Bollywood Dreams

The Charlotte Observor had a piece earlier this month on a Bollywood movie that was partly shot in North Carolina, and that holds a very special place in my heart (keep reading). The plot? Apparently it chronicles the ups and downs of a race car driver's career. I'm not sure if the makers of this movie got the idea from Talladega Nights, but both of the movies were partly shot at Rockingham Parkway in North Carolina and copying Hollywood does seem to be a common tactic in Bollywood. The article introduces the world of Bollywood to its North Carolinian readers by quoting the following graphic in Businessweek:

Many Indians, myself included, wouldn't be too surprised to see that Bollywood makes more movies and sells more tickets a year than Hollywood. However, this graphic, as well as the common refrain about the size of Bollywood, is apparently wrong. Bollywood refers to Hindi movies made in the Bombay film industry, the largest in India. However, the above-graphic refers to movies made in the entire Indian film industry, including Tollywood (Telegu language film industry in Andhra Pradesh) and Kollywood (Tamil Cinema). Bollywood, Tollywood, and Kollywood (for the record, I really hate these dumb names) each make about 150 and 200 films a year, and all of the Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu films together account for only 60% of films made in all of India, as suggested in this graphic. In his blog, Amardeep Singh points out this and other surprising facts that he gleaned from a recent book about the Indian film industry.

Back to "Don't Worry, Be Happy." The article in the Charlotte Observor also charmingly compares the eating styles of the American-born racing crews (fried chicken, baked beans) to the Indian cast and crew (spicy!) before making a brief political comment:

OK, by now you've realized a bit of irony about this movie project:
It is a case of "in-sourcing," bringing jobs and money from India to the Carolinas.

and then an erroneous one:

But more than anything, it might speak to the popularity of racing, worldwide.

I doubt it.

The article ends with a quote by an Indian-born North Carolinian film intern named Setu Raval who seems lovestruck by the movie's hero, Saif Ali Khan:

"I didn't believe he could really be here," says Raval, a filmmaking student at N.C. School of the Arts in Winston-Salem. "I just couldn't believe it. Not until I saw him in person. And then, there he was. So very, very handsome."

Anyway, the reason I'm writing about this movie is because it features not only veteran pin-up Rani Mukherjee and up-and-coming heart throb Saif Ali Khan, but also yours truly. While touring India a few months ago, myself and a friend were asked to be extras on a film that was supposed to be set in America whose working title was "Don't Worry, Be Happy". Actually, my white friend was asked to be an extra, and I was told that they already had more brown people than they knew what to do with. I went anyway and both of us were made to dance around on the balconies of fire escapes on a set that looked vaguely like a stereotype of 1980s Manhattan for about 12 hours while Rani and Saif shot a minute and a half of a music video. When this movie gets ready to break box office records, look for me at the end of a dance sequence, where I'll be visible directly behind and above Saif with my fist pointing towards the sky screaming "Yeah!!"