Filmiholic

Hello everyone and welcome to [this transcript of] our virtual, multi-country, multi-continent event to discuss Anupama Chopra’s latest book:  The King of Bollywood: Shah Rukh Khan and the Seductive World of Indian Cinema. 
 
The book - which traces Shah Rukh Khan’s career from his young days in Delhi to his pervasive success in 2007, while also examining the growth and changes in the Hindi film industry - is published by Warner Books and has been available for pre-order on Amazon.com for a while now, and will be published very shortly (in the US on August 2, in India on August 9, and in the UK on September 6).  
 
Anupama began her film journalist career in 1993 at the magazine India Today, and since then has also written for the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and Variety, among others.  In addition, she has already published books about Sholay and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge.

 
Participating in today’s discussion with the author are:
 
* Babasko, a.k.a. Barbara, who blogs about Bollywood from Austria at Baba aur Bollywood,
* Maja, SRK enthusiast based in Slovenia, who blogs here
* Michael, lawyer and blogger who writes from Germany about Hindi and Tamil movies here,
* Jo, Bollywood fan and owner of the funky London fair trade shop Ganesha,
* Darshana, who participates frequently from NY in Hindi movie discussion forums at Bollywhat.com.  (She also worked as a background extra on Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna),
* Beth, who resides in Illinois, USA and blogs at Beth Loves Bollywood,
* and me, Filmiholic

Maria:  Anupama, let me get the ball rolling and say that I think you’ve managed to write a book that is informative for people who are new to these films and who might be curious to learn more about them or Shah Rukh Khan, while also containing many interesting details for long-standing fans of mainstream Hindi movies and SRK, which can’t have been an easy balance to achieve, so congrats for that. 
 
What I do find fascinating is that this book is being published by an American house.  Can you share with us how they decided to go ahead with a book on an actor who, while recognized worldwide, and within the US, though by only a segment of the population, but who is not a household name here?  They must feel confident that there is, and will be, a market for a book on this subject, right?  Can you tell us about this?

Anupama:  Hi Everyone.  Firstly, thanks for taking the time to read my book and participate in this event.  I think it’s incredibly exciting that all of us, separated by thousands of miles and time zones and borders have connected over Bollywood and Shah Rukh Khan.  So thanks, Maria, for making this happen.
 
Regarding, how Warner Books (actually they have been renamed Grand Central Publishing), decided to go with this book:
 
I was very clear that I didn’t want to write a book only for the Indian market.  Book writing is a lonely, long, arduous journey with usually a miniscule pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.  You do it because you love to do it.  So I figured if I’m going to spend a few years of my life writing a book, I at least want it to be available in book stores in countries in the world.  I wanted to write for an American publishing house but as you point out, not many in mainstream American publishing had heard of Shah Rukh Khan.  I think it happened largely because of my agent Anna Ghosh (Scovil, Chichak and Galen).  Anna helped me to put together a 60 page proposal, which included a marketing plan, which she then shopped out to publishers.  Anna, very smartly, sent out proposals to several Indian editors.  This way, at least we were speaking to the converted and didn’t have to start from scratch.  The proposal was picked up by Devi Pillai at Warner (she has since left).  Devi wasn’t a big Bollywood fan herself but she knew what this whole universe is about.  If I remember correctly, Devi’s niece was a big Shah Rukh fan.  Devi convinced Warner that this was a book worth doing and they bought it.  But it is a leap of faith for them.  I hope it works.

Maja:  I haven’t read any other books about SRK before and I didn’t know much about his life, so I really enjoyed finding out more about him in this book, but I was wondering - considering that quite a few books have been published about him already, how did you decide to write another one?   Also, I like how the book is not only about Shah Rukh, but also about the history of Bollywood, and I even learnt something about the history of India from it. How did that come about - that it’s not strictly just a biography, that it includes so much other information too?

Anupama:  The idea of writing about Shah Rukh Khan grew out of my second book Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jeyenge (British Film Institute).  When I wrote a monograph on DDLJ, I found myself becoming more and more fascinated by Shah Rukh’s story, his incredible ascent and how he became the face of a post-liberalized India.  King of Bollywood was never meant to be a biography.  It was written as a portrait of Bollywood as seen through the life and films of Shah Rukh Khan. I hope that I’ve managed to create a picture of Bollywood with Shah Rukh in the foreground and many, many other things in the background.  The ambition was to create a window to a superstar’s life, Bollywood and India.
 
I think in so many ways this book is so different from the other book on Shah Rukh. I believe that I have added to the conversation on him and on Indian culture and films. So I wasn’t worried at all about the other books.

Beth:  I really enjoyed - and benefited from - the descriptive background information about what Hindi popular films and the film industry were like in the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as the context you give for particular people (Yash and Aditya Chopra, for example), particular films, styles of filmmaking, etc. The book feels almost as much like a biography of Hindi filmmaking in the last few decades as it does of Shahrukh Khan. Did you assume that most of your readership would not already know much of this information, or was it included in order to emphasize the relationship that exists between Shahrukh’s career and its setting? Are you hoping to attract readers who are relatively new to learning about Hindi cinema?

Anupama:  I’m happy to hear that you found the non-Shah Rukh material interesting.  I wanted to trace the evolution of the film industry and also give a context for his career.  I think it’s so much more interesting that way (I hope you all agree).  And yes of course, we are hoping to attract readers who are new to Hindi film.  Warner is marketing this book to the mainstream American market so it isn’t purely an Indian or Bollywood lover thing.  This balancing of information and details was the most difficult thing to achieve in the book.  It had to speak to both — the American reader who knows very little about Bollywood and the Indian reader who even knows that Shah Rukh Khan eats chicken everyday.  I hope I’ve managed to make it interesting for both.  It was a tall, ambitious order but that’s what made it challenging and fun. 

Darshana:   First, thank you to Maria and Anupama, this is a precious opportunity for me as I am an admirer of Anupama’s writing, enough to have hunted down her NYT articles and printed them out.
 
I see this book as one that can be read by the kind of person who reads good movie writing in the Times, The New Yorker, etc. — it’s clear, interesting, intelligent but non-academic writing on popular culture.  I look forward to recommending it - well, handing it to — my friends who are not immersed in Hindi cinema.  
 
My question is related to these remarks:  I love this kind of popuIar culture analysis (I love Shah Rukh, too), and I find surprisingly little journalistic writing about Indian mainstream movies that is on the level of Anupama’s writing or takes the movies as a serious subject.  So I would love to know:  how did you get here?  How did you come to write about the popular movie world?  Did you have to overcome any kind of disapproval — real disapproval, or a worry about meeting it?  Has your attitude toward Hindi movies gone through changes over time, or have you always liked, loved, appreciated them?   Or of course anything you might think of on this general subject.

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He received praise all around for his role of the Ganguli patriarch in The Namesake, he took on a very lighthearted and comic role in Metro, and now Irrfan Khan is winning praise for his portrayal of the Captain in A Mighty Heart.  Here’s the first part of a recent interview with him:

Did you actually meet the Captain before filming?

I was very eager to meet him.  I was looking forward to it, but with the kind of relationship we have between our very friendly countries, India and Pakistan,and he’s in the Pakistani intelligence service, so for him to talk about things which nobody knows what happened… It didn’t happen.

But did you speak with him at least?

We were planning to meet but at the last minute I came to know that he was not coming to Paris so I couldn’t meet him.  And for me, it’s a very foreign kind of thing to understand a guy who investigates like this at that time it was a newly formed kind of department, they never had an anti-terrorist squad, and from the book I could make out that they were not equipped at all, at all, so it was all his own personal interest and drive.

Has the Captain seen the movie?  Was he pleased?

Yes, yes, he is.

Did you film in Pakistan also, or only in Pune? The unit filmed in Pakistan.  I was supposed to go, but then there was a delay in visa so I couldn’t go.

Q: How was it being with Mariane?

Very emotional.  I mean in Cannes there was a standing ovation and the audience was so moved, and of course the critics in Cannes are the hardest to please, and everybody got up and everybody clapped.  Angie and Brad were there, you know, the hottest couple and the entire room was just looking towards Mariane, trying to say ‘thank you’ and you’ve really touched us with your story and you’ve been an inspiration to all of us.  I was holding the tears back, but she stood there, typical Mariane style, very graceful and just accepting and thanking which I thought was remarkable.

Q: How was it working with Angelina Jolie?

Great fun.  We just clicked as soon as we met.  I say it’s probably because we’re both Geminis, I tend to get on extremely well with Geminis, it’s like you find your twin.  And we tapped into each other’s energies really well.  Because it was the two of us and six men and not just in this industry I think women there’s always some sort of tension, more than likely the women don’t get on and the men do, but I think everybody was really surprised that we got on really well, so it was us against them and I think they were scared of us.  (Laughing) 

She’s a really lovely woman to work with and I think she’s a really good role model for me. 

Q: From your role in Bend It Like Beckham to Asra Nomani, that’s quite a trajectory.

One of the things I love about my career is, if you choose your projects carefully, you can go from one character, and I think every actor has the ability to do it, and you can just completely transform yourself.  Like with Angelina with the makeup and the hair, that’s the most unimportant thing, but it does make you feel a different way, and the accent and the background of the character.  As soon as I get a project and I know I’m part of it, you sleep, eat, breathe that person.  Everything about that person, like what sort of coffee would she drink?  You just form this completely different character and it’s one of the most exciting things about being an actress.

With Bend It, I grew up with a lot of girls from Southall.  I don’t know if you’ve been to England but there really are girls like that in England who walk around like they really think that they are it and they know it, and for me it was wearing the tight jeans and the backless top and the accent, I met a group of girls at Southall and the accent was just fantastic.  You always pick up a little word and with Pinky I think it was “Laters” and that will help you get into character.  When you realize that you’re getting paid to take somebody’s life and then throw it on screen in front of the whole world, it’s a great feeling, especially if it does well, with something like Bend It which was hugely successful.

Q: Was the wedding scene with all the dancing as much fun as it looked onscreen?

I trained as a dancer.  I can’t sing to save my life, and in the script it was just like “Pinky and Dittu just dancing around and chatting and listening to the music”, but I said “No, let’s go for it!” and they put the music on and Kulwinder and I, we had worked together before, and we just went into this whole bhangra thing.  But it’s that thing with an Indian wedding, isn’t it, even if you would never dance, but everybody gets up.  And that’s what happened that day, everybody started to get into it.  I think that’s what came across on the film.

Archie Panjabi was in New York in anticipation of the release of A Mighty Heart, in which she plays Wall Street Journal-ist Asra Q. Nomani, who was both a friend and colleague to Daniel Pearl and who played a major role as a member of the team involved following the kidnapping in Karachi.  Here is the first part of an interview with her:

Q:  Did you go to Pakistan for the shooting?

A:  No I didn’t.  Most of our stuff was done in India.

Q:  What was your experience making the film?  What did you think of Michael Winterbottom as a director and how did it help you as an actor?

A: I knew Michael as I’d worked with him before.  But that wasn’t such a big film.  I love Michael; I think Michael is one of the best directors in the world.  He’s really good because he really trusts his actors.  When he casts his actors he puts a lot of hope into them and that makes you immediately feel so grateful, you want to give him so much back. 

Normally when you’re sent a script you go home and you learn your lines and you come on stage and you recite them, but what’s really good with Michael is he says “Ok go live with that character then come on set and then incorporate that character’s perspective through improvisation on set, so in a way it’s like documentary, you just want so much of that character to turn up on set, you can do whatever you want in that scene, you have an idea what has happened in that scene but the way in which you go into these is entirely left up to you.  As an actor that’s incredibly challenging, as opposed to just reciting lines robotically. 

You don’t have to hit any marks on the floor, your lighting’s very natural and if you feel a certain emotion, or angry and you just want to let it out, you can, nobody’s gonna shout “cut!  That’s not in the scene.”  Filming can be quite scientific.  It’s all about time and money and every scene is boiled down to we’re gonna spend two hours on this scene, we’re gonna do it from this angle, or that angle, it’s always written down and specified, but with Michael it’s never like that.  You don’t have to worry about anything, you just have to totally immerse yourself in this role and just see where it takes you, and that’s very exciting for an actor.  It’s very rewarding.

Q: So you actually got a chance to meet the character that you played?

A: Yes, I did.  That was quite an incredible experience.  The airline lost my baggage on the way out, which is not unusual these days, so I didn’t have any clothes and I met Asra Nomani and I had to literally step into her shoes and her clothes.  It was very surreal.  Just arriving and suddenly wearing her clothes and her shoes. 

Q: Did they fit?

A:  They did!  I ended up there for a week so I really got to know her.  Asra’s one of these people where there’s no halfway.  If you’re coming there to meet her she will stop her entire life and give you a whole insight into everything about her, so for me it was really incredible to have someone who was willing to give up their life for a week and tell some very private and personal stories.  It was quite emotional listening to all of those.

Q:  In the movie, why did they omit the fact that she discovers she’s pregnant when all of this is happening?

A:  I don’t know.  Even when I saw it I was a little surprised, but one of the things you become immune to as an actress is that at times, really personal stuff that you’ve had to involve that you feel should be in there just ends up on the cutting room floor.  I don’t think it was anything intentional.  Every actor that was in it was surprised when they saw the first version and said “Oh my God!  That’s gone, that’s gone, that’s gone!”  And then you just say “Well, it’s a film.  Til today I don’t know why they left it out; I haven’t asked why.  But I think it was an important story, that’s why I bring it up in every interview.  What happened to Asra Nomani had such a huge impact on her life and today that child doesn’t have a father because of the events. 

Q:  Have you heard any talk about making a movie about Asra’s life?  Because I think though she’s still a young woman, she’s done so much already.  Would you be interested in picking up the role again?

A: I’m a great believer when you’re on something pretty big … My mother always says “When you’re enjoying yourself at a party, as soon as it’s great, leave.”  And I think it’s the same with this.  I think there’d be so much attention and focus on the girl, that if Asra did come up and do something, so soon, it wouldn’t work because it’d be compared and she’d probably be accused of trying to steal the limelight.  But I think in time, by when she’d have done so much more in her life, definitely.  I mean, now her life is like a film for what she stands for.

Q: And you visited with her here in the US?

A:  Yes.  I went to Washington and I was supposed to fly out to Pittsburg but because of my baggage she came to see me.  I mean, that’s typical Asra:  “No, no, I’m coming down, I’m coming right now.”  We met in Washington and she took me to see her and Daniel Pearl’s Journal colleagues.  She did sweet things like even take me to where they played volleyball, to touch the sand and it sounds silly but it was really emotional.  And she had one of Daniel Pearl’s cards that she gave to me, to touch it.  I really felt that I had some connection, in some way.

Q: And then you read the book for the first time?

Actually I read the script first.  Reading the book gave me a whole visualization.  It’s a very moving story.  I think it’s a very important story to be told.

I know you ran into opposition and difficulties when the film was finished, but during the creative process early on, when you’d discuss the project with people did you get comments like “Why bring this up now?  Drop it.” and if so, was that a common reaction, or the exception?

It was definitely a common reaction and was very shocking for me. In fact a well known producer from India who is also Sikh – completely crushed me by saying that it could not be made. 

Given how the adoptive parent-child relationship is such a major focus of the film, I was wondering if you’ve gotten a lot of feedback either from individuals who are adopted or who have adopted, or from any adoption organizations?

Actually only from individuals. And those individuals have been deeply and profoundly affected by the film. Interestingly, you are the first person in three years of talking about the film who has even brought up this subject with me – either from journalists or audience. It was an important theme for me. I met and spoke with quite a few adopted children and their adoptive parents and in all the cases at a certain age there is a burning desire on the part of the children to know who their birth parents were.
 
How did you manage to fit in the writing, in between taking care of your children?  Do you have a set time of day, or you just do it when and where you can?

I love you for asking me this. Again the only person. Being a fulltime mother with small children and making Amu at the same time has been excruciatingly difficult. Motherhood – specially living in America while all my family are in India – is hard enough as a fulltime occupation. The same can be said of filmmaking. The combination is lethal and not recommended!

To come back to your specific question of writing: I started when the little one was 2. He just started preschool. So I had a small window of 3 hours in the morning and then again late at night when they were both asleep. Its really hard to do both morning and night – but I had no choice. Nor did I have the luxury of writing when I felt inspired or when something came to me.

But I also tried to incorporate some of my creative process with the children. So for instance for a long time bed time stories were Kaju “back stories” – stories of when she was little and had to adapt to America at the age of 3 and how her mother had to deal with her trauma and then little naughty and loving things she would do. And these were great as providing the essential history that I believe each character should have in a script to be fully fleshed out.

Were there any other times during the making of the film when you were threatened, beyond that incident early one when shooting the riot scene?  Even after that incident, how did you decide to continue filming there and then? 

Being threatened by the politician was the least of all my problems while shooting Amu. For instance even on that day – the larger problem was working with the child – which is a later question of yours – so I will get to it there. But I had already anticipated threats and thought through how to best avoid such situations. Which is why we kept the riot scene for the end of the shoot and shot it in a very minimalist way. Also why we made the film secretly and required that all actors and crew sign secrecy clauses and not talk to the press. When I heard about the threat I immediately called some friends  - young strong men - who lived and worked in one of the slums we shot the film in (for Gobind’s house) – and asked them to come to the set and be prepared for trouble or attacks. I knew the police would not help us and there was no way I was going to let my set be attacked without a fight!

What would your response be to Americans who will see the film in the US over the next few weeks who might exit the theater saying something like “Communal riots in ‘84, the Gujurat riots, the Bombay riots and the bombings; India sure is one violent country”?   And to anyone who’ll throw the Deepa Mehta critique at you of ”She has to make a film that depicts India in a bad light so people in the West can feel good about their lives”?

I would feel pity for them that they [1] did not understand the film and [2] lived in denial of the reality of what their own country was doing. To expand – I have in fact often faced this criticism as I have been an activist in the US for many years. It has been said that since we live abroad we should show India only in a good light. In my opinion – Amu shows India in a very good light. Because it breaks the myth and lies that are spread by world media and others that communal violence in India takes place because people hate each other and there are so many religions and then they kill each other. Objectively if this were the case why is there not a riot every day in India? The fact is that it is always organized. And Amu brings this fact out strongly.

It is the only Indian film on the subject of communal violence which says that people are not to blame – but the government, the police, the bureaucracy…It brings out how positive people are by risking their lives in hiding each other. For instance in the train scene – (based on a true story) – the same students who said disparaging remarks against the Sikhs hid their Sikh copassengers from the mob. Keya Roy was heroic in her work in the relief camps – again based on the hundreds of Delhi – ites who stepped up to bat when the government didn’t bother with any relief work for the thousands of victims.
The violence – and the badness – comes from the government, from those in power. Just as this country has perhaps the most violent state power in the world. Not only against countries it goes against – such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Cuba, Panama, El Salvador….(how can anyone feel good about their government when they have a Guantanamo Bay on their hands). But also within th ecountry – black and Latino youth are beaten up and shot by the police – periodically. Illegal immigrants are treated worse than slaves, political activists face severe detention and death row is filled with people who do not really have a case against them but they are black.

Governments cannot define a country. Patriotism actually means – love for ones people. And Amu brings out my love for my people and my right to raise my voice against that power which rules falsely in our name.

Will your aunt, Brinda Karat, do any more films now that she’s dipped her toes in the waters?

Maybe my next one – as its also something she cares and relates to – a revolutionary armed uprising against the British in which young women played a key role. The Indian film industry was disappointed to find out that she had not switched careers!
 
In terms of simple process or mechanics, how do you prepare and coach the young girl who played young Amrit/Amu for the riot scene so that she will look authentic, without traumatizing her?  And all those scenes on the train tracks… how do you do that in Delhi?  Do you get a ton of permits and paperwork and stop everything to shoot, or is it more a commando-style operation (like the one at the market with real people in the background doing their shopping)?  How long did it take to do those shots?

It was extremely difficult to get Amu to perform at key moments. In fact – the whole day of shooting the riots literally went up in flames along with our precious auto rickshaw – as she was too terrified to go near the mob and would just come down the stairs and run straight to one side – far away from them. I needed her to enter the mob as she is supposed to see her father burning. This was also the day of the threat. We had to give up that day and then organize everything to reshoot – with the added tension of an attack.

I got the brilliant idea of getting Amu’s real father to take the day off and come to the shoot and dressed him as a rioter and put him in the center of the mob. The mother was besides me near the camera. Now I told her that she had to go find her dad touch his hand and then come running out to her mom. So we got that sequence of. But then when we needed her close up crying looking out of the window at the riot – she would keep laughing. Similarly at the train track to call her mother. So I took her real mother aside and told her that we would have to go through the pretence that the mother was leaving the set and going home and that Amu would be with us and dropped later. Now although the child had become comfortable with us – as every mother knows on the first day that they have to actually leave their child at pre school – the tears just start. So we enacted this drama and when her mother disappeared from sight she started bawling. But since it was just a quick shot – and my DP was very good – I only inflicted a few minutes of trauma on her – after which she was reunited with her mother and given many chocolates!

We didn’t have money for “moving trains” – so we had to find out the timetable and position our actors along the tracks and wait for the actual train to come. It was very hard as it was a complicated shot (seeing the mother across the track). So we had to wait for several trains and keep the actors energy and performance up in between and also look out for cops at the same time as it was commando style!

With the last shot of the film – it’s a special story. We didn’t have money for a moving train. So it was just a shot going from the TV over the whole space where the riots had taken place etc. there had been a train parked on the track for months – of pre production and the whole week that we shot in that location. Suddenly on our third take I heard a whistle and the train was moving down the track. I quickly ran and stood in front of the track with my hands folded while they reloaded the camera and got everyone in position. The engine driver was honking and cursing. I moved back and he kept chugging and we got the dream shot. Luckily there were no technical snags as the train would not have returned!

In terms of time – for instance the scene in the crowded market place between mother and daughter – took about 6 hours. The train shots took around the same amount of time.

Who has signed on for your next project so far?  When does shooting start and when do you hope to release it?  Will you do like you did with Amu and also release a book?

I have only just given the draft to two of the top producers in India. So it’s too early to say when I will shoot. Given that I need some big stars it will likely be 2008. Many actors have expressed interest in my next script and some know the story and want to be certain characters. Vivek Oberoi is one such person. But I haven’t signed anyone as yet. 

Here’s a piece I did for this month’s issue of Khabar magazine, an interview with Kal Penn.

As The Namesake releases in NY and LA today, here is the second part of an interview with Mira Nair, conducted the day after the Academy Awards, last week:

Q: You mentioned the things you liked, immigrants you see in the book, what you don’t see in the book.  Can you talk about that?

MN:  It’s more cosmopolitan.  I get many Asian writers of fiction asking me to make movies out of their books, and a lot of the classic sort of tales are of the mailorder bride coming from the darker continent, from India to the shining new world.  What I liked among many things that Jhumpa has written that of course it is not only the Calcutta of the 70s that I have loved, but the Manhattan of today.  And her Manhattan of today is much closer to my Manhattan of today than the Jackson Heights, Little India, little immigrant communities.  This is New York as a playing ground.  There’s the galleries, there’s the protests, the Ivy League sort of networking, that is the world I also inhabit every day and that was very interesting for me to finally put on screen the kind of life I also live.  And I haven’t seen that on screen.

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Q:  You had several other projects when you read The Namesake and you’ve said the project took on an urgency, was it that emotional thing that made it take off?

MN:  Entirely.  I wasn’t looking for a film.  I was booked to do two films, one of which was already financed and I was supposed to be casting right after I’d finished Vanity Fair and it was like a fever when I read this book.  I felt firstly this absolute shock of recognition that there was someone in the world who understood exactly what I was going through, and it was like a comfort.  I used to retire after shooting Vanity Fair in the mornings.  I would just leave and go back to my room and re-read it because that’s that feeling one has when you’re in mourning of needing to be in a cocoon. 

Firstly it was the grief that was the cornerstone, the recognition of what it was like to lose a parent in a country that was not fully home.  I’m really an intuitive person, so I didn’t question ‘Oh, should I really do this?’  I just knew it had to be done and then, when I was looking at the whole, it was that emotional cornerstone that got me, but also 30 years of a life from Calcutta to NY city, which are two cities that I have grown up in, and in NY where formally I learned how to see.  It gave me much more than that emotional underpinning, it gave me the Calcutta of the 70s the culture that I have loved for so long and it gave me the possibility of capturing Manhattan of today which is a very different place than when I first came to the city many years ago.

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Warning:  Plot details and spoilers ahead.

Q: About shaving your head, how did you prepare for that scene?

KP:  That scene was very important for Gogol because, up until his father’s death, the past few years of his life he’s distanced himself from his family because he’s gotten caught up in his college life first, that’s kind of where it starts, you don’t see it in the film but it’s described vividly in the book.  He loses touch with his parents after his first semester.  Basically he starts getting more and more into being a Yalie, and when he goes to grad school at Columbia he’s so close but he still doesn’t see his parents that much.  Then he starts dating Maxine and then pretty much falls into her life. 

The death of his father makes him realize he’s been ignoring his own family and that smacks him back into the reality of that ignorance, so him shaving his head is a tribute to his father.  Obviously, it was a difficult scene to do because as Gogol the death of somebody who is so close to you who you have ignored for so long.

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Continuing with Namesake week, here is the first part of an interview done with Kal Penn last week, just after the Academy Awards. 

Q: The name plays a lot of importance in the film, and you’ve changed your name.  In the movie’s credits, you appear twice (Kal Penn as Gogol, Kalpen Modi as Nikhil).  What was going on in your mind when you were working in this movie?

KP: It’s interesting because Gogol changes his name legally, but I just changed mine on my headshots, I didn’t change mine legally.  There are a lot of actors who come up with a stage name or a screen name, but obviously, you think about the significance of what a name means, and in Gogol’s case, it has nothing to do with ethnicity or heritage.  He’s been assigned this Russian dysfunctional author’s name and he can’t stand it.  Why is he named after this virginal, screwed-up-in-the-head guy?  Yeah fine, he was a talented author but in personal matters he was shunned pretty much.  So that’s what bothers Gogol and I thought that was interesting. 

Half of the reason that I changed it was to make it more palatable, to get more auditions and when I saw that was actually working obviously, that bothers you.  It doesn’t bother me individually, I just think it’s an unfortunate reflection on the state of affairs in the film industry that something like that would make a big difference. 

So every time I’ve done something either I’ve been really proud of, or had an amazing time working on, I’ve tried to get my real name in the credits in there somewhere.  A film I did called American Made, that was a short film, I’m credited as Kalpen Modi not Kal Penn.  In Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle I was a production assistant for a day on a day when I didn’t have any scenes so that I could get my name in the credits somewhere as my real name, and the same with The Namesake. 

I asked Mira ‘How do you feel about Gogol and Nikhil being credited separately as Kalpen Modi and Kal Penn, because there are two different age ranges and the character grows a little bit, and she said  ‘That’s a great idea!  Let’s do it!’

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