Kher test for De Niro

Cambridge University is willing to act as an honest broker to boost film collaboration between Hollywood and Bollywood. The undertaking was given at a seminar, “Globalisation of Indian Cinema: Opportunities for the West”, held at Judge Business School in Cambridge. Anupam Kher, who spoke about how much he had “loved” playing Freida Pinto’s father in a new Woody Allen film currently being shot in London, provided a bravura performance after a key note address by Jaideep Prabhu, director of the Centre for Indian & Global Business. The centre was set up 10 months ago at the Judge Business School. Kher, who has chalked up 400 Bollywood films, summed up why this was an ideal time to invest in Indian movies: “Indian cinema has really arrived globally because Cambridge is holding this seminar. If you have a script that has the ethnic and cultural heritage of India, put all your money into it at this time. This is the golden period of Indian cinema.” He also defended the Indian way of making films because cast and crew “laughed” on stage and enjoyed the process of making a movie: “It is very easy for a lot of people to criticise Indian cinema, to make fun of song and dance sequences but you need guts to do that because Indian films are made for Indian audiences and the Indian heart is larger than life.” To much applause he stressed: “A Shah Rukh Khan or an Aamir Khan can do what Al Pacino or Robert De Niro can do but a Robert De Niro or an Al Pacino may not be able to do what Shah Rukh Khan or Aamir Khan can do. You have to understand the Indian psyche.” The school, where Prabhu is the first academic to be appointed the Jawaharlal Nehru Professor of Indian business and enterprise, was established 20 years ago at the university, which is celebrating its 800th anniversary in 2009. “This has been a place of creativity and ideas for a long time,” said Prabhu, who posed a question which repeatedly came up during yesterday’s seminar, “How do we create more Slumdog Millionaires?” “In a more systematic approach to co-production, I would argue,” was his answer. He posed another fundamental question: “How do you balance improvised creativity, which a film depends on, with a more structured creativity, which is a business approach. We hope this event will start a dialogue between India and the west to identify more systematically the opportunities there are for collaboration.” He pledged: “The centre is well placed to broker this partnership.” Before delegates trooped off to the Picture House, a local cinema, to see a small budget Indo-French film, Hava Aney Dey (Let the Wind Blow), directed by the Brighton-based Partho Sen Gupta — it charts the progress of two young men in Mumbai who dream of building a new life in Dubai — another insightful address was given by Patrick von Sychowski, chief operating officer of Adlabs, a Reliance Big Entertainment company. There was no hidden agenda, he said, behind the $825 million deal that Hollywood, represented by Stephen Spielberg’s DreamWorks and studios run by big name actors such as Brad Pitt, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts (who is currently shooting in India), Nicolas Cage, Jim Carrey and George Clooney, had signed with Anil Ambani. “It’s money — Hollywood is always desperate for money,” he maintained. The whole industry was seeking another Slumdog Millionaire but Sychowski reflected: “Do you think it is easy to come up with a film like Slumdog Millionaire? It’s not. It’s a very difficult formula. There’s a very good chance the breakthrough will come from the south — from the Tamil or Telegu film industries. The cinematic language they speak is closer to the western one.” Kher gave his views on the search for a second Slumdog Millionaire: “If you make a film like Slumdog Millionaire, the second film will never work. You have to come up with a fresh idea.” Kher got his part in the Woody Allen film after his agent in London asked him to submit an audition tape to the casting agent. The requirement was for “a very regal looking, very aristocratic father of this Indian girl. He is supposed to be an art critic, a book critic”. Kher found that although he knew almost everything there was to know about Woody Allen, the American knew almost nothing about the Indian. “When I had finished a shot, I naturally wanted an approval — and he looked pleased. For me that was worth quite a bit.” The film, provisionally entitled “WASP” (Woody Allen Summer Production), is likely to be released early next year. As for Freida Pinto, he agreed that after Slumdog Millionaire, her rise had been a phenomenon: “And why not? It’s fabulous. God is on her side. She has to work very hard to retain the position that has been given to her. I am sure she is in good hands, both off and on screen.”