It is only two weeks ago that I nearly fell through a roof filming my final scene as Major Johnson in the upcoming Bollywood movie, Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey.
What’s more, that was only the first take. As I extricated my foot from the roof and looked down at the tiles on the floor below, my director asked me for ‘one more’… insurance wasn’t mentioned.
On the second time around, as I shot and killed the rebel Nirmal Sen, this time my other foot went through, but what the hell, I didn’t fall and a realistic frame was delivered.
And that is Bollywood movies in a coconut-shell. Planning means rewriting the script on the day, health and safety is unknown, fellow-actors will die to deliver a scene and it is the most addictive thing known to man.
I’ve been involved in the film for three months. A day here, a week there, night-scenes in 12-hour shifts, role expanded, a death scene promised and then rescinded, and ultimately I kill the rebel who was earlier supposed to kill me. Wonderful!
Co-starring Abhishek Bachchan, one of India’s best-known actors, and Deepika Padukone, on the front cover of Maxim India this month, the film is slated for release in autumn 2010 and no, there is no singing and dancing; this is a serious film.
The film portrays the British as bastards and is a hagiography of a group of Indian students who gloriously fail to overthrow British rule in 1930s Chittagong, but became heroes to the Indian people.
In the same way that Hollywood films are a marketing tool for the American way of life, so it is now for this country. ‘We’re not all about that Gandhi geezer’, screams an increasingly powerful India, ‘we had heroes as well and we now have the money to write our own history.’
Whether history will be kind to the acting talents of Major Johnson, I don’t care. I was paid well and would have do it for nothing, I did 30 days’ filming and loved every single minute of it, even if I had to wear a stick-on moustache, looked like John Cleese and had to wear a heavy officer’s uniform in 30 degrees of heat.
What’s more, I’ve just been cast as a British drug-dealer in my NEXT MOVIE, a role that should be significantly easier to portray than the moustachioed Major Johnson… I’m going method all the way, baby.
Monty Munford has more than 15 years' experience in mobile, digital media, web and journalism. He is the founder of Mob76, a company that helps tech companies raise money and exit. He speaks regularly at global media events with a focus on Africa, writes a weekly column for The Telegraph, is a regular contributor to The Economist, Wired, Mashable and speaks regularly on the BBC World Service.
