Becoming Bollywood Stars
Thursday, March 18, 2010 at 3:54AM ;)
The last week or so has felt a little like the doldrums. Trying to pull together the general outline or chronology of this film has been keeping us up at night. Getting work done has largely involved sitting at breakfast or on some corner, in the gondola or midway down a run and brainstorming. “What do you think if we did this...” “What if we did that?” It is a tough time in the process, but we had a breakthrough the other day and then a break from it all in the form of riding motorcycles as extras in a Bollywood film.
Our conversations of late have been great. No idea is a bad idea and they turned up some great ways of doing various things or conveying various themes. In particular, one of the difficulties we have come up against throughout this entire project is how much focus we put on the insurgency that raged here in Kashmir throughout the 90's. Our aim is to show the positive side of Kashmir and how it is rebuilding and developing in the wake of militancy, but we cannot pretend militancy didn't happen. That would do the people that survived it no justice and in many ways could undermine all the good we intend to portray if we aren't honest. Yes, Kashmir is still the most militarized region on the planet. There are military on every corner, but it is largely a remnant of the insurgency.
What has become apparent though, is that for us to discuss how the tourist industry is developing, one needs to understand the toll that militancy took on the people and Kashmir's tourism industry. In order to comprehend just how far it has come to the present day optimism we need to portray what it was like. And for the time being, all I will say is it was terrible. I have had some in-depth, and personally confronting conversations with people who lived through militancy, and in some cases participated in it. This is a whole other subject I will try to bring myself to articulate at another time.
Needless to say, how we approach the subject of the insurgency and history of Kashmir is something we need to get right and we are very conscious of this. It is a work in progress along with the rest of the film.
What has also contributed to the doldrums is the wealth of stories and beautiful images of Kashmir that we want to present. We knew we could never fit them all into a single film in the depth that each of them deserves, but up until now we haven't been forced to cut anything away. Our approach thus far has been to see what came to us, albeit in the time between skiing adventures, and plenty has come our way. There is the thirteen year old girl from Sopore that won “Best Technical Skier” at a recent girls ski camp who wants to ski from the top of the gondola, there is the turning of the seasons and the land being tilled, there is the beauty and contrasting destruction of Kashmirs forests, there are all the small histories of growing up in a place so unique.
Figuring out which themes and characters remain in the film and which don't was real cause for getting nothing done. It was easy to go skiing and enjoy the snow and sunny days I alluded to in my last post, but once the 12th March clicked by, we realized we had only one month left in India.
The breakthrough for Will and I came when we sat down and really focused on the central thesis of this film- to dispel the stigma that it is dangerous to travel here. It was hard to cut a lot of our ideas away and we both scrapped a few things that we each individually wanted to include in the film. But it felt good to start to bring things into focus and it has made the next moves easier to see. Now we are more or less at the point of going out with the camera and filling the holes in the story and strengthening what we do have.
Throughout the aforementioned doldrums we did actually nail down two really good interviews that took three months to develop and are critical to the film. With those in the bag and a clear vision of where what we do next, we felt quite proud of ourselves and happy to take a day off to ride Royal Enfield motorcycles as extras in a comedy film that is being shot in Gulmarg. Over the last two months we have become acquainted with some of the crew and actors and so it was a good opportunity to get to spend some time with them since they are busier than we are.
They needed ten foreigners that could ride motorcycles, but at the moment in Gulmarg there only eight who have some idea of how to ride. The director called us on Monday and asked if we could arrange ten foreigners, preferably a “really fat one” and a “kind-of-hot one”. I figured we had one of those roles filled, but the only foreigners left in Gulmarg are of the lean and keen skier kind so the fat role was sacrificed. Will and I managed to talk six people into forgoing a day of skiing in order to stand around and watch a bonified Indian cluster f#$%.
We all showed up in the dressing room and we were given black jeans, t-shirts and leather jackets to complement our dorky helmets. Mykk, one of three Estonians, was given a bra and three pairs of socks and informed he would be doubling for a hot blonde biker chick. We all ignored the stubblely travellers beard. Next we were each given a bike and it quickly became apparent who had ridden very little in the past.
Will and I had a great time hanging out, but the others were pretty restless come lunch and keen to sneak away and try to make the gondola before it closed for the day. Then the bikes starting falling apart and things started to drag on. Again Will and I were stoked. It made for a good story and the weather was fine.
As it turned out, the crew didn't finish and we were summoned again the next day. Will and I presented ourselves at 7am this morning, but the others were no where to be seen. That was fine though because there were only 3 bikes left running and before the first take of the day one had already died. So Will and I cruised behind a bike mounted to a pickup truck with the camera in the box, while one of the characters climbed from the backseat of the bike to sitting on the tank, straddling the hot blonde driving. Three takes before we were done the gear box in my bike died and I was left to drag my black Bata shoes back to the dressing room while the assistant director argued with the nine different owners of the bikes about how their bikes were junkers before we ever rode them. Read textbook Indian shouting match. At that Will and I took our cue and headed off to meet up with Shaugat, the local sledgewala we wanted to interview.
Our two days on a Bollywood set were welcome respite from our film. It was the perfect tonic for not being able to take my mind off of our film, but by lunchtime today, I was pretty ready to get back into it.
And back into it we are.
Reader Comments (4)
Bad ass-you guys look like the cast from the musical "Greece"
Nice conclusion of the day. Doubling for a hot blonde in a Bollywood movie is a dream come true. Hope you get your material together and we can see the neat Kashmir ski film really soon. Staying tuned!
Ana this is whatta de Vince raised you to be??????????????? Is an Oscar heading your way lol
Would love for you to post your thoughts about Kashmir on "Community Bragging Rights" here...we're dying to learn more and no one else will weigh in from Kashmir - I'd be elated: http://www.movinglinks4you.com/2010/03/22/community-bragging-rights What an experience. I keep saying it but this is ultra cool for us back at home to be reading your entries!!