Scene 18 Shot 1: CU Pappu as he wrestles
May 1, 2018:
Yesterday, we began the shoot for The Tenant in the traditional Indian way with a small puja (prayer ceremony) that was filmed on the movie camera. The producer smashed a coconut on the ground and broke it in two - she's a strong woman, Kanchan, and she did it one attempt. The offerings were then made to a picture of Lord Ganesha. And that act commenced the shoot officially. In India, God is involved in everything.
My guess is God (or whatever) was involved when 7 days before our scheduled start date, we lost our primary location. I got a call from my producer one night that we had lost the building (pictured in one of my blog posts) that was to be the housing society for the movie, where about 80% of the film was to be shot. Apparently, one of the men on the building committee decided that notwithstanding the fact that we had obtained signatures and approvals of all the members of the building society, we wouldn't be allowed to film there. This "uncle" was the only one opposed to us shooting there and he would not budge. I suspect his stance had something to do with the fact that my producer was a woman and this old school Indian man simply couldn't stand to be told anything by a woman. It was a devastating blow and with a week to go before the start of our shoot, we had to scramble to find a building in Mumbai - this city full of buildings - that would let us shoot and that would look right. The building would also have to provide us with two apartments where we could shoot the interiors. If we couldn't find the location in time, we would have to push our dates, lose our cinematographer, Pankaj, and potentially lose our lead actress, Shamita. It would be hard to come back from that.
So two days later I was in a car driving all over the city, stopping at buildings that were candidates and checking them out. We saw one in Mira Road, a godforsaken place that our character would never move in to, not for a day. Then we saw a few in Goregaon East that were nice enough but too recently built and lacking in character. Then we saw one in Mahim that was perfect for us but where the society was very savvy and asked us for a ridiculous sum of money. The best candidate was a society in Bandra, where the Chairman, a nice gentleman, showed us around. The grounds of the building were available, but the two flats we needed would be a problem. At the end of this long grueling day, I was more disheartened. I kept imagining scenarios in which I'd return to the States without any footage shot or in which I'd never start this shoot. The ensuing couple of nights were filled with dread.
In the meantime I had reached out to a friend who lived in the building in which I had spent my entire childhood. It turned out he was now on the managing committee of the housing society there. He said it was unlikely we would get to shoot there but since I grew up in that building, they would try. A few days later he called me and asked if I could come to the building right away and I did. I got there to find him (Lalit) and a couple of building uncles, one whose son I had grown up playing with. They asked me the details of what I wanted. I said we needed to shoot a feature film entirely in the building - 6 days of exteriors and 20 days in two different empty flats. After some discussion, mulling over, I saw their hesitation. I told them how every childhood memory of mine was right here and how I had written the script imagining this place and its geography. All of this was true. After a long silence, one of the uncles said to the others "How can we say no to one of our boys?" And my heart nearly burst. Not just from the relief of being able to shoot somewhere but the unbelievable poetry of being able to come back to the world of my own childhood to make this film that is so precious to me. We all hugged, we worked out the details, and saw some empty flats. I found one that was empty but for the second one, I had to approach the residents - a mother and son who remembered me and my family with great fondness - to give us their place to redesign, paint and shoot in. They agreed. And work began.
A week later we turned the camera on and shot our first shot, a close up of Pappu, Bharat's chubby cute friend, as he mock-wrestled with one of the other building kids. The day was very hot, we shot outside all day, and by the end I was drained but we had some lovely scenes with all the kids. Last night I slept better than I had in weeks. But now we have a month more to go and movie to make. And a thousand things to hold together in this fragile enterprise called filmmaking. So wish us luck.
