Bollywood Lights Beckoning

Indians love movies and if there is one thing they love more than watching movies, it is making them. Pune is close to the movie making Mecca, Bombay, and basks in the peripheries of its cellular glories. As you may already know, Pune has played host over the past month to the Brangelina entourage while a film on Daniel Pearl was shot here and in Mumbai.

Since we arrived in May, we have been approached on a regular basis by agents wanting us and more particularly, our children, to appear in everything from brochures to feature films. India is a very cheap place to make movies and while there is no shortage of local actors, there are relatively few westerners and even less western children and this scarcity of alternatives has made us a popular target for talent scouts. At first we were very skeptical about the legitimacy of the whole process and refused all invitations to “audition”. However, one Sunday afternoon, we were approached at Pune Central by a very glamorous lady who was so persistent we eventually gave her our email address and allowed her to photograph us. Ever since, she has apparently been our agent and bombards us with invitations to participate in any number of media friendly activities. As it turns out, she is very legitimate and the fact we see her daughter on every second commercial suggests she is actual quite good at what she does. However, to date we have been nothing but a source of disappointment to her because, in the scheme of things, being sub-continental stars doesn’t hold much attraction for us due to the fact it is time consuming and inconvenient if you happen to work office hours.

While we were still living at Hermes, we made positive noises about being interested because auditions were easy to get to and well, we had nothing better to do. Now we are on site and school has started, the children’s weeks are very full and we have no desire to spend our weekends dragging the family all over town for dress fittings etcetera. We have tried to explain this to our agent but, due to either language barriers or stubbornness on her part, she has not got the message and so we are still subjected to her frantic emails and texts wanting us, our friends or our children to be somewhere five minutes ago. Take Grand Final Day for instance, the agent desperately wanted Eliza for a catalogue shoot. Eliza and Paddy are the subject of the most requests because I think their brown eyes and olive skin make them fairly neutral from an East/West perspective and therefore very advertiser friendly. We were entertaining guests for breakfast and lunch on 30 September because the telecast was live and the game started at 10am our time. I explained this to the agent and she suggested that she would send a car for Eliza and me at 5pm. I said I couldn’t be confident the guests would be gone by then to which she replied, “You are already providing two meals for them, surely they will leave after lunch?” When she called me again at 6pm and I happily advised her that the guests were still with us and hopefully going to stay for dinner, she demanded to speak to them, presumably to explain they had overstayed their welcome, at least by Indian standards. I politely declined her offer and tried to explain once again that she was wasting her time with us, but she is nothing if not persistent.

There have been some very tempting offers and if we were not responsible for a family and living in the city we would love to participate in a movie. In late July, we were short-listed for parts in an Indian movie about their independence from the British. Cameron was actually cast unseen in the speaking role of a “Collector” whatever that is, because the director “liked his personality” from the picture we sent of Cam on the balcony at Hermes – perhaps it was the purple Wesley shorts that got him over the line! Chris was also cast unseen as a British Lieutenant. Unfortunately, the costume fittings coincided with the weekend we move to site and the filming was scheduled to take place in the second week of term, so that was one opportunity we were sad to see pass by. Sally has had the best offer so far – a leading part in a Bollywood film with a “Big Spunk”. But as she was offered this part late one night at Leopold’s in Mumbai, she was somewhat dubious about its authenticity. Chris was offered the part of the dentist in an ‘Oral B’ ad, you know the one, “This is Rob, we can’t show you his face….” But he doubted that the Head of Junior School should be taking time off to appear on tele in a towel. My best offer so far has been to do some swimwear modeling in a catalogue. While I was initially flattered, I was quickly brought back down to earth when the agent advised me, “Indian mothers won’t model lingerie and undergarments but we thought you might”!

There is a possibility at least one of us will get our fifteen minutes of Mumbai fame. Last Thursday evening, I received a hysterical sms from the agent demanding Daryl’s details because she wanted him to screen test for a Nokia commercial wherein he would be suspended in the air from a balloon. Daryl thought this sounded like a splendid idea and went to the screen test on Friday. While expressing some disappointment about both the absence of a casting couch and that no one asked him to remove his clothes, he said the screen test was all very professional. Even if the Nokia ad falls through, another British Raj film is in the pipelines and at least a dozen western men will be required as extras. We will keep an eye on that option.

The highlight of our brushes with mega-stardom so far occurred when we were in Mumbai during Dewali. I apologise to all who have already heard this brag but in view of the fact it is never likely to happen again, I am milking it for all it is worth. We were traveling through Mumbai in a taxi with the kids when this guy pulled up besides us in a car. He motioned to take our photo, so Chris obligingly held up Sebastian who is usually the main focus of curiosity. We continued on for a short while until we realized the same guy had pulled up on the other side of the taxi and was waving us down. We thought there must have been something wrong with the cab so we stopped. The guy came over to the car and shook Chris’ hand saying, “Welcome to India, Sir, it is an honour to meet you.” Chris smiled, somewhat bemused, and said, “Thanks”. The guy then leaned into me and said, “And it’s lovely to meet you too, Angelina”!