(Aamir Khan, above.)by Terry Keefe
To fans of Bollywood, even the most casual ones, actor-producer-director Aamir Khan needs no introduction. He is one of Indian cinema's most popular actors, and consequently, he is also one of the biggest stars in the world. Here in the United States, he is perhaps still best known to foreign film fans as the star and producer of the extremely successful 2001 release Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India, the first feature shepherded by Khan's production company, Aamir Khan Productions. Khan isn't known for doing a tremendous amount of interviews, so the opportunity to speak with him recently was one that I jumped at. Khan was in the United States as part of the promotional tour for Peepli Live, the new feature which Khan has produced, but has opted not to star in.
Peepli Live, written and directed by first-time helmer and former journalist Anusha Rizvi, is an intoxicating and extremely entertaining mixture of social satire and neorealism. The story centers around a poor farmer in the Central Indian town of Peepli named Natha (Omkar Das Manikpuri) whose family is about to lose their farmland, due to massive debts. Via his brother Budhia (Raghubir Yadav), Natha discovers a government program which pays significant compensation to the family of any farmer who commits suicide. Natha decides that he will take this fast and horrible solution to his problems, but word quickly spreads throughout not only the village, but also the national news media, about Natha's impending demise. Every manner of opportunistic politician and reporter descends upon Peepli with their own take on what Natha should do. The resulting national circus is delightfully absurd enough to have been orchestrated by Fellini, but visually, the presentation also feels extremely realistic, as it is shot in a verite fashion which nonetheless still manages to find humor in the frame.
I spoke with Aamir Khan via phone at the end of July.
Aamir Khan: Hello?
Hi, Aamir. This is Terry Keefe from the Hollywood Interview. Thanks for talking with me.
Pleasure, pleasure.
I really loved the film, Peepli Live. The right balance of satire and realism was vital in this.
That's correct, yeah.
Was it evident from the script stage, that the balance was right, straight away, or did you have to fine-tune it over the acting and the post-production quite a bit?
Um, no, I think it was there in the script. When I read the script for the first time, I just loved it. I thought it was funny and real, and also very heartbreaking, you know, on certain levels. And thought-provoking. So I loved the script the way it was, and that's what Anusha as the writer and first-time director has executed. When I saw the film, I thought she did a great job of translating on the screen what she had on paper.
(Natha, played by Omar Das Manikpuri, flanked by government soldiers, above.)
Are there many satires in Indian film?
No, it's very unusual. Satire is not usually made in India, and it's not known to do very well with audiences back home. But I'm hopeful for this one. It's not a film that falls into the mainstream category. Usually films in India are not…they're not social or political films usually…so this, when I read the script, I loved it, and I wanted to do it, but I realized as well that it's going to be a challenge to market this film to the mainstream Indian audience.
You know, I thought the humor was very universal, though. Was that something that was important to you, that it would be universal beyond the Indian audience? Because I think it will play very well in the United States.
Well, that's what we're hoping. I mean, when I read the script, while I recognized that this was going to be a tough one for mainstream Indian audiences, I also saw the potential in the material to engage a world audience and to entertain a world audience. And that's the attempt I'm making as a producer -- I'm trying to give it the best I can. To reach out, not only to the audiences for Indian cinema, but to audiences who may not have seen an Indian film before, or may [only] have seen Slumdog.
(laughs) Right.
(laughs) It's an Indian film. It's about India, of course. But, so yeah, I think this film does have the potential to travel across to different audiences, and that's what we are hoping will happen.
I think it will. You're effectively able to greenlight a film on your own at your production company, I assume. Was it just a matter of finding a project that moves you, or was there some niche that you were trying to fill with this particular type of project?
Well, no, you know, as a producer or even as an actor, I don't have any preconceived ideas as to what I want to. I see what material excites me. When I come across a script that mostly connects with me, that excites me, then I go for it, whether it's as an actor or a producer. So I'm not really a business producer, if you know what I mean. I mean, in the last ten years that I've producing, I've done just three films.
Right, right, because I assume that after Lagaan you could've had a whole slate of pictures going at once, and you opted not to. The Natha performance is very reminscent of some of the great silent film performances. I thought Omkar Das Manikpuri was terrific. He says little in terms of dialogue but so much with his physicality. Was that something you knew you had to cast for, the silent ability?
Well, Natha is a particularly difficult character to play, and quite honestly, Anusha, the director and I, were flirting with the idea of [my] playing that part in one point of time--
Okay.
--with the idea that, if I'm in the film then it reaches out to a larger audience, and this is a film that we wanted more and more people to see, because we feel it's an important film. But of course I would have to transform myself physically to be able to pull it off, and we thought that I should test for it, and see how that goes. But when we came across Omkar who finally plays Natha, we realized that we'd found Natha, that there was no need for me to test. And I didn't think I'd ever come close to what he's managed to pull off.
He's really wonderful in it. Did you know from the start of casting that you'd be using largely unknowns in many of the supporting roles?
Yes, that was the idea. We wanted to be very honest with the casting and get people who look real, and who look the part, and who -- when you're watching the film, you should feel that it's really happening, as you pointed out at the beginning. So yes, we wanted to go in for a cast which was very real, and as a result most of the cast that you see in the film have never acted in a film before.
Was Italian Neorealism discussed as an influence? It feels very much out of the classics such as The Bicycle Thief, in terms of some of the actors and performances, as well as the visuals.
Uh, yeah, I think, yeah, I think it is reminiscent of films like that, and it is most encouraging that you take films of De Sica along with Peepli Live.
You also used some theatre actors, and my first reaction would be theatre actors might have to bring down their acting volume, so to speak, for this type of tone, but everyone feels very realistic. Was coaching necessary a lot, or did they pick it up the transition pretty quickly?
Well, a lot of the actors are from theatre and are very well-trained actors. In fact, a lot of them are from group called Naya Theatre, which is a theatre group that was run by Habib Tanvir. And Mr. Tanvir actually passed away six months ago, but for all his life he worked with villagers from Central India, and this theatre group was essentially, all of these people had been working with Mr. Tanvir in theatre, and so having worked with him, they're all very well-trained actors. And they've done all kinds of stuff, I mean, you know, combining folk and modern theatre, and they've even done adaptations of Shakespeare in their own dialects and languages.
So what Anusha did was, after the cast was finalized, he spent three weeks in a workshop with all of them, and went through rehearsals of the film. And I actually came in at the end of the rehearsals, the last three or four days, just to see how things were going, and how things were playing out. And when I saw the rehearsals there was very little for me to add to it, really. It all seemed to be going exactly how it ought to.
What was amazing for such an inexperienced director was how this felt like a real village. Visually, this could be a documentary, and that's got to be so hard to pull off.
That's all credit to Anusha, you know, she's making her first film, she's never been to film school, she used to be a journalist before this. And when I saw the first cut I was quite amazed at how she had pulled this off, because there are so many layers in the film, and it almost feels like it's really happening and she's got cameras hidden here and there, and is capturing what's really happening, and that's quite an amazing quality to bring to a film.
Before you actually hired Anusha on as director, how did you become convinced she could handle this level of production, as a first-timer?
First of all, I loved the script, and then I actually told her to shoot four or five scenes, and I picked her some really tough ones. (laughs) So she shot them and cut them and showed them to me, and I really liked that, so that gave me the confidence that she's going to pull it off.
Was the post-production period long, because once again back to the tone, this could go wrong so many ways with the mix of satire and realism?
That's true. Well, the edit was a fairly extensive process, once I saw the first cut. After that, I got involved with Anusha and the editor, in reaching the final-cut stage, and we also tested the film extensively in that period, before we locked the cut, so we tested it on a lot of people, a lot of audiences, Indians, and, in fact, people from outside of India.
We got hold of people from consulates, the French consulate, the German, the American, the British consulate people, invited them to see the film, and they gave us their responses, so we tested the film extensively before we locked the cut, and it was really encouraging to see how well the film was actually playing with audiences.
Do you test screen much? Is that something that you traditionally do, like the studios do here, or not?
Uh, well, in India test screening is unheard of. But I'm one person who's been doing it from my first film actually.
I believe here you have agencies who do that, and they have forms that they fill in and stuff like that. But I like to do it myself, you know, the creative team, the director and me and another few people watch the film with the audience and then spend a couple of hours talking to them about it, and kind of, you know, feeling our way around them. Because I think when an audience speaks to you, they're communicating with you not only with their words, but you get a lot of signals along the way, as you watch the film with them, and you can read between the lines of what they're saying as well.
So, I find that process really useful and really helpful.
Did you do any Frank Capra watching in preparation? Meet John Doe maybe?
No, we didn't, but I'm a huge fan of Capra. I've read his autobiography as well, and I think he's someone quite amazing. In fact, at Sundance we got a response from-- because of being with an American audience, and someone in the audience mentioned a film by Billy Wilder called Ace in the Hole.
The film hits on almost every level of society in its satire, and nobody is really spared. Was that one of the goals? To just make sure everybody got hit?
(laughs) Well, yeah, I think Anusha was, I mean, it is a satire in its true sense, so it is in fact not leaving out anyone, including children, who, you know, the son asks his dad when he will die.
Right, right.
So yeah, it takes in everyone, actually. And that's the quality of the satire. Also, what a satire does is it looks at things from one point of view. And so this is not how all the media is, or all the politicians are, or all administration is not like this. But a lot of them are. And everything shown in the film is actually very, very accurate and true, and this is how things do happen back home in India, so in a sense this is a great film. I mean, it's a film which is a great window into how things are in rural India today. And I'm hoping that, you know, it sensitizes a lot of people. For people outside of India, it gives them a window into India, and for people in India, it sensitizes them about life in rural India.
The film has not been released back home in India yet, or has it already?
No, it's releasing on the thirteenth of August in the U.S., in India, in Australia, in South Africa and the Middle East. And in the U.K. it's releasing in September. And that's Germany as well. It's Germany and Poland and U.K. in September.
It's interesting that the film is being released simultaneously in the U.S. There is often a several month lag, before the top foreign films get here.
Well, you know, traditionally Indian films release simultaneously all over the world because of, we have a huge issue with piracy, and, but of course most of the films don't reach out to a non-traditional audience, so you have Indians and Pakistanis living in the U.S. who watch, so for the first time we're actually wanting to reach out to a larger audience, to an audience that has perhaps never seen an Indian film before, with the hope that it is something that they will find exciting and engaging.
Just a couple of questions about what you're up to next, Aamir. I know you get the question a lot about whether you'd like to star in an American film. Have decent American roles been offered to you? And what would be necessary for you to take one of those roles?
Well, over the last ten years since Lagaan, in fact, there have been a number of offers which have come my way, but nothing that excites me. Nothing that excites me yet, and I think for me to do a film, whether it's Indian or American or from anywhere else in the world, I guess it has to be a script that excites me, and a director who I trust. If that comes up, I'd be happy to.
And upcoming you have a couple of films - Delhi Belly is one -
Yeah, that's correct. So the roll-out on Peepli Live on thirteenth of August, and then the next one is Dhobi Ghat, which has been written and directed by my wife, Kiran Rao. That's actually premiering in Toronto, in, I think in the Special Presentation category. So that's premiering in Toronto in September. And then we, we haven't fixed a release date for the film yet, but it would be sometime January or thereabouts. And then there's Delhi Belly, which is the third in line, which is a comedy. And it's about these three kids living in Delhi in a rented apartment, and they get in trouble with the mafia and they don't know why.
Okay, one last question. What was your biggest surprise, or biggest surprises, when you took on directing for the first time?
Well, hmm, the fact is, when I took over as director on (Taare Zameen Par), it was, that was a surprise in itself, because I was not meant to direct that film originally. And, um, it was a bit of a crisis situation, and I kind of had to take over as director one week into the shoot of the film.
Trial by fire, it sounds like.
I was shooting from the hip.
Aamir, thank you again. Enjoy your stay here.
Thanks so much.
Peepli Live is released today, August 13th, in the United States and numerous other countries. Check out their website for more info at http://www.peeplilivethefilm.com/
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