Sometimes an act of little significance goes a long way and paves way for something as large as life. All of us do these small gestures every day. It is only time that decides if we were right or wrong!!
An actress of yesteryears did something without realizing what she was giving us!!! Nimmi took a 13 year old to the premiere of Raj Kapoor film “Barsat” . The boy was so mesmerized by what he experienced that he kept standing in rain for the next 55 years!!! The seeds of making of Ismail Merchant, the film maker were sowed that day.
The Visionary
Who else will have a vision of making films in English using Indian cast? Those were the days when Peter Sellers films were banned from Indian cinemas!
Remember Peter Sellers?
It was en route to Cannes that Merchant met filmmaker Ivory. Merchant made several connections -- a skill that had been extremely beneficial in his career. Saeed Jaffery and his wife met him in New York. It was the Jaffreys who introduced Merchant to Ivory. Their first meeting was at the Right Bank, a coffee shop on Madison Avenue, located in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. A plaque will soon be erected at the site to mark the location where the Merchant Ivory partnership began.
The humble beginnings
He attended New York University where he earned a master’s degree in business administration. Merchant went on to produce more than 40 films, getting 31 Oscar nominations, including three for Best Picture. Merchant’s first film was The Creation of Woman, which was an official US entry in the Cannes Film Festival in 1961. The short film also earned an Academy Award nomination that year.
Leela Naidu worked with Shashi Kapoor in the first Indian movie he made, The House Holder (1963). Just before this what he first started with was a film that was like a docu drama. The financiers/distributors weren’t interested in the concept. Ismail, who had already signed Shashi Kapoor, was very upset.
Leela asked him if he had another script. Ismail asked her to think and tell him if they could make another film. Leela had just read this novel The Householder by Ruth Prawar Jhabvala and she mentioned it to him. The next thing, he was in Delhi meeting with Ruth for the rights. This actually started the Merchant-Ivory-Jhabvala association. The Householder was their first film together.
The film was shot in Daryaganj in Delhi in a real barsati not in a studio or sets. Actors were put up in a hotel nearby. He hired Subrata Mitra, Satyajit Ray’s director of photography. How he got him, no one knows. All ate food from the galli (lane).His films were simple and they were made on a very tight budget.
How long is the string of a shoe?
Stars have talked about how tough a producer Merchant was, how penny-wise he was and often quite late in paying actors and other artists. He did not spend money on himself. He lived for his films.
He had a knack of making films with virtually no money!! Actors seldom got paid in time if they got paid at all. Once Shashi Kapoor got upset and put his foot down. He refused to shoot till he got paid. He got paid promptly the next day. Shashi went home and gave money to his wife Jennifer. She said, ‘That is very good of him’. It was then that Shashi realized the money was borrowed from Jennifer.
Then there was the shoot of Heat and Dust in the early 1980s, when Merchant ran out of money. For weeks the cast and crew worked on the film in Hyderabad without pay. When the team moved to Kashmir, there was no money to pay the hotel bills. When the hotel impounded the film’s cameras and equipment he turned to Shashi, the star of the film, requesting him to act as a guarantor for the hotel bills. What choice did Shashi have?
Friends’ Friend
He had a number of friends who stood by him in his thick and thin. He always reciprocated with his good gestures. When Shashi lost Jennifer, Ismail would find how he is coping from sources close to him but without his knowledge. During Jennifer’s sickness Shashi was desperate for support and that means also financial support. One day Merchant went in quietly to the hospital and paid money to Shashi.
He was generous with his time and energy. He reached out to a lot of people that he knew -- celebrities and others. He truly believed in their cause. He even cooked for many at their events.
About his ability to stay connected with people, Merchant has said: ’’I think it is very important for people to know that the connections you make should never be forgotten. They are there, alive and kicking.’’
Salesmanship
Ismail Merchant was the public face of the famed trio that included James Ivory and Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. They won Oscars for such efforts as the adaptation of E M Forster’s A Room With A View, and Howard’s End (three Oscars apiece).
The two (Merchant and Ivory) went on to earn a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the longest partnership in independent cinema history.
Ivory is a very shy person, and he’d never have achieved what he achieved with Ismail. Ruth is also very shy. So, the energetic, go-getting face of this trio of talent was Ismail.
He had this magical power to convince people. Sir VS Naipaul, the Nobel laureate, is not an easy nut to crack when it comes to giving permission to film his stories. Ismail wanted to make a film on Mystic Masseur. Ismail called him and told him that he wanted to meet him. Naipaul said, ’Please don’t come and meet me. Your powers of persuasion are legendary. I will not be able to refuse you. You make the movie.’ He gave him permission over the phone.
Not every time the things worked for them. About their films some have said that their films usually have plots that float about aimlessly (Much of the blame for this rests with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, who wrote the scripts for 23 of the films.) Although their movies have cultural sophistication, they lack a parallel political fineness.
Master Cook
While growing up in Mumbai, Ismail Merchant seldom entered the family kitchen. Merchant ended his shootings for the day by offering a multi-course meal he would cook. He opened a restaurant in 1993, and published several books on travel and cuisine.
Once he was challenged to cook salmon (fish) the Indian way, and how he managed to do it with just about two or three ingredients. The challenge came from Paul Newman, the star of the film, who had received a huge salmon from a friend in Alaska. Newman said he would cook half, and Merchant should cook the other half.
Merchant found mustard, some black pepper, salt and oil. He rubbed the mustard and pepper on the salmon, sprinkled some salt and baked his portion while Newman used the black pepper and cooked his portion.
Newman asked him how could he call his preparation Indian. Merchant recalled with a hearty chuckle. ’’I told him I had prepared it the Bengali style”. Bengalis just cannot cook without mustard!
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