00:00The head of the studio asked me,
00:01will you please make room for a white protagonist?
00:04Really?
00:05Yeah, and I said, I can promise you one thing,
00:08that all the waiters in this film will be white.
00:30It's because my roots are strong that I can fly.
01:00A Bengali man, Mr. Chakravarti, would come on his bicycle
01:20and teach me the sitar.
01:21I tried different things,
01:22and one of the things I was very interested in
01:24was performance and theatre.
01:27And Chakravarti taught me my first lesson,
01:29which is that you have to choose what you want to do.
01:32You can't do everything and be excellent.
01:48Yes, I did play Cleopatra.
01:50You did, right?
01:50Opposite Shashi Tharoor's Antony.
01:52I remember this, yeah.
01:53And I sort of didn't love him at the time,
01:58and I used to eat onions before love scenes.
02:28Well, when I showed Salaam Bombay at the Cannes Film Festival,
02:46I had no money to live in a hotel at Cannes.
02:49Really?
02:50Even after the success of the film?
02:51No, during, while it was showing.
02:53And I rented a pension, a little room,
02:57with an old lady in Cannes.
03:00And of course, we didn't have cell phones those days.
03:02And on the sales brochure of the festival,
03:05it's like, where do you contact for Salaam Bombay sales?
03:08I gave the lady of the pension's number.
03:11And that was the only information that I could give.
03:14There were no emails, nothing.
03:16And that night after the premiere,
03:18which was fantastic,
03:19and many 30-minute ovation and all of this,
03:21I came back to the pension about 6 a.m.
03:24And that phone, poor lady,
03:26it just kept ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing.
03:29And by the end of like 10 hours,
03:32I had sold like the entire world
03:34without quite knowing how to do it.
03:37But, except America that held out.
03:40But, you know.
03:56Hi.
03:57Hi.
03:58You're the director, aren't you?
03:59Right.
04:00So.
04:01Masala is an Hindi word, an Indian word.
04:03It means a collection of hot spices of all kinds.
04:05And in this movie, there's,
04:07Masala is love, the Masala music.
04:09It has Delta Blues.
04:10It has Denzel.
04:11It has an Indian woman.
04:12It has a cast from five lands.
04:14And it's shot in two countries.
04:15That's a Masala.
04:56So,
05:15I last made Kamasutra here in Aamir Fort.
05:18And we called it,
05:19we camouflaged and called it Tara and Maya.
05:21And 21 MLAs would routinely visit our sets
05:25to see whether we were making pornography.
05:29And as soon as they would come in,
05:31I would throw white duster coats on our,
05:33on Naveen Andrews and Indira Verma
05:35and have them spout dialogue like,
05:52It was made in response to Hum Aapke Hain Kaun,
06:05which is the wonderful Bollywood film
06:07that had 21 songs about a wedding.
06:11And we all had fun,
06:12but it was nothing to do with what it was like, really.
06:16So, I made a film that I could see myself
06:19and my family in it.
06:20And my family is in it
06:21because they were all free
06:22and didn't charge me a dime.
06:32There was a very,
06:32aesthetics are very important to Mira.
06:34It's a really integral part of her storytelling, you know.
06:37And I remember she wanted to do some stuff
06:39to me visually as well.
06:40I was like, what, what, no, what are you doing?
06:42But it makes sense.
06:43And her aesthetic vision
06:45is very central to her storytelling.
06:47You can see it in everybody.
06:49And she, she touches on everybody.
07:19And I recently ran into Juliette Lewis
07:46and it was an award ceremony
07:48and we were all having a few glasses of wine
07:50and pretty loose-tongued.
07:51And she says, Mira, when are you going to cast me again?
07:54And I said, darling, when white people interest me,
07:57I'll cast you again.
07:58You know, so it's a political act.
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