For ‘Kaante,’ Bollywood Comes to Southern California

Amitabh Bachchan, arguably the most famous man in India, stepped out of his trailer into the bright afternoon Californian sun, en route to a dentist’s appointment. But he was stopped in his tracks by a gaggle of impeccably dressed Indian women who had traveled from Beverly Hills, Newport Beach and Palos Verdes to the San Pedro set where his new movie is shooting to have their photograph taken with him.

Bachchan was in and around Los Angeles for most of the last 40 days working on “Kaante” (the literal translation from Hindi is “Thorns”), the first Bollywood film to be shot entirely in the U.S., using an American crew and Hollywood technology.

Bachchan, or A.B. as he is often called, is an actor of legendary status on the subcontinent, generating the kind of reverence that the British hold for the late Sir Laurence Olivier or Americans for Marlon Brando or Paul Newman.

He has been a star in Bollywood--as India’s film industry is commonly known--for more than 30 years, most often playing the good-guy hero who always gets the girl. Last year, his renown spiked further when he was named India’s answer to Regis Philbin, the host of the Indian version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.” But for all his experience, fame, power and wealth, Bachchan had never been involved in a project quite like this.

“It’s wonderful, working with an American crew for the first time: the efficiency, the planning, watching the way in which they make movies here,” Bachchan said in his famously gravel-toned voice. He was unusually dressed down in jeans and slippers, a bandanna around his neck.

On the grassy open-air San Pedro set, a catering truck served ribs and hot dogs to the dozens of American crew members and extras while the Indian participants indulged in lentils, curried vegetables and rice served by an Indian cook. The women who had driven there to have their photographs taken with Bachchan then moved on to the various other stars, most of whom had been up since daybreak filming a scene with a couple of exploding cars.

Apart from Bachchan, none of the other stars was locked away in a trailer. For the Indian cast, it was an uncommonly open and accessible set, the actors evidently content in the knowledge that, unlike in Mumbai, they would not be mobbed by fans.

“Kaante’s” producers--among them Raju Patel, whose first career milestone was the Tom Hanks vehicle “Bachelor Party” in 1984, and his longtime associate, Larry Mortorff--had also lured several other major Bollywood names to star in “Kaante.” The objective is a high-quality Hindi film (although a second version, featuring English subtitles, will be cut for international release) that will be made with state-of-the-art production techniques and Southern Californian locales yet still showcase the talents of India’s biggest film names.

Patel, whose repertoire has also included “The Jungle Book” and “The Adventures of Pinocchio” and who is working on a visual effects-laden version of the Tom Thumb fable, said he is enthusiastic about the prospects for “Kaante” because of its “international flavor in terms of its content and the fact that it delivers international standards.”

Patel and his team have pitched it to BBC Films and Film Four in England for distribution in that part of the world and are talking with 20th Century Fox in India about international sales. In the U.S., they intend to target Miramax and Fine Line, companies Patel described as “specialized distributors who seem to support these kinds of films.”

Bollywood is the world’s largest producer of movies, making 800 commercially released films a year, significantly more than the output of Hollywood. Much of it, however, is formulaic fare--melodramas featuring blighted love matches, dreamy song-and-dance sequences and unconvincing fight scenes--in two-to three-hour features fed to vast numbers of viewers in India, Pakistan, the Gulf states and South Asian communities around the world.

With “Kaante,” the filmmakers say, the idea is to break out of the mold. This is a hard-edged heist movie, a tale of six men who meet in prison and decide on one final criminal fling before becoming model citizens. One production source likened it to “an Indian ‘Reservoir Dogs.”’ They all agree that it will be interesting to see how Indian audiences respond to a film that is considerably more sophisticated and intelligent than most of the material coming out of Bollywood.

Associate producer Sanjay Sippy said the movie is scheduled for release in India next April before moving on to international markets.

“We are making history here,” Sippy said. “No Hindi film has done pre-and post-production in Hollywood, basically everything beginning to endThis is the American way of making movies.”

Some of those behind the venture admit, however, that they are also going out on a limb in terms of the story line.

“Everything else is that same formula stuff,” said director Sanjay Gupta, a Bollywood veteran who also penned the “Kaante” script. “For us, it was a question of not going near the formula.” Gupta cited the budget for the film as around $6 million, chump change for a Hollywood blockbuster but extremely high for an Indian production. Pritesh Nandy Communications, a media giant based in Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, teamed with private investors for the funding. “Foreign films like ‘Life Is Beautiful’ and ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ have done huge box-office business, and there is no reason something similar can’t be done with a Hindi film,” Gupta noted. “Ultimately, a good movie is a good movie, and the story is what is going to hold you--plus, we have the big daddy actors of India.”

Much of “Kaante”--which wrapped last weekend--was shot in and around San Pedro, including a crucial prison scene at the Historic Jail, which was also used in “The Usual Suspects.” There were also action-filled street scenes in Century City and on Hollywood Boulevard, with interior shots at the Frontier and Alexandria hotels in downtown Los Angeles.

Filming was done in 40 days, something of a record for an Indian movie, which can often be in production for two or three years because actors and crew are often working on several movies at the same time.

“It will be good to return to India and know that I finished a movie in just over a month,” said Bachchan. “It’s very organized, and in that way it’s different from Bollywood. There’s a discipline here, an excellent story and a larger experience of working in a great group of people. I’ve decided I’d like to do more movies in Los Angeles.”

Bachchan’s co-stars include Sunil Shetty, Sanjay Dutt (nicknamed India’s “Rambo” for his pumped-up build and action-fueled repertoire) and Kumar Gaurav. Also featured are Mahesh Manjrekar and Lucky Ali, who are making their acting debuts in “Kaante”; Manjrekar is a highly respected theater and screen director, and Ali is a popular singer.

“I’m lucky to be entering the movie industry with a big bang,” said Ali. “I decided to do this on a lark, but it’s been a great experience, even if music is my first priority in terms of my career.”

There is in “Kaante,” as in all Bollywood films, a romantic alliance--this one featuring Indian fashion model Malaika Aurora--but the relationship is not the central theme, as it is in most Hindi films. And hoping to give “Kaante” more of an international gloss, the song-and-dance scenes were choreographed by Neisha Folkes, who recently worked on “Glitter.”

“It’s a boy’s movie,” said Rajeev Masand, assistant entertainment editor for the Mumbai-based daily the Indian Express, who is working on a “making of ...”-style book on “Kaante.”

“The heist genre is not a popular one in India--not yet, anyway--but this could work because it is being done professionally. This level of production and commitment doesn’t happen in India. There, stars don’t get up at 6:30 in the morning to be on the set on time.” Masand agreed that the tastes of Indian movie consumers are changing and that a full-scale international production could only elevate Bollywood to a hitherto unexplored level of quality.

“Indian audiences want to see foreign locations, but that’s not enough anymore. Substance has to matter, as well as quality. What people should find appealing about ‘Kaante’ is that it’s the only Hindi film ever to be shot entirely, every frame, outside India, including all the exterior and interior shots.

Also, the entire crew is from here, the cameramen, editors, still photographers, makeup people. On screen, it will make a huge difference,” he said.