Synopses & Reviews
Masala: 1. A pungent concoction of spices that excites all five senses. 2. The perfect combination of dramatic elements in a successful Bollywood film.
Bollywood movies are glorious, colorful spectacles of romance, action, drama, song, and dance. India has the biggest film industry in the world, which produces some 900 movies a year, watched by passionate fans around the globe.
Stephen Altera writer who grew up in India and has inside access to Bollywoodacts as translator and tour guide in this firsthand look into the world of Bombay films. Following the making of a Bollywood version of Othello, he explores the enormous popularity of Hindi movies and reveals the actors, directors, musicians, and feats of artifice that make them so compelling and unique. From the blessing ceremony performed each time a movie starts shooting to the secrets behind the song-and-dance extravaganzas, Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief is a beguiling introduction to the rituals and culture of a moviemaking industry so similar to and yet utterly different from our own.
STEPHEN ALTER is the highly praised author of seven books of fiction and four books of nonfiction, including Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant and Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimmage up the Ganges River to the Source of Hindu Culture. As a writer-in-residence at MIT, he received both a Guggenheim and a Fulbright fellowship. He now lives and writes in India.
Review
PRAISE FOR ELEPHAS MAXIMUS"Magical and fascinating."THE BOSTON GLOBE"Deftly blend[s] Indian history and culture with current debates about animal conservation . . . Joyous."THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE
Synopsis
Bollywood movies are glorious, colorful spectacles of romance, action, drama, song, and dance. The biggest film industry in the world, Bollywood puts out some nine hundred movies a year, which are watched by passionate fans around the globe.Stephen Altera writer who grew up in India and has inside access to Bollywoodacts as translator and tour guide in this firsthand look into the world of Bombay films. Following the making of a Bollywood version of Othello, he explores the enormous popularity of Hindi movies and reveals the actors, directors, musicians, and feats of artifice that make them so compelling and unique. From the blessing ceremony performed each time a movie starts shooting to the secrets behind the song- and-dance extravaganzas, Fantasies of a Bollywood Love-Thief is a beguiling introduction to the rituals and culture of a moviemaking industry so similar to and yet utterly different from our own.
About the Author
Stephen Alter is writer-in-residence in the Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT, and was the director of the writing program at Cairo's American University. He is the author of four novels and a memoir, All the Way to Heaven, as well as another travel book, Amritsar to Lahore, a bestseller in India.
Table of Contents
contents
Authors Note ix
1 Shakespeare Remixed 1
2 Filmi Masala 5
3 Maqbool 14
4 One Way to Bombay 22
5 Monsoon Brainstorm 28
6 Sex, Films, and SMS 37
7 Scripting Omkara 42
8 Film City 53
9 1,001 Narrations 6010 The Poet of Pali Hills 68
11 Musical Sitting 74
12 Dev Saabs Durbar 79
13 Gunslingers 86
14 Poster Artist 91
15 Sun-N-Sand 95
16 Sunset Bollywood 106
17 Item Numbers 113
18 Bandit Queen 118
19 Going for Take 123
20 Rajkamal Studios 132
21 The Brick Kiln 136
22 How to Handle Actors 149
23 Cypra 157
24 Javed Akhtar 166
25 The Beast with Two Backs 170
26 Shyam Benegal 180
27 Mood! Mood! Mood! 184
28 Govind Nihalani 193
29 Politics 197
30 Call Sheet 203
31 Time to Die 213
32 Throwing Color 216
33 The Trade 220
34 The Salt of Love 223
35 Credits Roll 234
36 House Full 237
notes 247
index 249