In Part 2 of this interview, Bailey discusses how to change the future of Hindi cinema, which up-and-coming Indian stars to look out for and why Indian women in film have it so tough. Look out for Shah Rukh Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Vidya Balan and Frida Pinto. If you missed Part 1, find it here.
You’ve been coming to India at least once a year — sometimes up to three times a year — for almost a decade now. Where are your favorite spots in Bombay?
Bombay’s a city that I know mostly from the hotel that I’m in, the places I go to see movies and the places that the people in the movie business take me. So that’s essentially how I get to know the place.
I like Bandra a lot. It feels like a very cosmopolitan part of the city and I know that so much of the movie world is there. I like that there can be major movie stars’ homes, like Shah Rukh Khan’s, that are just a part of the hubbub of the city — they’re not big, fenced off areas like in LA.
When I was first going, I would take the auto rickshaws and the train between Churchgate and up north and it was great! It was a fun way to discover the city. I don’t do that anymore but I’m glad that I started that way. I still like the life on the street in the city — street food on Marine Drive and all of those great things, it’s fun.
You’ve seen countless films from India — any favorites?
Lagaan is a film that I think is great and it’s epic and it’s very long but I was fully engaged the whole time. I remember it played at the festival in 2001 in the year of 9/11 so there was a very dramatic connection to that film.
I remember going out to a theatre in Scarborough to see Devdas when it came out. It was a big experience to see that with a south Asian audience in a suburban Toronto theatre.
Dhobi Ghat is a film that’s not exactly a Bollywood movie but a film that I feel a very strong personal connection to because I was lucky enough to see it fairly early on and be drawn into a conversation about the film with Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao and saw it before it was completed. I was able to present the world premiere here in Toronto [at TIFF 2010] and really felt connected to that film and to those filmmakers because I knew they were trying to do something different, really unique, that they hadn’t done before. They were really trying to make a film that meant a lot to them personally and reflected something of the city that they live in. I think they showed Bombay, in that season especially, so well, really beautifully – you almost got a palpable feel of what it’s like to live in that heat in monsoon season. I love that about the film.
READ THE FULL INTERVIEW ON THE HUFFINGTON POST.
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