The last time I saw Gurinder Chadha was in 1994. It was springtime, in New York City, and we were both 34, and we were both getting our feet wet, in different ways. Chadha had just made her first feature film, "Bhaji on the Beach," which had been well received in England. I was a freelance writer who, after years of being a committed generalist, was beginning to write about film for the New York Times.
Chadha, who was born in Kenya but was raised and still lived in London, was in town to promote her film, and the Times had assigned me to write a brief profile of her for the Arts & Leisure section -- a sure harbinger of a young filmmaker's promise. And sure enough, "Bhaji on the Beach," an ensemble comedy that was strongly rooted in Chadha's upbringing in West London's largely Punjabi Southall neighborhood, performed respectably well at the box office. Along the way it earned such encouraging words as "quietly charming" and "delightfully original" from critics.
After an early success, an increasingly frustrated Chadha almost gave up on movies until scoring with "Beckham."
(Juana Arias -- The Washington Post)
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The next time I saw Gurinder Chadha was just last week, when she came though Washington on yet another press tour, this time for "Bride & Prejudice," her extravagant, Bollywood-inspired musical take on Jane Austen's "Pride and Prejudice." She had changed very little -- she possessed the same generous figure, the same quick laugh and the same command presence that is so crucial to success as an Army general, a CEO or a movie director. But this time, the cheerful presence snuggling into an armchair for a chat at the Ritz-Carlton had the added distinction of being the most successful female director in England.
That title was bestowed upon Chadha with the phenomenal success of her last movie, "Bend It Like Beckham," an independent production that was made for about $7 million and went on to earn more than $30 million worldwide in theaters in 2002 and 2003. And on paper, the journey from gifted newbie to the top of her profession seems a straightforward one. But nearly a decade separated "Bhaji on the Beach" and "Bend It Like Beckham," and when Chadha and I start catching up on what happened in between, she reveals that the intervening years involved myriad false starts, setbacks and full stops.
"I couldn't get another movie made for love or money," Chadha recalls, after politely admitting she has no memory of me, our interview or the New York Times (she's just that successful). It's not as if Hollywood didn't come calling once "Bhaji" opened. "I was wooed, but I didn't understand the Hollywood system," she says. "So I'd get scripts sent to me and think, 'Well, this isn't very good.' Not knowing that you're supposed to go, 'Well, I like the idea but I'd rewrite the script.' I didn't understand that's what you're supposed to do. I was always brought up to think the script was sacrosanct!"
She decided, on her own, to adapt a Canadian novel about a Sri Lankan refugee but got no takers. She accepted a Bollywood producer's offer to make a British Bollywood movie, but that project went south after three weeks of filming.
Indeed, it seemed for a while that the most positive fallout from "Bhaji's" success was that, while on the festival circuit with that film in 1994, she met her future husband, Paul Mayeda Berges. They were married in 1996.
"It was only because of Paul that I kept going," Chadha says. "I was ready to quit and just get a [television] job somewhere. It was just too hard. The only way I could survive trying to do movies was that I had a rent-controlled apartment. Had I had a mortgage and a family, there's no way I'd have the luxury of being freelance." In 1997 Chadha and Berges adapted Chitra Divakaruni's novel "The Mistress of Spices," again with no takers. In 1999 Chadha actually succeeded in making a film -- the family comedy "What's Cooking," which she wrote with Berges -- but though it was picked up by Trimark Pictures, it was dumped when that company was purchased by Lions Gate.
"I know there were times when she would get frustrated," Berges recalls from his London office. "We'd be driving in London and we'd pass a unit sign or someone filming on the street and she'd just want to kill herself, like, 'I made one film and it was well received -- why is it impossible to make another one?' . . . It was frustrating for her to have films she was interested in thought of as somehow noncommercial or for a very niche audience. Thank goodness 'Beckham' changed all that to a certain degree."
Ah, "Beckham." The movie that made British soccer star David Beckham a household name in America (before his marital problems with Victoria, the former Posh Spice); the movie that made Keira Knightley leading-lady-of-the-moment and Parminder Nagra a weekly presence on "ER"; the movie that smashed box office records in England; the movie that made Harvey Weinstein gnash his teeth that he hadn't picked it up for Miramax; the movie that made Chadha shelve, forever, any crazy ideas about quitting. Would it surprise the reader to learn just how close "Bend It Like Beckham" came to not being made?
After "What's Cooking" met its ignominious end, Chadha was furious. "I was just like, [forget] this [stuff]," she says, her language growing saltier as the memories flood back. "I said, 'Right, I'm going to have to sort this [stuff] out. . . . I'm going to write the most commercial movie I can for Britain. . . . It's going to have an Indian girl in the lead, but I'm going to make the most commercial movie that's possible for me to make."
Chadha co-wrote "Beckham" with Berges and Guljit Bindra (who provided the soccer expertise) in 2000, but it took two years for them to find the necessary financing. The final straw came when the U.K. Film Council, a government funding agency for British filmmakers, threatened to pass on "Beckham," which Chadha calls her "last lifeline."
After someone sent her the council's preliminary report -- which posited that soccer films never work and that the filmmaker would never be able to find an Indian girl who could kick a soccer ball like Beckham -- Chadha stormed into the office of John Woodward, the council's chief executive. "I was like a woman possessed," she recalls, laughing. "I said, 'John, I'm furious, you have to see me right now!' I said, 'John, this is [totally] racist; does this guy think Harrison Ford jumps out of helicopters? Of course we'll find a girl, that's what moviemaking is!' " And she was just getting started. "I said, 'You've got to back me here. I've been struggling for eight years now, I made this movie full of promise and not one of you [jerks] have given me a break. But every time you have a conference about how to get more diversity in filmmaking, you wheel me on to talk about it. I'm always on your panels about multicultural this and multicultural that. I'm the only bloody woman of color making feature films in this country after eight years. How shameful is that?' "
Woodward heard her out, Chadha says, and sent her home with a few suggested revisions in the script, which she made, turning it around over the weekend. The next week, the film council agreed to help fund the movie. "So now John firmly takes credit for the success of 'Beckham,' which went on to be the most successful British-made movie ever," Chadha says, laughing, "and quite right, too!"
If "Bend It Like Beckham" made stars of its two young leading ladies and breathed new life into Britain's film industry, it has more importantly given Chadha the opportunity to make "Bride & Prejudice," as well as her first big-budget, mainstream Hollywood movie, "I Dream of Jeannie," an $80 million blockbuster that Kate Hudson is rumored to be starring in. And, in a sweet instance of what goes around comes around, she is currently producing "The Mistress of Spices," which Berges will direct. Everything comes full circle, Gurinder Chadha will be the first to assure you -- just don't expect the circle to be composed of one smooth line.
