Real Indian Food

People always seem surprised about how much of the local cuisine I am willing to sample. Actually I like Indian food quite a lot. Some friends of mine are especially fond of extremely  spicy Indian food. (You know who you are you crazy pepper snorting fools!) Anyway, I was told that if I like that kind of spice then Hyderabad is the place to get it. Food is a big attraction here in Andra Pradesh. I've always liked biryani and here it is a speciality. The spices here are indeed more liberally applied than in Mumbai and they have truly found the right mix as far as I'm concerned: Just spicy enough to call it spicy without burning your mouth off to prove you can eat anything. I have grown fond of the masala omelettes which are a staple for breakfast. There's also a dish called egg burrhi which is a kind of scramble with peppers and spices and… well… I'm not sure what else, but it's good! There's a dairy just outside the walls of the studio that provides the caterers with fresh yogurt every day. That's also a treat.

Roti ready for the oven

Another delight of Indian cuisine is the bread called roti. There's a couple of types but the one  people love here is tandoor roti. The trick with roti is that it must be freshly baked and I mean freshly baked. Hot from the oven fresh. Most Indians won't eat roti that is cold. As such even on the set the roti must be baked on site. The caterers always include two bakers. Here in Hyderabad this is two guys with a 55 gallon drum rebuilt into a roti bakery. They fire it up with charcoal until the steel walls are ready to bake bread. 

The favorites! The roti bakers!

The oven has an overhanging curve of metal at the top which is heated from behind. The bakers form the dough into balls then the roti master flattens them in his hands, forms them onto a rounded mold which he uses to stick the dough to the underside of the heated metal overhang. When the roti is baked the second baker fishes it out with special hooks, then brushes butter all over it and ferries it to the food line. He rarely makes it that far though as calls of "roti!!" from the tables usually empty his basket long before he gets there. 

So here's a hint: when in India, sit near the bakers oven!

Ramoji Film City

One of the bigger fountains at Ramoji Film City

This place is incredible. I'm not sure how big it is, but thousands of acres I think. It was built by a very rich Indian fellow by the name of Ramoji, who lives on the property in a mansion. He built it as a series of generic locations for Indian filmmakers. It has everything. It really is a backlot in the tradition of Old Hollywood. There are several enormous stages, but that's a tiny part of the complex. The whole of the property is crisscrossed with paths and roads. Everywhere there are gardens and buildings, most of which are shells, statues, fountains and covered walkways, most of which are plastic. The spaces are huge. There's a massive double mural behind wrought steel gates that form the entrance to Ramoji Film City. There a fountains spanning hundreds of meters, tanks and pools with sculpted gators and waterfalls tumbling down between plastic rocks under bright neon lights after dark. There are Chinese and Japanese gardens, palaces, an airport terminal, a lake and rocky cliffs. 

A crazy lightshow waterfall by night

I'm told that so far I have seen only 30% of the place! 

A beautiful garden by day

The other amazing and fascinating thing about Ramoji Film City is that is it kept immaculately clean, like Disneyland clean, by constant human attention. There are no street sweepers or leaf blowers. It's all done by people with stick brooms. The whole place, even the sets and the stages are kept clean of litter and debris all the time everywhere. This is so completely opposite of my experience in Mumbai that it is surreal. Disneyland being cleaner than Anaheim is one thing. RFC being cleaner than Mumbai is a different range altogether. 

As I said in a previous post, It reminds me a lot of Sans Souci actually, which is a series of palaces and gardens that Frederick the Great built in Postdam outside Berlin in Germany. The eclecticism of Sans Souci  was born of a desire to be inclusive of a wide range of culture. Here it's designed to give international feel to Bollywood movies. It also provides lots of easy-to-use and therefore inexpensive set pieces for films from all over India where budgets are even more spare than Bollywood. The trick, I am told is to avoid overusing locations and giving away that you shot at RFC rather than a "real" location. 

Just a note on the word "Bollywood": this is Hindi cinema, traditionally made in Mumbai and including the music and dance numbers that have made Bollywood famous. This is only a part of Indian cinema. India is host to dozens of languages and all have their own cinema. Many of these regional films are shot at RFC as well.

OK, the HOLLYWOOD sign is too small…

Ramoji Film City also has a full amusement park, regular bus tours and is a destination for a lot of Indian tourists who ride the busses and walk the grounds looking for favorite locations from their favorite films. Sometimes they also get to see film crews in action, which is of course a big draw, but nothing compared to the chances of seeing a star or a famous director. That happens, too. Sometimes they even ask for autographs or pictures with guys who's skin is so light they must be from Hollywood. :-)

RFC is also a prime location for Indian weddings, which are massive, often last several days and include dinners for hundreds of guests, all-night dance parties, fireworks, light shows, concerts and lots of drinking and dancing. Overall RFC is way quieter than Mumbai, but not when there's a wedding going on!

So, it's nice here. I was told it would be boring but we're too busy for that and it's nice to be in a place that is clean and (mostly) quiet, well-appointed and comfortable. I think I will miss it when we hit the stages in Mumbai again in mid-March.

Welcome to Hyderabad

The Highway around Hyderabad! Where are the cars?

My second sojourn from Mumbai has taken to me to Hyderabad. My first flight on the dreaded Air India was fine. It wasn't the best airline I've ever flown but we got there with no drama and all our luggage came through so that's all that counts in the end. On arrival in Hyderabad we were greeted with the cleanest place I have yet seen in India. The airport is new and has all the trappings of a modern new airport: clean lines, beautiful landscaping stretching for miles in all directions, big wide roadways… wait a minute… are we still in India? Apparently this is all very new, but it covers a large area. We came out of the airport complex on to empty freeways, smooth as glass and stretching as far as the eye can see. Yes that's right, I said "empty." This is nothing like Mumbai where the freeways are a chaotic jumble of two-wheelers, trucks and cabs jostling for position regardless of lanes and zipping between gaps even Los Angelinos would shy from. It was so unexpected that I took pictures like it was a rare species of bird or something. The driver said it is all brand new and is a beltway circling the city at some distance.

Part of the Mural at the Entrance to Ramoji Film City

I didn't see the transition from this alien landscape to Hyderabad proper as we were headed for a property a ways outside the city called Ramoji Film City. RFC as it is called is a massive preserve built by Mr. Ramoji as a giant backlot, film studio and resort. Imagine an Indian Universal City with a backlot the size of MGM circa 1940 when almost all of Culver City was the MGM lot. It's huge and has every imaginable location somewhere on the property. It hosts tons of weddings, parties and other events and includes a theme park complete with a HOLLYWOOD sign. More on that as I explore.

The Sitara

I am staying in the nicest hotel on the grounds, the Sitara. It is quite nice with a beautiful pool, decent food and rooms that are very comfortable. The constant weddings with their lights, screamingly loud Indian music and rowdy drunken guests are a downside, but you can't have everything. The view is nice!

The view of the pool from my room

Sunset over the Ramoji Film City Theme Park

It's quite hot generally. The Mumbaikers complain about it but luckily for me I'm pretty good in the heat. Morocco has trained me to deal with it and oHIo will always be responsible for me appreciating that at least it's not cold. I still have my Dorks of the Desert™ hat to protect me. 

This place, sheltered as it is within the Bubble of Bollywood is a lot more comfortable to me than the streets of Mumbai. I'll be back there soon enough so I am enjoying this little working vacation.

India Part Two

The view from my new room at the Sun and Sand

Well here I am back in India. There seem to always be days when the whole thing is about to fall apart but eventually that has all been worked out to everyone's satisfaction and I am back in Mumbai. Christmas at home was brilliant apart from the uncertainties of doing business in India. The weather was great and we treasured every moment together. Now I am back for another stint, which will mostly involve shooting on stages and locations in Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Ho! Ho! Ho?

The people on the floor at Pixion were really great in greeting me back. It's nice to know that I have made a positive impression with the artists in my time here. They even left up all the Christmas decorations to make sure that I got to see them! That was sweet. 

I'm in a different hotel, right next to the Novotel where I was, called the Sun and Sand. It's quite a famous hotel, hosting film festivals and Bollywood meetings, but not as big or modern as the Marriott or even the Novotel. Ironically, I can look out my window now and look right into the room I had at the Novotel, about 150m away across two swimming pools.  Still right on the beach with a view of the ocean. The restaurants are not as big but just as good and the service is really good, too. It's more of an Indian feel as opposed to the more international feel (isn't that a song?) of the Novotel. It's a favorite of the film's director and many Americans have lived here when they were doing work for Bollywood. So that's been fine.

The weather here has also been good. Still mostly the 85º F and sunny which is the mainstay of Mumbai weather, but a few days in the 70s have made everyone happy. There's even been a few really clear days where the ocean wind blew away all the dust and pollution. That has soon returned but it was nice to see to the horizon for a change!

I got to attend a Bollywood party last week as well. The daughter of the director celebrated her birthday and so we had drinking and dancing long into the night. There was a stand-up comic who (typically) based his material around insulting people from other parts of India. I guess that's OK here… or not, but apparently funny to those who understood all the references. I learned how to do "traditional Indian dancing" which was fun, although the music was all non-traditional to say the least. Mostly technobeat remixes of Bollywood hits, including ones from past films by our star who was in attendance and the new tracks for our movie which we will be shooting in the upcoming weeks. All night we were chased around the place by two guys with devices filled with alcohol of unknown origin, which they funneled into people mouths with hoses, sometimes through ice, fruit or melon husks. I tried not to get caught too many times and as such was still walking when I left the party. I was one of the first to leave: at 2am. One of the highlights was the director expertly dancing with a glass of water balanced on his head. Keeping those theatrical skills alive! He is a famous Bollywood actor himself in addition to his fame as a director.

Saturday I head for Hyderabad which will be a whole new experience. We'll be at Ramoji Film City on the outskirts of Hyderabad. It's supposed to be isolated, hot and complicated. OK. Sounds like we'll be focused on the work and trying to keep in touch with what's happening back in Mumbai, where the visual effects work on the movie is commencing. We'll be testing the Indian internet with all the things we need to do to stay involved with shots in progress.

India Republic Day Parade from Delhi

Today is India Republic Day. The anniversary of the adoption of the Indian Constitution. There were big military parades on TV all day. The hotel staff assembled for the raising of the Indian flag outside the hotel at 10am. Not nearly the action in the streets that I have seen for the Hindi religious festivals. The fireworks for those holidays went of for days. There's been nothing for this. Maybe tonight there will be some sponsored by the government. Like many things the government does here, it may be largely ignored by the majority, or like the parade in Delhi, it's a ticketed event that takes place under the highest security.

So it's another new adventure coming up this weekend in a new city with a different community around me. As always, every day is a learning experience. More from Hyderabad!

December was a blur!

Well, December was packed. My last post was just after Thanksgiving and then we went "onto the floors" as they say here. That means "into the studio" in American parlance. After that everything is kind of a blur. We shot 12-14 hour days every day for twenty straight days between 1 December and 20 December. I barely had time to sleep never mind blog. Overall things went very well. The sets were under constant construction as we shot the film, but they look great on film. We had all the major stars of our film at one time or another in attendance and usually shooting scenes. The Director is very good and his work is focused. He's editing the film together as we shoot it. It is really great to see it all come together so quickly.

One of the great stories of the month was the first few days where the son of the Director, who is also the star of the film showed up, not as the star, but as an Assistant Director. He worked like crazy making everything right which was really a testament to his dedication. The other thing about his work on those days was that it was clear he was doing it because he loved it and also because it was the first days of his Dad's new film and he was there for him and to make it right. How cool is that? You have to realize also how a big a star this guy is. Imagine Tom Cruise coming onto a set on a day that he didn't need to be there and working with the extras and secondary players to get them in the right places and dumping his hands into a bucket of green slime to make sure it is applied to the actors just right for the shot because it's his Dad's movie and he has been doing it since he was ten years old. Great stuff.

It's the latest rage!

So there wasn't a lot of "seeing India" during December. We did eat a lot of good Indian food every day and I got a chance to see how the Indian labor market works. In short, where we would rent a forklift and an operator if we needed to move a big stack of plywood from one end of the set to the other, here they just hire 50 people and they carry it. So there's a lot of "day players" as we call them. That creates some security problems and I lost a camera because of it. I get called all over at a moments notice and I have to carry everything with me or risk losing it. In the shuffle late in the shoot I somewhere set down my video camera and bang it was gone. This was after the ADs had already embarrassed me at least once by walking up and handing me my phone after I dropped it somewhere. Yikes. Sometimes it's hard to keep a grip. I'm pretty bummed about losing the camera, but it's not like I wasn't warned.

Near the end of the shoot I was gifted a terrific turban from the AD's. I had jokingly pretended to adore a specific billboard with this salesman (entertainer?) wearing this huge orange fan-adorned turban with a big tail on it, saying, "I love that hat!" So they got me one! It was so popular that all the Chinese stunt guys wanted turbans, too. Group photo!

I had time for one banzai run at the shops before heading home on the 22nd. Raksha, the 1st AD again was amazing, taking me to places I would never have managed without her, searching for Ganpati and uniquely Indian shirts and gifts. 

Cathay Pacific Comfort

I got on the plane late night at Mumbai and was on my way back to the USA for another dose of reverse culture shock. I again went through Hong Kong on Cathay Pacific. That was a sweet ride actually. I quite like that airline. All the business class seats are set in single rows like diagonal parking, so you have some privacy and it's easy to sleep. I saw some good movies, too, most notably Senna the documentary about the famous Brazilian F1 driver. That was very moving for me as I was always a big fan of Senna and seeing his career and death chronicled so well was quite affecting.

So Christmas was at home. I won't recount that here (coz it's not India!) but there will be pics on the bertonspero.com page soon.

The End of November

Sunset from the deck of the Gadda da Vida

It's the end of my third month in India. Since the monsoon ended the weather has been steady every day. 85-95º F all the time day and night. Most sunsets are nice, at least when I've had the chance to see them which is mostly on Sunday afternoons. The best beer in the place is locally brewed Heineken, in my humble opinion, served with peanuts and other little crunchy snacks, both covered with a pepper curry seasoning. I did manage to mistake a chili pepper for a green bean once. A fair amount of beer was required to counteract that. I was also offered sugar cane juice as an antidote which I guess worked as well as the beer. The bar at the Novatel, called Gadda da Vida (Hello, Iron Butterfly fans everywhere!) is all outdoors now, as seen above in the sunset photo.

Post Monsoon

Monsoon

When the monsoon ended, they took down all the covers over the outdoor areas. I had thought this was construction, but now I see that lots of places are simply covered against the rains and the covers come off when the rain stops. This is true all over town. It has been interesting to watch all these places open up on rooftops all over town and along the sea. I guess it won't rain again until next July.


The more I look at India the more I see it as a crazy mash-up rather than just a place that is disorganized. People don't care about continuity or "how it looks" like we do. They just do what is required to get along and if that means old guys with beards ride scooters with plastic Harley helmets perched on their heads, well that was the way for this fellow to get across town and off he went, dodging the auto-ricks, cars, busses, and yes, elephants with precision that only motorcycle racers have in the USA.



The day after Diwali ended there was a big gathering outside my hotel to celebrate yet another holiday, one primarily celebrated by people from the state of Bihar who have moved to Mumbai. It has become politicized because the government won't recognize it in the state of Maharashtra, so the celebrants gather in huge groups to oppose the policy and have music and religious rituals and speeches both spritual and political. Some celebrities appear. Anyway, they set up this huge lighted runway down the lane next to the hotel and then this massive stage bang up against the hotel retaining wall and just here there were what looked to me like 50,000 people on the beach. They stayed all night as part of the ritual is to go into the sea and stay there until dawn. It was full on. All cleared away the next day.

Here's this week's billboard, featuring the star of the film I'm working on in a double role, which is a bit of a speciality for him. This is a portable sign rolled into one of the big intersections on my way to work. The product is a kind of biscuit (cookie) I think. I'm not sure what the subtext is here…


So, on to December and the first weeks of actually shooting the film!

The Grand Prix of India - Race Day!

Yeah, baby! I made it to the First Grand Prix of India

Again my driver was right on time. I am digging that. I was worried that on Race Day things would be more crowded and they were but because I left early without fail I didn't really have any problems on the way in. I was there long before most people. I had time to wander a bit more and do some last minute shopping. (You can never have too many Ferrari hats apparently.) I didn't realize that The Morning Warmup was no longer a part of F1, so there wasn't a lot to do in the morning. The support races were not really high calibre, mostly tools to show off Indian talent which was not in too much abundance. One thing I did see was that in both of the races while P2 and P3 were battling through the esses leading into the final corner, P4 got a good run and blasted past both of them in Turn 16 to take 2nd! I was wondering if the F1 guys were watching that. (In retrospect, I guess not.)

The weather all three days was pretty steady. Dry and pretty hot. It wasn't really humid like it can be in Mumbai but it was in the 90s most of the time. I was not at all uncomfortable. I'm not sure if the dust in the air filtered the sun, but I was also sunblocked and insect repelled pretty thoroughly all three days and I had no problem with burning or bites. I didn't eat any of the track food as I just didn't want to spoil my weekend by eating the wrong thing. I had breakfast and dinner at the hotel and lunch was Clif Bars™ and protein bars I brought from the US. I made sure I had plenty of water. They wouldn't let me bring fluids into the track so I bought water inside the fences, which was cheap anyway, Rs15/liter, which is US30¢. This is Aquafina so next time you pay US$2.25 for that think about what Evian spells backwards. Anyway that kept me in fine shape in terms of hydration.

The Crowd Favorite: Force India

Michael Schumacher

The race was all that you expect from F1. Amazing speed, colossal sound, lots of excitement from the crowd. There were lots of empty seats around me which had to be no-shows. The seating was about 85% full, I'd say, but the crowd was great! They really came alive for their favorites and showed themselves to have more history with the sport that was immediately apparent. As the US fans surprised F1 by being red-blooded Ferrari fans to rival the original Tifosi, so Indian fans cheered not only Force India, but also Lewis Hamilton who spent some time promoting McLaren in India and especially Michael Schumacher, who is the Man Who Was King when India began paying attention to F1 some years back. Really, Schummi got the biggest cheers of anyone short of Force India and Karthikeyan and Michael's cheers were for his driving not his nationality.  I really got a thrill from that and it re-energized my own affection for Old Spoonface™.

The Lights Come On!

The race was Vettel's from start to finish, but there was some good stuff as Button did his level best to stay with the young German. If Seb had made any mistake, Jenson was right there. It was a really good weekend and a really good drive from Button. He just didn't have the oomph to stay with the Red Bull. There was a good battle between Alonso and Webber for a while. Some good looks and some tight driving and strategy for both. It was good to watch but the pressure of Alonso eventually wore Webber down. Again, Alonso showed something that others don't have, in my opinion.

The Prancing Horse of Scuderia Ferrari
Alonso at the wheel

The Hamilton/Massa contretemps were almost predictable. I was quite surprised to hear later that Massa was penalized for turning in on Hamilton as Lewis tried exactly the maneuver that I described earlier and couldn't make it stick. It's the responsibility of the following car to avoid a collision and I think Johnny Herbert saw a little too much Union Jack on Hamilton's car to make the right call. Hamilton was over optimistic of his chances at Turn 5 and Massa went ahead and took his line. Lewis needed to brake sooner but he wanted the position too badly. I'm sure it's true that Massa took his line too late and with the thought that if he was hit it was Lewis' fault, but it hardly matters who's fault it is when you're sailing through the gravel trap. So while I think Massa's penalty was unfair, I also think he should have been more aware of the situation and done more to avoid a collision. Having said that I will say that I would have done the same and then been mad that I had to make a choice between crashing and giving way to a bully. I don't like guys who force you into that choice. Hamilton should do better. He has the talent to drive better than that. We've seen it. 

Of course Massa then showed his versatility as a driver by knocking the left corner off his car on the same corner where he had knocked the right corner off on Saturday. Nice.

One of the joys of the weekend was watching Schumacher do well. While Webber made a hash of his tires and the strategies needed to overtake Alonso, The Master did it exactly right, forcing his teammate to pit first, blistering the time sheets on old tires while Rosberg was stopped and slow and then screaming out in front after his own stop. Just like old times. His run to a season-best 5th looked brilliant and the crowd really responded to it, myself included. OK, so Massa and Hamilton helped him up there but it was still great to see Michael working nearer the front.

The Chase

As for Vettel, I think we are still learning what this guy can do. He is a really good driver. We knew this when he debuted like Schumacher, impressing in a back marking car at a ridiculously young age, but a few guys have done that and not become dominant for one reason or another. I was thinking back to his win in Monza in the Toro Rosso and really, in the modern era, only Senna ever did anything like that when he almost won Monaco in a Toleman. In retrospect this is a very impressive feat indeed. Now, given the car of choice he is unbeatable, and that's not uncommon either, but he has come through some fire to do it. Running into Weber and suffering morale busting mechanical failures ultimately did not deter him. He won the 2010 Championship because he kept fighting and for most part fighting fair and he wore Weber out and he outdrove everyone else. What's clear to me is that he now knows how to drive like that even when he doesn't have to. That's why he is unbeatable. 

I have been watching him since he won The Championship in Japan and he is getting even stronger with the title in the bag. I think his own personal motivation is still so strong that no-one apart from Alonso can match him. He also has been able to take concepts like "First Grand Prix in India" and make that something he wants to be his and using that to keep his drive at 10/10ths. Whatever is motivating him it is not flagging because the championship is won. I can point to many many Champions of years past that cannot say the same. So I have to say I was impressed to see Vettel drive. I think the quartet of Vettel, Alonso, Hamilton and Button will one day be thought of as we now think of Stewart, Graham Hill, Clark and Brabham or Prost, Mansell, Senna and Piquet. It's great to have so much talent on the track at once.

And it was great to see it in person at The Buddh International Circuit. When it was all over everyone moved to the exits and it was just the same as the USA or Belgium, namely: The Biggest Traffic Jam Ever. In India this is a staggering idea. I sat crammed into a too small seat, stopped dead for 90 minutes before we all got untangled and headed in another more profitable direction. My favorite moment was when I was stuck in some place, hanging my head a bit out the window to get some air and found myself about four inches from someone else's head! He was in another bus completely! He looked at me and said, "What is going through your mind right now?" I said "Patience is a virtue, especially in India." I did find my driver after some tangled phone calls and walking a mile from where the busses all came to stop in a jam at the other end and then we tried to find a way back. I have no idea where we went on the way back. I'd never been to most of the places we travelled through. It took me four hours to return to the hotel. 

Even with that somewhat difficult finish, it was as always, a terrific experience to see F1 live. It is the World Championship. These are the greatest drivers and the greatest cars in the world and quite probably the best racing venues as well. As proud as Sebastian Vettel is to be the winner of the first ever Grand Prix of India, so I am proud to have been a spectator. The first of anything can never happen twice.