35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

320
EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
megastars come and go all the time in Bollywood, some around for
what seems mere months, others with more staying power. ———
— was presented to me as a cut above your average next megastar, a
serious actor at heart, and using stardom as a way of doing what he
really wanted to do, regarding which he was, however, somewhat
vague – beyond invoking Brando, De Niro, Pacino, et cetera.
‘Really turn people’s heads around, you know?’ he further
explained. There was also a project that sounded rather like Raging
Bull, but set in fifteenth-century Delhi and about a professional
gladiator whose uncle is the Moghul emperor. There was a lot of
intrigue, and much fighting that would be filmed so realistically it
sounded as if people might have to sacrifice actual lambs in the
name of art. It ended in a Himalayan cave, with the gladiator now a
guru, using his early years in the arena as a metaphor.
‘Of what?’ I dutifully inquired.
‘The whole movie is really his philosophy,’ he explained, plainly
expecting me to howl with wonder.
I’d been told he despised the Bombay film world and was eager to
expose its squalid secrets: as long as he wouldn’t be exposed as the
one exposing them. All he seemed eager to expose, however, was a
vast ambition as formless as the universe itself, and equally in danger
of disappearing into itself for no apparent reason.
After an hour of recounting great American films he’d seen – but
seen in terms of how much greater they would have been with him
in front of the camera, and behind it – he finally started answering
the questions I’d been asking doggedly. After proving that his
interpretation of Tony Montana in the Scarface remake would have
humbled Al Pacino, with a Cuban accent somewhere between Wales
and Sweden, and how the film would have been greatly improved
by adding song and dance numbers, particularly during the final
bloodbath, he suddenly announced that film-making in Bombay
had become very sinister over the past few years.
‘Always now you are hearing stories of how some don’s goons are
paying visit to so-and-so after he is refusing movie role.’
‘Don’s?’
‘Big-shot gangster, like Brando as the Don Gollyonni,’ he
explained. ‘Part One Godfather.’