Canadian Bazaar
TORONTO: Academy Award winning Slumdog Millionaire director Danny Boyle says if he were asked to make this film today, he will refuse it.
“I will encourage the making of the film but I want an Indian filmmaker to make it. Time has moved on, time has changed,” said the British filmmaker who is at the on-going Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) for the North American premiere of his tabloid drama Ink.
Boyle said nowhere are film stars more famous and popular than in India.
While referring to the popularity of Leonardo DiCaprio after the success of Titanic and Boyle’s own film The Beach, he said, “He (DiCaprio) was as famous – as John Lennon famously said about The Beatles – as Jesus at that time. Wherever you went with him, it was extraordinary. But nothing compares to how famous the actors – who are stars in Bollywood – are in India. I learnt that when I did Slumdog, living there for a year.”
The Oscar winning director also narrated deep lessons he learnt while shooting Slumdog in Mumbai.
“You have to like India, Mumbai. You have to go with it (the flow of life) there …it’s like a wave that’s withdrawn from you and you think: Oh God, you are not going to get anything shot here because it’s chaos…but the crew said trust it, trust it and it will come back to you. The generosity of the city is delivered to you when you least expect it. It was a huge thing for me,” Danny Boyle said.
Boyle’s highly entertaining tabloid drama Ink – about the rise of sensational journalism in Britain with the taking over of The Sun by Rupert Murdoch in the late 1960s – had its North American premiere at TIFF this week.
