Bollywood or Busted

It's over. I'm home.

It's not really over at all for me - the filming of the movie may be over, but I still have 5 or 6 key interviews to do (including Charlie, for those Janine fans out there desperate for an update). I also need to shoot some of the editing. And of course I need to do some editing myself. 20+ hours of footage is awaiting my attention.

The morning after I wrote my last post, Mr Grover got slapped. It was the one and only moment of real tension caused by the cross-cultural crossing of lines. The very nice continuity person is a fourth generation anglo-indian, and culturally is much, much more anglo than indian. She's been staying in the crew hotel, and something caused Mr Grover to have a go at her in front of the whole crew about drinking in the bar, and some other, more personal insults. She gave him one warning, he didn't stop, and she slapped him. You go girlfriend etc etc. The Indian crew, however, had just seen a woman slap someone who, as well as being a man, was older than her and was more senior on the hierachy to her. This caused some discomfort, to put it mildly. As the First AD remarked to me "As far as the crew are concerned, it's nothing that couldn't be solved by throwing her on a pyre." She left the set that day, which was a real shame, but I did hear that she'd had a long chat with one of the producers about it, and had been really sorry that she'd slapped him, and had described him as being like a dad to her. Mr Grover is a very nice chap, but he went too far at that moment, and was never quite the same after being in receipt of a wallop.

The rest of the experience was a lot happier. There was a lot of talk at the end about how enjoyable an experience it had been for people - many cross cultural boundries were crossed in a good way too. On the last night shoot, when Kabir and Karen finished their last shots on a suburban cul de sac in radlett you could see how much they'd enjoyed it. And when, the day after, we finished getting the last shots of the project, the way the crew embraced Baz, the director, was a sight to behold. There was love in the room, man...

And then we went to the wrap party. Before I tell this story, I should point out that I am tee-total, have not taken drugs for several years and haven't been out all night at a party since the year 2000. So, how I came to be in Soho House at 3am with the last remnants of the cast and crew has a lot to do with the fact that I had a flat tire, couldn't find the number of my breakdown service, and am a bit of a big girl's blouse when it comes to things like that. Me and Dad had gone straight from the end of the shoot into town, and parked on Charlotte Street, which is where I discovered the flat. We got to the party and were the third group of people to arrive there. The first were an actress and a premiership footballer, and a screen legend called Saeed Jaffrey and his wife. I realised I was going to be in for an unusually starry evening. When Ori, one of the runners arrived, I mentioned the tire thing, he pointed out to me that all cars had a jack in the boot, and that he could change the tire for me with the greatest of ease. So I had to wait until the very end of the evening / beginning of the next day to get home. Which meant I went to the after-party-party at soho house, which is a media type club in the west end, where you can't take photos, and I ended up sitting next to June Sarpong for a bit...very odd, but all in all quite fun. I've written enough for now I think - more soon!

Update!

I've realised that the title of the post makes no sense, as I hadn't included a vital part of the story (I wrote the post over a couple of hours, whilst doing other things and forgot.) Have you heard the word "Busted" being used to describe something bad or something having gone wrong? As in "I saw Superman IV and it was busted." or "I liked the Phantom Menace, but Jar Jar was busted." Or "I've lost my keys - busted." ?
It has swept through the cast and crew (particularly the cast) like wildfire, thanks to Caroline Chikizie using it ALL THE LIVE LONG TIME. I've grown really fond of the expression, and want to see it catch on. So remember kids - when things go wrong...it's busted. And when they go right? Well, I'm angling for un-busted. But maybe that's a bit busted...