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Inscrutable Americans - soon at a theatre near you

M D Riti

"Watch your ass!" yells the irate baggage handler. The young Indian looks at him in amazement, struck speechless by his very first encounter with a real live white American in the US of A. "How he know I bought a donkey?" he wonders aloud, much to the amusement of his fellow-passengers. "Really, these Americans are too advanced. They are storing all world information on computer...."

It was probably a matter of time before someone tried to make a movie out of Anurag Mathur's novel The Inscrutable Americans. The screen version of this book, produced by NRI doctor couple Srihari and Indira Malempati of Pikeville, Kentucky, should be ready for release in the first week of June.

The Malempatis, who have produced this film under their home banner - Tricolor Communications Inc - want it to hit some of the major film festivals in the fall of 2000.

The Malempatis, who have a good medical practice in Kentucky, are financing this film out of their own pockets, and estimate that it will cost them about half a million dollars. "We have no fixed budget, though," said Dr Malempati in an exclusive interview with rediff.com.

"The theme is universal and so the target audience is most people in India, USA and around the globe, who have at some time or the other found themselves in an alien culture. Anyone can relate to Gopal and Randy's experiences in this film. It is a comedy, but it also addresses a lot of serious issues relevant in today's context. We are planning a worldwide release of this film starting with India and the USA and are looking for distributors."

Inscrutable Americans will become the latest in a series of English films made by Indians both in the US and India. While the Amritraj brothers set this trend a decade ago, it is undoubtedly the generation of Manoj Night Shyamalans and Nagesh Kukkanoors that has made the West sit up and take notice.

This film belongs more to the Hyderabad Blues genre than to that of Sixth Sense.

From Bugaboo, the film made by Silicon Valley engineers last year about their own lives, to Dollar Dreams, also made last year in the US, and Twenty Plus, which is now under production in Bangalore, there is a whole range of films being made in English by Indians.

There has been a mixed response to these films commercially in the US. However, in recent times, there seems to be a growing recognition of Indian films and filmmakers worldwide.

The last schedule of Inscrutable Americans is currently being shot in Hyderabad. The first schedule, comprising about 60 per cent of the script, was completed in December and January.

The locations where the shooting took place included the University of Hartford campus, Hatford restaurants, downtown Hartford, Bradley international airport, private residences in the greater Hartford area and Mt. Holyoke College campus in Massachusetts.

The second schedule was finished in just one week in March in the greater Hartford area, New York, Mt. Holyoke College and the University of Massachusetts, Amherst campuses.

"We actually read this book only after Chandra Siddhartha, who ultimately became the director and screenplay writer of the film, and Bala Rajasekharuni, who is co-director, approached us with the rights from Mathur," admits Dr Malempati.

"When we read the book we got interested because it deals with contemporary issues. It also reminded us of the cultural conflicts we ourselves faced when we first came here. So when Bala and Chandra asked us to finance the movie, we readily agreed."

It was at this stage that Sundeep Muppidi, the associate director and co-screenplay writer of the film, got involved. Muppidi, who is a documentary film-maker and also works as an assistant professor of communications at the University of Hartford in Connecticut, got permission from his University to shoot the movie on the campus, which is much like the small town Mathur writes about.

Inscrutable Americans is not the Malempatis' first brush with cinema. The couple had produced Padamati Sandhya Ragam, a mainstream Telugu movie, which was one of the earliest and biggest hits in heroine Vijaya Shanti's career in 1986. This movie too was set in America.

Inscrutable Americans, however, is the first film for director Chandra Siddartha. His past experience includes a number of programs for some Indian television companies. He was also the executive producer for Nirantharam, a Telugu film that was screened at the Cairo Film Festival.

Interestingly, when the unit began casting, they got a phenomenal response - mostly from the white American community.

"We held auditions in New York and Hartford," says Malempati. "The casting calls were handled by Bala Rajasekharuni (the co-director) who advertised in trade journals and websites in New York," recalls Muppidi.

Most of the characters in the film are played by professionals from Broadway. Rajiv Punja, who plays the main character, Gopal, is from New York. So is Eron Otcasek, cast as Gopal's friend Randy.

The three main female leads are also from New York - Sue played by Jana Williams, Gloria played by Staci Cobb and Ann played by Roni Jane Gannascoli. Faculty and students of the University of Hartford also play prominent roles.

Punja is a Bangalore boy born in the US. He studied in Bangalore at St Joseph's Boys' High School and later at Bishop Cotton Boys School. He then moved back to the US and now lives in Brooklyn, New York.

While a large part of the film unit came from India, the rest of the crew was selected after auditioning in New York and Hartford.

The plot of Inscrutable Americans is quite simple. It has as its main protagonist Gopal from Jajau in Madhya Pradesh, armed with a copy of Playboy as his guide into the American mind.

Gopal leaves his hometown and gets on a plane bound for America, all set to figure out the inscrutable American mind. Sixteen hours and thirty-seven glasses of Coke later, he steps onto American soil, still wondering why the airhostess had started crying when he had so politely requested her for another coke. And to compound his wonder, he discovers that strangely enough, America is full of Americans!

And thus begins Gopal's one year in America - his crash course in Chemical Engineering and the American way of life. But he soon realizes that Coke and "Mac Donald's", and near-naked models splashed across billboards are only the tip of the iceberg. There are deeper, more complex questions about the American mind. Like would a yearlong supply of hair oil from his family owned hair oil factory win Kate Winslet's undying love?

And with the irrepressible Randy around for a friend, will power doesn't stand a chance! So Gopal graduates from vegetable "ham" burgers and thirty-seven glasses of Coke to steak and beer.

Now Randy has a mission called 'Operation Gopal De-virginisation'. And Gopal is his willing accomplice.

Luckily he has what it takes to get the girls - a brand new silk underwear, extra dollops of hair oil...and an irresistible "Jajau-ian" accent. So with much advice from Randy, and guided predominantly by his brilliantly intuitive knowledge of the female preferences, Gopal begins his quest for a woman and his journey to understand the American mind.

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