Former tennis player turned Hollywood film producer Ashok Amritraj has reason to celebrate. Having spent 25 years in filmmaking, he was recently in India to collaborate with English movie channel Pix from the Sony stable to kick off a reality show titled 'Gateway.'
Amritraj's new hunt: to discover the "hidden filmmaking talent in India." His firm Hyde Park Entertainment will act as a platform for this talent to go international.
In an interview with Indiantelevision.com's Ashwin Pinto, Amritraj shares his insight into the business of filmmaking in the West, his relationship with studios and the experience of working with top talent in the industry like Bruce Willis and Steve Martin.
Excerpts:
What opportunities does the burgeoning Indian media and entertainment scene offer for Hyde Park?
There are interesting opportunities in a growing industry. My business is in Hollywood first and foremost. But I have always felt a great affection and affinity for the country where I grew up. This year is the 25th anniversary of my being in Hollywood and I have made over 95 movies. It felt like the time was right to come back and do something here. |
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How did the idea for 'Gateway' come about?
Pix was interested and so we started to evolve the whole idea. The concept got bigger and better. We are excited about seeing 'Gateway' come to fruition. |
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In the US Mark Burnett and Steven Spielberg did a film-based reality show On The Lot which didn't fare as well as had been expected. What went wrong and how confident are you that 'Gateway' will take off?
However, the way of getting there and the tasks that they go through the elimination process is completely different. In one way it is close to The Apprentice as I will act as a mentor. In another way it is also close to Project Greenlight, which was done by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon.
There are different things being done. Our show is very India centric. It is for Indians. The aim is to make the path of a talented Indian filmmaker to Hollywood easier. We are looking to provide a platform for a young fresh Indian director to showcase his/her talent on the world stage. He/she is guaranteed a distribution of his movies between Sony and Hyde Park Entertainment. |
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What brought you and Pix together?
Money is available from a myriad of sources like hedge funds. However stories, talented and original storywriters are hard to find. When you do an initiative like Gateway you could find an extraordinary talent like an Ang Lee or an Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu. |
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What are you looking for in candidates?
You also need abilities like how to handle actors, how to work with creativity, how to formulate a story, how to keep a producer happy. As you put all these pieces together and add to that a personality that can work, you try to frame the whole picture. |
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Are you looking at other television projects? |
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Last year you had mentioned that Hyde Park was looking at a JV with an Indian animation firm. Has anything happened on this front? |
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In general what does Hyde Park look for in a project before giving the go ahead?
Secondly you look at the distribution paradigm and you look at who will want to watch this kind of a film. The distribution team gets involved and lets us know what will work and where. Then we get a casting director to tell us things like a certain project will only work if Brad Pitt is involved or it will only work with Kevin Bacon. All these pieces are put together which is why it comes down to only three to four films. |
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When you work with a big star like Steve Martin on Shopgirl how much of a collaborative process is it?
The areas where I am very personally involved is developing the screenplay to a point where I as a producer am happy with it. I am closely involved with getting the principal cast and the director. Then I get hands on post-production. During the production period the director runs the project.
We start with storyboards. So you have the movie laid out before you pretty much. We know where the camera angles are, where the locations are. We then do a read through with the whole cast. Sometimes we take a complicated scene from a camera point of view and computerise it. For me the post-production process in terms of the cutting, sound and music becomes very critical. |
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Could you talk about some of your favourite experiences of working with creative talent?
I did Bandits with Bruce Willis, Billy Bon Thornton and Cate Blanchett. That was a dynamic experience as was working with Anjelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas on Original Sin. All these actors are extraordinarily professional. They arrive on time and treat their craft as a business. They are very disciplined which results in success. |
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As a producer when you have a film like Bandits with more than one big star, how much of a challenge is it to deal with egos? |
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How did a tennis player from India like you get accepted in Hollywood?
I got lucky in 1984. I met a young chap who was a limousine driver. I met him again in 1990 at the Cannes Film Festival. He said that out of 800 photographs he had sent, only I had responded. The person was Jean Claude Van Damme and we made Double Impact. Then people in the industry found messages that I had called two years earlier. They got back to me and things started to roll. |
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You have been making films for two decades now. What is the biggest change you have noticed in the industry?
The digital revolution is amazing. You just have to look at what George Lucas did with Star Wars. A more recent film 300 was shot against a green screen. It is an exciting time to launch Gateway as directors today have more tools at their fingertips. |
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Would you say that filmmaking has become more democratised?
You do not have to be the son or daughter of someone famous to enter filmmaking. You don't need to have a huge film background to get into it. You need talent, vision and creativity. Gateway is a democratisation of filmmaking. |
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Are new forms of distribution like VoD making it easier for a film producer to recover costs? It is another revenue stream. But I agree with guys like Scorcese and Tarantino that a film has to make money theatrically if it is to be anything on video or video on demand. |
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When you started out you focussed on action and comedy. Are you looking to branch out further in terms of genres?
We just released Premonition with Sandra Bullock. We will release Death Sentence which is a gritty action film. It is not a 'shoot them up' film and I believe it will make audiences think a lot. It is about an ordinary man being put in an extraordinary position and to what extent he would go. It stars Kevin Bacon and Kelly Preston. |
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You co-produce films with different studios. How would you describe your relationship with them? |
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How does the Bollywood system compare with Hollywood in terms of creativity and professionalism? |
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Are films like the Oscar winner Crash a sign that Hollywood is becoming more multi-cultural now compared to the early 1980s? |
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Do you feel that there is a lack of respect for IPR in bollywood? |
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Why can't India have a global film like what China is doing with films like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon? |
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Finally how much of a threat do you feel new forms of entertainment like gaming will be to films five years down the road? |