Thursday, November 22, 2007

Bolly Blog 23 - The Third American...

As I think I may have mentioned in earlier posts, part of the plot of "The Family Picture" is an American film critic who comes to India for a film festival and then loses his movie camera, which Ravi finds to make his movie.

Playing the role of the film critic is American actor, Joe Polhiemus. Joe did the same thing that Derth and I did, left the comfort of his home and flew half way around the world for this wild adventure...Since I knew how Joe was going to feel when he landed at 2:30AM, I decided it was best to meet Joe at the airport myself...

Sashi our Production Coordinator and Superman Man, accompanied me. We had to get up at 1AM in order to make it to the airport by 2:30. Then the wait began. You never know how long it will take for someone to get through Indian customs....
Sashi asleep on his feet...but prepared for the arrival!

Finally at 4:20 - Joe appeared. We were in the middle of a huge crowd but the sign worked!

We then drive Joe about an hour outside the city to the location for the American critic's Hollywood apartment. (We found a resort that looks like Los Angeles) This was very difficult, to find a place that feels like LA. Of course the only time we could shoot there was the morning of Joe's arrival, about 6 hours after he landed!

Joe and I talk as he has his first Indian breakfast.

By 10:00AM, Joe was working with Uma on his first scene.

Joe was a real trooper and all were impressed with his work with so little sleep!

We let Joe go home right after lunch, where he crashed for the night. The next day Joe accompanied us on a location scout to a Hyderabad movie theater. We got to check out a little bit of a Tollywood movie that was screening while we were there...Pretty silly slapstick stuff...the posters say it all...
Joe in front of a Tollywood poster...

Both Joe and I were taken with one actress who seems to put all of her acting performance into her lip....

Joe gets some acting pointers from Lip Girl!

The next couple of days Joe shot his scenes with Ravi and other's...


Joe is charming in the film and his final scene with Ravi is just lovely work...

Back in the real world, Joe lives in the Bay Area and he's not just an accomplished actor, he also works for the Stagebridge Theater Company, the oldest senior theater company in the US. There is a wonderful article about the company HERE-STAGEBRIDGE

And here is a link to the Stagebridge website. So happy to know that there is a place for us to go do theater when we are in our twilight years!

Joe has been doing his share of sight seeing as well and I think he feels like I do..that this was the experience of a lifetime!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice photos!!Thanks.

Unknown said...

Shannon, I just arrived home and it was a treat to read this blog... Thank you so much. It was nice to spend Indian Thanksgiving with you and Derth! Hope you survive the music shoot... by the way, that SNL sketch with Drew Barrymore was hysterical! And your youtube candy giving premiere! Bye!
- Joe