INT: So I wanted to ask about just now you're working with American Actors and how is that for you? I mean... 

MN: For MISSISSIPPI MASALA? [INT: Yeah, yeah.] Firstly, again MISSISSIPPI MASALA really came out of my own thinking and desiring, so I was asking people to come into my world, this very unseen world of interaction or storytelling between the Asian and the African world in, in North America, so… And you know, I knew that as--anyway, so and Denzel [Denzel Washington] was a key to that for me, because I wanted very much, I loved him in QUEEN & COUNTRY [FOR QUEEN AND COUNTRY], his first film. And I just thought he would be great for this. And that was rocky and, you know, interesting to get him. But you see, I always tell people like the power of doing good work is that he had seen SALAAM BOMBAY! and he just wanted to meet me too, whatever I might have been, that film, you know. And then he also said to me in our first meeting that he knew that he would never get a tale like this of an Asian and African interracial sort of romance. He said, "That, I just haven't seen it," you know. And that intrigued him. But I think the confidence that he saw in SALAAM BOMBAY! obviously wanted him to open this door, 'cause he was already on the rise when I was trying to reach him, you know. And then he won an Oscar like a month before, you know, for GLORY a month before we really had locked the deal, you know? So it was quite nerve-wracking, but I was not unconfident about it, you know. I remember I used to smoke those days, only during casting sessions. And I took Denzel out to the plaza for a meeting, and I said, "Do you mind if I smoke?" Those days you could, and he said, "Hey, it's your lungs." And it was... I'll not forget that, so I was chugging away, pitching him, you know? And consequently stopped smoking, but we remain friends ever since. We recently met at The Hollywood Reporter's Director Roundtable just like last month and it's wonderful to see him also become such a Director, you know? Anyway, so yes, once it was daunting, usually I just, during the shoot it was quite seamless, you know, to really see a star at his work, you know? Like he makes it all feel so effortless. And Spike Lee who was a dear friend used to say, "Hey Mira, you're not gonna get his shirt off." I said, "I'm not interested in his shirt off." And one day I came to the garage scene where he was under the car and he had to fix something, you know, that was the situation. And there he was with his shirt off, and I said, "Hey Denzel, I was told that I couldn't even ask for that," and he just laughed and you know. But he was very happy during the making of MISSISSIPPI MASALA. And he would do things like that…

MN: But one day when I was not feeling, 'cause I made MISSISSIPPI MASALA while I was myself in the sort of stupor of first love. I had recently fallen in love with my husband, who is a Ugandan professor, so it was like distance and not always together and all of this. So I was in that stupor, literally. And I knew what it felt like and I had to create that on screen. And Denzel [Denzel Washington] was just marvelous as an effortless sort of mechanic or a carpet cleaner or a son or a brother, but when it came to the love stuff, I wasn't feeling it. And I definitely know that it is now or never time in movies, you know? And that I definitely had to rev myself up. It was a scene where they were going to be prancing about in the cotton fields in Mississippi, the ending. And we were, he was in his trailer right by the cotton fields, and I had to psych myself up like, "I'm gonna talk to this incredible Actor, you know, about making me feel weak-kneed." You know, how... like I have to do that. And I went in to the trailer, I was definitely had a spiel and I had to make sure it came out right. And I said, "Denzel, this is what I need to feel. And this is how it is. And I need that total vulnerability because that's going to let me in." And I said, "Just in case," I didn't let him answer, he was looking at me skeptically like, "Oh my god, these, you know, women," you know? And I said, "Just in case," you know, I have two older brothers, so I had to always sing for my supper all life, you know, and deserve my audience, as they would say. So I said, "Just in case you think I'm just some schmaltzy woman, you know, asking you for this, let me tell you that the female audience in this marketplace is going to like scream when you give them this. When you give me this." And that hit and he said, "Ah-ha. Now you're talking." You know, like that hit him. And I tell you that, that I had to psych up to say. But then the result is still scorching. You know, I went to the theaters when the film was showing; it was just insane. It was interactive. [INT: Yeah, people were screaming, right?] People were screaming, you know? And they screamed for many months in many different countries, and it was great. So anyway, it's lovely to remember and you have to keep remembering that you've got to state what you want, and you've got to find a way. Whatever the way, you know. There is no one-way. And yoga teaches me the art of resistance and surrender. Like if this way is not working, you've got to find another way. The way is not to say, "There is no way."

INT: What do you do if Actors don't have chemistry? How do you, like-- 

MN: It's death. I've had that too. And I've had that in the middle of 16th Century India, in the middle of Central India where there were no phones and you can't replace anyone and whatever. [INT: What did you do?] So you have to look at the Actor's strength, and you have to shift the thing, unfortunately sometimes, to mine that strength, and to protect the Actor from what he or she cannot do. That's what it is. It's what my friend would call checks and balances. You've got to see where the weight is higher, and go for it and minimize the pain. And then you have to protect the hell out of them in the editing. And create a type of alchemy that may or may not have been there. [INT: Isn't that interesting? I always say editing is an act of love, you know?] It's truly a protection thing. You know, you can recreate so much. And then you've also got to get over your own problem, in the sense that I used to really have problems with this Actor, and I didn't even want to see the rushes of a scene because I thought, "No, I can't." You know? And I cut the whole thing and I previewed the whole thing. And I realized with all the protection we had done, or whatever we had done, that the audience was loving him. [INT: Wow. That's amazing.] And so I had to go back to the drawing board and look at what I didn't even see, you know, to restore. So it's, the craft of film as a great one, you know, in terms of how you can constantly, you know, create a tapestry that can serve you better. And you can't give up too easily. Yeah. [INT: Yeah, absolutely.]

INT: Okay, let's move on to THE PEREZ FAMILY. So that's your first big studio film and it's also your first director-for-hire, right? How did the process differ for you, even pre-production and production differ from projects that you initiate? 

MN: Yeah, you know, THE PEREZ FAMILY was offered to me by Tommy Rothman [Thomas Rothman] who was just starting Fox Searchlight. And you know, I responded to the novel because it was about this sort of magic realist state of exile between Cuba and Miami. And I liked the story, and I related to it, and I also have always been fascinated with Cuba. And I got to go there and actually constructed the whole, wanted to shoot there and etcetera. So you know, it was pleasant in the sense that I could get into this realm of the magic realist Latin American fiction, also, that I had loved and so on. And it was pretty smooth sailing with shooting with the studio, except for the casting process, which was a big pressure to definitely cast, you know, commercially savvy Actors and especially Actresses. And I remember having to fight for my friend Anjelica Huston, whom I wanted. And I wanted, you know, and then... so that was… But I didn't feel, I must say, compromised because I loved every Actor, you know, from Alfred Molina to Marisa Tomei to people that I had asked to be in it, you know? I did love that process. But when, you know, at the end of shooting, Tom Rothman left for something else. I think he left to—sorry--create Fox Searchlight and it was a Samuel Goldwyn project before. So I was left with the next regime and that's a orphaned place to be, and wasn't very helpful at all during the post and the distribution. So that was very, actually, not exciting at all to work with Sam Goldwyn and to be at the mercy of his meanderings. But you know, the process of making the film was good, but you know, it was tampered with in a pretty deep way, although I think we captured the spirit and the lusciousness and the desire to live life in the Cuban fashion that I love.

INT: Okay, “The New York Times” praised KAMA SUTRA: A TALE OF LOVE for its concentration on sensual detail. And creating the illusion that the audience could almost smell the wafting incense. How do you work with your key collaborators from the screenwriting to the editors to fashion this world that involves the audience's senses? You know, like your Production Designer and your Set Decorator? 

MN: Well, you know I really come from an extraordinarily ancient and refined culture. And in India we have centuries of thinking and thought on aesthetics, for instance. And Kama Sutra is much less a book of a pop-up sexual positions, as it is a way to live life, which engages all senses. That is what it is to be kama sutric. So at that time, from the 11th century, 16th century, all that time, you know, there were real, there are incredible ancient books about aesthetics alone, called “Atharvaveda”, where every color is almost designed to mean something. So lime green is the sort of coming of spring, and a ruby red is about lust, and you know, everything has a code and a meaning. And our paintings are based on that, our clothing is based on that, it's amazing. So in KAMA SUTRA, Mark Friedberg the Production Designer and a dear friend and I, we decided I wanted to go to that first. So actually that way the film is very kama sutric. It actually has you enter into this sensual universe, which was at that time taught to our people. You know? [INT: But you had to then teach it to him, he had to learn that?] Yes, yes, yes. And he also taught me, but you know, so it was based on those principles. And we kept that world and that's an extraordinary world. You know, of color, of Earth, of natural things, with you know, bursts of color. That's the real, for me, a big joy of making cinema is to... because the art form of the cinema, it encompasses every art form. So from painting to color to costuming to music to you know, it all is about creating a world that you are inviting the audience into, but a world, in this case, of the Kama Sutra, that has its own principles. So we followed those principles. [INT: Was it your first time working with Mark?] Yes. No, no, Mark did PEREZ FAMILY. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, he's really talented. And also we, yeah, have a great thing going. But and then his Set Decorator, Stephanie Carroll has been my Production Designer pretty much ever since with the exception of one or two films. And she's terrific, she just did QUEEN OF KATWE with me. And she's again, it's this extraordinary blend of looking at the reality of things, how to heighten it, but based on what there is, and also, of course, a great skill. Yeah. So that was KAMA SUTRA, we did that in every element of it, from music to clothing to design. [INT: An ancient and refined culture, I love that.]

INT: Okay so, your critically acclaimed film MONSOON WEDDING was--[MN: And commercially.]--and commercially, huge, was pitched as an American style independent film made in India. 20 days. [MN: No.] You had 20-day shoot it says, no? [MN: No, 30 days. Yeah.] Well that, 30 days is still-- [MN: Still very little.] And a pretty small budget, right? So what challenges did you face as a Director/Producer with that film? And how did you overcome it? 

MN: You know, MONSOON WEDDING was born out of the premise and the challenge, how to make something out of nothing. And that was kind of a dogma related question that was being asked in those times, you know, about 15 years ago. I was very inspired by FESTEN and the dogma inspired films coming out of Denmark. And I had by then made several bigger budget films, 10 million, 15 million, 20 million, and I wanted to see whether I could, for myself, return to how I began, which is under a million bucks a film that would be equally visually inventive and freewheeling and challenging and not pedestrian. And I was teaching this mantra, how to make something out of nothing. I was living in South Africa at the time, and teaching in the townships. And this idea of your imagination is bigger than what you might have in your wallet, you know, and how to do that, how to tell that story. And I asked myself whether I could, you know, do the same.

MN: And I had in the meantime, I always make a lot of short films in the course of every year. They are short fiction films or sometimes, very rarely, short documentaries. And that year, the year 2000, I made a film called THE LAUGHING CLUB OF INDIA, which was shot in the monsoon with a handheld camera, my friend Adam Bartos shooting. And it was about this absurdist phenomenon that was taking over India, about people who get together every morning at seven AM in public places to laugh daily, and who take laughter seriously. And I was not particularly in a humor-filled mood those days. I was depressed; I had returned eight million bucks for a film that I did not want to suddenly make, and I was just ugh. And I decided to make a documentary on this. Anyway, made this film, which was oddly moving because people who aspire to laugh have always come from a state of despair, I found. And you know, and that style of making that film in the monsoon with old movie songs and in this freewheeling manner, was the genesis of MONSOON WEDDING, the film. And my, I was teaching at Columbia film school at the time, here in Columbia University, and my smartest student was Sabrina Dhawan, who was 10 years younger than me, from my city of Delhi, and we started cooking up this idea of--there was a very successful Indian commercial film in those days, about a 21 song wedding movie, and we said, "Let's make a reality check version," you know, and decided to come up with this plot that kept growing to become five plots on love. And then she wrote MONSOON WEDDING as a screenplay for her course. And I, meanwhile, went to Cannes without a screenplay, with just my idea of making a multilayered film of a family in my home, in Delhi, you know, for a million dollars. That was my pitch. You know, today's India globalizing madness, UPSTAIRS, DOWNSTAIRS, Altman-esque, and that's what I'm doing. And I went to 18 investors in Cannes, I slept on various people's offices and floors and you know, hadn't had a hotel room. And every one of them 18 people said yes. Who would say no to a million dollar film at that point? Anyway, I chose one person, Jonathan Sehring of IFC, you know? And then I started to make... Then the screenplay was finished, and then sculpted, and then I cast half my family and this legendary Actor, Naseeruddin Shah, who plays the father, who's--I've always wanted to work with, and centered the family around him. And went to a friend's house, and it was made with great assurance, but with no money. I mean with one million dollars and 30-day shoot, and a very complicated plot at the end of it, was five subplots, you know. But we rehearsed everything in advance. We set this house and we rehearsed everything in advance, so we had did the blocking a week before shooting began because when we started shooting, we were shooting like television--eight pages a day--but refusing for it to be television. It had to be visually, you know, taking risks and linking these worlds and Declan Quinn was such an amazing, is such an amazing Cinematographer, and you know. But that energy, we didn't even have money to print the rushes and look at them. So when I came back to New York I discovered that energy we had captured as a result of this. It was really quite fantastic. But I didn't, I still thought of it as an intimate family flick, 'til the very end, 'til I showed it at Venice, you know. Or at Cannes. Because I didn't, I still thought of it as a small thing, you know.

INT: And then what was that experience like, when you realized... 

MN: It was amazing. It was amazing, because it's so much fun this film, and so deeply wrenching as well, you know. And it was cathartic, really. People were dancing in the aisles from Italy to god knows, Denmark, and India more interestingly for me. And it just kept playing and playing. It ran, it broke box office records here at the Paris Theatre; it just didn't stop. And then it was that film that has often been called an antidepressant, that Sam Cohn, my agent at the time, now passed away, the great man who told me, "Mira, you should think of making a musical of Monsoon Wedding." Because I--[INT: Which now you are.] Which, it took me nine years, I listened to him and I started it at that time, developing the songs and developing the--reworking of it with my essentially Sabrina Dhawan, who wrote the screenplay and a great Indian composer called Vishal Bhardwaj. And now nine, 10 years later, literally, we are opening next month in Berkeley, and then coming to Broadway, so. Sort of coming back full circle. You know, starting at the stage and also coming back to the stage, sort of 40 years later. So I'm very happy and also, you know, slightly daunted but happily so to do this. Because again, I think you know, I'm the one to do it, in the sense of... I've, without realizing it, sort of become a bridge, you know, of bringing my worlds now crossing two or three continents of Africa and Asia and all of that, to this Northern world, but without pandering. You know, without explaining, but without… just asking to have that dialogue, rather than to make a schism of us, you know. [INT: It's amazing.] Yeah.

INT: Let's talk about Declan Quinn. You've collaborated with him on many films, including MONSOON WEDDING and RELUCTANT FUNDAMENTALIST, in which you chose to use a handheld camera. [MN: Sometimes.] So how do you guys work together on your vision? And what's the key to your successful collaboration? 

MN: Well Declan and I are a little like soulmates, you know, like I call him my cinematic husband. And we actually practically born on the same day in the same year, weirdly enough. Anyway, I love how he sees and I love that we both kind of come also from a deep devotion to photography. I love how he moves the camera, and how he’s constantly, while knowing the classical form, has gone for the untraditional, you know, in framing, in entering universes, and there's also a lovely quality in Declan that does not judge, that observes without kind of judging, but also knowing from years of documentary work actually, from years of even news work, you know, where the story is told best. But with iconoclasm, you know. Anyway, we just, it's a beautiful shorthand. And I mean, I work with others as well, with great happiness, but I always end up missing Declan. And yeah, so I... what can I say? We work like, every film pretty much has its own antecedents, I bring together a book, I call it pretentiously, the manifesto, with images, with things he brings to me, similar images and references to light especially. And then we both create a kind of visual book of what the film is to be. And we both... sometimes we go, we never finished shot breakdown of a whole film before we started, but at least we do a third of the film. And in the process of doing that, two of us in a room somewhere else after all, everything is said and done and locations have been seen and whatever, to actually design the scene. And then we design the scene in a way that might have 17 shots, but when we come to the set and life is short, you get into like making the 17 six, the classic ways. Like that, you know, piece by piece, but always you know, not sinking into what I call the two plus two way, which is just join the dots and move on. But always like aspiring for something that gives at least us pleasure, you know. 'Cause nothing is more interesting than at least creating one frame that day that is like, "Wow," you know, "This is why it's all worth it." You know? That's what we, I go for.

INT: Do you like, how do you feel about using handheld versus kind of a more composed... 

MN: You know, it depends entirely on the style of the film, I mean I don't, you know, handheld for its own sake is never that interesting. With MONSOON WEDDING, it was always handheld because A, we had to move very fast, and we had to link people without that classic shot over shoulder, this and that, I... that's not my way of working. I love to preempt the editing really in the shooting. But it's not a kinetic handheld, it's more a fly on the wall type handheld, but with a absolute point of view. Absolute point of view. And we had to do that actually in a very careful way, the less money you have, the more careful and assured you have to be. And we had to do that in a very careful way. In basically every scene of MONSOON WEDDING had 21 people in it. And yet we were telling a very focused story that had to be told very quickly and economically because we had to move on to the next strand. So how do you shoot the nieces eyes as the uncle who has abused her walks in? But at the same time as having a lot of merriment and a lot of you know, welcomes. But it has to be done. And so we would structure all this. But to get it done really quickly, the handheld worked; it helped a lot. So but if you look at THE NAMESAKE, which was all a different style, it was composed like a series of very classical still photographs. And for that I also had this fantastic collaboration with Fred Elmes [Frederick Elmes], who's a great master and, but he was also given to that kind of way of framing, which revered that, you know, classical photograph stills, almost the black and white, you know. Much more structured, you know. Like a photo album in a sense. But MONSOON WEDDING came out of a different kind of kinetic, mad, India on the cusp--globalizing, anything is possible kind of energy, you know. So it's a different energy that informs the camera of every story.

INT: Let's talk about the cast of the HBO film, HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS, which included Uma Thurman, Gena Rowlands, Juliette Lewis, and Ben Gazzara, all of whom received award nominations. [MN: Yes, and won! They won three Emmys and two Globes, yeah.] And... one Golden Globe, right? Can you talk about that? How did you work with these Actors from rehearsal to production to get their best work? 

MN: I mean, making a film for me is about, you know, inhabiting a world I want to inhabit. And I actually rarely think of stories with white folks in them. But the fact is, when I'm offered this kind of story, and HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS, which I was offered by my dear friend, Uma Thurman, while I was still mixing MONSOON WEDDING and refusing to think about anything else. But she just broke down that door and said, "Look Mira, please." And what I loved about the story of HYSTERICAL BLINDNESS was the truth and the blunt, brutal truth in the writing by this wonderful young playwright, Laura... oh god, I've forgotten her last name. Laura Cahill. Laura Cahill. And it was a play that Uma bought the rights of and asked me to make the film of, for HBO and Lydia Pilcher [Lydia Dean Pilcher], my usual Producer, you know, who also, of course, made it easier for me to accept. But when I decided to do it, you know, again I love to make things, you know, the craft, practice the craft, you know. So I thought, "Okay, it's in New York, I'll do it. I'm with my family, I like the bluntness, the brutality of it, it's a major challenge to have Uma Thurman, one of the great beauties of the world, play a character who can't get laid, which is the premise of the thing. Is that she's had every new man, had every man in this deadbeat town, and in walks a new guy whom she wants, and he doesn't want her. And you know, that whole cringeworthy quality of this desire to be loved or to be desired. And how… I, anyway, I had a way of telling it because it was a relationship equally about mother and daughter. And anyway, and I have been a child of John Cassavetes, like many, many people have of his films. And I thought, "Wow, okay, if I'm making this film, I'm going to work with the Actors I revere." And those were Gena Rowlands and Ben Gazzara. And everyone I asked said yes. [INT: That's amazing.] So we had 23 days to shoot it, and again, Colin Callender--it was for HBO, it was their first feature film. And HBO, it was Colin Callender at the time, and he didn't mess with me at all. I mean he just loved my filmmaking, so he just said, "You make it." And I didn't have any interference. And I made this very rough, but powerful... I mean these Actors they were fantastic. And Uma was just so brave. She reached to that dark space in her. Wow. And Juliette Lewis, whom I loved from all those films: NATURAL BORN KILLERS. All of the films earlier than that, you know. And she... so it was actually a beautiful 23 day trip, you know. And it's actually a deeply American film, you know, in the sense that it captures this desperate loneliness that... but in a sassy way I think, and in a heartbreaking way.

INT: We're at VANITY FAIR, I just want to know kind of what attracted you to writing an adaptation? What did you think you could bring to this story that's been adapted many times? 

MN: Right. Well, Focus Features finally distributed MONSOON WEDDING, and they came to me with VANITY FAIR. They... And “Vanity Fair” unknown to them, was one of my favorite novels growing up as a 16 year old. Because it was about a badass, it was about Becky Sharp. And I was in this convent school in India, and you know, reading about how a girl from within the system, bucked the system, or really the ultimate outsider of that kind of British social climbing hierarchy, you know, how... what are the sacrifi--what does she do to make it? You know? And but the beautiful thing about Thackeray's book, it's the 800-pound monster, is that he writes it with the eyes of an outsider. He was a man who was born and raised in India, and left India, was sent to England to be educated at the age of 14. And I've always believed in his writing, he sees his own society with the sort of lacerating eyes of an outsider as well. [INT: Interesting.] And somebody who relates the colony to the empire, because the only reason Becky Sharp could exist and be from the lowliest of origins in that society, classist society, was that that was a time that India, you know, England was getting rich off the exploits of India. And it was flooding the markets and people who were not of the class were being able to be upwardly mobile and that is the energy that created a Becky Sharp to rise. So I wanted to tell it with that empire and colony, you know, access, which actually Thackeray wrote about. It's just that the various other versions of VANITY FAIR were not interested in that, they were interested in simply the girl who went from rags to riches and her downfall. And I was interested in context.

INT: Do you think that… Give me a second. I kind of want to ask you if you feel that being a woman made a difference with that film? And kind of with many films. Do you think that, people ask me that a lot. [MN: Yeah.] Kind of the female gaze question, you know? Do you want water or... If you could just talk about that briefly--if it's interesting. 

MN: You know I aspire for complexity in my work, the complexity of life and the unpredictability of it. I really... we all know that there's no black and white, you know, we all know that actually it's in the shades of grey, now a sullied word, that real drama and humanity lies. And so I always aspire to have that complexity in all my characters. And I really believe that men and women can both aspire for that complexity. But for me, the circus of life, the fact that a whole world, an ensemble makes a world, firstly I always believe that my films are more like circuses, that they're not really often about just the leading lady and the leading man, it's about everyone, what I call the prismatic universe. Everyone matters to everyone else. Phiona Mutesi in QUEEN OF KATWE is not a champion who suddenly, a lotus who came out of mud, you know? The mud and the street and the family, you know, and the teacher, most of all, and the mother, everyone makes a champion, you know. And that's also how we live in most parts of the African continent, you know. So that holistic view, what I call the prismatic view, is what interests me. And I think, of course, as a woman, I really cannot make a character, a female character, especially, who has given up on life. I just can't do it. In “Reluctant Fundamentalist”, in Mohsin Hamid's brilliant novel that I took years to make into a film, the initial girlfriend, the white girlfriend that this guy falls in love with, you know, walks into the water and disappears as a kind of pallid defeatist, you know. I actually can't make that character, so I changed her into this questioning, folly-ridden artist, you know. But so that's what I go for, you know, and even in Becky Sharp rising, I saw so much also of myself in her because she was the ultimate outsider, who didn't sink to becoming one of them as she wanted to be one of them. She still retained her edge. But she tried to navigate and sometimes tried to... lost her mind, you know. And that's interesting you know, to me than some flag bearer, you know. So that's what I go for. I think men and women can do it, but as somebody who is very strongly female and very proud and relieved to be so, I certainly, you know, aspire to capture that fun. But I would say the same with any male character. You know, life is not about cardboard, you know. And it is our work as Directors to make that cardboard be disappearing. [INT: Absolutely.]

INT: How did you work with the Production Designer? On VANITY FAIR, how did you work with the Production Designer, Maria Djurkovic--[MN: Djurkovic.]--and the Costume Designer? 

MN: Yeah. You know, firstly I wanted to... VANITY FAIR was largely set in England, and I wanted to very much capture that cinéma vérité style of the foul smelling, you know, filthy streets of London from which mansions happened and you know, sort of cleanliness that you'd never see on the streets. That kind of unpretty period picture is something I wanted to do because that's where also what it was like, and that's also where Becky came from, you know. Maria Djurkovic has, is steeped in the knowledge of working in England and also comes from a kind of Czech, you know, Eastern European edgy look in, so that attracted me. And I love her aesthetic. Beatrix Pasztor [Beatrix Aruna Pasztor] was somebody who's a friend and a dear, an amazing artist who also is Hungarian and from another place looking at this place. Her eye caught mine in the movie EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, where she dressed Uma in such a brilliant kind of inventive, handmade, feathers, before boho-chic or any of that was ever invented, you know? She just has an eye of kind of making style out of found objects that is so cool. And again, with “Vanity Fair”, Thackeray himself was a fashionista, with a complete fashion plate who spent hours and literally pages in “Vanity Fair”, the novel, describing the brocaded waistcoat of Joss, this English character who returns from India who's plumed like a peacock and whatever. You know, the tapestries, the paisleys, the embroideries, the azures, the incredible jewel-like silks. These were, I mean, unseen by English pale eyes before they came to India, and this was what was lusted for in England, you know, at the empire from the colony. And so that was definitely the information that Becky and all of these characters would wear these, you know, Indian colors in a way. And I thought Beatrix with her outsider/insider eye would just take that and run with it. And she sure did, I mean it was extraordinarily memorable, you know, these jewel colors, you know, in the middle of her filthy England. [INT: I'm remembering it now, it's very, it really sticks out in my mind.]

INT: VANITY FAIR and AMELIA are a couple of your higher budget films. Discuss, like, the challenges and benefits of having a high budget as compared to the benefits of working in independent, you know, independently produced films? 

MN: Well, you know, I enjoy being a team player. I enjoy being a part of a group, because filmmaking is that collaborative. Of course with a studio film, it's the illusion, you know, it's an illusion to think that it is independent. You know, it is about being that team player. And it depends so much on who your team is, you know? With VANITY FAIR, Focus Features and James Schamus and a very kind of highbrow, wonderful crowd who love complexity, who love politics in this kind of storytelling. And I did not have any, you know, resistance to making this particular vision come true. With AMELIA, this was a film that I resisted because I was making SHANTARAM at the time, a big film with Warner Bros. and Johnny Depp, for at least a year and a half at the same time, so I had turned down AMELIA. And then at the last minute, like two, three weeks before we started shooting SHANTARAM, the Writers Guild went on strike, and all pencils down, and Johnny eventually took another film, and that project died after a year and a half of putting it together. And at that moment, AMELIA and the Producers of AMELIA came to see me and asked me to reconsider, and Hilary Swank came to see me, who was going to play AMELIA. And she's a knockout; I mean she's such an amazing Actor, and also a really terrific human being. And to work again with an artist like herself, it was intriguing. But Amelia's life then became intriguing because she was a woman who refused to, you know, who not only broke literally every ceiling, but also had this attitude, you know, that she lived, she did what she did for the fun of it. And I thought that was great. Anyway, so I... but mostly I have to say that, you know, it's the adrenaline of just about to shoot a big feature film, and then it's taken away, and I began to get more privy to the fact, "Okay, let me do this other one," which was really not originating from my insides, but it was interesting to try and make a kind of portrait of an independent woman. But then as soon as I signed up with this independent film that was fully financed by one man, they sold it to the studios, just like again, a couple of weeks before shooting. And that, again, meant I had to either get out or compromise with their notion of casting. And that was a, I almost left the film before I shot the film because they... actually, I had cast David Strathairn, whom I had adored for years. And they asked me to cast Richard Gere. And so it changed from a companion piece to a love story. And because that's the expectation, really, then you see Richard Gere. And so, and this was another, you know, dance with Hollywood that then commenced. So it was not exactly... it was a sort of folly, you know, of the film. And but the flying and her--Hilary and Richard, I mean, I loved working with them all, but it sort of changed from the fire that elicited the film to something else. I'm being delightfully blunt, but I suppose I just die anyway, so. [INT: No, I mean I want you to talk about because it is--] This is the DGA, man. [INT: Yeah. This is the DGA, and there are lots of differences between doing big, you know, studio films and doing independent films.] That being one of them. [INT: And that's one of them, you know?] Yep.

INT: Okay, let's talk about the visual style for THE NAMESAKE, which takes place over 30 years. [MN: Yeah.] And how this shooting compared to your previous films, MONSOON WEDDING and VANITY FAIR? 

MN: You know, THE NAMESAKE visually really is exactly what I wanted it to be, and that is very hard for a Director to say at the end of everything. It's an absolute kind of almost a Joseph Cornell, jewel of a film, thanks to Fred Elmes [Frederick Elmes], the great Cinematographer of BLUE VELVET and several masterpieces. But Fred and I really saw eye-to-eye on this idea of creating THE NAMESAKE as a series of almost crystalline still photographs, almost black and white photographs. You know, set both first in an older Bengal in Calcutta, and then of course to the cold and the harshness of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which we filmed in New York City here. And it was not at all about being kinetic or being anything, it was like almost observing a series of vintage pictures without the sepia, without the kind of... with a modernity, you know, especially. So we, you know... and Bengal is an extraordinarily rich and beautiful state. And of course Bengali women are reputed forever and the clothing, everything makes a meaning. You know, so it's sort of the red and white cottons of the morning weddings, and the mansions that were ripped, you know, sort of influenced deeply by the English at the time, so these old decayed mansions with marble walls and frescoed something, and you know, a sort of older era that was just bang in the middle of a cacophonous modern Indian marketplace now. You know, that type of juxtaposition of all the layers that make an urban city. And especially Calcutta, which is a city I've grown up in on my childhood, and it's an amazing, almost a gothic city. Very London in parts. But they have, Calcutta is known for its great metal bridges, the Howrah Bridge especially. And when I saw... And of course, “The Namesake” in Jhumpa Lahiri's hands is a story of exile: A couple who come from Calcutta to come to study in New York and immigrants and who have never, you know, seen snow and who struggle, that whole thing. And I am a child both of Calcutta and New York City. And when I, I live next to the George Washington Bridge, I see the Queensboro Bridge, I see these bridges, and this graffiti, and these sort of salaam to both politics and art in and alive in both cities. And when I started to look visually at how these are the commonalities, you know, visually, then that became THE NAMESAKE feeling. You know, how literally Ashima, the girl who comes as a young mail order bride really, to New York looks outside the Queensboro Bridge and in the metal girders sees the Howrah Bridge of her childhood and her parents who must be thinking of her. It became the metaphor of exile, of living between worlds, the bridges alone. So once I got that illusion of how to blend the state of being of Calcutta and New York City, it became the visual sort of cement of the whole film. But really it was that, and it was Fred's cinematography and understanding how to capture that. Because cinema really lends itself beautifully to capturing exile. You know, you can look outside your window, and instead of the Hudson River, see your garden. That's what happens. And that was how we made THE NAMESAKE. [INT: It's amazing when you can say that a film comes out almost exactly, you know, the way that you intended it.] Yes. [INT: It's not that many times I've been able to say that, but I know exactly that...] Yes, it's... no, me neither. [INT: It's a great feeling.]

INT: Talk about your work with your Editor, Allyson Johnson [Allyson C. Johnson]? 

MN: Yeah. My earliest Editor has been Barry Alexander Brown, who also cut the latest film, QUEEN OF KATWE. And he was a great, is a great master and teacher to me of how to create cinema and rhythm, especially with music. And he, Barry Brown introduced me to Allyson Johnson, who then cut MONSOON WEDDING for me, and again, on a wing and a prayer and pretty beautifully, very beautifully and never, you know, has the same instinct with music, especially. And I asked her to do VANITY FAIR after that. We moved to England together. And several films really. And Allyson, you know, like Barry also has this ability of having great confidence and economy of how to tell a tale. Because for me rigor and that economy, but it's also, it's about rhythm. It's about an intuitive sense of rhythm, and both Allyson and Barry really are steeped in that rhythm. And they just really know everything to make the story richer with every moment. And it's just hassle free, it's like this sort of ruthless cutting, that's what I love, you know? I'm not attached really, and how to create, like we were talking about the alchemy of two Actors who don't have chemistry, that is in the Editor's hands, and in the Director's hands.