Making the City Of Joy gave me the best political education of my life. It became a wrestling match between an Englishman who had gradually ceased to be a Marxist, and a culture that was becoming more Marxist by the day.
The actor is concerned with his own bit of it, but the director’s somehow trying to work the whole thing into a much bigger picture. It’s like conducting an orchestra.
I cannot forget a conversation that I had with an elderly couple from the tribe. They asked me whether I would kill them after I had finished. When I asked them why they asked that, they replied, Because you white men always do!
I began to feel that, in a sense, we were all prisoners of our own history.
I think the job of movie reviewing can be really tough. If a film has layers that need to be thought about, it’s easy to get missed the first time around.
I like cinema audiences. I respect them, and I talk to them just like I would anybody I know.
Good directing is about getting the performance to be just what’s right for the movie.
Even if we don’t know it or aren’t aware of it, politics and philosophy are really what make our up lives.
The history of the white man in India really jumped up and bit me in the neck.
Much of Indian science seems intuitive and not bound by the rigid thinking of classical scientists.
In India, one has to plan according to the monsoons.
Very good coaches for ski jumpers stand at the top of the slope and watch the jumpers prepare, rather than standing at the bottom and watching them land.
Sitting down to a meal with an Indian family is different from sitting down to a meal with a British family.
They suggested I should introduce an element of reincarnation in the story. At first, I thought that was silly. But then, this whole time dimension began to fascinate me.
If you spend a whole afternoon just eating popcorn and watching football, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if that’s all you do, you get swept along with the tide, without any idea of where you’re going.
We’re a strange animal, so often destroying what we love for selfish ends, and yet tantalized by the sense that there are other choices if only we had strength to make them. In the politics of 400 years ago, we find the same questions we battle with today.
Conventionally, one looks at history as something of the past. But after Einstein, who knows what is in the past and what is in the present?
Eventually, the tribe developed so much confidence in me that they invited me to be their chieftain.
I like DVDs so much – it’s such a better format than VHS.
I’m not a very serious person. You know how they say that clowns are very funny in public and are really sad at home? I’m really kind of stupid at home and more serious in public.
Music is a very integral part of the film, but it will not be as full of music as a Bollywood film.