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Making a Movie in Mumbai
The wife of an independent film producer tells all
by Rosemary Stolzenberg
Mark Stolzenberg has been developing a $ 7million Feature Film Comedy called, “Maximum Fun” which takes place in India. Mark wrote the screenplay before it was trendy to shoot in India (pre Slum Dog and Speilberg in India) . The project is moving forward with great vigor and Mark hopes to go in to production in 2010. Mark and his wife Rosemary recently travelled to Mumbai to hold meetings and secure financing. Little did they know that they would be caught up in the Terror Attack in Mumbai…
With about three weeks' notice, I went to Mumbai, India, with Mark to meet with investors for his independent film, "Maximum Fun". We flew directly to Mumbai from New York, on a sixteen hour flight that left JFK Airport about 9:00PM, Friday, November 21st, and arrived in Mumbai about 10:00PM on Saturday the 22nd. It was the first time we had been to India.
Our hotel, the seven-year-old JW Marriott in Juhu, was on the beach with a beautiful pool area and a view of the Arabian Ocean from our room. At the hotel, and everywhere we went in India, people were helpful, pleasant and extremely gracious and hospitable. Juhu is a busy, bustling beach town with a crowded and lively nightlife. The weather was in the 90's, hot and not humid.
Our friend, Jayant, took us to great restaurants and hired a car service to take us to meetings throughout the week. Jayant had arranged for another friend to take me sightseeing later in the week, so I enjoyed riding around Mumbai and absorbed the city without taking a thousand pictures in the first few days (I took just a few hundred!). The real Taj Mahal was several hours away, so we decided that I would visit the Taj Mahal Hotel and the Gateway of India, with shopping at Colaba Causeway included, which was about an hour's drive to the south from Juhu.
The pool was gorgeous and I swam and sunned (just a little with much sunscreen and shade), while Mark met with film business people. Mark had been hooked up with Jayant through another contact and had been talking with him for two years before we met him in Mumbai. He connected Mark with other people and Mark also found contacts through the internet and networking with friends. One of his acting students at the New School told him that the Marriott is the place to go for film people. Until then, Mark had considered the Taj Mahal Hotel, because that's the most popular hotel for tourists. The Marriott's large lobby provided many comfortable areas for meetings, where Mark spent most of the first three days taking meetings.
Jayant took us to Mahesh Home Lunch, which was down the street from our hotel. After dinner, he got Mark a "pann" which is a digestive made up of a leaf with many different herbs added to it. The leaf is folded up and then you stick it in your mouth and chew. Mark ate several of these, but I only ate one at The Class, another local restaurant. The food in India was great, even better than Little India in NYC, although NY Indian is still pretty good in comparison.
While I was nervous about eating spicey food in India, most of the spicey stuff wasn't too spicey for me afterall. The funniest part was that on the flight to India, while eating a salad, I mistakenly popped a whole green chile into my mouth and crunched it up, thinking it was a fresh string bean! Yeah, it was extremely hot, and maybe that prepared me for the rest of the spiciness I encountered later in my trip.
Wednesday night, Mark and I were winding down watching television, when we first heard about the attacks in Colaba and the shooting of tourists at the Leopold Cafe. I said to Mark, "Well, I guess I won't be going shopping there tomorrow." We were twenty miles away from the main terrorist actions at the Taj Hotel and the Oberei Hotel. About an hour later, 11:00PM or so, Mark had gone down to the lobby to make some calls and there was a report of gunshots at the JW Marriott. I got out of bed and got dressed, packed a bag and expected the India army to knock on the door to evacuate us. Mark came back and said the army was guarding the hotel. We were up most of the night, but there was nothing going on in Juhu and I think the gunshot was a mistake by an army soldier or just a random, not-related incident. They reported that two boats with explosives had been picked up by the Indian Coast Guard, which is what worried me the most, since we were on the water.
I emailed people to let them know we were not near the action and I made a few calls to family. Some people called us to find out where we were.
The next morning, Thursday, the pool area was closed and a large tarp had been put up to sheild the area from the beach. Before this, hotel guests could go out a door to the beach, which we did do once to watch the sun set. We were approached on the beach to buy toys and pictures, and I did get henna from two girls and also a little purse. The water and beach were very dirty; offerings that locals floated to honor the dead littered the beach. They did do some clean-up, which I noticed from my room in the morning, but the water was not clean and the gray sand was very smelly.
I was a little upset about not being able to enjoy the sun and pool, but I soon became just grateful to be alive, not kidnapped or murdered, and I found a little group from Luxumbourg in the lobby to hang out with and chat. Their co-workers, doing business in Mumbai, had been stuck in their offices all night long. The hotel staff was on double shifts, because many people did not come to work that day and schools and colleges were closed because of the attacks. The Marriott was closed to outside visitors, which were many because of the six restaurants, the spa and the health club. When we asked about going outside the hotel, the staff tried to discourage us. Jayant called us and said it was quiet in most places in Mumbai, although the situation was getting worse in South Mumbai. The death toll kept climbing and the terrorists continued to throw fire bombs. There were hostages at the Taj and Oberei hotels.
Our flight was scheduled for Friday, late, actually 1:00AM Saturday, so we didn't try to leave earlier. Jayant came over for dinner Thursday evening and we enjoyed a quiet meal, followed by a nice stroll to a coffee shop. Without the attacks, the area would have been filled with traffic and people, but we walked through the streets without having to dodge rickshaws, people and bicycles.
Friday morning, Jayant picked us up. We went to the Otters Club, an ocean health club, for a meeting. We took a rickshaw to an editing studio to meet some of Jayant's colleagues. Another colleague who was making a Bollywood film had a dance studio, so we went there and watch part of a dance rehearsal. Mumbai seemed normal and quiet in our part of town. Mark & I ate dinner at the hotel and the car came to take us to the airport at 8:00PM. The army was funneling cars into the airport, but it didn't take too long. The airport was crowded, but nothing unusual was going on. Our passports were checked about ten times and we got the flight without incident. There were mostly Indian people on our Air India flight.
We arrived at JFK about 7:00AM after a sixteen hour flight. Mark was sleeping for awhile on the plane and woke up, asking me "How long do we have left?". "Nine hours!" I said, "You haven't been sleeping that long." They had a screen at each seat where you can watch television, listen to music, watch movies. On the plane, I watched "Ben Hur", classic Bollywood movies and some India television.
At our beach home in Coney Island, we enjoyed a welcome home party with a couple friends, then we ordered in some Mexican food. After eating and drinking, I went to sleep and Mark woke me up about midnight, sick from food poisoning, although he was concerned that he had gotten something in India and wanted to go to the hospital. I tended to him for awhile and we were convinced that it was the Mexican grilled shrimp salad that made him sick, so no hospital visit.
As time passes, we realize how fortunate we were on our trip. We didn't stay at the Taj Hotel and our hotel was too far away from the action to be involved in the attacks. The first few days of our trip went very well, with good meetings and nice weather. The people in India are wonderful and gracious. Mumbai is very interesting and it seemed like there was a great focus on the city before the attacks, with stories of "Slumdog Millionaire" and of the huge population there (twenty million people in Mumbai and forty percent of India's taxes come from this city).
Everyone we know was happy that we returned from India without any problems. We look forward to going back again and we have learned much about the film business in India and made wonderful connections there.