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Hollywood bigwigs back Deepa Mehta

A P Kamath

You can bet George Lucas and Steven Spielberg will not want to visit Varanasi.

Lucas, the creator of the Star Wars series, which has grossed nearly $ 3 billion worldwide, is so upset about what happened to Deepa Mehta and the Water unit in India that he is taking advertisements in Hollywood trade publications, condemning the events that led to the cancellation of the shoot.

Mehta directed several well-received episodes of The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles television series for Lucas. One of the episodes dealt with Hinduism and Indian spirituality.

Rick McCallum, co-producer of Star Wars, told the Hollywood media this week: "This is a problem of people acting fanatically – not sitting back, taking a deep breath and trying to figure out what the real issues are and what the film is about."

He said the action of about 200 fundamentalists "defies the whole concept of what a democracy is."

McCallum is aware that Americans too have protested against films and plays which they considered offensive.

But Hollywood film-makers point out, that while sustained protests were directed at such films as The Last Temptation of Christ when the movie was released in America, the protesters had not sought to stop the film being made.

For Lucas and buddy Spielberg the Indian protests may have reminded them of their efforts to shoot a few key sequences of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom in India. When they anticipated protests about the scenes that involved a cult, they switched the location for the shoot to Sri Lanka. The scenes were shot with Amrish Puri and several Indian and Sinhala artists in locations a few hours from Colombo.

Many Hollywood producers, who are convinced that India offers some of the most dramatic and colorful locations, say they are afraid to go to India because of the problems encountered not only by Hollywood film-makers, but also NRIs like Deepa Mehta.

Ismail Merchant has had his share of problems with protesters when he made The Deceivers in India. Some people were angry that a film about a little prevalent but notorious cult of the past should be the subject of a film.

Merchant wrote about his experiences in the book, Hullabaloo in Old Jeypore: The Making of Deceivers, published in 1988, about the time the movie was released and became one of the biggest flops of his career.

He returned to India to make two more films, In Custody and Cotton Mary without any hassles, but Hollywood wants more definite reassurances, either from the government or the Indian movie industry.

Last year Jane Campion ran into controversy and a few hassles when she shot a few key sequences for Holy Smoke in India.

But to many people the most spectacular example of what one producer described as over reaction by overzealous citizens occurred when the City of Joy shoot faced opposition from Leftist groups in Calcutta.

"There are a number of books about India Hollywood is interested in making into movies," said an Indian producer in Hollywood who asked for anonymity. "And many of them would show India in a positive light. Take, for instance, the books by poet and playwright Christopher Isherwood about his guru. But Hollywood is scared to go to India."

The refusal by India to let the two Buddhist epics, Seven Years in Tibet and Kundan be shot on Indian locations, rankles deep in Hollywood. Martin Scorsese, the director of Kundan, feels India need not have given importance to the protests by Chinese who did not want the pro-Tibet films being made

Hollywood is also familiar with the controversies that greeted Shekhar Kapur's Bandit Queen. Long before Elizabeth was nominated for top Oscars and made an impressive $ 30 million in America, Kapur was known to many in Hollywood because of the protests against his film.

Even those producers, who eyed India as a potential locale for movies that have no Indian background, have changed their minds, opting for a South American country.

Many Hollywood studios have funds in India which cannot be expatriated. And that was one of the reasons MGM added a few Indian characters and shot Octopussy in India. The shoot for that movie did not worry the culture censors And yet other studios did not come forward to shoot the film in India.

"If nothing else, they are afraid of bureaucracy and red tape," says the NRI producer in Hollywood. "They know there is too much of democracy in India," he said with a wry laugh."

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