoot in the afternoon and by the time you’re ready to shoot in the afternoon, maybe the technicians go on strike,” said Mr Navi Radjou of Cambridge University.

“The moment you bring in the professionalism of Hollywood players, I think you’re going to see more rigour and more seriousness in the movie-making business in India.”

Further complications arise from the practical nature of filming in an incredibly populated country.

“You can’t shut down streets or public locations the way you would anywhere else in the world,” Mr Noorani said. “Going through that process is always very interesting because it takes a while for western crews to get used to it all.”

The most recent point of contention between Hollywood and India has been political in nature. A proposed film based on the Alex Von Tunzelmann book Indian Summer, The Secret History of the End of Empire, has been put on hold after the ministry of information ordered the deleting of certain scenes.

The film – which was set to star Cate Blanchett and Hugh Grant – is based around the alleged love affair between Edwina Mountbatten, wife to India’s last British viceroy, and India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Neru.

In approving the film’s request to shoot on location in India, the ministry demanded removal of the scenes depicting physical affection between Mountbatten and Nehru along with a scene where Nehru declares his love for her.

The reason, government officials cited, was to protect the reputation of one of India’s most revered leaders.

* The National