Filmiholic

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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Before the movie was the printed word. 

Jhumpa Lahiri’s first novel, The Namesake, followed her Pulitzer Prize award-winning book of short stories, Interpreter of Maladies.  Houghton Mifflin has a nifty collection of resources related to Jhumpa and The Namesake, here.

The author did a round of interviews in New York last week in the lead-up to the movie’s release.  Along with five other reporters, we met with her for about half an hour.  She speaks in a very measured and deliberate manner.

On this snowy day, she wore a short brown blazer, an orange silk scarf around her neck, and a brown & beige check plaid wool skirt with a thread of the same burnt orange running through it.

This is my kickoff to Namesake week, Jhumpa Lahiri’s interview about her book and Mira Nair’s adaptation of it:

Q: Was the book based on your family?

JL:  It is based on a more diffuse experience.  The characters were cobbled together from people I’ve known, people I’ve been exposed to.  I think I was just drawing on the experiences of growing up in this country, being of Bengali heritage, as a sort of background noise for the story.

I always thought of it as a very basic coming-of-age tale, of growing up and feeling divided loyalties and to me that was my main goal, to get that across, that sense of what is it like to grow up with a name that doesn’t make sense to you, doesn’t make sense in the place where you’re living, it comes out of those feelings.

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Pratibha Parmar, the director and producer of Nina’s Heavenly Delights, is just back from Hong Kong, where her film was selected to close this year’s Hong Kong Lesbian & Gay Film Festival.  Less than a month ago, it was screened at the sixth Indo-American Arts Council’s Film Festival.  The movie will be released by Regent Releasing next year across the U.S.  Here’s what she had to say about the film:

Maria: How did it go in Hong Kong?

Pratibha: Hong Kong was a fabulous experience.  The film was received really well.  I’ve now travelled with the film to the Chicago Film Festival, IAAC in NYC, and HK, and every city has been a very warm and enthusiastic response to the film and in each city there have been different kinds of audiences.  So it’s good to see that all kinds of different people are responding to the film as a universal story.  And also people like the upbeat feel of the movie and it makes them smile, which is a good thing in these times.  

Maria: Tell me about the Bollywood number.  How and why did you decide to include it?  How do you feel about Hindi movies?

Pratibha: The character of Bobbi, the bollywood drag queen gave me a dramatic excuse to develop one of my passions, i.e dance. I have always used dance as a story telling device in my films, even in documentaries.  I brought on board the choreographer Piers Gielgud who worked on Oliver Stone’s Alexander.  I wanted to bring together diverse dance traditions and create a mix of Bollywood and Western contemporary dance. I love the dance numbers in many Bollywood films and I particularly like Farah Khan’s choreography, which ‘borrows’ from many different modern dance styles.  The day we shot this dance finale was memorable. By the end of the day, every single person on the crew was singing Nazia Hassan’s Aap Jaise Khoi.  It was the only day I had the whole cast with me on set so it was particularly special.

I love movies from India. I like the way there is a sea change in the kinds of films coming out of India right now. Films like Omkara are quite brave and actors like Saif Ali Khan are developing in interesting ways. I loved the dance number on top of the train in Dil Se with Shah Ruk Khan.  I must have watched it a few too many times.  And Aamir Khan in Lagaan was a real discovery.  I enjoy the masala movies but I am more interested in watching some of the newer films like Rang de Basanti. I recently interviewed Kajol and Ajay Devgan on stage at the Birmingham Asian Mela at a BAFTA organised event, which was quite an experience, particularly with thousand of fans screaming for them.

Maria: How has your family and community been about your being gay and your choice of partner?

Pratibha: Lets just say, it’s not been easy sailing. It’s taken many years for them to accept my choice of partner and my sexuality. I think in the end my mum had to go with it because she could see that I was happy and that I was not going to miraculously turn around and get married to a man, even one of my own choosing.  But having said that, she is also very fond of my partner of many years and has said that she is like a ‘third’ daughter to her.  Which is all the acceptance I need.  In fact there was a recent breakthrough moment when both my partner and I were invited to my nephew’s wedding as a couple. 

Maria:  Related to that, I ask because I wonder if Nina’s Heavenly Delights is either (1) your wish for lesbian & gay desi kids everywhere, that their Moms and families be as cool about it as this one was, or (2) your own reality, that everyone was totally with you, or (3) neither of those two and something else?

Pratibha: One of the reasons I love cinema is that it allows us to imagine different kinds of realities.  So by creating a mother on screen who is a fully rounded person, one with her own desires and dreams makes it possible to show that there are other ways of being.  Suman is a dignified woman whose life doesn’t end when her husband dies.  All she wants is for Nina to be happy and if that means accepting her sexuality then that is what she does.  And you know, it isn’t all pure fantasy.  Few years ago I was invited to a film festival called Larzish in Mumbai which looked at films around sexuality. I met quite a few Indian lesbian and gay men who came to the screenings with their parents, who were accepting of their children’s sexuality.  Things are changing and attitudes are shifting.  Culture and tradition don’t stand still forever, thankfully. 

Maria: Is it difficult to film food being cooked and make it look so yummy?

Pratibha:  Creating the yummy looking food sequences was a big challenge and very time consuming.  I wanted to capture the colours, the textures and the sensuality of Indian food on screen.  I wanted people to leave the cinema and go to their nearest Indian restaurant for a curry.  I did most of the food shots after the main shoot during editing.  It felt as if I couldn’t have enough of these shots and I think I used up all my food shots.  There was of course a lot of cheating.  I found a chef in a Brick Lane Indian restaurant and he did most of the cooking but we shot it in a way that it looked as if Nina was cooking.  I also worked with a food stylist to create the look of the dishes and my DOP was excellent in lighting the food to make it look so sensual.

Maria: Is there a large Scots-Indian community in Glasgow?

Pratibha:  There is a significant Scottish Asian community. The majority is of Pakistani origin but there is also an Indian community.  I decided on locating the film in Glasgow because many years ago I had gone there to do a documentary on the city.  It was my first visit and I loved it.  So I went back there with this film.  I didn’t want to make a film that was representative in any sociological way about the Scots-Indian community.  I wanted to have a family and characters who are real, three dimensional characters and not stereotypes.

Maria: Were any of your lead actors not gay, and was there any uncertainty about playing a gay character?

Pratibha:  The two lead actresses who fall in love with each other are not gay but neither of them had any hesitation in playing a gay character.  They in fact relished this opportunity and were totally in to it.  In fact when it came to the kissing scenes they were offering to do more takes!  And Ronny Jhutti who plays Bobbi is not gay either but he gives a stellar performance.  I did quite a bit of rehearsals with him beforehand and he worked very hard on creating his character.  It totally pays off because he does get some of the biggest laughs in the film and he is quite unique.

Maria: One thing that struck me in the film is how well everyone deals with being of Indian origin and born and raised in Scotland.  It seems to me that a lot of our 2nd gen kids here go through more anguish, if you will, about identity, or if not anguish, at least grapple with it more.  Do you sense less of that in the UK?  If so, why do you think that is?

Pratibha:  The difference maybe due to the fact that the South Asian community in the UK overall is much ‘older’ than that in the US.  We are now moving into our 4th generation rather than the 2nd.  This longevity helps to create more of a deep seated presence here.  My generation, definitely had more angst and were much more confused about our identities, the whole caught between two cultures syndrome.  Nowadays questions of identity are construed in quite different ways.

Maria: Did Bobbi’s bus exist already, and if so, who, how and why?  And if not, who came up with the idea?  And his wardrobe… does he normally dress along those lines, or was that the work of some fabulous wardrobe person?

Pratibha: A wonderful coincidence happened during pre-production.  We found out that one of the Master truck artists from Pakistan was in Glasgow visiting for a few days. These incredible folk artists transform regular trucks into works of art using decorations and painting in elaborate designs.  I had always envisaged Bobbi who runs a Bollywood video store to have a van decorated in the colorful style of Pakistani trucks.  It would have been a challenge for the art department to duplicate, but to find the real artist, Ghulam Sarwar, amongst our midst was a heavenly gift.

As for Bobbi’s wardrobe, no he doesn’t normally dress like that.  Once again the way he dressed was so much part of his characterisation that a lot of work with a couple of different wardrobe designers went into creating his quite specific but indeed quite outrageous dress sense.  It was important to show that he wasn’t afraid of being who he is - a drag queen.

Maria: And finally, why didn’t anyone think of getting Art Malik into a kilt??

Pratibha:  Oh, trust me, I tried, but he wasn’t having any of it!

Tejaswini Ganti, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at New York University and author of Bollywood, A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema, was one of the academics presenting a paper at the conference hosted by NYU earlier this year.  The subject of the conference was The Social and Material Life of Indian Cinema, and it was chock-a-block with a slew of Hindi movie experts (and counted among audience members one very animated Ms. Arundhati Roy).

Amardeep Singh has a terrific post on Tejaswini’s book here. 

The young professor, writer and mother set aside some time for a long, in-depth interview about Hindi cinema recently.  The first part of that interview appears here, the rest will follow in subsequent days.

Maria: Let’s start with movie audiences and the assumptions that filmmakers hold about them.  Can you speak about the NRI audience versus the broad, broad Indian audience?

Tejaswini: As in, how filmmakers construe that difference?

Maria: Exactly. 

Tejaswini:  When analyzing this industry, the thing that I always keep in mind, and always like to point out to whomever I’m speaking to, is that there’s this broader, complex reality of audiences, people everywhere, what they like, don’t like, how they respond, and that is infinitely complicated and then there’s the discourse and discussion about audiences that the industry indulges in, the media, the press, and even viewers themselves also indulge in, which is usually much more simplistic, much more stereotypical, reduces all the complexity of the way people respond to films. 

And then we have these truisms that operate about audiences, and we have them in the U.S. regarding Hollywood but definitely in the context of the Bombay film industry they revel in lots of and lots of truisms about audiences and definitely there is a distinction that Bombay filmmakers make between an NRI audiences and audiences in India, that’s one large distinction.  Then of course they also distinguish among audiences within India and that’s a whole other set of issues that I’ve written about a lot.

But definitely one of the first differences that filmmakers always talk about in relation to NRI versus Indian audiences is that not every film will circulate overseas and do well in the NRI market, but the NRI market is overall presented by filmmakers - I’m talking about how Hindi filmmakers talk about the NRI audience - generally conservative when it comes to the stars.  There are certain big stars who do well in the NRI market, not every film can get released, not every film will do well.  You yourself know this; you’ve been following it.  The three Khans do well, there’s a fewer number of people that do really well abroad in the NRI market.  That’s one distinction.

There’s a basic assumption that some audiences outside of India are less apt to go for experimentation with stars, non-stars, and then there’s the whole issue of content, themes and the Indian press since the late ’90s has been critical of the NRI audience and disapora audiences because they feel that those of us that live outside of India only like a certain type of film, which are what I call the glossy, happy family wedding films (genres of Hum Apke Hain Kaun, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge).  They feel that those are the only type of films that do well here and hence there’s been a kind of criticism or blaming of NRI audiences for a phase in the Bombay film production history where those were the main type of films that everyone was wanting to make.  And somehow the Indian press  says “Those people out there are nostalgic, they only want to see these type of films”, we’re driving the market, so to speak.

Another dimension about NRI audiences that doesn’t come up as much in the press but definitely in my conversations with filmmakers is that they are really aware that in an overseas market they’re less able to compete with Hollywood films in certain genres, like the real huge action films which have these huge budgets, they feel they can’t compete at that same level because they don’t have the same budgets.

Hence, there’s a tendancy for the NRI market is these films with a lot of songs and dances and cultural spectacles which Hindi filmmakers do so well.  That gives them a kind of edge within this market and they feel they can’t do these other types of films that could be equally popular in India don’t have as much popularity outside India among NRIs because of the fact that NRIs could be watching these big budget Hollywood films.

With NRI audiences, there’s this funny dichotomy where they are presented as nostalgic, and interested in seeing things that remind them of India, but they’re also represented, since they’re outside the country they’re seen as educated and more cinematically literate because of those other types of films, so there’s a kind of duality about the NRI audience whereas the Indian audience gets, of course, characterized based on region and class and the whole set of distinctions that the filmmakers generate as well, and that’s a whole other topic.

Maria: Has any filmmaker, or anyone in the business, admitted to you that they’ve consciously made decisions in a movie about what they’re going to do, with a view to attracting an NRI audience?

Tejaswini: No one admits that overtly because at the end of the day,  the filmmakers want as many people to see their film as possible, they want the widest audience possible.

It’s funny, I see the kind of analysis the press indulges in, that the filmmakers indulge in, is usually a post-facto analysis.  After the film hasn’t done well in certain places, they’ll say “Ah well, it’s really only meant for these other places.”  The industry operates mostly with hindsight analysis, so the kind of niches that people talk about usually are generated after something’s done well or not so well in certain markets.

Having said that, there’s definitely been a lot of public debate over the last, since the film Taal came out in ‘99, when Taal did better, there were a few films that year that did better overseas than in India, and that actually generated a lot of debate in the industry about “Who are you making films for?  Is it enough to make films for the overseas market?”  And some people said “Sure, why not?” and other people said “No, we can’t do that, you can’t be sustainable that way.”

I would say that a lot of discussion about this, no one will overtly say “I’m only making films for certain markets” although there are people like Ram Gopal Verma who says “I’m only making this for the urban audiences” or multiplexes…

So there definitely is a change in the discourse about who they’re targeting within India.  Frequently I feel that there is a defensive type of response and I did see a little bit of the Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna shooting and talked to Karan Johar and he understands that he is popular overseas and knows his films haven’t done as well in certain parts of India. 

So that’s how the market has shaped up, so then that becomes part of how you identify and describe yourself.  You don’t necessarily set out saying “I don’t want to make films that people everywhere don’t want to watch.”  They take what’s happened and use that to spin the analysis.

So it’s all post-facto analysis, except with the recent case of very small budget films only getting a limited release, but that’s a whole other different set of issues that have come about in the last 3 or 4 years with the rise of the multiplexes. 

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Stay tuned for the next installment of the series, and more with Tejaswini Ganti about the Hindi film industry.

I thought it could be interesting to add an occasional piece that wasn’t a movie review.

Lisa Tsering is a reporter for the California-based paper India West.  I’ve known her as a fellow Hindi movie and Govinda fan for a couple of years now, but I was curious to learn how she came to make a living writing about something she loves so much, and hear about her experiences on the job, and how she’s keeping it all together now that she and her husband have an 11-month-old son.  Here’s our chat: 

Maria:  Before we jump into the whole Bollywood subject, can you give me a little biodata?  How did you get into this line of work?   

Lisa: I was born in LA and I’ve been watching Bollywood movies since 1991.  I was going to make my first trip to India and I thought if I could prepare myself to see what real life looked like in India then I can have an idea in my mind.  So I thought “Well, I’ve heard about Bollywood movies”, you know down in LA they have a couple of theaters.  So I thought “Why don’t I go see a movie and see what real life is like?”  Of course as we know, Bollywood movies don’t look much like real life. 

But I went and the first movie I ever saw was called Akela with Amitabh Bachchan.  It was kinda lousy, but I saw that movie and it was like a spiritual experience for me.  After that I went to India and I realized ”Oh my God, this is the greatest thing.  I’ve discovered something totally wonderful.”

Maria:  Wait, you mean India was this totally wonderful thing, or Bollywood, or both of them?

Lisa: Both of ‘em.

Maria: Why would you say it was like a spiritual experience for you?

Lisa: The fact that it wasn’t perfect.  It wasn’t anticeptic.  It had flaws, for example, I noticed that Amitabh’s eyes were kind of pointing in two different directions.  It was a little bit slapdash and the technical qualities of the movie weren’t so good.  It was kind of corny and everything.  And all these little imperfections to me became very charming.  And I thought it was a little bit dorky in a way.  And that’s sorta how I see myself.  Kind of dorky and kind of weird and charming at the same time.  Something about it was the key that just fit in the lock in my mind and I thought “I get it!  I get it!  This is great!”

Maria:  So that was the beginning.  Then what happened?  Were you writing at the time?  Did you have a day job that was different?

Lisa: I had a day job that was really different.  I was working at the Bodhi Tree Bookstore in LA.  And I was a doing a little bit of writing, but not much.  But then after I started getting backstage at the various Bollywood concerts, which back then was very easy if you didn’t look Indian, just being different, they would let you in and do whatever.  I made some friends and I started doing a little bit of coverage for an LA-based Indian paper.  They were really nice and gave me a chance.  That was the very early ’90s.  Then I had a bunch of different jobs but then I came here to India West about nine years ago.

I’m not the quitting type, but I had just quit a job that I hated, some desk job, and that very day I was going through the want-ads and saw that India West needed a part-time proof reader.  By then I had been reading the paper and loving everything and I went and introduced myself and spoke some Hindi to them and they said “Oh that’s great, c’mon onboard.”  I started in a very low position but then I started slowly working myself up and taking more responsibility and now I’m so grateful.  If there’s a show or anything that needs to be covered, I’m the first one they call, and that’s really great.

Maria: How about credibility?  Do you ever find people looking at you a bit askance, saying “Well what does she know about this because, well, she’s not one of us”?

Lisa: To my face, at least, people have always been so nice, especially because I’ve taken time to learn some Hindi, so people have been just so nice and sweet and grateful.  And if I go out to interview anyone, say some movie star, after two or three minutes they realize “Oh, I don’t have to explain what chai is to this person” and they treat me just like any other Indian, which is just great.

Now, when I go to India though, being a woman, yeah that’s when some problems begin, but not being not Indian, as a woman journalist you know what I mean, it can be a little hard as a woman there sometimes.

Maria: You mentioned in an email that you really like Bombay.  How many times have you been there and what have your experiences been?  Have you been to the studios?

Lisa:  I’ve been there six times, and I’ve been to most of the studios.  I’m not gonna tell you his name, but one major male star, we had some experiences together when he was on a break between shooting and he was smoking a joint while his bodyguard waited and it was very weird, but all that crazy stuff’s behind me now.  I’ve been able to visit the studios and it’s a wonderful experience, but it is so hot and those guys work so hard.  The women have all that heavy make-up on in the heat and they always look so beautiful… I don’t know how they do it!

Maria:  What about other Indian films (Tamil, Telugu, etc.) - have you branched out?

Lisa: Well, only if Mani Ratnam has made it, you know?  Otherwise, not much.

Maria: And the non-Bollywood movies, you know, the

Lisa:  Mr. and Mrs. Iyer type movies?  

Maria:  Yes

Lisa:  Oh yeah, I love the parallel cinema.

Maria: You’re a mother now, you’ve got this career as a journalist full time, how do you juggle it all and how often do you watch movies or go to concerts?

Lisa: I go to cover something once a week, a movie or a show, and my husband is so supportive.  He is such a gem.  He always says “Hey, your work is so important, you need to do that, just leave the baby and we’ll have a great time just being bachelors” so it’s not been a problem.  In fact, you know, if I need to I’ll take my son along to an interview.  I haven’t done it yet, but I’m not afraid to.  I want him to be surrounded by all the wonderful Indian music too.  There’s one place I won’t take him, though, and that’s to these Indian star shows because they are so loud and it just drives me nuts to see people bringing babies to those, makes me so mad.

Maria:  You were at a show recently, weren’t you?

Lisa: Yeah!  I was at Salman Khan’s show and then before that it was Akshay Kumar.

Maria: Do you notice quality changing in the last 10 years or so?  Any observations or trends?

Lisa: It’s satisfying on one level, you know, you get to see your stars dancing, and the dancing’s really good, but the staging is really old-fashioned.  If you ever get a chance to go see one of the bigger Western acts, like Madonna, you’ll think “Why aren’t the Indian show producers looking at the new technology and the new staging and try to be innovative?  You know, in fact, they’re so old-fashioned that the girl dancers usually have to wear flesh-colored spandex on their tummies; I have no reason why.  It’s so lame.  A lot of progress needs to be made.

Maria:  Yeah, that spandex cover-up is weird.  Tell me about your personal favorites over the years; actors or movies that you could watch over and over.

Lisa:  Since Amitabh was the first star that I ever saw, he’s totally the king of everything.  He’s a god to me.  It’s almost like in my mind he’s a father figure and I know maybe that sounds really stupid for a movie fan to say, but hey, people build altars to him.  Then, I think Shahrukh Khan is great and I admire Aishwarya though her acting leaves me cold, but I admire what she’s doing.  And Raj Kapoor.  Nargis is a total favorite.  In fact, I named my cat Nargis!

Maria:  You’ve watched the earlier movies also, have you?

Lisa:  A fair amount.  Not as many as I’d like to watch.  My absolute favorite of all time is Awaara.  It’s such a beautiful piece of art.

Maria:  Have you met Amitabh Bachchan?

Lisa:  Oh yes, I’ve interviewed him several times.  He recognizes me now.

Maria:  How was it the first time, and since?

Lisa:  The first time I interviewed him I waited in a hotel lobby for six hours.  I was relatively new at that point in my career and I thought “You know, I’m willing to wait as long as it takes to do whatever I have to do to get an interview with this guy” and I’m so glad that back then I would wait because you know these stars are always late and you have to get used to it, but I felt so committed.

It was some hotel in the San Francisco Bay area and he said “Oh my gosh, since you’ve been waiting so long, sure I’ll give you some time.  Come on up and we’ll do the interview” and I was just flabbergasted.  He was such a gentleman.  You know, a lot of journalists will say “Oh yeah, this fake modesty thing he puts on” but I just think that he’s the ultimate classy, wonderful gentleman and he’s just great. 

Other stars have been not quite so positive, like one of the times I interviewed Salman Khan.  He was hanging out with Sanjay Dutt backstage in LA at a show and the floor of the dressing room was an inch deep in booze.  It would splash when you walked.  They would smoke cigarettes and let them fall to put themselves out in the booze, and I thought “Oh my God, we’re all gonna’ go up in flames!”

Sometimes it’s fun, and sometimes it’s not.  Once in Bombay, Hrithik was shooting Main Prem ki Diwani Hoon and I waited for about 3 hours outside the studio in the burning sun and I didn’t get to see him.  But things do eventually pay off.  I was actually the first NRI reporter to interview Hrithik. 

Maria:  How often do you go to India?

Lisa:  I haven’t been in about three years now.  I used to go every other year.  Since I’ve had the baby I’ve had to take a little break from that. 

Maria:  Do you have any of the Indian channels at home?

Lisa:  We used to have them, but they’re so freaking lame!  These stupid soap operas and the same old ads for these fortune tellers.  Why should we pay all this money to watch a half an hour of Sa Re Ga Ma Pa and then suffer through 23 and 1/2 hours of garbage?  So I cancelled my channels.  It’s bad.  I would love to see Indian Idol and all that.  Did you have a chance to see those shows?

Maria:  A little bit.  I have to confess when I’m in India it’s hard for me to get out of my hotel room, the TV there is just mesmerizing.

Lisa:  Oh yeah, Zee TV and MTV and all of that.

Maria:  We both love Govinda.  What is it about him that you like so much?  Have you met him? 

Lisa:  Oh yeah, he’s my favorite, my God!  I have a picture right here that I took when he was shooting in San Francisco.  I’ve interviewed him a couple of times, in both Bombay and here, and he laughed at my jokes.  What can I say?  The man’s a god.

Maria:  Excellent!  How is he to talk to?  Does he speak to you in English?  What’s he like?

Lisa:  He’s very laid back and laughs all the time and his accent is very thick but he’s very funny and he’s just as charming and cuddly in English as you could imagine him being in Hindi.  Is he supposed to come back in films after doing his political thing?

Maria:  If you look at IMDB, there are some movies down there, so supposedly he is.  Let me ask you about your career.  You did this piece about immigration fraud and false dowry accusations and you won an award for it this year.  How do you interweave these stories with your Bollywood work and do you worry about getting pigeonholed?

Lisa:  Oh, I do care.  For instance, my business card says “Entertainment Editor” which I’m changing now, because I hate to go to some function, like a memorial service for somebody, and I whip out my card and it says that.  To me, it’s real easy to switch from subject to subject, and I’m glad that I don’t do entertainment 24/7; I think that’d be real stultifying.

India West is a small paper and the advantage to that is for the reporters, we have to dip our toes into so many different subjects.

Maria:  How did that piece come to you?  [Note: the story was about NRI men returning to India to marry and afterward being extorted for money or citizenship for their brides’ family members under the threat of being accused of asking for dowry.]

Lisa:  My editor mentioned that it happened to somebody she knew, and then it happened to somebody else, and if it happened to these two people, then maybe we can research this.  And now, my God, there’s so many people!  I still get email about it.  In fact I just got an email yesterday about some NRIs who are mobilizing against it.  Storywise, it was just such an interesting novelty.

Maria:  What is your opinion of recent Bollywood movies, compared to say what was coming out in the early 1990s?  What do you think of them now?

Lisa:  Of course I admire their increasing sophistication both technically and storywise, but Maria, the latest thing that I’m all upset about is product placement; shameless, odious, obnoxious product placement.  I just saw Krrish and they put a bag of Tide laundry detergent right in the middle of the movie screen between Rekha and Hrithik as they’re having a conversation.  In another scene, they put a jar of Bournavita on the table right in front of the camera as they’re trying to have their breakfast.  Odious.

If you read the news in India all these media analysts think this is the greatest thing to come along and I just think it’s disgusting and I’m so upset by it.  But if there’s any trend I’m seeing, it’s that, and we have to do something because it’s not o.k.

Maria:  On the positive side, anything that impresses you?

Lisa:  The look of the films has become much slicker, which I like.  The heroes and heorines are cleaned up a little.  You know, the girls used to have bushy eyebrows and be chunky, now they’re all hot.  All in all, the films have improved.  They used to be a little simplistic, they’re more intellectually rewarding now.

Maria:  What was your favorite movie in 2005?

Lisa:  Was Main Hoon Na 2005?  I just saw Fanaa and thought it was great.  I loved it.  I thought the relationships were so beautifully done, Aamir and Kajol had so much chemistry and you could really feel the two people connecting, and the scenes of her and her son.  I mean the kid had some crappy dialogue, but she and Aamir are such a great actors that watching them is just a joy on screen.

There was one parallel film I saw called Dombivli Fast, a Marathi film, that was really good.  It’s been in a couple of festivals. 

Maria:  Amitabh Bachchan was in just about every big movie last year.  Was there anything of his that really struck you?

Lisa:  Oh, Black!  The scene where he kissed Rani Mukherjee was one of the highlights of cinema of any country, I thought.

# # #

It’s a Friday afternoon in San Leandro and we wrap up our chat so Lisa can get home to her family.  I ask if her husband shares her enthusiasm for Bollywood movies, and she says that, being Tibetan, he’s familiar with Hindi movies, of course, but, Lisa tells me, “I’ll say ‘Hey, do you want to come with me to this event that Aishwarya Rai will be at?’  And he’ll say ‘That’s ok, you go with one of your girlfriends.  I’ll hang out here and watch TV.”

You can learn more about Lisa and read her award-winning article “Indian Husbands Fall Victim to Dowry/Immigration Fraud” here.