Friday 1
Today I take the 60th street tram across the East River to the hospital set. I am treated to a beautiful view of the East Side of New York and the tram gets so close to buildings that I can see into people’s apartments!
We continue shooting the hospital scene with Ashima giving birth to Gogol. The scene takes a long time to shoot because there are many actors and a baby which keeps crying. I remember an important rule I learned at film school – don’t put babies and animals in your films! I guess that’s also true for a big budget film. Even if you have $10 million you can’t make a baby stop crying!
The scene is between four people – Ashoke, Ashima, a doctor and a nurse. While I am sitting next to Mira watching the scene, I can feel that it doesn’t work. But I can’t say anything because I am not the director and this is not my film. But I feel that the actors playing the doctor and the nurse are bad. And the scene is not funny when it’s supposed to be. Even though I can see that the scene doesn’t work, I know how Mira feels because I am also a director.
Sometimes, you are under a lot of pressure during the day and it makes you tired and unable to see things clearly. Many times I have directed a scene that seemed to be good but later in the editing room I realized it was horrible. But on set you can’t see it.
Sometimes, you only see what you want to see. Again, seeing my mentor’s mistakes gives me confidence. It makes me feel that I am not the only one who makes mistakes. Even very experienced directors make mistakes. So they are not so different from me.
During dinner I have the most interesting chat with Norm, the make-up person. We talk for 30 minutes and he tells me all about the unions. In the American film industry, all the crews are in unions. The Actor’s Union, the director’s Union, the production designer Union, the make-up Union. Every film department has a national union. In America, they have unions to protect the small people from being taken advantage of by powerful people. The unions set rules for their members – a weekly salary, maximum working hours, etc. If a producer breaks these rules, they have to fight with the Union. So they cannot take advantage of the small people like in Thailand where sometimes the company overworks the small people. It’s supposed to be a good thing.
But the union system also has problems. The union makes money from its members so it wants as many members as possible. But some producers don’t want to hire union people because they are more expensive. There is no law that says they must hire union people.
They can hire non-union people and their film is then called a “non-union film”. But the unions sometimes come and sabotage the production. They will send their people to the set and tell the non-union people to strike! For example, they will tell the non-union make-up people “if you stop working we will let you join our union for free” and so all the make-up people agree to strike because if they join the union, they will make more money. So they strike and the production has to stop working until the producer agrees to hire union people.
The most notorious union of all is the driver’s union, also called the Teamsters. This is a very powerful union. They have been known to destroy non-union productions by sending their members to the set with trucks and keep honking the horn the whole day so that the film cannot record sound. Sometimes they even beat up non-union drivers! The producer has no choice but to hire union people.
But then once the little people join the union, sometimes they also cannot find work because there are too many people in the union! Norm tells me that many make-up people in the union cannot find work. There are too many people and too few films. And then there is corruption. The members who are close to the union managers get all the best jobs. So that is just like Thailand!
This is one reason why it’s so expensive to make films in Hollywood and why many films now shoot outside the United States.
Saturday and Sunday 2-3
No shooting on weekends. I go to the Guggenheim Museum to see the installation work of Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija! Very interesting!
Monday 4
Today we are shooting at JFK airport and the crew van leaves from the corner of 35th street and 3rd Avenue. When I get there it’s 6.00AM and the sky is still dark. I see about 30 people waiting on the street that I don’t recognise and I find out later that they are the extras in the scene who are waiting for the extra bus. I always feel sorry for extras. Many of them are actors who never made it and so keep working for years and years as extras hoping to get a big break. Some of them are so old now and I think to myself “you shouldn’t be waiting in the street at 6.00AM. You should be at home with your family”.
The scenes today are quite complicated with a lot of extras walking in the background because it’s an airport scene. Security is very tight and some of the make-up people get stopped at the X-ray check point for carrying nail clippers in their bags!
We are shooting in the international terminal of JFK but in an area where there are not many passengers. I think about Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal which recreated this same terminal inside a soundstage. I think it is the biggest set ever built for a movie in history. It is quite amazing what people will do to make a film.
The shoot progresses quite smoothly throughout the day and I leave at 6PM to meet some friends for dinner.
Tuesday 5
Today is the most beautiful day and the most beautiful location we’ve had. It’s warm and sunny and we are shooting out in a beautiful home in Oyster Bay. It is a large house with a sloping lawn in the back that ends at a beach. Oyster Bay is one of the most hi-so neighborhoods in all of America. It is where a lot of rich New Yorkers live when they don’t want to live in the city. It is also the inspiration for the The Great Gatsby, one of my favorite novels of all time.
We are shooting here because in the script, Gogol, the son of Indian immigrants, has found a rich American girlfriend and comes to her childhood home to meet her parents. In the script he is proud to have “gotten” this girl but at the same time has the feeling that he will always be an outsider in her hi-so life. That is almost the same fate that befell the hero of The Great Gatsby.
I know that is the reason Mira has chosen to shoot here in Oyster Bay. Among these gorgeous homes overlooking the bay, there is a sense that this life is out of reach for immigrants. We were not born here and because of that, we will never belong here. This is America at its most class-conscious. As I walk along the beach I sense a beautiful sadness. I also, will never belong here.
Mira is sick again today and in a bad mood. Rolex sends a journalist to talk to her but she declines so he just talks to me instead. During break as everyone takes the vans to a nearby church for lunch, Mira lies on the grass overlooking the beach and falls asleep! I think Mira is a successful director because she puts her job in perspective. She loves film. But she loves life more. She doesn’t forget to enjoy the view and I think only when you understand this can you make filmmaking work for you as a career.
Wednesday 6
Mira is still sick today and in the morning a doctor comes to the set to check on her and give her some medicine. But the film must go on.
Today is the first day that we are shooting in Manhattan. We are in the Upper East Side on 75th Street and Park Avenue which is the most hi-so part of the city. The townhouse we are shooting in is actually owned by the same family that owns the home we shot in yesterday at Oyster Bay. The townhouse is a very beautiful five floor building but being a real apartment, there is again not that much room to move around. I ask Lydia the producer why they didn’t build these sets on stage and just shoot the exterior in the real location and she tells me “money”. It would have been much more expensive to build the set because “the union carpenters are very expensive”. I remember the conversation I had with Norm last week.
We are shooting scenes between Gogol (Kal Penn) and his American girlfriend Maxine who is played by the Australian actress Jacinda Barrett who I saw in Bridget Jones 2 as the beautiful assistant of Colin Firth. In real life Jacinda is very beautiful. She is 5’10 with long blonde hair and when she is not shooting she walks on the street talking on her mobile phone and everybody who walks past stares at her. She looks like a movie star. She is also about an inch taller than Kal and Mira tells me that she needs to have Jacinda slouch down in some scenes so that she appears shorter than Kal.
But Kal also has some fans. The townhouse is across the street from a school and in the afternoon when classes get out, a bunch of teenage girls run over to take pictures with Kal because they loved him in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle. They tell him they all have the DVD! Before The Namesake, Kal has only been known for his comedy roles. He is a very talented actor and can do a lot of funny things with his face just like Jim Carrey and other famous comedy actors. But this film is a challenge for him. It’s his first dramatic lead role. He has to make the audience believe him as a leading man. Mira sends him to a personal trainer to lift weights and get more muscles! He is too skinny!
Overall today is slow because it is difficult to light a real apartment. Over the last two weeks I have spent a lot of time watching the DP (Director of Photography), Fred Elmes, light the set. He is a real gentleman – very quiet, but with intensity - just like a character in a David Lynch film. Today the lighting is difficult because there is no space and Fred has to put an 18K HMI on a crane across the street and blast it in through the window. Though the lighting takes time, what Mira and I see in the monitor is always very beautiful. Like directing, cinematography is about taste. There are many people who know how to put up lights, how to get an exposure, but in the end, the great DPs are the ones who have good taste. Ultimately, the job is not technical, but artistic. When I see Fred’s dailies (I have been watching all the dailies on DVD on an Apple laptop computer) they are beautiful because they are tasteful. Any DP can make something look pretty, but only a few can make it look right. That is a matter of taste.
Lunch breaks at 5.30PM. Over here, “lunch break” doesn’t mean it has to be lunch time, it simply means six hours after we start. Usually we start at 6AM so lunch falls around noon but today we start at 11.30AM so lunch is at 5.30PM. So it’s actually dinner but it is still called “lunch”. Because of the union rules, you cannot work your crew for more than six hours straight. Every six hours you need to have a 45 minute break and so the first break is always called “lunch” and the second one is called “dinner”. It’s not important what time they are. And you have to give your crew at least a 10-hour rest between days – this is called “turn-around”. That is why today’s call time is at 11.30AM. Because last night we didn’t wrap until after midnight! So by union rules, we can’t start before 11.30AM without paying penalties to the crew.
During the break, the whole crew goes to eat leaving just some location assistants and interns to watch the equipment which is sitting in the street. I am surprised there are no police on set. Maybe because this is the Upper East Side and it is a very safe neighborhood. I don’t come back after lunch. I meet a friend to go for a walk in Central Park. You can find the most beautiful view in New York by standing on the east side of the park at 90th street overlooking the reservoir to the West Side as the sun sets into the buildings. You can see the silhouettes of all the famous New York apartment buildings - the San Remo, the Beresford, and the Dakota – where John Lennon was shot.
Thursday 7
Today we are back at the same 75th Street location. Mira is shooting a party scene with about 20 extras moving back and forth in the scene. I am excited to watch this because for me, the hardest scenes to shoot have always been ones with a lot of characters talking to each other. It becomes very complicated to stage the action without the audience becoming confused about where all the characters are in relation to each other. The easiest way to do it is to break the people into groups and that is exactly what Mira has done here. Because this is a real apartment, there is not a lot of room to move the camera so she stages the main action in the foreground and simply has the extras moving in the background. This is much easier to do because the camera does not need to move to follow the main characters. It is not as fluid visually but those are the limitations of shooting in a real location. In a way it’s just like shooting two people talking but with people moving in the background.
Nevertheless, this scene takes almost three hours to prepare. Partly it’s because of the lighting and partly because the scene requires a lot of rehearsals. By now I am used to the pattern of working on this set.
Every scene is rehearsed and shot in the same way: 1. Mira will rehearse the scene with the actors on the set. All the department heads are present to watch this rehearsal. Once Mira and Fred have decided how they will shoot the scene, they let the actors go. 2. The stand-ins are called in so that the crew can light the scene and prepare the set. This lighting set-up takes the longest time – sometimes hours. 3. The actors are called back in to finalise the scene. 4. They shoot.
Every scene follows this pattern. It has taken about a week for the crew to get up to 100% but now I look around and feel that everyone is working at full speed. I think every production is the same, no matter for a big film or a short film. It always takes some time for everyone to move in the same speed, everyone to understand each other.
I leave early to take a train to Connecticut to visit my sister. I come back to the city at 10PM and call the set. They tell me they are still shooting. Next morning I find out that they go overtime again and don’t wrap until 2AM! I know that each day of shooting costs an average of 85,000 dollars. Tonight’s overtime will add another 35,000 dollars to the day’s budget!
Friday 8
Today is my last day on the New York set and it is the most exciting day because we are shooting outside in the streets of Soho! I always remember New York movies looking like this – Woody Allen, Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee – the movies I grew up watching all portray New York this way – the streets. So I am so happy to finally be on the street today – now I feel like a part of a real New York movie!
Compared to all our other days of shooting, today is crazy. There are crowds everywhere. Cars and trucks drive through the street and honk their horns. Police helicopters fly overhead making the sound man go crazy. There are a group of paparazzi photographers on the sidewalk because we are shooting right outside the Marc Jacobs store and the Wimbledon tennis champion Maria Sharapova is shopping inside. We have to wait for her to come out and leave because all the photographers are getting in the way. Finally she comes out and walks right past me about three feet away! She is beautiful! Six feet tall, long blonde hair, wearing dark glasses like a super model. I smile at her but she doesn’t smile at me. Bitch.
After she leaves we begin to work, shooting a scene with Gogol and his new Indian girlfriend Moushumi (he has broken up with Maxine) walking in the streets of Soho. They walk and talk and the camera operator follows them with a Steadicam. There is a lot of noise with cars and people and helicopters and Ed, the sound man, tells Mira that this scene will have to be ADR. That means that the sounds he is recording cannot be used in the final film. The actors will have to go back into the studio and record the dialogue again. If possible, you never want to do this because the actor’s performance can never be as good as the original. But here we have no choice. The Soho street location is beautiful but the sound is bad.
Sometimes you have to sacrifice one for the other. It takes all afternoon to get three shots of Gogol and Moushumi walking down the street. First, a wide shot in front of them. Second, a medium shot of Gogol. Third, a medium shot of Moushumi. The continuity doesn’t really match in the shots but I know it will be okay. There is a nice liveliness to the scene and people won’t notice the continuity problems. I ask Robyn the script supervisor and she says the same thing. If the scene is good – people won’t notice the continuity. After we finish this shot, we hurry and shoot one shot of Jacinda Barrett walking down the street for another section of the script. We put the camera right on the sidewalk in the busiest street in Soho – but amazingly, nobody really looks into the camera! I don’t know why. Maybe it’s New York and people are used to seeing film crews on the streets. But this shot makes me happy. It feels like I am in film school again – shooting on the streets with people walking all around us. There is an excitement to it. While we are shooting this, the second crew is preparing the night shoot. This is a scene inside a moving taxi and the lighting team is rigging the lights to the rig that will pull the car. That’s the way the teams work. They are always thinking one shot ahead. While the first team is shooting, the second team is preparing for the next shot.
We break for lunch at 6PM and during the break I go around to say goodbye to the crew who I have become friends with over the last 3 weeks. I will see most of them again in India a month from now when the production moves to Calcutta. But goodbye for now!
Sunday 10
I leave tomorrow morning for Bangkok. This last day I spend at Mirabai, Mira’s personal office. It’s the first day of editing! The editor, Allyson Johnson, has been editing the footage since the first day of shooting but this is the first time that she has been able to show Mira. I arrive at 11.30AM and talk to Allyson – I met her last year when I came to New York and she was editing Vanity Fair. The production office has rented an AVID system and installed it at Mirabai so Mira can edit in her own office without the interference of too many people at the production office. That’s the funny thing about editing. It only requires one person. When you shoot, you need so many people – sometimes hundreds. But when you edit it’s always one person.
Mira arrives at noon and we all have lunch before working. I feel lucky to be able to sit with her as she looks at the cuts and though this is not my film, I have been with the production since the beginning and I feel happy and proud to see the film edited into sequences. We edit from 1PM to 6PM, looking over all the scenes that have been shot. Even though it is still rough, I can see the movie coming together before my eyes. That’s the magic of editing. I ask Mira what she wants when she’s directing actors and she says “energy – the actors have to have energy from the start of the scene to the end”.
Like the first day, this last day I am again reminded that an experienced director like Mira makes mistakes just like I do. She gets angry because some shots are not so good and she didn’t shoot more takes. I laugh inside. I think every director in the world knows what that feels like – to sit in the editing room and realize you didn’t shoot enough footage. It’s nice to see that this famous director gets angry and complains just like I do!
Mira: “I don’t have any more takes?”
Allyson: “No.”
Mira: “Shit…”
As the sun sets on the last day of my stay in New York, Mira and I leave together and walk down 6th Avenue to the subway. She tells me she is not taking a taxi because she is trying not to spend so much money. She turned down the big paycheck of Harry Potter 5 to do this film that pays her very little. Maybe she thinks she made a mistake? But then she smiles and tells me “you have to do what you really care about”.
We hug at the subway and I watch her rush down the stairs and disappear. Then I walk back to my apartment, watching, listening and smelling the atmosphere of New York all around me. One day maybe I will be back to direct my own film here. That would be nice.