The Costumer Cometh

Posted on February 5, 2014 by admin

For over eight decades, Maganlal Dresswalla has created costumes for the best known Hindi, South Indian and even Hollywood movies. Akshay Manwani brings to you the story of a legend.

Maganlal Dresswalla is not difficult to find. In Mumbai’s posh suburb of Juhu, on the Vainkunthbhai Mehta Road that connects the city’s iconic Prithvi Theatre to the eminent Nanavati Hospital, it is situated in the middle of a bustling shopping complex. The number of vehicles the complex attracts has the effect of slowing down, dramatically, the pace of traffic on this thoroughfare.

And yet, the high profile of its neighbours, on either side, leads visitors to walk past Maganlal Dresswalla, without so much as casting a look in its direction. Situated right between Kala Niketan, a famous sari store, and two designer couture boutiques, Jesal Vora and Archana Kochhar, Maganlal Dresswalla does precious little to battle the ethnic charm of the former or the contemporary glamour of the latter. Where the bedecked mannequins within the glass facade of these three outlets entice many a passer-by into paying the shops a visit, the words ‘Maganlal Dresswalla’, inscribed on a solitary rusted metal hoarding that stands a few metres before the narrow entrance to its basement premises, appear more like a warning for construction being carried out at a site than the sign for an institution that has been an intrinsic part of the history of Indian show business.

But the moment you make your way down the flight of stairs, from this inconspicuous facade into the sprawling 3000 square feet plus premises of Maganlal Dresswalla, you are transported into another realm. The feeling is that of a Harry Potter-finds-himself-on-platform-nine-and-three-quarter experience, where visitors, much like JK Rowling’s protagonist, are left wide-eyed at what lies before them. A swan-shaped wedding palanquin greets you as you step off the staircase. Beyond it lies an unlikely landscape steeped in colour— a variety of costumes, turbans, masquerade masks. Piles of wooden and metallic bows, arrows, maces, spears, bayonet-laden-rifles are stacked up in one corner. The sound of tailors working away frenetically at their sewing machines can be heard from the other end. The space is brightly lit— a glow of yellow light accentuating the ornate interiors of the shop.

It is from here that Maganlal Dresswalla serves the requirements of Mumbai’s film and television industry. Its association with Hindi cinema dating way back to 1926. The family that has founded and runs this enterprise is not so much an overlooked chapter of the industry’s history, as a quintessential and ongoing participant in the evolution of cinema for so long that its presence has perhaps been taken for granted. From Indian films like India’s first talkie Alam-Ara (1931), to Mughal-e-Azam (1960), to Jewel Thief (1967) to the more recent Jodhaa Akbar (2008), Hollywood movies like Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Life of Pi, TV shows like Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj and B. R. Chopra’s Mahabharat to innumerable regional language movies, Maganlal Dresswalla has provided costumes to hundreds of characters, protagonists as well as extras, for close to 90 years, working closely with filmmakers such as K. Asif, Shyam Benegal and Ashutosh Gowarikar.

***

Suresh Dresswalla, 67, is the man at the helm of Maganlal Dresswalla today. Even on this lazy Sunday afternoon he is carefully dressed in a silk maroon full sleeved shirt with a mandarin collar and black pin stripes, dark brown trousers and a pair of formal black shoes— all seeming to reinforce his Dresswalla credentials. We are seated on either side of a wooden desk, with a reflective glass panel on top, in the section of the premises reserved exclusively for film costumes. Garments of various hues are stacked in metal racks along the walls behind him and to his right. To my right, a female mannequin, dressed in Kimi Katkar’s sultry red flamenco outfit from the widely popular Jumma Chumma number in Hum (1991), catches my attention, as Suresh bhai, as he is called, begins speaking.

“Kya hai ke, pehley jo hai na, before 1926, mere daddy aur unke bhaisaab, gaon mein pagdi baandhte thay— shaadi byaah ho ya koi function ho (Earlier, before 1926, my father and uncle would tie turbans at weddings and other functions at their village),” Suresh bhai tells me in a hoarse voice, laced with a distinct Gujarati accent. Hailing from Dhari village in the Saurashtra region of Gujarat, the two brothers worked their way into Mumbai’s film industry, making a name for themselves in the turban business. “Us zamaaney mein gents hi ladies ka role kartey thay, as a heroine (At that time, men played female characters in films). Maganlal Dresswalla is established since then.”

There are other tidbits that emerge— like how the firm got its name. “My father’s name was Harilal. Maganlalji was his elder brother. The business was in the company’s name, which my father was handling,” Suresh bhai tells me. The story of how Dresswalla was incorporated into the firm’s identity, which Suresh bhai tells me, with a hint of pride in his voice, involves his father going to meet a film producer at his office. The producer made Harilal wait. “Daddy ko achcha nahin laga. Appointment lekar aaye thay. Toh unhoney turant bola, ‘Mujhe bulaaya gaya hai isi liye aaya hoon. Unko time nahin hai toh main jaata hoon (Daddy did not appreciate being made to wait. He had an appointment. He said, ‘I have been called here and that is why I have come. If he does not have time, I will leave.).’” When the message was relayed to the producer, he said the ‘tailor’ should wait patiently for another 10-15 minutes. To this, an angry Harilal’s parting repartee to the producer, which went on to define his enterprise, was: “I am not a tailor. I am Dresswalla. Mere paas sau-sau tailor kaam kartey hain (Hundreds of tailors work for me).” It is this pride in their work that has kept Maganlal Dresswalla going in the entertainment business for over three generations. The commitment to their craft, their work is something shared by their employees as well. Their expertise in mythologicals and period films, built over the past several decades, doesn’t stem from their ingenuity alone, but from hard work, too. “We study literature, photos, books with designers,” Suresh bhai tells me, explaining his commitment to respond to any kind of costume requirement.

***

‘Tailor’ is used as a generic term by Suresh bhai. It describes the array of people—tailors, cobblers, metal and fibre craftsmen— Maganlal Dresswalla employs and works with to execute costume requirements in films. Eventually, the scope of Maganlal’s services was broadened to include the entire gamut of livery, headgear or weapons that formed a part of a character’s appearance in a film. Suresh bhai extracts, from his fading memory, a cursory list of names of the films Maganlal Dresswalla has been associated with over the last nine-odd decades.

“All the costumes in Mughal-e-Azam were ours. Kranti (1981) as well. Babubhai Mistry’s Sampoorna Ramayan (1961) and Mahabharat (1965) had a lot of our costumes,” he says, taking long pauses while recalling these films. Then, suddenly, he remembers, “The dacoit costumes in Sunil Dutt’s Mujhe Jeene Do (1963) and Vinod Khanna’s Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) were done by us.” In the next instant, he names a film from an entirely unrelated genre: “The side artistes in Ajooba (1991), the crowds in the film, their costumes were done by us.” From the present day, he speaks of Jodhaa Akbar. “The turbans for most of the main artistes were done by us,” he says. “Ashutosh Gowarikar khud aaye thay selection ke liye (Ashustosh Gowarikar himself came to select the turbans).” Suresh bhai adds: “We have easily done more than 100 films. Itne kiye hain ki abhi mind mein hai bhi nahin (We have done so many, that it’s easy to forget them).”

However, when I ask which film so far has posed the greatest challenge for the Dresswallas, he talks of television. He cites Shyam Benegal’s Bharat Ek Khoj (1988). “What would happen is that every 10 days, the show’s period would change. That meant the character’s turbans, their dhotis, everything changed.” In order to deal with this constant state of flux, Suresh bhai stationed more than a dozen craftsmen in Mumbai’s Film City, where the serial was shot, who often worked through the night to meet production requirements. “It was a very tedious job,” he says. “But I did my best.” He adds, almost shyly, “Shyam babu ne mujhe gold medal bhi diya thaa uske liye (Shyam Benegal even gave me a token of appreciation for my efforts).”

Suresh bhai is a ready reckoner on material that has been used to dress up artistes over the years. While speaking of Mughal-e-Azam, he tells me that Prithviraj Kapoor’s armour for the war scenes weighed in excess of 50 kgs. “In those days, armours were made of iron. Today, they are made of aluminium.” Similarly, he explains, crowns worn by kings or divine characters today, have thermocol, instead of metal, as the base frame material, to make them lighter on the actors’ heads.

He talks of how K. Asif kept telling his father, Harilal, during the making of Mughal-e-Azam, with great conviction, that the same film that had landed him in a penurious state, would deliver him from it. (The film, started in 1944 and released in 1960 was made on a whopping budget of Rs. 1.5 crores has since become a cultural milepost in our cinema for its grandeur, scale and beauty.) Or how Dilip Kumar insisted, unreasonably at times, on having Suresh bhai, who was then a young man, present on set to tie his turban throughout the shooting schedule of Manoj Kumar’s period drama, Kranti (1981). But the one memory that stands out for him revolves around the 1975 mythological blockbuster Jai Santoshi Maa. The episode, besides highlighting the fickle nature of luck in the movies, is also a telling comment on the urge to repeat a successful ‘formula’ to death in the industry.

“Usme maje ki baat kyaa thi (What was interesting about it was),” says Suresh bhai, sitting up in his chair in excitement, “Ashish Kumar, Jai Santoshi Maa ’s hero, made Solah Shukrawar (1977),” a rehashed version of Jai Santoshi Maa, which he hoped would cash in on the former film’s success. Kumar even called his production house Santoshi Maa Pictures. And Maganlal Dresswalla, who had done costumes for the previous movie, were called upon for this one as well. But the film tanked. “Yeh taqdeer ki baat hai, ki yeh (Jai Santoshi Maa )superhit gaya aur usi ka hero, jo khud film banaaya, us type ka, woh flop ho gaya (This is destiny, that while Jai Santoshi Maa was a hit, a similar film, made by its hero, tanked).”

***

Tea arrives. The conversation changes track. Suresh bhai says he lost his father, Harilal, almost 13 years ago. Maganlal, his father’s elder brother, had passed away much before that, “Some time in the 1940s or 1950s, I don’t know.” Until seven years before Harilal’s passing, the family had continued to operate from the first Maganlal Dresswalla premises in Bhuleshwar, a crowded neighbourhood close to Kalbadevi in South Mumbai, also famous for being the early residence of the Dhirubhai Ambani family. Suresh bhai and his father Harilal moved from there to Juhu only in 1993, when the Indian television industry was beginning to grow.

“I was doing Tipu Sultan (The Sword of Tipu Sultan, a historical drama on TV) at that time,” remembers Suresh bhai. Coming to South Bombay, with its constant traffic snarls, was a problem for producers, many of whom lived in the suburbs. “Sanjay Khan (director of The Sword of Tipu Sultan) would pester me regularly, saying you have to take up premises in Juhu. He would tell me, ‘Even if you take up a place on the fifth floor, aur lift nahin hoga, toh bhi hum chad ke aayengey (and there is no lift, I will still climb the stairs and come).’”

Before joining the business with his father, Suresh bhai went to Kishinchand Chellaram College in Mumbai’s Churchgate, from where he studied up to “Inter-Arts only (two years of college)”. He says he had a passion for acting in those days and performed in several college shows, but could not take up acting professionally because his father would not allow it. “Daddy ne thappad maar ke bitha diya shop pe (Daddy summarily dismissed the idea and made me sit at the shop),” he tells me, breaking into a wistful chuckle. His warmest memory from those days is of acting in a play whose title may be seen with some irony in hindsight: ‘Yadi drama na ho sakey, toh yaaron mujhe maaf karna (If the drama doesn’t take place, then friends please forgive me)’. He grins as he says the title out loud. “Jatin, means Rajesh Khanna (Hindi cinema’s first big superstar), was there; Amjad (Khan, a star villain) was there; Jeetu (Jeetendra, also a film star) was there (they were all acting in the play). We stood first in the inter-college competition.”

The other acting memory Suresh bhai recalls is when he dressed up as the Hindu god Krishna from B. R. Chopra’s television series Mahabharat, having provided costumes for the same. “Kabhi kabhi aisa lagta hai na, itne heroes ke costumes kiye, film mein, serial mein, mujhko khud yeh banna hai. Toh mujhe Mahabharat ka Krishna banna thaa (Sometimes you feel, you have done costumes for so many heroes, in film, in TV serials… you would like to be one of them. I wanted to be Krishna from Mahabharat ).” The opportunity to fulfill this whim came his way when an independent director, whose name Suresh bhai cannot recall, approached him for a short film. “I was in Bhuleshwar then… She made me wear Krishna’s costume and took me to Marine Drive where she asked the beggars to gather around me,” he says, laughing heartily at the idea. “She wanted to show the contrast— between the time of the Mahabharat, with its wealthy kings and prosperous setting, to the poverty in Mumbai today.”

While speaking of Marine Drive, Suresh bhai decides to clear the confusion created by two other Maganlal Dresswalla outlets in this part of South Mumbai. These, he explains, are run by his brothers, but have nothing to do with films (“They are not in Bollywood”). Kirti bhai, his elder brother, functions out of Marine Drive. “He is dealing mostly in school and college functions, fancy dress costumes for kids.” Girish bhai, the youngest of Harilal’s three sons, operates out of Bhuleshwar, but not from the original Maganlal Dresswalla premises. “He is doing exports to Middle East.” When I ask Suresh bhai what led to the division in the business, he says, “Daddy only said to do so.” He insists that all three siblings have been and continue to be on good terms with each other, but “now everything is separate.” The one time that I managed to connect with Girish bhai over the phone, he too ruled out any conflict between the brothers: “Whatever we are doing, we are satisfied. Whatever he is doing, he is satisfied.”

***

At the 2012 Mumbai Film Festival organized by the Mumbai Academy of Moving Image (MAMI), young, upcoming actor and filmmaker, Shriya Pilgaonkar’s Dresswala, a four-minute short film, was shown in the ‘Dimensions Mumbai’ section of the festival. Shriya had known of Maganlal Dresswalla for a long time as a place for costumes, but once she got to know of the films they had been associated with, she says, it became “like a heritage site” for her. “That is when I realized that I have to know more about this (place).”

While Shriya believes that the audience at MAMI left with a new perspective of Maganlal Dresswalla, she feels bad that not enough goes into preserving Maganlal’s legacy. “In the 2005 floods, a lot of their stuff was washed away,” she says. “In India, a thing like preservation is not taken very seriously. I wish there would be archives of these costumes for people to see.” Pilgaonkar’s statement is an echo of Suresh bhai ’s own regret, at the devastation brought about by the 2005 Mumbai floods, which obliterated records of their work not just in Hindi cinema, but in English films like Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and in several Gujarati and South Indian language movies, including N. T. Rama Rao’s costume for Ashoka The Great (Samrat Ashok – 1992). “Sab ke album thay, photograph thay original, woh sab paani mein chale gaye. Khatam (We had albums of all our films, original photographs in them, but they were all destroyed in the floods. Finished.).”

Presently Suresh bhai is more focused on the television industry, which for him takes precedence over films. He says this is due to a decline in the quantum of period and mythological films being made today. “Aajkal Western type kay… ya Las Vegas type kay… toh woh costumes zyaada chaltay hain. Woh type ke costumes main nahin karta (Nowadays, Western costumes, Las Vegas style costumes, are in greater demand. I don’t do those kinds of costumes),” he says about costumes in today’s movies. His discomfort is especially reflected in the way the words ‘Las Vegas type’ stumble off his tongue, with great reluctance, as if by merely mentioning the phrase he is compromising on a value system. “But I do a lot of TV serials. Sagar Arts ne jitney Devi Ma ke upar serials banaaye, usme mostly maine saarey main lady artists ke costumes diye hain (Whatever mythological serials have been produced by Sagar Arts around Devi Maa—the Hindu goddess—I have given the costumes for most of the main female protagonists),” he adds, immediately.

Forty-five minutes into our conversation, we are joined by the younger of Suresh bhai ’s two daughters, Sarika Dresswalla, 36, who is visiting the premises on this Sunday evening with her husband, a banker. Like her elder sister Rupal Dresswalla, Sarika has been involved in the business for more than a decade now. “As a child, this was like a dreamland for me,” she says. Her face lights up at the memory. “Every time papa would call me to the shop, even if it was in the middle of the night, I would be ready because there was so much going on. So many colours, so many costumes. It was like a passion for me, it was in the blood.”

As Suresh bhai gets up to attend to matters of business, Sarika gives me a tour of the premises. She begins with the film section, right behind the mannequin styled like Kimi Katkar from Hum. A wide array of outfits are on display here, iconic costumes that have been worn by heroes and heroines over the years. Amitabh Bachchan’s Shahenshah jacket, with netted-metallic material on the right arm and a rope that the character usually carries in his left hand, stands out. Another female mannequin is dressed as Madhubala’s Anarkali from Mughal-e-Azam. Then there is Aamir Khan’s Elvis Presley outfit from the song ‘Tere pyaar ne kar diya deewaana ’ in the 2011 film, Delhi Belly. But these are duplicates, made by tailors at Maganlal Dresswalla to cater to the rising demand for Bollywood themed parties. They allow people to relive their favourite film characters vicariously. “Everyone has a dream. Everyone wants to become something,” says Sarika. “And when they come here, we bring their dream to life.” The costumes also represent new avenues of business being developed by the Rupal and Sarika, the third generation of Dresswallas.

“I want to expand into foreign films. That’s my dream,” says Sarika, when asked about her vision for Maganlal Dresswalla. “There’s such beautiful work that we do here and I think we can offer so much more to them (foreign films). I’ve already done foreign films— supplied costumes for Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol (2011, for a section that was set in India) supplied for Life Of Pi (2012)— about 400 to 500 school uniforms.”

Rupal, who I spoke to a few days later, spoke of plans for expansion as well. She pointed out how Maganlal Dresswalla today helps create mascots for brands such as Bournvita and Colgate, an initiative driven entirely by Sarika and her. Rupal is older than Sarika by four years. She did a course in fashion design from the J. D. Institute Of Fashion Technology before joining the family business. She says that since her husband, Gujarati superstar Hitu Kanodia, is part of the entertainment industry, “it helps”. “We are 21^st century women. Once you are married, you need to know how to balance your life,” she added, in a measured way.

***

As we near the end of the quick look around the Maganlal Dresswalla premises, Sarika mentions the store is about to undergo a complete overhaul. “What I am trying to do is… ” she begins to outline her plans— essentially a more compact, functional and organized premises, suited to the next generation of Dresswallas. Her zest sits well with Suresh bhai ’s own plans as he nears 70 and looks to his children to take the legacy forward. “My ambition is that both my kids – Rupal and Sarika, woh dono bahut aagey badhey film industry mein, badi badi filmein karey (go a long way in the film industry and do good work),” he had said earlier. From an idea that began at a time when even female characters in the movies were portrayed by men, to an institution that now sits on the shoulders of two confident young businesswomen, the Dresswallas have had an eventful journey.

Nothing is quite the same since when they started. In the last two decades Hindi films have become glossier and slicker. Every star today has his or her own stylist, as does every film. The fashion industry is of global standards in India now and almost all the top designers are involved with the movies. The large number of fashion magazines in the market has cemented the bond between cinema and fashion. It is common practice to have makeup and prosthetics technicians flown down from Hollywood now and costumes in superhero films like Ra.One are generated by SFX. The space for traditional costumers like the Dresswallas is shrinking. But their significance is not. To have loved Hindi movies and their inimitable characters is to have loved Maganlal Dresswalla.

Sooni Taraporevala – TBIP Tête-à-Tête

Posted on January 31, 2014 by admin

Sooni Taraporevala, 56, grew up in a large Parsi family in South Bombay, leading a fairly regular life until the day she found out she had been accepted to study in Harvard University as an undergraduate. She had applied for a lark and still cannot believe she got in. Harvard opened up a whole new world for her, sowing the seeds for the extraordinary work she was to do as a photographer and screenwriter later in life. It was also here that she met her collaborator in cinema, Mira Nair. After her post-graduation she moved back to Bombay without a plan, “for emotional reasons”. Back in her hometown, she began photographing her community, building an unparalleled body of photographic work compiled in several exhibitions and a book called Parsis : The Zoroastrians of India – A Photographic Journey. Furthermore, she brought to life a city slum in Salaam Bombay!, Mira Nair’s directorial debut. Since then she has written several films including her own debut feature as a director, Little Zizou. She wants to continue writing films, directing them and taking pictures. Also on the bucket list is a novel. Here is hoping the newly acquired and richly deserved Padma Shri will keep her motivated.

An edited transcript:

Okay, so we are going to start from, obviously the beginning. You grew up in Bombay?

I did.

What were those times like? When you think back to your childhood, what is it that stands out the most in your memory?

I grew up in a large extended family. Went to an all girl’s school, Queen Mary School next to Kennedy Bridge, and I guess what stands out is that I had a really happy childhood because I had a very large extended family. I am an only child myself but the extended family was pretty large and we did everything together, like large groups going for holidays and everything, so I think that stands out for me.

Did a lot of people live together as well?

Yes. I grew up with my parents, my grandparents, my father’s two brothers. Unmarried brothers.

Okay, okay. So that’s a fairly large group. And you went to college here as well?

I went to Xavier’s (St. Xavier’s College) for a few months and then I got very ill and could not attend college and then applied to a lot of American universities, got admitted and so never went back to Xavier’s.

How did Harvard happen?

Just by chance (laughs ). Fluke. Luck.

Yeah it was undergraduate studies. It was not very common for…

It was not at all common and in those days, you know, no undergraduates went, actually. And everyone severely discouraged me, not my family, but everyone else. The USCIS (United States Citizenship and Immigration Services), people who knew, they said, “Don’t be silly, you will never get in.” I just wanted to try and I just tried. I wrote to forty universities; that got narrowed down, down, down and then Harvard was the only one where I got admission as well as a scholarship.

Wow! Not a bad choice.

It was an amazing thing. I still can’t believe it actually, so many years later. I don’t know. It was one of those amazing things.

This was the seventies, right?

This was… yeah… I went in 1975.

What was Harvard like in 1975?

It was kind of… You know, it still had shades of the sixties when I was there, but kind of fading. I was there through the mid-seventies in America and the eighties. The eighties were very much an era of (Margaret) Thatcher and (Ronald) Reagan and all that, so in comparison the seventies were much more like the sixties.

At least the shadow of the sixties. What did you major in?

Literature but did a lot of film and photography courses as well.

Which is also very interesting to me because this is photography, this is not when digitization had come in such a big way. And you were at the centre of lot of intellectual discourse being in Harvard. What were the kind of conversations that were happening around photography, anything that you can remember? I am sure there was a lot going on because that was also the time when someone like Susan Sontag was writing On Photography. On Photography was published, actually, I think in 1975 or 76.

You know I never really took part in any intellectual conversations about photography.

Anything that you remember of how people were thinking of photography then or what was trendy?

What was prevalent in those days, I think, was street photography, documentary photography and it’s something that I also was very interested in and went into as opposed to commercial advertising or things that were set up. Which is also, I think, kind of leftover over of the sixties, because that was what was really prevalent in the sixties as well, that kind of photography. But my photographic education was very different in the sense that I took mostly independent courses so that I could use the facilities and the dark rooms to do my own work and projects. So I was always very…. I did a lot of independent studies which was basically fashioning my own projects and my own courses and I didn’t really learn photography, like, I never really learnt screenwriting. So I approached both of them kind of indirectly. And I was taught photography by a fellow student who was a stringer for The Boston Globe at the time, who was also a student at that time. And he taught me the basics— how to use the camera, how to print etc.

So you took more technical….

I took help for technical stuff and then developed my own kind of style and my own eye. I didn’t really do courses that taught me how to see or what to see.

What did Harvard leave you with? What was your takeaway from Harvard?

My takeaway was huge. It opened my eyes; it gave me an entire world. It’s impossible, actually, to describe it because I went from Xavier’s to doing one text in an entire year to doing courses like Shakespeare’s tragedies. All his tragedies in one semester, all his romances in the other semester. Three thousand courses to choose from. Every semester you had a week where you could shop for courses— that’s what it was called, it’s still called that. Sort of a mall, you went into lecture halls to see which courses you wanted to take. It was huge— the breadth of knowledge, what you could study, how intensely you could study it. It was really amazing.

What about after Harvard? You stayed on in the US for a bit after Harvard.

Yes. I then went to graduate school at NYU (New York University). I was, actually, at Columbia’s film school but I transferred out to NYU because NYU had a dark room and I did cinema studies at NYU and, again, did a lot of independent courses in the photo department.

Okay. I have read that your decision to come back to India was more an emotional one, but didn’t you want to stay on for a little longer in terms of your work? How did you reach that decision? I read somewhere you quoted, actually, a very beautiful (T.S.) Eliot verse in some interview about coming back, about making a journey and then coming back and discovering a place anew. What were your concerns? Were they purely emotional or were they also professional? I mean, at that time was it easy for someone like you to do what you wanted to do there in the US as well?

See the thing is Mira’s (Nair) father’s nickname for me was ‘rudderless ship’. I had no clear career goals or plans. Itwas purely an emotional decision. I didn’t even know what I was going to do because I graduated in cinema studies. I knew I didn’t want to teach and I didn’t want to be a film critic. Everything I did I did because I wanted to do it. I liked studying films but it had no practical kind of consequence in terms of… and I might add that I only did all that because I was on a scholarship. Had my parents been paying high fees I would have probably been more practical. But I was lucky that I didn’t have to be practical and that I could, actually, follow my heart and do what I wanted, which is what I did. But at the end of those two years I said, “Now what am I going to do?” And so photography was almost… being a professional photographer was almost like a default kind of thing to do. I love photography, it’s not that I didn’t, but to make it my career was because I didn’t want to teach and I didn’t want to be a critic. And I didn’t think I had the personality to be a filmmaker because at that time I thought, and rightly so, that filmmakers really have to go out there be extroverted, sell themselves, sell their projects, be kind of mini army generals putting together crew, putting together money. I just didn’t feel that I had that kind of personality and photography was just myself with one camera and a few lenses.

Tell me, you didn’t study screen writing, right?

No I didn’t study screen writing.

You mentioned that it was something you taught yourself, like photography in a lot of ways. How did you go about that? Did you read a lot of books on screen writing or…

No, no. Actually I didn’t even know that such a thing like the three act structure exists when I wrote Salaam Bombay!. My education as I said was very indirect but I am glad that it happened that way. For instance, literature taught me a lot of things about character, about point of view, about narrative. Studying films taught me a lot about how you construct a film, how you make a film and photography taught me about the visual world. So I approached screen writing through all those three strands when I wrote Salaam Bombay!.

Did you ever, at some point, go and read the different theories?

I did, and I am so glad that I didn’t start out that way because had I done it I would have not continued; because a lot of them are very confusing and very scary, in a way. Everything is so like, you have to reach your turning point at this page and that and that and that. It was all very complicated so I would not have made it as a screenwriter.

Have you ever referred to any of those theories?

Sometimes when I am stuck, I do but I have never actually gained much from it. Sometimes I wish that I had learnt it that way because sometimes it would be easier rather than trying to forge your own quirky path but it is what it is.

Mississippi Masala and Salaam Bombay!, I want you to talk a little bit about both the processes and how they might have been slightly different. I know that research was involved for both. And the director was the same. So tell me about how the processes were different for you.

Sorry, I will have to think about this because it has been so long… but I suppose when I wrote Mississippi Masala I was one film old but otherwise it was, I think, pretty much the same in the sense that Mira and I were working at it together. What was really different is that we had this huge star, Denzel (Washington). Sorry, actually there were lots of differences. What was also very different was that I was writing about the African American community and that I felt very responsible about getting it right and very scared about not getting it right. Though having said that, Salaam Bombay! had the same kind of responsibility of not being part of that world but representing that world and wanting to get it right.

Actually that was my next question. Salaam Bombay! is based in Bombay but it’s the Bombay right outside where you lived, where you grew up and this is completely different. Is it important for you as a writer to find certain connects to the story you are writing? Even if only in your head?

As a writer you always I think unconsciously or consciously, most often unconsciously, bring your personality and everything into it, into the character.

Of course. So where did you find your points of connects for both these?

With the characters. It would sound strange to say because I am so different from Jay. I am so different from Mina in Mississippi Masala but made her an only child like I am. When you are writing you bring things in from your own life. I think everyone kind of does that.

Did you work with Mira at the scripting stage, a lot, as well?

You know, we were friends before we started working together.

You guys met at Harvard, right?

Yeah we were both college students there. We were both undergrads there. We both got there, in this near miraculous way and we both couldn’t figure out how we had got there. So there were lots of points of contact, lots of similarities. We shared a lot of things. My process with her is very different than if it was a purely professional kind of thing with a director. We can’t rule out the friendship part of our lives together.

Which is probably the best part. Tell me what the success of Salaam Bombay! meant for you guys. It might have seemed like… you guys did make a great film but it was your first time and it was 25 years ago. How did the Oscar nomination happen?

I don’t know how it happened but it happened. At that time, because I was not a screenwriter and it was my first script, I didn’t really realize the import of what had happened. It didn’t really strike me as how amazing it was. It was fun and it was great but it was not like earth shattering like it would be now; because now I have been in the industry for 25 years, so if an Oscar nomination happened it would be a completely different deal than what it was in those days. In those days also nobody in India knew or cared about the Oscars. So Mira and I were there in L.A. and as Mira jokes, “The Indian government didn’t even send a telegram saying congratulations.” We were completely out there. Nobody knew. They used to broadcast the Oscars on Doordarshan early in the morning. Nobody knew, nobody watched. It is very different now, from when we were there.

How did you process that? How did you guys process that success?

Well, it gave me a career for one thing. Salaam Bombay! gave me a career. I was always really surprised. I knew it would do well, but not as well as it did.

Salaam Bombay! also gave you a lot of other things. Lifelong friendships, a lot of people in a production house you guys went on to form, the trust that came out of that. Tell me a little bit about those journeys.

The trust Salaam Baalak Trust is still running very successfully in Bombay and Delhi. Sorry, what else?

The friendships and the production house. Lot of people from the Jigri Dost production house are also from Salaam Bombay!.

Mulchand Dedhia who is the most famous gaffer in India now started out with Salaam Bombay!. A lot of people started out and stayed friends. The late Hassan Kutty became India’s most well known continuity person and assistant director; he started out with Salaam Bombay!. Lots of friendships— Dinaz Stafford, Anil Tejani. And when Dinaz and I started Jigri Dost Productions to make Little Zizou, my debut film a lot of the same people came on board and that was lovely.

Where did the name come from?

Jigri Dost Productions is actually a name that Mira was thinking of calling her production company; which then became Mirabai Films. I had always remembered it and so when it came time I said this is the name I want.

It’s a lovely name, I am glad you used it. You have worked on two adaptations.

Actually more.

Yeah, but I wanted to compare these two: The Namesake and Such a Long Journey. Both very popular books, read by lots and lots of people. I just want to understand how both these processes were different. The novels are different essentially. How are the processes different? How were the challenges different? Did you work with the writer in either?

I didn’t work with the writer in either. Both of them stayed away from the script process and actually went and came down for the filming, for part of it. Jhumpa (Lahiri) was there in the America part of it not the Calcutta part. Both of them were very hands off with the script and I didn’t really work with them at all. Such a Long Journey was my first adaptation and so I was very, very nervous about it, I had never done it before. It’s a very different book from The Namesake. It is full of incident, detail, plot, character. It is extremely dense and long and rich and amazing.

The Namesake is almost the polar opposite of that because it’s a very sparse sort of novel. Almost something that would be thought un-filmable.

Absolutely.The Namesake is much more interior. Though The Namesake also spans generations and continents.

And journeys.

So they both have a sweep but I remember Such a Long Journey being much, much harder to kind of condense into a 100 pages. The Namesake was hard for other reasons. Finding out whose story it was, how to convert something that’s so interior into something that’s exterior, that’s cinematic. So those were the challenges of The Namesake.

Can you remember couple of things you changed for both?

I don’t think I changed much in Such a Long Journey. The Namesake, a couple of scenes were added that were not in the book. One is, after his father dies, Gogol’s father dies, in the film he goes to this barber in a black neighbourhood and gets his head shaved. It’s a lovely scene because Mira put this great rap music over it and then he comes back and at the airport his mother and sister are surprised to see him with his shaved head and his mother says, “You didn’t have to” and he says, “I wanted to.” That scene was new and for me it was a way of showing that he had come round to the Indian side of his life, that he felt a certain regret and a certain kind of… almost feeling guilty about his father’s death because he had not been great to his parents. He had kind of favoured his girlfriend’s parents over his own so that scene was new. I can’t think of what else.

There was a place. You guys changed the place.

Mira wanted to make it New York instead of Boston. Yeah, that was changed. And of course, also she (the character of Ashima Ganguli) is a singer in the film where she is not in the book.

Why was that?

Again Mira wanted it so that we could do things with music and just give her more of a personality rather than just being a housewife.

You studied literature. You are familiar with so many books. Can you, at the top of your head, think of some book that you feel like, ‘That would be a really difficult novel to adapt’?

You know, some novels are really about style, about the way they are written. For example, The God of Small Things. You could make a film of it but you would just be making the plot, you would not be translating the language and so it would not really be a true… it would not really be in the spirit of the book. I think novels where the writing is as important as the story, the way it is written, those are harder to translate.

Can you think of a couple of adaptations that have worked for you, which you haven’t written? Can you think of any that you liked and any one that you feel like was couldn’t live up to the book?

I have seen a lot of adaptations which I think are good films but I haven’t necessarily read the books that they were adapted from. I loved The Last Emperor and I remember actually studying it because I was actually doing Such a Long Journey at that time and I actually watched that film and tried to study it to see how they went from past to present etc. I remember really liking that adaptation. Of course Pather Panchali is one of the most well known and most well beloved adaptations but again I haven’t read the original.

I want to come to Little Zizou, which given that you felt for the longest time that you did not have the personality of a filmmaker, you started to make a film quite late in your career. What was the first idea, what was the first seed of idea? How did you start with the…

You know I came back from shooting. Not shooting, I came back from visiting the set of The Namesake and I had some time on my hands and at that time there was a lot going on with fundamentalism around the world and it was (George W.) Bush’s America— there was Osama (bin Laden) on one side and Bush on the other side. And in my own little Parsi community, there was someone very junior to both of them, trying to aspire to that level. It was out of a sense of frustration at the state of the world that I started on this. I also had never embarked on a Parsi kind of film before because I thought that, you know, the reality could never really match up to whatever I would put on film. But when I started I said, “Hey, you know, actually…” and then I made a list of everyone who could act in this film and there were lots of people at that time and I actually wrote parts for specific actors, including my two kids. I wanted to address this business about patriarchy, about religious fundamentalism. But I wanted to do it with humour and I wanted to make a local tale have universal resonance. So those were the ideas that went into Little Zizou.

You’d already documented your community in a book, which we will come to later. Was this, part of the impulse for this, also a sort of documenting your community or just the ways of your community, not documenting your community itself?

No, no. I don’t think that I think I could have made the story in any other community. The reason I did it in my own was two reasons. One is that I think that basically first you have to look at yourself before you can point fingers at others and secondly, for my first film I wanted something I knew really well in terms of a world. I didn’t have the confidence to make a first film like Mira made Salaam Bombay! about a world that was actually out of our comfort zone. I didn’t want to do that because I didn’t think that I could. So I stuck to what I knew best, which was this community that I grew up in.

Tell me about where some of the characters came from?

I don’t know actually.

How many of them were amalgamations of people you knew and how many were direct translations of people you knew?

Well, the two antagonists, the newspaper editor and the religious nut were based on real people. My kids, I used a lot of their sibling rivalry and many things that I heard them say and do I put it into the script. Tknow Francorsi, one of the friends, I met him at a party and I loved the way he looked and when I found out he was half Parsi, half Italian that went into the script. The flight sim came out of a real situation, and I am not allowed to say the name but a dear friend had actually made a flight simulator like that. I think what was enjoyed most by the community was watching who was going to come next on screen.

That was practically enjoyed by even Bombayites who are not part of the community.

My husband used to say, because whoever I’d meet I would say, “I am making a film, you ought to be in my film.” My husband Firdaus would say, “Are you crazy? What kind of film are you making? ‘Anyone, come on, come on. Be in my film.’” Anyone and everyone was in it. It was made with a great deal of love by the crew and the cast and it really was a very pleasant and great experience making the film.

What I also found interesting was, Such a Long Journey. I know you didn’t make your films to portray the community in any way or to document the community but how would you say the portrayals of the community were different in Such a Long Journey and Little Zizou?

For one thing, I think, Such a Long Journey ‘s characters are more middle class. The building and everything is different from Little Zizou. I mean, no one is practicing black magic in Little Zizou . They are listening to ‘Hey Mambo’. Such a Long Journey , the main characters are about a family that has seen better times but are now facing hard times. Little Zizou is not about hard times, in that sense. It’s more about a psychological hard time that the characters go through. So I think that’s the main difference that I would say.

I want to start talking about the book now. The first question I want to ask you is that, I believe that the exhibition that you are having, an exhibition of your photographs on the community, I believe that your edit for that is slightly different from the book.

Yes it is.

Two things I heard you mention. One is that—but I want you to explain more because I didn’t understand what you meant— that this edit is a little more courageous, if you will. Basically what you said was that you were not afraid of courting controversy with this edit and the other was that you also said that this was more about contextualizing the community in the larger social space, which perhaps the book was not. I wanted you to talk a little about both.

You know, when I did the book there was no visual documentation about the Parsis at all and when I did the book, also the first edition, the kind of issues that are confronting us today were not really at the forefront. So my book was a kind of non controversial document of the community. Also when I did the book I felt responsible to portray not every aspect, but as wide a breadth as I could. My mentor Raghubir Singh who started me on this journey was very eager that I document as much as I could, that I don’t stay in one area, just make it as broad as possible. When I did the exhibition, I was not concerned about representing the community; I just wanted it to be a visual journey. That’s it. So I chose photographs that I liked visually and that I thought would look great on a wall and that I wanted to see blown up. So the show is really a photographer’s show. It’s not really a Parsi photographer’s show. It’s a photographer who photographs Parsis putting up a show. The book is really about the community. It’s not about me, it’s about the community.

Tell me how you started, a little bit on how did the journey begin to…

For the book?

Yeah. For the book.

It began a long time ago when I just came back from NYU. Before that I had come back, I had taken a leave of absence, I’d bought a camera and I was photographing. Among the pictures I took, I took pictures of my family— aunts, uncles, grandparents. I met Raghubir Singh in 1982 and he is the one who saw my pictures and said, “Concentrate on this because you have a feeling, you have unique access etc.” That’s the time when I started out actively working towards the book. Then Salaam Bombay! happened. I was a screenwriter. Photography kind of took a back seat. I got married and Firdaus, my husband, said—and his name is Firdaus Bativala, he hates it when people call him Firdaus Taraporevala. My husband said, “What are you doing with all this? Do something with it. It’s all going to just catch fungus and disintegrate if you don’t.” So then I started again putting it together and the first edition was published in 2000. Unfortunately, Raghubir Singh passed away a year before and so never saw the book, which I really regret. I hope he can see it from where ever he is because he was a huge, huge help to me.

Of course the access, the feeling is there and all of that but it can be very tricky for an artist to document their own community. It’s so common for photographers now to work with communities, they look for communities to work with. They go out find a community and document them. I am sure you have seen a lot of that work. For example, even someone like Ketaki Sheth, she has done work with the Siddi community. I could think of so many. Karan Kapoor has done work with the Anglo Indian community. How is it tricky in ways for you to be documenting your own community? How did you see your own journey vis-à-vis theirs?

I am just trying to think. I think the tricky part is not the photographing; it’s what you choose to show afterwards. That’s the tricky part. Because I have such an affectionate feeling for my own community, at heart, I really don’t want to offend anyone or hurt anyone. Other than that, I can’t think of any kind of land mines that I negotiated.

What about the access? You spoke about it, how much access did you get from your own community?

I got fantastic access. Everyone was very warm and welcoming and open.

And you also shot in the Agiarys.

You are allowed to actually, except you are not allowed to shoot the central fire which I didn’t ever do. At that time, I was also allowed to shoot at the Towers of Silence. Now it’s a complete no-no. I would never be allowed.

Why is that?

Now people have become very paranoid about Towers of Silence. It has become a very contentious issue and so now I would never be allowed. There are certain things that have divided the community very bitterly. One is the issue of who is or is not a Parsi, and the other is how we dispose of our departed. These are very emotive issues that people feel very strongly about one way or another.

What about the response from the community? Has it been uniformly…

Even when the book was out, because we are such a… (laughs ) you know we love to fight, we love to argue. So I was expecting anything after the book came out. But I was very pleasantly surprised that it was received so warmly and so well. Same with the exhibition.

Tell me something. What are some of your continuing concerns about the community and would you want to continue to document the community? If yes, in what ways would the journey be different? What else would you like to explore?

You know, I will always continue photographing. Whether it will become anything or not, for my own, for myself I will continue photographing because now I do have a document that spans 35 years so there would be no point to my stopping it. If I continue, it would become even richer. So I will always continue. I don’t know if I will do a book or show or anything else. I might just do it for myself. So that will continue. I don’t think I will make any more movies on Parsis, now I am going to move on.

Tell me something, what has being a writer brought to your photography? Do you feel like it helps you to build a narrative or tell your story, in any way?

No because I don’t do photo stories that well. All my photographs are like single shots but within those single shots, when I first started photographing I did them only for myself. I did these five pictures from India. I had printed them small and I wrote a story around each one of them. It wasn’t a photo story or photo essay. It was a single picture but within that single picture I created a story of the people in that picture. So in that way I can spin stories, imaginative stories of people in photographs. In that way maybe it helped but I don’t know how else.

You actually spoke a little bit about it earlier; how has photography helped in writing? The other way round.

A lot, in terms of screenwriting because it helps me to think visually which I think is essential if you are a screenwriter.

What about film making?

Same. I am not saying cinematography for film and still photography are same. Not at all. I could never operate a film camera but I do know my lenses and I do know what I want it to look like and I do know light and things like that.

How do you edit your work? Your photography work, how do you edit it? Do you take help from other people or do you take opinions from other people for your edits?

I pretty much do it on my own. Though of course Ketaki is a very old friend and a very dear friend, so I show her. I show my husband. But basically on my own. It’s just a question of getting it down, down, down. You start large and then you edit, and it’s smaller and then you edit and it’s smaller. That’s the way I do it. That’s the way I did the show.

Raghubir had a very studied approach to photography whereas someone like Raghu Rai always spoke about it being in the instinct of the moment and being very… where do you stand on this? What is your approach to photography?

I think more instinctual because Raghubir, you are right, it wasn’t a studied approach but Raghubir was very into that you need to know the history of photography, you need to know the traditions, you need to know (André) Kertész, you need to know (Eugène) Atget, you need to know this that and the other. Which I actually kind of glanced through but I don’t know it as well as I should. I instinctively like certain works and I instinctively don’t like certain work. That’s how I approach photography. The work that I instinctively liked very much and still do is the work of (Henri) Cartier-Bresson because for me the way he used the medium, for me, it’s the way… What is so unique about photography for me is that it can really capture a moment in a way that films can’t do and books, words can’t do. So for me that is the joy of photography, is capturing a moment and capturing it and rearranging the world to make it make sense stylistically. All of it comes together to form content, that is what I find exciting about photography.

Other than Bresson who are some of the photographers who have either influenced or..

Robert Frank’s The Americans. (Robert) Doisneau, who again did a lot of street work in Paris. Atget, Kertész, Brassaï. A lot of French photographers.

Have you ever, consciously, paid a tribute to any picture that you really loved or any photographer that you really loved with any of your work? Okay, I will give you an example. A friend of mine who is a photographer, went to shoot a film in Benaras and the first shot that he took was of a boy leaping from…

Like Raghubir?

Yes. So I was wondering if you’ve done tribute somewhere or emulated something.

I am too uneducated to do these tributes (laughs ).

Pictures are for the uneducated really.

Yeah. I would be thrilled if I could actually do a tribute to someone like Bresson, to Raghubir, but the situation hasn’t arisen.

I wanted you to name a couple of films that have either professionally or, simply, personally really moved you.

All the films of (Federico) Fellini. I saw his films when I was an undergraduate at Harvard and they really spoke to me, they really moved me, they really touched me. The characters I felt I knew, they were like Parsis to me. So, I would say Fellini.

I can see that. Little Zizou was about your concerns, of course you wanted to speak about the themes of the film, the community which was a second layer. I also felt like—I don’t know if you tried to do that—it was also a sort of portrait of a much lesser seen Bombay, at least to a viewer. I don’t know if that was the intention.

Yes, absolutely it was an intention that these were locations that were usually not seen on film.

Also the locations, which perhaps is great because they’ve been documented. I don’t know long they will look the way they look. You came to Bombay, it was an emotional decision but the city has changed so much in the last 20 odd years. Have you taken well to the way it’s been changing?

Not really. No.

What are your concerns about the city today?

I am concerned that we don’t have any sense of heritage, that we are breaking everything down for money and very soon there is going to be nothing left and these are buildings that once they are gone we are never going to get them back. I think it’s very unfortunate that even the ones that we say are heritage… It’s the most ridiculous thing that you keep a facade and then you will have some skyscraper shooting up from the middle of a beautiful old bungalow, that’s our idea of heritage. Everything is about development and everything is about money and its going to be a horribly ugly city in a very short time if we continue this way.

Do you think its character is changing in other ways as well, not just architecturally or externally but its character is changing internally as well?

I think so. From what I read in the papers, there is horrific stuff going on. I don’t know if it’s just Bombay or all over India. I don’t know, maybe you didn’t read about it when I was growing up but it just seems to be… every day is more horrific than the next in terms of what comes in our newspapers.

But it’s also interesting for us. Do you feel that in the last 20 years or 25 years… has there been any incident that you feel the city has changed around? In the way that 9/11 changed New York, in a lot of ways, not just the fact that the towers are no longer there but it’s a slightly different city.

Of course I think all the bombing and the riots completely changed the character of the city. The city that I grew up in was very different in terms of tolerance. I mean there were riots but now people have really closed themselves into their various communities. I grew up in a different city which was genuinely cosmopolitan, Bombay was.

What endures? What is something that survived through the years in Bombay?

All those gyms at Marine Lines. Parsi Gym, Hindu Gym, Islam Gym, Christian Gym, Catholic Gym.

I don’t know if they are the same anymore but they have survived. Final question— what’s next for you? Are you going to make another film, I know it’s not going to be about Parsis. You said that.

I am hoping to. I’ve been working on something for the past few years but it’s a very large subject, it would be a large film. I want to get the script right before I take it out. So that’s something I am doing. I am also writing something for Mira and an American studio, that I can’t talk about right now.

Have you found the personality of a filmmaker or have things changed?

I think I have adapted the personality to suit my own personality and I have realized that you don’t have to be a certain way to be a film maker, that’s what I have realized.

Also things have changed. A lot has changed for filmmakers. It’s not so difficult anymore.

That’s true. I have certainly become an addicted filmmaker and I certainly want to do it again.

I hope you make a lot of films. Tell me, I know I said that was the last question but I’ll ask you one more, why did you never think of writing a book?

I have thought of it and it’s something I want to do. It’s on my bucket list.

It’s on your bucket list. Will it be fiction or non-fiction?

Fiction. That’s a huge commitment. I don’t know how writers do it, it takes years and you’re completely isolated and you have to have so much confidence in what you are doing. At the end of it, it may never be published. It’s a very courageous thing to do.

But it’s also a fantastic journey. It’s a lonely journey but once you take a few steps, it’s also a fantastic journey. Well, I hope you write that book and make that film. Thank you.

Thank you.

Little Zizou by Sooni Taraporevala is available to watch free online on Hulu

(Geographical limitations apply, not available in the Indian sub-continent)

Maximus Minimus

Posted on January 21, 2014 by admin

Voices from Afar is a series of interviews with filmmakers and film professionals, critics and experts from various countries around the world. The idea is to, through these voices, better our understanding of films and filmmaking communities which may seem alien at first glance, but whose joys and struggles, on closer examination, may have a deep resonance with our own.

Maximón Monihan, 44, is a Brooklyn-based filmmaker, writer, and former professional skateboarder who founded his production house Bricolagista! with 36-year old wife and partner Sheena Matheiken.

Their first feature film La Voz De Los Silenciados (The Voice of the Voiceless), won the Mumbai Young Critics Award at the 15^th Mumbai Film Festival. It has also been screened at the Thessaloniki International Film Festival (in Greece), the International Film Festival of Kerala and the Dharamshala International Film Festival. Based on a true story and shot entirely like a pantomime, it traces the journey of Olga (played by Janeva Adena Calderón Zentz), a speech and hearing-impaired Guatemalan teen who comes to New York to enroll in a sign language school and unwittingly becomes the victim of an international crime ring. The movie is silent. There are English subtitles to explain the sign language in parts.

Previously, Monihan has appeared in landmark skateboarding films Hokus Pokus and Shackle Me Not and served as research assistant to African-American scholar-activists Herman Gray, Angela Davis and Akasha Hull. He also co-authored By Any Means Necessary: The Life and Times of Malcolm X: An Unauthorized Biography (as Ryan Monihan) and made a handful of short films as well as music videos for artistes like rapper Talib Kweli and DJ and producer Prince Paul.

I meet Maximón, Sheena, and the female lead of their debut feature, 24-year old Janeva Adena Calderón Zentz, in the lobby of a luxury hotel. The trio have just finished breakfast at the hotel’s coffee shop and by the looks of it, enjoyed it thoroughly. Maximón adjusts his trademark black fedora before we begin.

I’d like you to clarify something first. Is your name Maximón Monihan or Monihan Monihan?

Monihan (laughs): Right, so it’s like this. My real name is Ryan Maxwell Monihan. Maximón is my nickname. Nobody calls me Ryan anymore, and also, there’s a guy online named Ryan Monihan who makes really, really bad films. So if I say my name is Ryan Monihan, people will say, ‘Oh, I looked at your stuff, and… yeahhh…’ (grimaces).’ So I cut that out completely. I was in an old skateboard movie from a long time ago. And they had this stupid rap song in the middle where they say, ‘Monihan, Monihan, M-M-Monihan,’ over and over. It’s a refrain in a corny rap song where they use this J. J. Fad beat. That’s why everyone calls me Monihan Monihan. I’ve been called all sorts of bad stuff in my life, so this is totally normal.

What prompted you to turn film director?

Monihan: What most people don’t realize about skateboarding is that it was a sort of outcast activity. It wasn’t considered cool at all at the time I started, but we had our own culture. It’s mainstream now in many parts of the world, but at that point skateboarding was what the kids who didn’t fit in did. And because of that, it was very artistic. Nobody cared about competition. What they cared about was expression. We had no coaches in skateboarding. You create your own tricks, you make up your own names, you do your own stuff where there’s a lot of creativity.

Actually, a lot of the great filmmakers now come from skateboarding. There’s Spike Jonze, there’s Mike Mills. Then there are artists like Shepard Fairey. Because for skateboarders, the main form of attraction is filming new tricks, new stunts. So we learned a lot about filmmaking on our own. And a lot of the influence, whether it’s in music videos, advertising, or cinematic language you see nowadays, comes from the skateboarding culture.

In a weird sense, us ramshackle, know-nothing idiots have influenced the larger public. But skateboarding also taught me the language of cinema in a great way.

You’ve talked about skateboarding as a fringe culture. Has that rubbed off on your production house, Bricolagista!? You describe the company as a ‘pre-eminent subterranean creative collective’. Is there a conscious effort to remain unconventional in your approach to making films?

Monihan: Yeah, totally. We come from a very humble circumstance. There are no big production companies to provide backing. It’s just us. There’s no funding, no insurance, no permission, no permits. We do it all on our own, and that’s the only way we know how to do things. We make our way with whatever we can get our hands on. That’s what ‘bricolage’ really means— creating something with whatever you have at your disposal. It’s weird, because people think America is a rich country and you have access to everything. But the thing is, if you’re not connected there, you have access to nothing. There’s no government support like you have in some countries. You have to do it on your own, or you have to do it with some financing from a private source. And we’re not the sons and daughters of famous folks.

Janeva, are you a part of Bricolagista! as well? Because apart from acting in La Voz De Los Silenciados, you’re also credited as the Art Director of the film.

Monihan: Those drawings you see in the film? She did all of that.

Those were lovely. You’re a Visual Arts student…

Zentz: Right. There was a really short period when I helped Monihan out with video work and some of the commercial stuff he was doing. There was also a time I was trying to do some Art Director work in L.A., just to make up my mind and see whether I like it or not. I did two short films—student films—and then a public service announcement. There was a bit of experimenting. But I didn’t like it in the end. I didn’t get paid for a lot of the work I did because most of them were low-budget projects…

Did you get paid for this film?

Zentz (laughs): A very small, small, small amount.

Monihan: The thing is nobody got paid. I didn’t get paid, and (points to wife and producer Matheiken) she didn’t get paid. We were all doing it because we wanted to prove that we can make a movie.

Sheena, you’re a partner in Bricolagista!, and Max has talked about how hard it is to get by on little or no funding. But you do have production teams scattered across the globe, so how do you manage that?

Matheiken: The best way to describe how we work is this: our philosophy is to find like-minded people, people you have a certain chemistry with. So, over the years, we’ve done many projects—whether freelance or commercial gigs—where we’ve built great relationships with those we’ve worked with.

Monihan: It sounds ridiculous, but all those years of travelling around and staying on people’s couches, living the skateboarder’s dream, you come across highly creative people, and the relationships we build are lifelong relationships. So it’s not just about the money. I know a hugely talented person in Hong Kong, so if we have to do something in Hong Kong, we team up and all work together. In that way, you can say we have connections.

You’re not tied down by demands prevalent in big production companies…

Matheiken: We can be very nimble, that’s the beauty of being small. There’s no red tape and bureaucracy. Since we are a small team, we can deliver good quality work without compromising on anything or bowing down to people.

Monihan: There’s no overhead too. We’re like the A-Team. Just put in the different, crazy components in a van, and off we go. But this is how it’s going to have to be for a lot of people in the future, because big salaries, big overheads…

Matheiken: And the hierarchies… It’s stifling.

In the US, do you see La Voz De Los Silenciados being picked up by indie festivals like Telluride, or maybe even Sundance?

Monihan: We would love to be in those festivals, but it’s really, really hard. We don’t know if we can get in because we have no team of sales agents or production company behind us. That world is very, very insulated.

Matheiken: Things like Sundance, for example, the way it works, it’s very difficult to get someone who has connections within the industry to back the film if they haven’t produced the film or have not had anything to do with the film. And in our case it’s a bit too late to get someone with clout on board, I think. Also, Sundance promotes or gives a platform to movies or people who have applied for their grants (to the Sundance Institute). Those films are given a priority. We don’t know anyone in Hollywood. I’m not even a cinema person. I do interactive web designing actually, but I help Max out with the company and he helps me with my work. We collaborate on each other’s projects.

I also feel that movies like La Voz De Los Silenciados do better in Europe and Asia. The thing is, if a movie is shown at a festival in Europe, people back home in the US are like, ‘Oh, it must be worth watching!’

Monihan: So we’ll probably get attention after that.

Maximón, you said you’d met Janeva at a party. How did you know that she would be the one to play the hearing and speech-impaired Olga? It’s not an easy role for a first-timer.

Monihan: I like people who have a special personality. You can sort of sense when a person has an attractive persona.

Zentz: It was at a gallery opening in New York for Brad Kahlhamer, who’s a Native American artist. Between Soho and Chinatown, I think. I’ve sat for Brad a number of times, so I went to the party all dressed up. Anyway, I was attacking the snacks table. Free food, you know… but yeah, that’s how Monihan and I met.

There’s another cast member I want to ask you about. The ‘fourth Beastie Boy’, photographer Ricky Powell. How did that happen?

Monihan: Man, Ricky is such a character. He’s a really good friend. And he’s a handful— most people don’t know how to deal with him. He’s a true New Yorker, your eccentric New Yorker that everybody hopes is still there, one of a dying breed. Ricky is a unique person. It’s not an act with him. He is what he is…

Matheiken: It’s funny, because there are some scenes in the film where I’m like, “He’s overacting”, but he’s actually not.

Monihan: He can’t be any other way.

Zentz: He is over the top, but that’s who he is.

The story on which La Voz De Los Silenciados is based was in the news for barely a few days before people forgot about it.

Monihan: Yes. You have panhandlers on New York subways who sell ‘I am deaf trinkets’, and there was a tiny mention in the local paper about how this deaf girl who made a living on the subway was a victim of the slave trade. It was terrible. The way the media reports the news— they have news cycles, you know. CNN, for example, will just have a sub-line or ticker because they don’t want to keep showing the same thing. So they sweep it away under the carpet. If you didn’t catch it that day, you missed it.

What stood out in La Voz De Los Silenciados was the silent film approach, which totally takes you into the world of a hearing and speech impaired protagonist.

Monihan: Exactly. Our intention was to make audiences feel as helpless as Olga does when horrible things are done to her and other deaf-mute panhandlers. To somehow get a sense of what it’s like to not be able to speak out or cry for help like we would normally do.

So Maximón, as a director, what, to you, is more important- the story, the treatment, or character development?

It’s difficult to assign a level of importance, because they are all crucial. But what is usually missing in many movies is characters that take on a life of their own. Characters who transcend that first screening. I feel like I know Olga really well. I’ll never forget her. And it’s weird saying that because it’s somebody who we helped make up even though she’s based on a real life character.

You’ve spoken about how even though La Voz De Los Silenciados is a silent film, you didn’t want to be one of those who just ape silent era movies for the heck of it.

Monihan: Yeah, and I guess that’s pretty normal in ‘young American cinema’. There’s a lot of gimmicky stuff going on, with people trying to show how clever they are. I’m super self-conscious when it comes to that. I don’t want to be one of them, the ones who go, ‘Oh look how well we did this’, or ‘look how cool is this’. They focus more on the art direction and the look of it. I don’t like that. It’s kind of like, advertising-tainted filmmaking. It’s great that it’s beautiful to look at, but there needs to be a lot more to it.

It’s more style than substance.

Monihan: That’s right, style over substance. I mean, style can be substance too, but I don’t like this ‘twee’ stuff. It’s just annoying. I like stories with conviction, the ones that actually say something and make a point. A lot of people try to be too cool and pretend like nothing around them bothers them. I think it’s sad. People should stand up for something. You don’t want to be preachy, of course, or unnecessarily didactic. But you should still be smart and know what’s going on. There used to be amazing people in their teens and in their twenties making protest songs over the years. We don’t even have that anymore. There’s no Bob Marley, Johnny Rotten, or Joe Strummer any more. Nowadays you have machines like Justin Bieber, and that’s stupid.

Matheiken: You sound like an old man.

Zentz (laughs): Yeah.

That’s alright, nobody really likes Bieber.

Monihan: Yeah, like where are all the grown-up twenty year olds?

Zentz: Twenty year old revolutionaries? They’re all on Twitter.

Monihan: I mean I think they’re out there, but we need to find and encourage those voices.

You’ve spoken about a few of your cinematic influences, like Jean-Luc Godard. Do you have any other favourites?

Monihan: Well, at the top of my head… the neo-realists from Italy. But I really like some of the younger directors from Japan. There’s the guy who made Cha No Aji (The Taste of Tea) and Naisu No Mori: The First Contact (Funky Forest: The First Contact), Katsuhito Ishii. He adds a layer of magical realism to his films and I love that. When you’re older, magic in your life just gets pushed to the side. So yeah, I like the neo-realists, but I also love the ‘magical realists’. And there’s also Yosuke Fujita, who made Zenzen Daijobu (Fine, Totally Fine). These directors are new, they’re fresh, and they’re creative. They take chances, and are influenced by the craziness of the Godards and the like, but they do things their own way and in their own style. Then there are the classics by Yasujirō Ozu, Vittorio De Sica, and Federico Fellini. And (Hayao) Miyazaki and Aki Kaurismäki.

Was the magic penguin Noah in your film an ode to magical realism?

Monihan: Oh yeah. I mean, we all need a way to maintain our sanity through all our problems. And sometimes, the solution is an insane one. Noah was the only thing that brought some hope in Olga’s desolate life.

Is it true that you’ve written an unauthorized biography of Malcolm X?

Monihan: Yes. All of my skateboard graphics were about Malcolm X. I was a huge Malcolm X fanatic. I was going to say ‘Malcolm Xpert’ but that sounds lame (laughs). But yeah, he was my hero growing up, and for most of the kids in my neighbourhood too. Everybody lionized him. He gave us all a voice. It’s problematic to iconize anybody, but all the great things that he said, how he became the spokesperson for marginalized people back then, the way he spoke… he was such a great orator. It was huge to us. And this was before the Spike Lee movie came out, at a time when Public Enemy was big, so you had the whole revolutionary rap scene going on. Young people were becoming increasingly political. There were people like Huey Newton who influenced thousands, and Angela Davis was one of my teachers. So all these great people really spoke to what we were feeling at the time.

Are you planning to write another book?

Monihan: I haven’t thought about it. I’m too focused on doing our own stories right now, through films. But you know, I want to be an old man sitting on a beach writing novels. That would be a fucking dream. People tell me ‘You talk too much, you have too much to say.’ So I think I better put everything in a book, and people can just deal with it that way. So hopefully, I can keep writing as long as I live.