The Hindu : Front Page : Hollywood with Bollywood

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Hollywood with Bollywood

NEW YORK: Hollywood and Bollywood rarely meet. But in the new film Slumdog Millionaire, the two international epicentres of filmmaking find an unusually fruitful cinematic union.

The connection comes by way of British director Danny Boyle, who shot the film in Mumbai with a cast of mostly Bollywood and local non-professional actors.

Filming with handheld digital cameras and working with a small crew from London, Boyle went to the slums of Mumbai to capture the city’s vibrancy not like a foreigner, but like a chameleon.

The story of Slu mdog Millionaire itself is a bit unbelievable. It is about a teenager (Dev Patel) from the slums of Mumbai who rises to the top of India’s version of ‘Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.’

A suspicious policeman interrogates him, accusing him of cheating. But his reasons for knowing each answer reflects his life story — a kind of truthful version of The Usual Suspects. To do this, the part played by Patel also needed to be cast for two younger children — as did two supporting roles.

The casting headaches and the international production could have ended in disaster, or at least a poor movie. But Slumdog Millionaire has been hailed (Rolling Stone called it one of the year’s best) and is getting a full Academy Awards push from Fox Searchlight, which also distributed the Oscar underdog Little Miss Sunshine.

Hollywood blog Movie City News’ ‘Gurus o’ Gold,’ which compiles the Oscar prognostications of 14 leading industry insiders and critics, has Slumdog… as a favourite for a best picture nomination.

The 52-year-old Boyle is known for the variety of his work, from 1996’s druggie drama Trainspotting to 2002’s horror film 28 Days Later and last year’s sci-fi space adventure Sunshine.

But the last time that he took cameras to an exotic foreign land — for Leonardo DiCaprio’s Titanic follow-up, The Beach — things didn’t work out as well. The movie was panned and Boyle does not recall it fondly.

“If you go in as a bit of an invading army, it’s much more difficult to adjust appropriately because you’re just too big,” said Boyle. “I’ve done that before. I went to Thailand to make The Beach and I went with a huge crew. Three months in Thailand, who’d say no to that? But in terms of making the film, I’m not sure that’s the way to do it these days.”

Producer Christian Colson said sending “hundreds of Europeans” into India didn’t make sense.

“It would have been very expensive, but it’s also dumb,” said Colson.This time, Boyle kept the crew smaller and was working with a modest $15 million budget. He also enlisted casting director Loveleen Tandan, who helped so much (with work in the second-filming unit and local knowledge) that Boyle gave her a co-director credit in some markets. — AP

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