This story is from August 23, 2002

Marigold: Hollywood love, Bollywood style

Meenakshi Shedde / TNN / Aug 23, 2002, 00:38 IST

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MUMBAI: What do you get when an American director makes a $10-million Bollywood musical on love? It's called Marigold. And it has romance, comedy, songs, dance sequences — the works.

Marigold: Hollywood love, Bollywood style

<div class="section1"><div class="Normal">MUMBAI: Hollywood''s here to make a $10 million Bollywood musical. And Marigold has romance, comedy, songs, dance sequences â€” the works. The story in brief: An American heroine comes to India to work in a low-budget film, and falls in love with the choreographer, played by Salman Khan. "It is a love story. We trace the seven stages of love, and there are corresponding songs and dances for each," explains writer-director Willard Carroll, head of the California-based Hyperion Studio. Impressed that love could be thus boxed and labelled, we request a whistlestop tour through the stages. "Oh," he says, turning beetroot. "I have to look it up in the script." And we thought it was an original script, pouring forth from his quivering heart. If it''s just a second-hand listing, we want a refund. Still beetroot, he reels off the evolution of love from his script, written with not a little help from lyricist Javed Akhtar: "Hub - attraction, uns - infatuation, ishq - love, aquidat - reverence, ibaadat - worship, junoon - obsession, maut - death." The title of the film that the American actress is shooting in India is less trouble. "It will probably have love five times in it," says producer Tom Wilhite, grinning. Carroll adds, "Something like Pyar Mohabbat Prem Ishq." Carroll has directed Playing by Heart with Sean Connery and Angelina Jolie, and Tom Wilhite co-founded Hyperion Studio, which does both live action and animation software. Carroll got sucked into Bollywood a year ago, when he came to attend a Pentamedia animation conference in Chennai, and later saw what he calls "Chorry Chorry Chapke Chapke". It was ishq, ibaadat and the whole caboodle at first sight. "I was hit by its energy, music, beauty and songs," he recalls. "The energy in Indian movies is infectious." After skimming through about 100 Bollywood DVDs, he decided to go off the deep end. Except for the American heroine, the cast and locales of Marigold are Indian. Explaining his choice of prime beefcake, Carroll says, "Salman Khan could be paired off with any American actress, and he has an energy and charm that would work well with American audiences. His English is good, colloquial and entertaining, and I felt I could write for a personality like him." Also on board are musicians Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy, lyricist Javed Akhtar, choreographer Farah Khan and set designer Nitin Desai. Is American cinema approaching a creative plateau, with globalisation provoking it to seek collaborations with indigenous cultures and cinema? "Yes, it was like that for me, at least. There''s a sameness to a lot of American cinema, which probably explains why a film like Mira Nair''s Monsoon Wedding or Alfonso Cuaron''s Mexican film Y Tu Mama Tambien did so well. For all America''s provincialism, the youth really appreciate other cultures, as you see in the popularity of hip-hop or Latin American music. So there''s also an anti-blockbuster cinema." Reflecting on Bollywood''s appeal, he says: "I think American audiences would be very responsive to the way Bollywood pushes the emotional envelope. It is about family relations, the battle between tradition and modernity - universal things. There is a hunger in the US for emotional cinema. I know Indians are sentimental, but Americans are closet sentimentalists too." Although he admits that Moulin Rouge, Monsoon Wedding and Lagaan have paved the way for his film, he thinks it''s not so much a Bollywood phenomenon out there as "an interest in all things Indian that''s starting to hit the US". Of the other films that flirt with Bollywood, he has not seen Deepa Mehta''s Bollywood Hollywood, but thinks Nagesh Kukunoor''s Bollywood Calling is "a very highly pitched parody". "Marigold is not a parody. We have fun with the anarchy of making movies here - even Hollywood studios have controlled anarchy - but we remain respectful of Bollywood," he insists. "For instance, the American actress can''t get along with anybody, but Salman candidly tells her that she has a terrible attitude." The film will be shot in English and Hindi versions, 1-hour-45-minutes-long, with most of the songs, and two-and-a-half hours with everything, mushrooms and onions included. Anyway, you can''t help feeling that Carroll, a heavy-duty `Wizard of Oz'' fan with tons of memorabilia, including the book in 50 languages (Tamil as well), must have his heart in the right place. "I love it because it''s an escapist fantasy," he says. And now, with Marigold, he will have created his own. </div> </div>

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