Ok My Pedigree Chums, people are always asking me on how did I get the Idea of making a cross genre BRIT/PAK film, And why didn't I follow the usual route of making Boot Polish into a GRITTY social film about real poverty and life! - Like I said BP is about escapism and to all you film Buffs out there!
You dudes will realise that I am DEFO not the first or will be the last to make them!
BP just only seems to be original in the way that Ive constructed it for this day and age (decade!!!!)
The first ever experience of crossgenre films I saw, were the early workings of Merchant Ivory Productions! The great psychedelic shite lol 70's stuff!
Years back C4 or was it the BBC? run a season of MIP films, I was never into period dramas or anything like that, but then I was like wow this shit is actually really GOOD!! LOL:() They screened a lot of work and I thought wow from Mixed Bollywood to Oscar Winning Period Dramas!!!
Shot entirely on location in and around the city of its title, Bombay Talkie is one of Merchant Ivory's most distinctive films, at once a psychological drama and a parodic homage to the Indian film scene of the late 1960s and early 1970s. MIP have just released a fantastic DOCO!
HELEN - Famous Bollywood Dancer of the 70's stared in the Biggest Bollywood film ever SHOLAY!
This wonderful (though too short) half-hour 1973 documentary written by James Ivory is included by Merchant Ivory Productions along with the DVD of Bombay Talkie.
It opens with a mention of item girl, and dancer par excellence, Helen’s 500-film milestone. Over the next 30 minutes we hear narrator Anthony Korner solemnly intone about the significance of dance numbers in Hindi films (”…vicarious luxury”,”…make do for love scenes”, “…puritanical censorship rules”) as we witness the always upbeat Helen in a black bodysuit and tights doing her daily yoga routine and applying her green glitter maker-up for the typewriter dance number with Shashi Kapoor in Bombay Talkie. She is asked about retiring and says that she has a boutique opening up soon in the Sheraton where she’d like to do “something nice and groovy”, but admits that “once you put make-up on, you can’t leave this line.”
A scene from Merchant Ivory Productions first film Shakespeare Wallah (1965)But the real treat of film is Helen herself, in the many snippets from her many films, doing what she does best: dancing and vamping it up on screen, surrounded by such interesting elements as a caged ”savage” in blackface and gold hoop earrings, Easter Island-like giant idols with lights blinking where their eyes would be, and Shashi Kapoor in canary yellow cuban-heeled boots hopping about on the keys of a giant typewriter.
From the opening credits sequence (probably the most original of any Merchant Ivory film) to the films within the film (the musical, the Indian western), Bombay Talkie claims a unique place in Ivory's work for its elements of meta-film -- a film about film, in which the viewer is at once involved in what is on-screen and aware of the medium. Yet there are also those familiar elements of uprooted persons and cultural difference that characterize both the earliest and the most recent films of Merchant Ivory. Lucia, late in Bombay Talkie, tries on one of Mala's saris and Vikram explains to the uninformed Englishwoman that it is his wife's wedding sari. Just then, Mala enters to see her husband's lover dressed in her own wedding clothes: as in many of Merchant and Ivory's films, cultural misunderstanding leads to human drama of the most visceral and affecting kind.
Felicity Kendal as Barbara Wood in The Good Life -1970's BBC sit com - a huge TV hit at the time.As I have always said I am always interested and influenced by many Films & Directors, stories and its always good to experiment different types of Cinema when your making shorts. The only advice I give new filmmakers (like myself) is try and be original in your time-day and age!
Don't follow the prescribed path, some people may hate your films F*** em, one thing ive learned is that people will appreciate your originality and your ART!
Boot Polish is an amalgamation of many different forms of ART & Cinema - A mixture of Bollywood Cinema with Art House as well as keeping it real with certain OLD skool European influences
British FORGOTTEN Actors of Yester-years!! What ever happened to Richard O Sullivan?
Mr O'Sullivan with Paula Wilcox in Man About the House
Recently ive been watching 70's - 80s British TV comedies on Late night Cable. 'George and Mildred' and 'Robin's Nest, Man about the House'
I am a fan of Richard O'Sullivan and as a child of the 80's like so many I love all the re-run shows!
Researching the Internet -
Mr O'Sullivan disappeared from the public eye and was believed to be living a reclusive life. His last appearance on television was as a guest on an episode of This Is Your Life
O'Sullivan fell ill late in 2003. He is now living in Brinsworth House, a retirement home for actors and performers in England, run by the Entertainment Artistes Benevolent Fund In 2006. Man isn't it a shame that dudes like him are forgotten!! I think the British TV industry should remember their good ole ACTORS! Especially the ones that gave us so much cheer & laughter as well!! I know we have our Ronnie Barkers of the TV industry!
Lets RAISE a GLASS - One for the road for Mr O'Sullivan, man he should get an O.B.E for his services in TV!!!
Lets BIG up the TV Sitcom Hero's of the PAST!
Mr O'Sullivan and those fabulous, now unseen but never forgotten, entertainers, dudes from the past who put the celebrity culture of today to shame.
Man he's pretty cool DUDE!!! Watch the RE-RUNS on Cable lol.........
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