How to star in an Indian Movie

Toronto Globe and Mail, September 2003

Bombay is a wonderful city, but it’s a magnet for all kinds of hawkers and hassle merchants. So when someone approached me and asked, ‘Hey, wanna star in a movie?’ I assumed it was trick, and politely said ‘no’.

My friend L. and I were at the end of a three week trip to India, and we’d grown wary of offers that sounded too good to be true.

We’d heard great things about the Indian cinema, though. India produces thousands of hours of film and television, in many languages, in several major cities. But ‘Bollywood’, the Hindi-language film industry centred on Bombay, is the best known and by far the most glamorous.

Its dewy-eyed romances, packed with cheesy action sequences and lavish musical numbers, are shown all over the world.

We had counted on maybe watching a film while we were Bombay (or Mumbai, as it’s now correctly known). But that, I thought, was as close as you could get.

My guidebook dryly remarks that ‘there are no organised tours of Mumbai’s film studios, and it’s difficult to get beyond the gates without good reason’.

Luckily, the movie producer’s agent who approached us was persistent. "See that van over there? It's full of tourists like you. They’re all going to make a film today. If you don’t believe me, come and talk to them. We’ll pay you 500 rupees."

500 rupees is worth 15 Canadian dollars - Not quite what I’d expect for a day’s work at home. But for the prospect of movie stardom I felt I could drop my usual daily rate. So Lynne and I joined a bus full of Brits, Americans, Swedes, French and assorted others to make our debut on the Indian screen.

We drove north through the city’s unending slums to the airport. We were shown into a hangar where an old, wingless Air India 747 was entombed - Presumably for training staff to serve drinks and snacks, but perfect for shooting the aeroplane sequences of an action movie.

Sadly we weren’t filming a dramatic hijack or an extravagant song and dance set pieces. In fact, we weren’t sure what it was. All anyone would tell us was that the film was called ‘The Hero’ and that it was ‘An Indian James Bond’.

My companion, L, being blonde, was handed a smart blue uniform and some high heels two sizes too small. She was to be the stewardess, and serve drinks to the leading lady, Preity Zinta, as she played the Kashmiri shepherdess-turned-spy staring out of the aeroplane window, though clouds of dry ice, mourning her lost love, and trying to hide the fact that she had (as on-set gossip would have it) a terrible toothache.

My request for a pilot’s uniform was cruelly rejected. I was given a stale bread roll and told sit quietly on the plane and pretend to be a passenger.

Like many things in India, the set was massively overstaffed and utterly chaotic. Teams of workers scurried around waving lights, costumes and smoke machines, but no-one paid us much attention.

It was Alfred Hitchcock who said that all actors should be treated like cattle. Even though the cow is sacred to Hindus, extras in India spend most of the day being herded around without any explanation of what’s going on.

We were told we’d be done by 7pm, but it was 2pm before we started, and well after midnight when we finished.

Some of the other actors had done this before, and starred in slightly more inspiring roles than ‘passenger eating bread’. Two former builders from Northern England had spent the day before starring as US cops, jumping out of cars and arresting baddies. A retired council worker from Leeds had been camping it up as an evil colonial judge in a period drama.

One extra, a musician, had been cut off from funds at home by a banking error, and was working in films to earn money for food.

We didn’t realise but Preity Zinta and the leading man, Sunny Deol are both huge stars in India, and The Hero turned out to be quite a major film. It made one London cinema, at least, and then the video shops.

It turned out, to my surprise, that the film was actually quite good, too. The action sequences weren’t quite James Bond standard, but the platoons of dancing soldiers and singing spies more than make up for that.

Deol’s world-weary face looks perfect in the lingering close-ups where he ponders the clash between duty and love. He dons a series of ridiculous disguises, and dispatches baddies with the same weary look on his face.

Best of all, he falls in love with a shepherdess who spends half the film with an impossibly cute lamb peering out of a basket on her back. Ursula Andress’s Dr. No bikini just doesn’t come close.

The action drags a bit towards the end (nothing whatever to do with the fact that the last hour is set in Toronto, of course). Otherwise it was great… With one exception.

Our hours of toil had been cut to a couple of seconds. L had almost a whole half- second of screen time. But no matter how often I replayed the scene, I couldn’t even pick out the top of my head. I must have been slumping in my chair at the wrong time. Maybe my bread roll eating wasn’t convincing enough. Either way, my efforts had ended on the cutting room floor, and my Indian film career was over before it began.

Next time, I think I’ll head to Beijing. Perhaps the Chinese cinema will appreciate my talents more…

HOW TO DO IT

With over 120 feature films produced ever year, there’s a constant demand for extras, and westerners are always in demand. Getting recruited to star in an Indian film essentially requires you to hang around in the right places. The main tourist area of Bombay is Colaba, towards the end of the Mumbai peninsula. Leopold’s Café, on Colaba Causeway (00 91 22 2020131) a well-known traveller hangout, used to be the first stop for people looking for actors. Nowadays they tend to head directly for the Salvation Army Red Shield Hostel on Mereweather Road and Best Street, behind the Taj Mahal hotel. Being blonde helps, but anyone is welcome. Once you’ve met a few agents and got swapped mobile numbers you can expect a steady stream of work, particularly if you’re prepared to commit to longer projects.