The Waiting Game

I met many filmmakers who started making films about the same time I was making them.  We would meet at film festivals or at film panels for young filmmakers and since we were all on the same journey and dealing with similar issues we kept in touch with each other via email and bitched and moaned about the same things.

One such filmmaker moved to Mumbai to make a hindi film and took him almost 5 years to get his project off the ground.  Every time I spoke to him or emailed him I sensed this frustration that comes from waiting for your project to manifest.  Waiting for your career to begin, your life to start and for wonderful things like fame and fortune to happen to you.  Many times he would project it on me and ask me to hurry up and make my own films.  Eventually after a couple of years I decided to hurry up and move to India and start pushing my film ‘The Anushree Experiments’.  However, one thing I told myself was that I would not end up frustrated.  I will live life even when I am waiting.

2 years in India and I look back fondly at my time here.  While pushing and pitching my film and meeting various producers and investors etc.  I have continued to paint to keep my creative juices flowing.  I kept up with travel and visited Europe twice and the US once.  I did a couple of art shows, one in Frankfurt and the other in Hyderabad. The one in Hyderabad was held at a cafe that I am a regular at ‘Beyond Coffee’.  I found a friend in Vivek Rao and Art [Co-owners of Beyond Coffee] and one thing led to another and I had my first solo art show.  At the same time, my sister in Denmark and I were getting interested in philanthropy and we came across an article about Sampat devi Pal [Founder of 'Gulabi Gang'].  Sampat’s work with her gang of women clad in pink sarees was inspiring and I started to use a ton of hot pink in my paintings.  This was about the same time Asha Menghrajani, my co-producer and friend and an abstract artist in her own right came to visit me and we were traveling across Rajasthan and meeting miniature artists in Udaipur and buying ‘Rani’ pink chunnis in Jaipur.  Every where I went I spoke of Sampat Devi Pal and her Gulabi Gang.  The guy who sold us the pink chunnis was inspired and decided to give us discounts on anything pink.  He wanted to help the Gulabis in his own way.  On our way back, Asha and I collaborated on a painting at Delhi airport.  My first artistic collaboration [In painting].  Later Asha and I organized an art exhibit for Asha’s own abstract work at ‘Beyond Coffee’

Back in Hyderabad, I started to get ready for the art show at ‘Beyond Coffee’.  And lo and behold, I saw posters of Pink Ladies Gym advertisements everywhere I went.  A new branch had opened a hop stop from ‘Beyond Coffee’.  I met with the manager and told her about Sampat Devi Pal and her gang of Gulabis and she decided to sponsor the art show.  We got Kondaveeti Satyavati [A Feminist Leader], Pritham Chakravarty [An actor and activist] and a couple of more vocal feminists to light the lamps and open the art show.  We spoke to the press about the Gulabis and sold a few paintings. A percentage of sale from any painting that had the color pink was collected and sent to the Gulabis.  Sampat Devi Pal sent me her wishes and thanked me for the contribution.  A few months later the British ‘Guardian’ announced their lists and Sampat Devi Pal was named in the top five Inspirational women in India.  The press descended on me a second time.  They wanted to know more about me and my paintings and my interest in the Gulabis. The papers got me publicity so much so that my local grocers and cycle repair guys started coming to introduce themselves to me. They knew my name and thanked me for doing what I did.  They had read the local papers and were proud of me.  I was a local celebrity.

The second thing that has kept me going during these 2 years of waiting has been my ‘Screen Writing’ and ‘Cinematic Language’ seminars.  The seed of this particular activity was planted in me by Uma Da Cunha [Casting Director & Curator of the Mumbai Intl. Film Festival].  When I was ready to come to India she suggested that I give talks on filmmaking at schools and colleges and that she could hook me up.  I never heard from her about that again, however I did end up giving a lot of talks and seminars just like she suggested.  It started with an invitation from Madhu [Filmmaker, Friend & Activist] to give a talk as part of the Entrepreneurship Summit at IIM Ahmedabad.  Madhu was doing a film festival as part of the summit and so I gave my first talks at IIM-A to a bunch of eager Mass Communication students from local colleges.  A journalist from the Ahmedabad Mirror was at the seminar and she gave me some ink.  Kartikeya, the owner of ‘Digital Academy’ Mumbai was at the summit and he invited me for a couple of talks in Mumbai for his film students at ‘Digital Academy’.  Back in Hyderabad I was introduced to Pranay Rupani, head of the Mass Comm. dept at St. Francis College for Women.  Pranay incidentally had attended the screening of my feature film ‘Mitsein’ at MAMI the year before.  I gave a seminar and even took a few classes for his students on screenwriting and directing.  KL Prasad, a Tollywood screenwriting and now actor was present at one of these talks and he suggested I give a series of talks at the Director’s Union.  My audience there was a bunch of assistant and associate directors from the Tollywood industry.  They enjoyed the classes and word got around that I was a ‘Talker’.  This led to Dr. GopalaKrishna Paruchuri who started the Directing course at Potti Sreeramulu Telugu University to call me and before you knew it I was teaching screenplay and cinematic language to a bunch of bright young men and even some part timers in the distance education courses.  Those bright young filmmakers that I met became my film community in Hyderabad.  Their energy and POV of ‘anything is possible’ was infectious.  They were making films with no boundaries.  I was inspired and energized.  They involved me in their thesis films.  I acted in about 5-6 of their short films as well.  I ended up co-writing and co-producing one myself titled ‘My First Porn Experience’.  I call them my film making knights.  They found a production space in Kalyan Nagar, a one bedroom apartment which serves as a space for production meetings, props storage, birthday parties and even a location for shooting some of their films.  I told them I would sponsor the space for a year within which they promised to get the place productive.  I cannot wait to see the films that will come out of that space.  All this ‘Talking’ has been effortless and has given me a chance to share what I learnt from my teachers in Los Angeles with filmmakers here in India.  This past weekend I was invited by Bala [Classmate from when I was doing my undergrad in Chemical Engineering] to Yahoo! Bangalore.  Bala wanted me to give a talk as part of the ‘Purple Gavel’ series of talks.  I choose the topic ‘Cool’.  I explored ‘Cool’ with Yahooites and then gave a talk on storytelling to the Yahoo management.  It was a big hit and the response was amazing to my surprise.  Now Bala is planning to set up talks at various corporates in Bangalore.  He thinks the computer geeks could use some perspectives on storytelling.  I for one could not have imagined that a suggestion from Uma Da Cunha would take me on a journey beyond extraordinary.  It’s been fantastic waiting for ‘The Anushree Experiments’ to get funded.

The next filler in my 2 years in Hyderabad was ‘Phenomenex’.  Phenomenex is a company that manufactures and sells products for ‘Separation Sciences’.  Don’t ask.  Most times it’s a challenge even for Phenomeknights to explain what Phenomenex does.  Whatever it does, Phenomenex does beautifully and it is a very successful company with about 14 subsidiaries all around the world and over 60 distributors.  It’s headquartered in Torrance near Los Angeles and it was my home for about 4-5 years.  I had a great run at Phenomenex and made a lot of sales and friends.  One friend and mentor being Bobby Virasingh.  Bobby was the top sales person at Phenomenex the year I joined.  He is a sardar born and brought up in Thailand and later his family immigrated to US and he got his college education [Chemical Engineering] there.  He was the only other Indian at Phenomenex Sales when I joined.  I used my desi-desi connection to get close to him and sponge off all the sales advice I could get.  I was kicking ass in a couple of years.  Bobby is one of the coolest salesman I have met and so when a few months ago I heard from him I was thrilled.  He was in Hyderabad on Phenomenex business.  The business was that Phenomenex was opening a subsidiary in India and Hyderabad no less.  Strange are the ways of the universe.  Once at Halloween I had my entire sales team from the west coast dress up in sarees and kurtas and we created a banner titled ‘Pheomenex India’ and we sold to clients in Arizona, California, Utah, Washington State and Oregon.  And here I was, at striking distance of having that vision manifest right in front of my very own eyes.  And I would be a part of that whole manifestation.  Within a few weeks I was on Phenomenex payroll again.  I was running around Banjara Hills, Jubilee Hills and Hitex City looking for office space with a real estate agent in tow.  Once we had the office we broke the coconut and did the puja and remodelling work began.  I was interviewing sales people for jobs, I was organizing the launch party and even sold into my territory in Kerala and Tamil Nadu.  All the people I loved working with at Phenomenex US were here in Hyderabad for biz visits and the finale was when Fasha Majoor, the founder and CEO and my biggest supporter showed up at Shamshabad Airport.  To meet people in a completely different country and context is just an in explainable experience.  Phenomenex India was an unexpected gift and I had no idea about when I decided to come to Hyderabad 2 years ago.

The last but not the least – Kids for Kids.  The building where I live is surrounded by slums or bastis as they call them here.  Usually populated with construction workers, fruit and vegetable sellers, street food hawkers and house hold help these slums/bastis have a lot of kids [Some go to school, most don't] running around half-naked and crossing the streets like unguided missiles.  A few feet from my building is a Temple in a perpetual state of construction.  There is the mandatory tree with a platform built around it.  I went to Himalaya Bookstore [The 'Staples' of Hyderabad] and got a bunch of paper, paint, crayons, various art supplies and Cadbury Chocolates and set up for an hour every Sunday under the tree.  The word got around very quickly.  Soon every Sunday I had about 30-50 slum kids pouring over paper and fighting for erasers and crayons and creating art like there was no tomorrow.  They was little Picassos.  They gave me a finished work of art and I gave them chocolates, ice cream bars, biscuits and bananas.  I mentioned this Vivek Rao at ‘Beyond Coffee’ and next thing I know I was organizing a kids art competition at ‘Beyond Coffee’.  I converted the top ten art works from the kids into a set of greeting cards titled ‘Kids for Kids’ and raised money for Kids with HIV.  It was a success!  This got me thinking that maybe I can do the same with the slum kids art.  Phenomenex India keeping in with the Phenomenex tradition will I am sure have philanthropy as part of it’s corporate activities and I have told Bobby to call me when he is ready.  I cannot wait!

A lot more minor and equally extraordinary experiences litter the 2 years of my stay so far in Hyderabad.  Too many to write.

I am still pursuing funding for ‘The Anushree Experiments’ and know that in time that will happen.  I refuse to be one of those filmmakers who ends up feeling that they was just wasting away while they were looking for financing or investors. Meanwhile life has not slowed down one bit and I live to the nth degree everyday.  Next in line – An Art Show in Copenhagen!!!

Anushree Casting Adventures

It is said that casting is 50% of directing.  Maybe it’s 70% or maybe 40%.  Whatever the percentages, casting is undeniably the most important part of directing a film.  I love and hate casting with equal passion.  I love it because it makes my screenplay come to life as I meet actors and imagine them saying and doing things I wrote during the last two years and I hate it because it is a nightmare trying to find the right actor for the right part.

When I was making ‘Mitsein’, I cast Smriti Mishra as the lead in Mumbai and once I got back from Mumbai, I just auditioned for the rest of my cast.  I did not have the resources to cast my net too wide and I picked the best I could from what showed up and made my film.  With ‘The Anushree Experiments’, I have a bigger pool to select from and moreover I can attract thoroughbred actors for the various roles in my film.  It is very exciting to have professionals to work with.  However, now I and running into a whole new set of issues.  Egos are big and frail.  Calling or approaching an actor can be perceived as a loss of power.  Playing ‘Hard to Get’ is practiced at a level that I cannot even begin to explain.

The pros want to feel that they are being respected for their craft.  They don’t want to be seen as work horses who are just are in the profession for the money.  Many of the good ones are truly not in it for the bucks.  The rest just pretend.  Every actor has a price.  Some just deal in a different currency.  The ones that are established have issues like ‘Their Screen Image’, how exciting is the project, who are the other cast members, how significant is their role, what are their opportunity costs, what will they get out of the project other than creative satisfaction.  Some actors need the assurance that my financier is strong enough to carry the project all the way, other need to know if my producer is experienced (especially in light of the fact that I am fairly inexperienced).  Lots of intangibles.  The real killer is when I am trying to figure out the subtext of what the actors or their secretaries are really saying, what they are not saying and a whole slew of hidden sayings in between.

Approaching the actor is an art in itself.  Especially in India where there is no established system of agents and managers.  The approach has to be through the right person.  The person giving the reference has to be an industry heavyweight or an industry opinion leader.  Sometimes the person who gives the reference wants something for his efforts.  It’s not usually money.  The chance to be associated with the project in some way.  To tag along on an exciting project.  In the case of ‘The Anushree Experiments’, the chance to be associated with a so called ‘International Project’.  Maybe the game in Mumbai or Hyderabad has gotten boring for them and they want a conduit to a bigger playground.  I usually take that as a compliment.  It tells me that the person at least thinks highly of my project.  All in all, casting has become a tad bit more complicated than when I just put a simple ad on Film Arts Foundation’s Forum site announcing my film.  A whole new set of parameters have come into play and I am trying to get a grip on this complex process so I don’t fuck up and approach the wrong actor through the wrong person in a wrong way or God forbid I will not work in this town.

I am new to the Hyderabad film industry and so the onus of making friends and sussing the players and mechanics of this place is entirely on me.  I have to take the initiative.  I have to put my hand out first for the shake and I have to sell myself first.  I have zero street cred here.  My filmmaking awards and US experience does not count for much here.  Here, the locals have their own game and their own secret rules.  I am just the naive outsider.  I can either learn to play in their arena or pack my bags and leave.  I have to honor the power structure in this place (First I have to figure out the power structure to begin with).

The locals have paid their dues here in this industry and as they have a saying in India ‘On his turf, even a Dog is a Lion’ (I hope I got the translation right).  In short, I cannot break levels and get into the mix.  I mean these guys have grown up with each other since their trench warfare days and I understand that.  I feel the same in Los Angeles and San Francisco.  My film friends, my buddies from when we were shooting 16mm films on old Bolex cameras – we worked with each other in rain and heat and we celebrated and egged each other on.  We fought circumstances and we fought each other.  We cried and celebrated, we bitched and mourned.  We made films together.  In Los Angeles, when I see my filmmaker friends and their progress, I see a future where we will inherit the town together.  In Hyderabad film industry I have no currency of past favors to trade with.  I am just someone who is respectfully tolerated for a few minutes at a party.  The formality and the respect is the barrier.  That is them saying – ‘You are just a Guest’.  I can only buy my way in and probably at only premium rates.

I am catching on fast.  To win, one has to know the rules and become a master of the game even if it is a one-off game.  After ‘The Anushree Experiments’, I may never come back to Hyderabad to make a film.  I have no idea what my next screenplay will be and where it will be set.  I am pretty short-sighted at the moment and cannot see beyond one screenplay and beyond Dec 2010.

When I decided to come to Hyderabad, I knew that I would have to adapt and learn a new language.  I knew that I would be challenged and that I would have to get out of my comfort zone.  I came prepared.

With every film, my learning curve is steep.  With every film I am transformed into someone I cannot recognize.  I resist it every time and I lose every time.  Even the resistance is transformational and it’s never-ending.  How does one keep up with such a person who transforms at such rapid rates?  Maybe the trick is to not keep up.

Pierre Assouline, my producer is coming back from France on August 20th, 2010 and I anticipate his return with eagerness.  My financier Kevin Kevi has been so busy, I haven’t heard from him in ages.  I consider that a positive thing.  It means he is making a lot of money and that is always a good thing.  I am slowly getting to know of possible actors who can be cast for the role of ‘Anushree’ and her father ‘Shashi’ (My principal casting).  Yes, I approached them through the right reference.  Pierre and I are extremely happy with the latest draft of my screenplay.  I should start to story board and gather my visuals together.  I have this habit of creating paper collages of visuals and keeping a binder for inspiration.  And someone suggested I need to hang with 21-year-old Indian girls.  Great idea!

:0)

Aparna

The Screenplay Rewrite

I cannot even remember when I started to write ‘The Anushree Experiments’.  In fact the screenplay started out with the title ‘Hanglider’.  I think I conceived towards the end of my Phenomenex days when I was working in chromatography sales.  I know it was towards the end of Phenomenex days because the birth of the possibility o a new feature film is what ended the so-called ‘Phenomenex days’.  I have to define those days for you.

Phenomenex Days

I was selling chromatography columns and silica to Biotech and Pharmaceutical companies.  I was having a blast and was on a complete high.  I was so in the ‘zone’, I could do no wrong.  I was closing deals like it was going out of fashion and made a ton of money for Phenomenex and myself.  I had just gotten back from a much-needed holiday in Kenya and was getting restless as I usually do when my savings account swells and I know I can afford to plug out of the matrix for a couple of years and be a filmmaker full time.  This had become my life.  Plug into the matrix for a couple of years, make some money, plug out and make a movie.

When I joined Phenomenex I was so poor from having made my last feature film ‘Mitsein’ that I had barely enough money to fill gas in my car to drive to work for two weeks till I got my first paycheck.  That meant, I had no money for food.  At work, since we were in training, we got fed some breakfast food and in the evening I ate the food my roommates had in the pantry.  At the time I was renting a corner in a two bedroom apartment filled with 2 or 3 illegal Brazilian girls who looked like supermodels and cousins of Giselle Bundchen and an extremely handsome, better than Brad Pitt looking Austrian art gallery owner from Vienna who was studying Brazilian Jujitsu.  Trust me, it was my reality for a few months while I saved enough to get out of that place.  At nights it was a regular Rio style party with Argentinian beef on the grill and dancing till the wee hours.  During the day, the girls hung out at the pool side in their g-strings and bikinis and lazed.  The Austrian cutie and I were the only two outsiders in ‘Little Brazil’.  While he had a great time with the girls, I spend my time studying chromatography since we had an exam every day and training was a bitch.  During lunch my training partner Wynne Tsing brought me lunch.  She has always been very intuitive and she realized I had no money for food so she fed me every day for two weeks till I got my first paycheck.  Fast forward 2 years and I am living in a posh loft in downtown Los Angeles with filmmakers and actors and musicians.  Wynne and I are co-writing ‘The Anushree Experiments [Then titled 'Hanglider']‘ and a year later we both quit our jobs and jumped head first into writing a screenplay that was a lot of fun.  We created fun characters and fun scenarios and we created a protagonist who was a bit of both of us.  She was the girl we both had been at some point or the other in our lives and transformed.

Wynne and I both attended ‘The Writers Boot Camp’ in Santa Monica and we got more skilled and better with writing.  With every stage we realized how much we did not know and how stupid we were to even write what we had written so far.  There were times I was so depressed that I would have to be woken up midday by Wynne who came downtown with her cheery smile and Starbucks coffee and muffin and kicked my ass out of bed.  She even tried getting me into Bikram Yoga to get me out of my funk.  I sweated so much that I ran out after a few sessions.  It was better to write then endure Bikram.

A year of writing full-time, attending the Screenwriting Expos, shifting from Movie Magic to Final Draft, Writers Boot Camp and attending the Squaw Valley Screenwriting Workshop all boiled down to a 100 odd pages of a screenplay titled ‘The Anushree Experiments’. Phew!  Talk about distillation.

The screenplay then went through endless drafts.  I have lost count of them.  However, there was always that third act that Wynne and especially I could not crack.  Something was off.  We never did feel right.  Being a story about a father and a daughter, Wynne felt I needed to talk to my father in India and resolve any stuff I had with him so I could write that scene.  After a lot of resistence I made that call and cried and resolved a lot of stuff with my dad and cleaned up a lot of baggage.  Guess what!  The third act still sucked.

In the meantime I was also coming to the end of editing ‘Mitsein’.  I got caught up in finishing that film.  I was avoiding it for years.  I knew I could not make my next film till I finished ‘Mitsein’.  I finally finished ‘Mitsein’ and then sat on it.  I was too attached to it and did not share it with anyone.  Did not want to send to film festivals and did not want to screen it for anyone.  I had many demons to deal with [Especially from the shooting of 'Mitsein'] and it took a lot to finally start sharing that film.  I showed it to a few close girl friends who liked it and encouraged me to send it out.  After 6 months of nightmares and dodging I finally sent the film out to festivals and let it go.

As ‘Mitsein’ started to screen at festivals, ‘The Anushree Experiments’ loomed back up and there was that dreadful and blah boring third act. Yuck!  Well by this time I had decided to move to Hyderabad, India to shoot ‘The Anushree Experiments’.  I moved from the Downtown Loft to an Old Spanish House in Glendale with a beautiful terraced garden and orange trees.  I did not want to sign a full year’s lease and wanted to pay month to month till the time came for me to extract myself to Hyderabad, India.  Here at this Spanish haven, I tried rewriting a bit and cleaned up a lot of the screenplay.  I still avoided the third act and it’s boring resolution.

For no apparent reason, I decided to go to Grass Valley near Sacramento and do a Yoga teacher’s course at the Sivananda Ashram there.  I wanted to detox, lose some weight and also clear all the negativity of ‘Mitsein’s’ production so I could go into ‘The Anushree Experiments’ production clean.  That month at Grass Valley kicked my ass like never before and trust me when I say – ‘I saw GOD’.  We were warned about the process by Swami Sita who told us we were signing up for ‘Concentration Camp’.  Yep, we meditated and did 4 hours of Hatha yoga everyday not to mention the lack of sleep and the constant homework.  Oh well, all in all I survived, got my certificate, was detoxed, made 4 paintings while I was there and got out.

I had started to paint like a maniac since about 8 month prior.  This was mainly to deal with the rather long gestation periods of filmmaking.  Concept to screen takes about 5-6 years for a film and it’s too much to ask a girl to wait before she can see her fucking expression.  By the time I see my films, it feels like I am seeing some expression of mine that is sooo outdated that I need a fossil expert to make any sense of it anyway.  I needed something instant to look at my ‘self’.  Like in 4-5 hours.  Painting was perfect.  The dam broke and I was painting away.  I lost sleep and hunger and watched many films while I painted.  I painted for no reason at all and I painted effortlessly.  I think art is the sublimation of sexual energy and if my paintings are any indication, the lack of a boyfriend and a non-existent sex life really created a prolific body of work that was very colorful and crazy.  It was a poor substitution for sex, but at least it was documented.

Coming back from the ‘Yoga Farm’, I had a partial stipend waiting for me from CanSerrat, an art residency 30 minutes outside of Barcelona, Spain.  After the ‘Yoga Farm’, an art residency in El Bruc, Spain seemed like heaven.  I booked my tixs and was off in a month.  At CanSerrat I painted, I went to galleries, met artists that I knew I always wanted to meet and I had amazing conversations.  I met writers, painters, photographers, poets, sculptors, fashion designers, installation artists, performance artists and sound designers.  I fell in love with creating art and got real horny about my ‘The Anushree Experiments’ again.  I was all that kava and heat and swimming and Miro and Picasso and the beach and Madrid and just a languid existence with no expectations.  I got up everyday and expressed what I felt like.  I loved it there.  I even shot a film with performance artist Peggy Jo Pabustan called ‘Peggy’s Grapes’.  Excellent!

Back in Los Angeles, I threw down the gauntlet.  I was moving to Hyderabad with my computer, printer and a feature-length screenplay [with a blah third act] and I was going to make my next feature film.  It took me one month and a to-do list that looked like a space shuttle launch sequence to get me out of Los Angeles.  I crossed off the last item on my to-do list – ‘Get on a plane to Hyderabad’.   As soon I sat in my seat, I went into a 22 hour hibernation that took me half way round the world to a place I was dreading.

In Hyderabad, I had to deal with things that only hardened criminals should be subjected to.  By the time I reopened the screenplay to do a so called ‘Hyderabad Rewrite’, I wanted to take a flight back to Los Angeles and drop all plans of making the – ‘Anushree’s Wasted Experiments’.  I stayed however and this time I wrote with Hyderabad in mind.  I visited my university [Osmania University] and started to write from a place that I was only imagining before.  Now it was real.  I  also had good conversations with my father.  It was nice to be close to him.  Plus there was nothing else to do in boring Hyderabad anyway – so it was ‘rewrite time’.

When I met my film’s producer Pierre Assouline, he gave me my first major rewrite assignment.  All the previous rewrites were babies compared to this one.  In fact according to him this would be my official ‘second rewrite’.  What the hell!!!  Oh well!  I hunkered down and started.  I went to Mumbai and stayed for a few weeks with my writer friend Beena Gera to do the rewrite and got very little accomplished.  I tried to rewrite while I went back for a ‘Tax return’ visit to Los Angeles and then to Europe.  I partied instead.  Two months later, I am back in 46 degree Hyderabad and sweating bullets and the so-called ‘Second Rewrite’ is not happening.  My brain has stopped functioning after 40 degrees and at 46 degrees I am no longer human.

Pierre calls me from the South of France as he hob nobs at Cannes and asks me about my rewrite. I go – Blah blah blah!  Yes I will have it very soon.  He had spent almost 4 hours with me as he went line by line on my screenplay at Russell Square Hotel in London and I made endless notes for my rewrite.  Now about a month later I was trying to decipher those handwritten notes.  What the ‘F’.  Did I write that and that and that.  What the hell did I write as notes.  Fuck it!  I opened the final draft doc and started to write my screenplay anew. Fade in:  I started.

I wrote my rewrite on a blank page.  I knew the plot and the characters and I knew the dialogues by heart.  I knew who said what and why and why not.  I knew the color of the shoes in the 4th page of the second act.  I knew Pierre’s notes by heart.  I knew it all.  And so I wrote and wrote and wrote.  I joined the Talwarkars gym in Madhapur and I gymed and I wrote wrote and wrote and wrote some more.

And last weekend, on Saturday, as I was writing my third act I had a breakthrough!  I knew why it was not working because I had just written a scene that made my entire screenplay work.  It was the scene I had been waiting for.  It was the scene that released me from my agony.  And I realized why I was telling this story.  I realized why I was putting myself through hell to make this film.  I realized why I resisted and why Pierre called me from Cannes to ask for the rewrite.  I realized what was at stake.

I would like to know your thoughts when you see the film and see that scene play out.  If you would go through hell for that scene in your life.

:0)

Aparna

Hyderabad Blues

Ok, so I am using Nagesh’s movie title as the heading.  It is f**king unbearably hot in Hyderabad.  I am sweating over my rewrite, I am sweating over my extreme boredom here, I am sweating over casting the role of Anushree’s dad in my film and I am just plain sweating like a pig.

Europe was a hectic ride.  5 days in Paris, 6 in Vienna, 6 in Frankfurt, 3 in Copenhagen and  in Oslo.  It would have been 5 days in London had the damn volcanic ash not happened.  I had to endure another 10 days in London.  Thankfully the weather was great and I met up with friends and saw movies from my host’s ‘Gene Hackman’ collection.  Pierre came by for a couple of days and we met with a few casting directors in London and got a sense of the landscape.  I may have to go back to London in a month to do some auditioning.  Oh well.

The jetlag combined with the heat was killer once I got back.  To top it off I got a cold.  It was the pits.  Well, I am back on track.  And writing and meeting actors and getting to know the possibilities here.

Rewriting an entire script is a bitch.  It feels bloated and now I have to slim the whole thing down.  I am getting attached to scenes and characters and it is getting sticky.  I try and avoid looking at the bloated screenplay by painting, or uploading my facebook with my trip pictures.  I try and sleep off the depression sometimes.  I try and watch Charlie Chaplin movies.  Everything but deal with the elephant screenplay in front of me.

The latest diversion is to edit the experimental feature film I shot with Peggy Jo Pabustan in Canserrat.  It won’t last long though and I am already worrying about what I will do after that.

I have so many things that I need to cross off on my film todo list.  I have a stack of DVDs from all over Europe that I need to watch.  I have to write a recommendation, listen to some CDs that Paul gave me in Vienna.  I need to read Sofi Oksanen’s play that Bente send and check on the film rights.  I have so much to do and in front of me is the rewrite of ‘The Anushree Experiments’.  It’s intimidating to even look at Pierre’s notes from London.  I need to slash the first act to 30 pages.  And I need to add more funny into the damn script.  It’s took much to ask of me really.  Especially since I have been chewing on this screenplay for the last 2 years.  Pierre told me that two drafts from now the screenplay better be ‘Pukka’.  He is picking up the right Hindi words in Mumbai for sure.

The only good news is that there is now a Gym a couple of blocks from my apartment in Hyderabad.  Looking forward to that for sure.

My next post will hopefully be more cheerful and will contain good news.

Aparna

Vienna – Schiele, Klimt and Waber

Have been travelling all over California and now Europe.  Vienna was a surprise.  I wasnt planning on taking the trip when suddenly I got an email from Hannes Kollmann from my Redondo Beach days in Los Angeles.  Austria got added to the itenary.

A minute after my arrival in Vienna I get a call from my producer Pierre Assouline.  He is planning to come to London the 10th and 11th and we are going shopping for casting directors and also for my lead for Ánushree´.  Raj Pippalla introduces me to a casting agent in London as well and I start to set up the meetings.

The girl that Vijay Singh suggested emails me back and I plan to meet her in London.  She seems almost perfect for the part.  Well, I am keeping my fingers crossed.  Itś always trying to find a needle in a haystack. However (as Prakash Jha once told me), the needle is sometimes at the top of the haystack.  I am standing for that.

My art show has been announced for April 3rd in Frankfurt.  Got an email from Irene Balmanoukian about it. It was in German and could not understand a word except my name and Ireneś.  I have no idea what to expect, but I am excited and cannot wait.  I leave for Frankfurt on 29th morning from Wien.

As much as I am enjoying my European trip, I can wait to get to Hyderabad and start work on Anushree full on.  At Canserrat during one of my low phases, artist Halle Kareem (Oslo) told me that I would have to find some way of getting horny about my film project all over again.  Somewhere along this trip – Meeting Vijaya Singh and seeing footage of a possible Ánushree´, Pierre coming to London to help cast, meeting various filmmakers and artist in Paris and Vienna etc. has all started to wake me up to my project in a whole new way.

I am planning to visit Sigmund Freudś museum today to see his famous couch.  maybe he can analyse why I am feeling the way I do. Why travelling has this kind of effect on people.  Why it changes a human being in so many profound ways and with such speed. Why you meet a part of yourself that you cannot meet when you are in one place.  All questions for Mr. Freud.

David, an artist in France told me that big things happen in a small way.  The jump is almost silent and it all happens slowly in small steps.  I can see my film getting made that way.  Silently in small steps.

Next post will be from Frankfurt.

Luv,

Aparna

The Year of Kathryn Bigelow and her Boys

Yes! I saw her walk up the podium and get her Oscar and yes I cried. I hugged Erin Ploss Campoamor who was sitting next to me and I was in Diana Romero’s house in Echo Park while all this happened.

In 1998 I started on my path of being a filmmaker. I had no idea what that meant or would make me do. All I knew was that I was aligned. My first job was (interestingly enough) on Erin Ploss Campoamor’s film – ‘April in the Morning’. She was directing the film and Pablo Proenza (now her husband) was her cinematographer. The shoot was in Berkeley. I was the Art director on the shoot and my first job was to get a couple of gold fish in a bowl for the shoot. I called the 2 fish ‘Big Eyes’ and ‘Small Eyes’. They died on me soon after the film due to my in experinece and overfeeding. I mourned their loss and decided to never get fish as pets ever again. too heart breaking. The good thing that came of that shoot was my friendship with Erin and Pablo and the genesis of my first film – ‘Nupur – Ankle Bracelets’. Erin was my first supporter and started as a producer on my first film. So it was great that when I saw Kathryn win the Oscar, Erin was there sitting next to me. We jumped up and down like school girls. Yes, it was possible and would remain a possibility for all eternity. A woman director can win in that very male category. She can be the creator and what’s more she can do it with a film about men. How awesome is that!

I met Diana Romero at Erin’s party. She was part of the NALIP gang and graduated from AFI producing program. We kept a nice friendship over the years and things were pleasant. Then one day she and I had tea at Glendale Manor and she told me about her goals and aspirations. She wanted to make big budget studio films. She wanted to ride the tiger. Yes! I understood. i saw how big she was during that conversation. She looked beautiful and powerful. I suggested that she should just go for it. I was trying to be encouraging. I meet her a year later and she is working for Lions Gate and had optioned a book and is gearing up for a film. It was at her 2010 Oscar party I saw Kathryn Bigelow receive her 2nd Oscar for producing. We screamed like banshees and hugged like crazy. It was a very emotional moment.

Yes, I make a big deal of it. Yes, It is feminist. Yes, it’s crazy. And I will tell you the reason why.

When I received the 2001 Film Arts Foundation grant for New Directors to make my first film, we were given a year to submit our finished film to fulfill the conditions of the grant. Gail Silva, the then director of Film Arts Foundation told me something that caught my ears – The women grant receivers always completed their films on time and submitted them. The men filmmakers, it was touch and go. some did and some didn’t. She wondered why that was. The answer to me (even then) was a no brainer. Women got very few opportunities and when they did one, they squeezed every ounce of themselves to make sure they took full advantage of the opportunity, because if you did not come through on your one opportunity, chances were that you would not get another. Men, in contrast did not have that fear or pressure. They could count on more opportunity. That was the difference. It’s not that women do not get equal opportunities. It’s just that we do not get equal opportunity to fuck up. You had to make good (or great) every time.

All I have ever been is a woman. And so really I cannot ever fairly compare and contrast. To know what it must be to be a male director and how hard or easy it is to navigate through to make a career. I truly cannot say. However, I do know that it in the 80 odd years since the Academy has been handing out awards, only 4 times a woman has been nominated for best director and won once. They say film is a director’s medium. They say a film is a director’s vision. They say the opportunity is equal. I want to believe it.

I believed it tonight. It finally happened. Tonight I was proud to be a film director. Everything seemed just a little more possible.

xoxo,
Aparna

Los Angeles – Back home!

In a few hours I will be on a flight to Los Angeles.  I have never missed a place like I have missed Los Angeles in the last few months.  I cannot wait to cross the immigration line and hear the familiar – ‘Welcome home’ from the Immigration officer.  I cannot wait to use my cell phone, drive my car and use my atm card without getting hit by fees.  I cannot wait to be on cruise control in my city.  A place that I can move around with my eyes closed.

I have missed my friends, the creative conversations with my filmmaker buddies and the silence while driving my car on the highways and so much more.

India has been so challenging.  The loneliness and the lack of silence almost killed me.  Hyderabad has a small film industry and it is very incestuous.  It is hard to make friends and really have deep conversation here.  I managed to find some friends and hang on to them with dear life.

However to sum up my 5 months since I got here – I attended the Mumbai International Film Festival in October in Mumbai and had a blast screening ‘Mitsein’ for the audience there.  I met some very interesting and creative people.  My relationship with my lead actor Smriti Mishra has become more deep after that screening.  I never saw that possibility when I was shooting the film.

November, I had a apartment warming party and also I followed Lakshmi Manchu’s film which was being directed by K. Raghavendra Rao.  I went to Araku Valley with the cast and crew and got to experience a ‘Tollywood’ production.  I took tons of pictures and celebrated my time with the unit.  I met and got to see the vision and dreams of the assistant directors on the shoot.  I made an interesting connection with KRR, the director who has made 105 films in 35 years. Wow!

Early December Mistein has it’s Los Angeles premiere and mid December I left for Kerala and after a short stint at Neyyar Dam Sivananda Ashram I went with a bunch of girlfriends to Varkala Beach.  It was such a great way to bring in the new year.  I got massages, swam in the ocean, read books, worked on my screenplay and just had way too much fresh juice.  I met Jodie, Gemma and Talia and fell in love with them.  I saw my first ever Kathakali performance and was blown away.  And to add to it all I met Pia Shah and her beau who were vacationing at Varkala from NY.  The last time I met Pia was with filmmaker Anjali Sundaram at Malibu Beach.  I think Pia and I have a beach to beach thing going.

Early January I went with a new friend and writer Beena Gera to IIM Ahmedabad to give my first ever Screenwriting workshop as part of the Entrepreneurship Summit there.  The seminar was a hit and I got lots of great responses and confidence that I could do it again.  I even got write-up in the Ahmedabad Mirror.  How cool was that!  And the best part, I met with Madhu and Meghna and saw the evolution of the work they started in Mumbai.  Madhu is all Gandhied out and I can only imagine what more he is going to create.

Back in Hyderabad I started to feel the low energy again.  However something wonderful happened late January.  Pierre Assouline came on board ‘The Anushree Experiments’ as a producer.  I almost died when he did.  I am the luckiest bitch ever.  Pierre made a visit to Hyderabad and met with the finance guys here and we got to know each other.  We went to Charminar where Pierre got some lovely pearls for his woman and then we got a most interesting tour with a most interesting tour guide of the Golconda Fort.

A few days later in early February I was in Mumbai with Beena Gera working on a new draft for Anushree which included the changes Pierre suggested to make the film have more potential for a crossover.  One evening Pierre, Smriti Mishra and the rest of the writing team attended Deepak Bandhu’s debut film ‘Akhari Decision”s audio release function.  We celebrated every time we saw a poster of the film in Juhu or on a bus.  Had lots of Pav Bhaji.  Mitsein’s score gets launched on iTunes. yey! I gave a seminar on screenwriting at Kartikeya’s Digital Academy and was impressed with what he has created with his filmmaking school.  I saw the ‘Tejas’ in his students and how much fun I had giving the seminar there.  And to top it all Beena and I created a concept for a LA based TV show and pitched it to Mohinder Walia at FOX TV.  And that is when my buddy Mohinder tells me that he has known Pierre from Cannes.  So of course we have a get together and have a blast. Fun fun fun.

On my way out of Mumbai I met and saw artist Lalitha Lajmi’s beautiful paintings at her studio.  That was a truly magical day.

Back in Hyderabad mid February, Amulya my sister arrives from Copenhagen to celebrate my 40th birthday.  Cousin Srinath arrives from Boston.  The entire family is at my place for my birthday celebration.  I cut two cakes and turn 40 amongst family and later with friends in the evening.  I feel 21.

The later half of February was spent working on my screenplay and having amazing screenplay conversation with a film maker in town by the name Raj Pippalla.  Mistein plays at the Beloit International Film Festival in Wisconsin and is a screenplay competition finalist.

Looking back, it has been a rather adventurous and full ride.  I could not have planned it better.  I cannot imagine what the ride will be like when I get back to Hyderabad mid April.

Meanwhile I am excited to be heading to Los Angeles, filing my taxes, meeting all my friends, film buddies and the Beverly Hills playhouse gang.  I will see my co-writer Wynne after so so long.  And of course my roomies at Glendale Manor, Mellissa and Copper.

Mid March I head to London for a day and then to Paris to have a mini vacation with my sister Amulya.  My first trip to Paris.  Irene Balmanoukian, my production designer from ‘Mitsein’ has arranged for an art show of my paintings in Frankfurt on the 26th and later we head to Copenhagen for a show as well.  And a short trip to Oslo after that to meet the Norwegian artists from Can Serrat art residency in Spain.

I have a life that sparkles.  I really have nothing to complain.  I am stopping it.

Watch out for the pictures and stories from my US / Europe trip soon.  I think I will come back all pumped up to go into ‘The Anushree Experiments’ pre-production.  Cannot wait.

xoxo,

Aparna

Sticky Past

Some of my past sticky notes just refuse to get unstuck.  How long will it take to get a lesson, to complete something that is eating every possibility one creates.  How many impotent and dead possibilities does one have to witness before you make that sticky past a priority and deal with it.

Today I saw a graveyard of all the possibilities I have created in a particular area of my life.  It was devastating to even see it.  To mourn it.  It’s like that scene from ‘The Matrix’, when you see the fields and fields of babies being incubated and grown.

So I decided to rip that sticky note off the wall and shred it.  Knowing fully well that I will be tested immediately.

It’s freedom at it’s best.

Aparna

Fluidity

The great thing about the initial stages of putting a film together is the fluidity.  The possibilities are endless and everything is up in the air and uncertain.  Commitments are still at the word level, nothing on paper really except I guess the screenplay.

Later when things get more concrete the possibilities start to diminish and choices start getting made for you instead.

Pierre Assouline come by today to Hyderabad.  He is Arati Misro’s contact from Cannes and he liked the screenplay of ‘Anushree’ and sees the potential.  He comes from International Sales and has a perspective to filmmaking that is complete.  he currently stays in Mumbai for half the year and Paris the other half.

Had dinner with Muktesh Rao Meka, Kevin Kevi and Pierre at ‘The Water Front’ restaurant overlooking the tank bund necklace road.  The view was grand and the food was nice.  I was a bit edgy, I wanted everything to fall into place right away and want to know everything.  I need to have more patience.  I saw how the various elements of my film would have to be set in order to give it the best chance to succeed, not just at the creative and artistic level, but also at the commercial level.  Pierre aslo talked about having marketing built in from the beginning of the film instead of waiting after it’s done.

Muktesh had some great ideas on how to use casting and to create traction for the film locally.  I am really getting to see the beginnings of setting a movie for a win.  To take a particular film as a unique project and treat it as such.  I learning so much and know that I have a lot more to go.  This is just the tip of the iceberg.

Tomorrow, Pierre and I will roam around Hyderabad and see the sights.  He suggested I take my film into more outdoor locations to let it breathe and as soon as I got home I texted Beena Gera my new writer on board.  I am flying to Mumbai on Friday to stay with her and really work on the screenplay and incorporate the suggestions Pierre had.  Also I want to introduce Pierre to a potential investor in Mumbai.  I look forward to Mumbai because I have a very focused goal and I love time enclosed focused goals.  They force me to get results and I come out flushed with creativity.  Everything recedes to the background.

Building my film brick by brick.  That is how it always happens.  By the time I get to production I have travelled the Sahara and the stakes are so high.  Everything becomes so significant.  I need to watch out for that.

I can smell what’s coming like a wild animal.  It’s wild.

xoxo,

Aparna

How to work like a Woman

I met a young man today who wanted to work with me an assistant director for ‘The Anushree Experiments’ and I asked him a very clichéd question – ‘Are you ok working for a woman director?’ and he asked me what the difference was.  That got me thinking.

How does one work like a woman and how does it differ from how a man works?

I think, a man works by occupying space.  By making his presence felt.  In fact, in my early film making days, I worked on many a shoot that were helmed by women and they worked just like their male counterparts.  They made their presence felt, they got their power by occupying space.  I learnt to do the same from them.

When I made my own films, I pretty much had the same modus operandi.  I realized that it felt alien and was very effort full.  In short, it was not feminine.  I feared that being feminine would mean a loss of power on set and then all hell would break loose and that would end my stint as a filmmaker.

Slowly however, I realized that being feminine was not about being a delicate flower or being a bitch, but about holding space.  A woman holds space in which magical things can happen.  Like babies, marriage and even films. A woman’s presence is invisible.  All she needs to do is hold her vision and let the film happen.  It requires a lot of trust and letting go knowing fully well that it will come out great the other end.

This brought the whole issue of communication to the forefront.  I learnt to communicate my vision and to acknowledge.  That is how I would regulate the quality of what occurs in the space I hold.  That is how I would regulate the quality of my film and enjoy the creativity that enters my film set.

The whole process allowed me to be feminine and effortless.  Someone once told me that when I drop the sword, all the men around me will pick it up to protect me.  That my vulnerability is my power and that it will be guarded by everyone around me.  It took a long time to put it into practice.

Why don’t they tell you that when you are in school so you can start early on.  All this reinventing the wheel business is so tedious!

Happy,

Aparna