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I know this may seem sad but ive scanned a couple of pages for you guys using OCR (So might have some spelling mistakes) But any of you guys who can be bother to read then have a go at this.. i think u`ll get the jist of the sort of Humour that is in the book.. its a bit Micheal Palin style!! Anyway the book is a massive surprise to me....... the book gives an excellent authors perspective of everything Bollywood related including "the squating toilets!!" very funny indeed!!
Chris Graham and the "Padded up" chapter about him preparing to go to Bollywood after being selected at his awful attempt at woo-ing Ashutosh Rana at the cricket match!!
"At this point, 1 should admit, 1 knew very little about Bollywood, about Aamir Khan, or about India altogether. I'd seen the occasional glimpse of Bollywood movies here and there. Occasionally Barry Norman would have mentioned or shown a clip from one, and 1 knew, from the thriving Indian video store at the end of the road, that there was a market in this country. Vast numbers of videos were on display in this little shop, the boxes of which all seemed to feature an impossibly beautiful and highly decorated girl and a slick looking individual with a floppy quiff.
1 quickly discovered that Mr Khan's fame had spread to these shores, though, and no mistake. Susan, my wife, told an Indian friend of hers at work that 1 was going to be in a Bollywood film.
'Oh really?' the friend replied, mildly interested. 'Who is the star?'
Susan shrugged, and said: 'He's called Aamir Khan, something like that . .
Whereupon her friend let out a scream as though she'd just seen a Bay City Roller. I'm talking twenty five years ago, obviously. Nowadays catching. sight of Les McKeown or Derek Longinuir provokes a quite different sort of scream.
An old school pal of mine is married to an Indian, and when 1 mentioned the film to him he started grumbling that Bollywood films were the bane of his life. His wife subscribes to the specialist Bollywood movie channel on satellite or cable B4U, 1 think it's called and whenever he wants to watch live football these days Steve finds himself banished to the small black and white portable in the spare room. 1 told him to bring up the name Aamir Khan in conversation, and if a signed photo would get him the fourth round of the Worthington CupIn colour in the comfort of his living room then I'd see what 1 could do.
1 thought I'd find out a little bit about Bollywood, forewarned being forearmed, so first of all 1 checked out the Aamir Khan fan websites. Among the things 1 found out about the star apart from what he looks like with his shirt on and with his shirt off was that he has a reputation as a serious craftsman, trying in his films to portray naturalistic characters, avoiding as far as possible the over the top hysterics of his rivals. The other thing that came up again and again in descriptions of the man was that he shunned publicity, having a particular disregard for award ceremonies, which he made a point of not attending. Good for him, 1 thought.
Next 1 nipped down the road to the Asian video shop. This stocks exclusively Bollywood films and Bollywood soundtrack albums, and it thrives, so there is certainly an audience for Bollywood output in my part of South London. 1 found myself wondering whether 1 would be stoppedin the street once Lagaan was released.
The video shop guy was a bit surprised to see a white bloke browsing in his store, and couldn't take his eyes off me. 1 was probably unshaven 1 usually seem to be and 1 dare say 1 looked as if 1 was preparing to rob the place. 1 strolled around looking at the film boxes, but 1 hadn't a clue what 1 was looking for particularly, which made me look even more suspicious.
1 decided to ask for his help and went over to the counter. His eyes flicked nervously from side to side, and he looked like he was sizing up his chances of making a break for the police station on the other side of the road. When 1 asked him if he had any Aamir Khan films he breathed a huge sigh of relief, and suddenly a little pile of tapes materialised on the counter in front of me. None of them had boxes, and I wondered for a moment whether he'd misunderstood me and thought 1 wanted porn, but I gathered as he described them that none of the films he was offering me had actually been released for video rental yet. Aha bootlegs!
,The huge global demand for Bollywood output is met, in part at least, by the Indian underworld. The traffic in bootleg films and soundtracks via Karachi and Dubai is reckoned to be worth as much as £6 billion a year. And the gangsters' interest in the movie business doesn't end there. Many Bollywood films have mob money behind them, and they often try to cast the big stars by sending them death threats.
'Which is the best one?' 1 asked.
'All very good,' he offered, helpfully. Oh well. 1 picked a couple more or less at random. Mann and Mela, they were called, and 1 hoped they would show me what Aamir Khan was all about. 1 bade the video shop man good day, and left him to recover his composure, poor chap.
Later that evening Susan and 1 stuck the tape in and gave Mela a go. 1 recognised Aamir from the soft focus publicity shots on his fan club's website. All 1 could say after watching a bit of Mela was that if he was the naturalistic one, then the rest of Bollywood must be populated with hams that would give Messrs Sinden and Callow a run for their money.
It's hard, at the best of times, to follow a film in a completely unfamiliar language, such as Hindi is to me. Usually, though, the language of film itself gives you a clue as to what is going on. We see a scene in a sort of faded blueish monochrome, for example, and we gather that it is a flashback. We see a small boy in the flashback, and something about the cut back to the present day tells you that the boy and the adult we are now looking at are one and the same.
It also helps that the predominant genre of movie in India is so all embracing. The 'masala' movie masala in India meaning mixture, whereas in our country it means a sort of bright orange creamy tomato sauce has a little bit of everything. A wild and exhilarating mix of romance, adventure, tragedy, knockabout comedy, pathos, emotion, musical numbers and dancing is the usual recipe, and the idea is to thrill you, move you and generally excite your envy on every front.
And if you are finding the main love story a little bit too syrupy for your taste, don't worry. There'll be some slapstick along in a moment, knockabout stuff of a calibre that would make even Norman Wisdom blench.
Within about fifteen minutes of Mela, however, 1 was utterly at sea. Aamir and his mate were involved in a fantastic fight scene, and then we cut away to a musical number. In a Hollywood musical the songs by and large seem to grow out of the story. Characters burst into song, which is not a particularly realistic thing to have happen, but the song takes place in the same location as the surrounding story, and pushes the plot along, or illuminates a character's emotional state in some way.
In this, though, we were wrenched from a countryside scene on to a huge theatrical stage, where the characters were suddenly all clad in black leather, and surrounded by neon lights and a bewildering number of dancers. It was as though the Young Generation, the Younger Generation, the Second Generation, the Nigel Lythgoe dancers, the Jeff Thacker dancers, Pan's People, Legs 'n' Co, Hot Gossip, the lads from Michael Jackson's Thriller video and the Kids from Fame had got together to form some kind of almighty synchronised pelvisthrusting supergroup. They did their funky thing, and then it was back to the plot, and a bit of comic relief."
Edited By faddy on 1042315012
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