Bollywood Dreams

There I was, walking the streets as innocently as an infant fawn grazing in the meadows, when I was approached by a man yelling "Hey man! Hey!" Knowing this could hold little promise I duly ignored him. "Hey! You want to be in Bollywood?" I stopped in my tracks. "We're shooting for Bollywood tomorrow. I need some good-looking Western people as extras. I am missing one Western guy. Are you interested?" I was intrigued, but looked at him rather skeptically. "Here is my card. You may google me if you want" he said to allay my suspicions. "Also you can ask my Swedish girlfriend" he offered, referring me to that most trusted authority: random White people.

Before I tell you why I agreed, first you have to understand what I agreed to. Bollywood, as you probably know, is the massive Hindi-language film industry based in Mumbai that turns out about as many movies as the rest of the world put together. To many, Bollywood is synonymous with massive, elaborate dance scenes where the performers bounce around and lip-sync in Hindi amongst a vivacious cohort of apparently anonymous sycophants whose purpose in life is spontaneous, synchronized dance. Not so. A proper Bollywood movie is this and much more, usually stretching to unbelievable durations (especially if billed as "epic") so as to properly accommodate all the ingredients a Bollywood hit requires. These are, in no particular order:

A sickeningly sweet romance in which true love prevails but nobody ever makes out.

Slapstick comedy.

Celebrity cameos.

Action sequences from the "jumping in slow motion over a low, flaming obstacle" school of stunts.

An elaborate dance sequence in which the protagonists' camps encourage the leads to continue in their transparent games of "hard-to-get", frequently involving scarf-whipping, booty-shaking, and most of all wrist-twitching.

Labyrinthine plots with tangents that lead nowhere.

Ear-bleedingly heartfelt duets.

And, of course some occasion on which 75 cocktail waiters are so overcome by unexpected joy that they burst into turban-tossing, hip-swinging choreography at the chaste display of affection by complete strangers

I saw this offer as an offer I couldn't refuse, an opportunity to expose Bollywood as the fraud it really is. Bollywood conceals a vast national secret that I am sworn to bring to light, even if I must take the ultimate risk. The well-ordered phalanxes of unidentified people bobbing about in their robes and saris high in the tea fields where our couples romance are in fact the agents of a nefarious conspiracy to conceal the truth: Indian men can't dance for shit. If you were to catch a glance of Indian men dancing (and you would be hard-pressed not to), you would find that not only is it highly uncoordinated, but rather stupid-looking and generally just bad. Even in the throes of unexplained mirth on the streets, close examination reveals that the dancing, which is almost always an all-male afair, closely resembles that listless shuffling of the feet and rotation of the shoulders and torsos characteristic of European bars. The only difference is that while many Europeans (and hapless Americans) maintain at least some kind of dignity in this lackluster performance, the Indian man feels the need to demonstrate to the world that despite all appearances, he is actually dancing. For this he rather overcompensates by raising his arms high into the air as if he were hanging from a railing, waving them around a bit, and pointing his fingers slightly downwards and wiggling them so that it looks like he is trying to tickle a mountain goat's feet. The truth is out there. Do you want to believe?

I should also admit that I have ulterior motives for being interested in Bollywood. My future wife Aishwarya Rai is a Bollywood superstar...nay, a Bollywood angel, and doing a little work in Bollywood can only help us to tighten our bonds of love. Yes, I know she somehow got mistakenly married to that Bollywood star Abishek Bachchan asshole, but he can be...taken care of.

So, it was with these things in mind that I agreed to be a Bollywood extra. The guy took down my name and told me to be ready and waiting in Colaba at 7am. He repeatedly asked for my assurance I wouldn't flake out on him and then spoke in the most flawless, current English speech I have heard in months. "If you bail on me I'm fucked, man. There aren't any Whiteys walking up and down here at 7 A.M.!"

I made it quite clear that I had every intention of attending.
He asked "Do you know McDonald's?"
I paused for a moment as if to mull it over "...I believe I've heard the name."
"Meet there."

When I appeared at McDonald's early in the morning I found a small, bleary-eyed troupe of Westerners waiting with me. There were six of us in total, an unusually balanced gender ratio of three and three. I had half-expected my presence to be necessary merely to justify the presence of Bollywood's improbably ubiquitous white girls, who have a tendency to be prominent extras in just about everything, as if the entire female population of Pasadena had packed up and moved to India with the dream of dancing in the first row of extras in a Hindi music video or toothpaste commercial. A rather self-important looking scamp pulled up with a taxi and a motorbike and had us pile in. We didn't quite fit, so I was treated to a 18-kilometer ride through Mumbai work-morning traffic on the back of a motorcycle which was being driven about as carefully as a stolen crotch-rocket in Grand Theft Auto IV. We were finally deposited outside, of all things, an IMAX cinema next to an industrial park. We had gotten there fairly early, and were thus treated to the luxuries of waiting around the loading dock as a crew of carpenters assembled a handful of props and a large wooden frame which I soon realized was going to become a green-screen. Oh hell yes.

Besides myself, the other extras were a pair of Brits, a pair of Germans, and a Swedish girl. We soon learned that we were to be acting in a commercial, though nobody told us for what. They also told us, to our unanimous relief, that we would not be expected to dance, but presumably do other "extra" things like sit around, walk casually across the background, and pretend to drink coffee. The morning thus became a business of sitting around and doing nothing as we waited for our time to sit around and do nothing. After some time we were ushered into the IMAX. It was a large, ultra-modern multiplex with a cavernous multi-story lobby. Being almost alone in an empty, unlit movie complex gave us all rather eery feelings, and most of the extras retreated to a partly lit corner of the coffee bar, while I wobbled over to a padded bench in the Oriental restaurant and took a nap.

As I drifted in and out of sleep I heard a faint rumbling sound, and saw members of the crew pushing little airport-style carts with luggage on them. Then two guys walked past carrying a large and convincing imitation of one of those big blue airport signs that tells you which way to go for baggage claim and such. They started setting up on the side of the lobby nearest the cafes and shops, and indeed from the narrow viewpoint of the camera and the aid of strategic obscuring props the shining columns and shops of the theater lobby made a very convincing slice of an airport terminal. Then for some hours the crew labored with the incredibly complicated process of setting up the proper lighting with enormous screens, filters, and blinds being used to both illuminate the space brightly while also maintaining the illusion of mixed and realistic light sources. Finally a team of men struggled in carrying what was definitely now a taughtly-stretched standing green-screen. I knew where I wanted to be.

While all this was going on, a trio of very stylish Indian girls were escorted past us. They were undoubtedly Rich Chicks and had quite an air of self-importance and expensive tastes that would have suggested they were fashion models if they were taller. Almost as soon as they had arrived, their heels clicked off around the corner and they vanished. The Indian extras had also started to trickle in while we were waiting. It was clear that many of them did this all the time, and took themselves very seriously. One circle of plump, fashionably-attired women extras spent the entire duration of set-building applying their makeup, while on the other hand the Western extras looked like we had just rolled out of bed and did nothing to amend this but roll ourselves back into naptime.

The size of the crew had reached critical mass. There were at least 50 technicians, laborers, and other crewmembers buzzing around the set. Most of my dealings were with the assistant director, the extras-herding dude, and occasionally the director himself. When the set was almost complete the extras were summoned. I was paired off with the Swedish woman and entrusted with a cart of luggage and a handful of used airline tickets. My partner was forced to spend the rest of the day lugging a heavy backpack on her, while I merely had to handle two strips of paper and a stack of empty luggage on wheels. It was delightful. The extras-handlers then starting assigning us positions and routes. Come on green-screen, come on green-screen. The assistant director took me and led me all the way to the foreground, immediately in front of the camera and told me that I was to act against the green-screen. YES.

So, for the longest sequence in the commercial I was placed in the very front, and was told to push my luggage cart (with Swedish woman alongside)directly across the field of view of the camera towards the green screen with very precise timing so that the lead actor could slip directly behind me. I was then to consult my tickets (which informed me I was in Singapore flying to Mumbai), feign conversation with my partner, and gesticulate towards the green-screen as if searching for my flight on a ten-foot digital announcement board. It couldn't have been better. With the utmost grace I pushed my cart, made faces of concern, and made large, sweeping gestures towards the board. Meanwhile the lead actor casually weaved behind me as the other pairs of Westerners and a few young Indians pushed carts on their routes, and a large majority of the nonplussed Indian extras who had spent so much time on their makeup were relegated to go to the distant background and just stand there as humaniform objects, because apparently it takes a large number of extras to make somewhere look busy on screen.

In the course of my Bollywood debut I got only one directorial note, which was "More pointing at the screen, please, yes, very good, a little more pointing." In comparison, the lead, whose task it was in this scene to casually cut a path through the airport while looking oblivious and munching on some kind of snack that looked like a long Rice Krispie Treat, got such notes as "again, but with more spring in your step. More spring."

By the way, tall-heeled wingtip shoes are in, for both sexes.

The scene was over, and so was the height of my Bollwood glory. We sat around again while the crew rapidly converted the escalators into another set. It truly is remarkable how little of a building one needs to alter to make it a set, because if you're only using one camera angle you don't need more than one visual cone that doesn't look completely obviously like an IMAX theater lobby. As soon as they were permitted to do so, the male extras all put on their designer sunglasses and started taking extremely serious photographs of each other. Then, to my rather pleasant surprise, the cutest of the white girls (the British one) appeared in a short, body-hugging, bright-red uniform dress and a sexy hairstyle, clearly co-opted on the spot to add a dash of coveted paleness to the critical role of Hot Flight Attendant. She was soon followed by the three mysteriously disappeared Indian girls, who were also in matching uniform and had definitely been recruited as "special extras", designated hotties. I was fairly certain I knew the general plot of the commercial now. Behind them came out a fourth Indian girl who was sulking because she had lost her spot at the last second to an unexpected English girl. Bollywood is a cruel mistress.

The second scene was a homage, if you will, to a classic trope: the oblivious snack muncher rides up an escalator while a quartet of sexy flight attendants lean sensually against the banisters while they ride up behind him. As nobody else was to clutter the escalator, me and Swedish girl were forced to accept our position among the crowd in the background, but at least I got to push my cart across the entire scene.

There was a third, incredibly tedious scene in which we were essentially made to stand in line to be composited against a green-screen shot of hanging nutribars, and then it was over. We were never given the free lunch we were promised, but I was given a crisp new 500-rupee note for my troubles, while the dozens of Indian extras were given nothing but the illusion of brushing with glory. And they had come so close.

Some of them had come within feet of Ghostface Buddha.

For those interested, the advertisement should be airing around the 20th of February, but possibly later. If you don't have the ability to spend all day watching Indian television, various members of the crew suggested they would be posting the work on YouTube. The product is "Horlick's Nutribar", or some other spelling thereof. If I find it anywhere, needless to say it will be posted, along with a sensible and modest commentary by its star (Ghostface Buddha)