A Holiday and the Big 5 O

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so it's catch up time.

March 8th was Holi. It's a national holiday the celebrates the triumph of good over evil. It's also called the festival of colors. "The Festival of Colors? Why do they call it that," you ask. An excellent question with a simple answer. They spend the day throwing colored powder on each other and spraying each other with colored water with squirt guns. We celebrated the day before at work and this was the result.




The next day was even more fun.




The next Tuesday was my 50th birthday. If you had asked the list the places I had imagined spending my 50th birthday, India wouldn't have made the to 100. But here I was. I turned out to be a pretty good day. Dilip, the production manager on Dragons, came into the office and asked me if I wanted to join the team for dailies. I grunted something affirmative and followed him up. Dailies at Crest isn't like dailies at other studios Ive worked at. They don't look at shots, they go over the schedule. Ick! So I usually don't go to dailies. But he asked so I went. I followed him into the conference room and got a huge "Happy Birthday" followed by a decent rendition of Happy Birthday to You. There was a crazy huge flower arrangement and a cake.



Oh, and one more thing.



Yes that's icing on my face. I got the gentle version of the custom. They usually shove a whole piece of cake in your face and smear it all over.

There's something at work in this. Something in the culture. I just haven't figured what it is. Not that it matters. I had a great time both days.

Moooo!

I saw my first cow on the drive to work this morning. It was on one of the less crowded roads we take on our route to the studio. The cow was just hanging out on the side of the road, nudging a pile of trash with it's nose. I image it was looking for something to eat. We went by so quickly that I couldn't get my camera out. I should have it ready all the time, but I just feel like a rube doing that. I guess I am a rube, come to think of it.

The Following Film Has Been Edited For Television

I watched American Pie 2 on Indian tv this weekend. Kind of a sad way to spend my first weekend in Mumbai, but don't fret. I got out and saw the sights and got the sunburn. Last night I was just feeling a little worn out so I flipped on the set and there it was. I've seen it a few times already, so it was like a comfortable old friend. Just what I needed.

The interesting part was the way it was edited for tv over here. Parts of the movie I thought mostly harmless were completely cut out. Some of the more outrageous stuff made it through without a single trim. Occasionally, throughout the movie, a banner would scroll across the bottom of the screen telling you where to write and complain if something in the movie offended you.

The real mystery to me was how they handled the language. The f word was right out. No bleeps, jut cut out of the dialog. So were a few other words that would seem to be pretty obvious choices. The word that confused me was 'shit'. It's used in movies a lot these days from PG films on up to NC17 and beyond. There is a veritable fountain of shit pouring from the mouths of Hollywood's actors. Take that as you will.

When they broadcast American films in English here they subtitle them, which makes sense. But they subtitle them in English, which doesn't really makes sense to me, but whatever. This is where more editing comes in, albeit a different, and to my mind, bizarre form of editing. They replace some words in the subtitles. Not in the actual dialog, mind you, just in the subtitles. An onscreen damn becomes darn in the subtitles. Shit becomes crap. In the American Pie movies every tenth work is shit, so that's a lot of crap.

Now we finally come to the point. One of the characters in the movie is occasionally referred to as Shitbrick. How did they handle it in the subtitles? Wrong! They used Shitbrick. Wha-? I had always thought of it as two words, but they wrote it as one here and capitalized it, so that's what I'm going with. And maybe that's why they got away with it. Because it's used as a name instead of a swear word. I dunno. All I can say is, the next time I'm watching a movie in the US and I'm trying to fathom how the hell the MPAA came up with the rating, I'll just think of Shitbrick and smile.

A Night Out

Milind, Dilip and Vinod took me out for drinks and a bite to eat after work on Friday. When they asked me what I wanted to eat, I put my self in their hands. I told them I was up for anything. After the lunch we had, I was curious what Indian culinary wonders might await. What mysteries would be revealed? What do people in India do to unwind on Friday night? Apparently they go to Chili's. That's where we went. And it was only 2 blocks from my hotel. It was packed and people were waiting to get in. The Rolling Stones were playing in the background and sports were on the big screen TVs. It was...Chili's.

Not all was what it appeared to be, however. The sports, Cricket. The burgers, veggie. The queso and chips was good. The hot wings were okay if a little blah, surprising in a country that thrives on outrageously spicy cuisine. The nachos were frankly weird, covered in odd spices with, a bizarrely formal presentation. But the drinks were excellent and the company even better. We talked about things completely unrelated to work and an odd fork in the conversation led to a plan for Dilip and I to catch a Bollywood movie sometime after work next week. Score!

The evening ended fairly early, which was fine with me. It had been a long week and I was tired. 7 days earlier I had been in LA being told that my flight for Mumbai was leaving in 7 hours.

Ratatouille

I had my first meal in a nice India restaurant near the studio. Up to now I've been eating at the studio or at the hotel buffet. I was enjoying both, but now I may be ruined. It was the best Indian food I've ever had.

I was taken to lunch by 3 guys from the studio. Vinod, and Dilip both work at Crest. Milind actually works for Dreamworks in Bangalore. We had a grilled chicken appetizer followed by chicken tikka masala and shrimp tikka masala and shrimp fried rice. They call the shrimp prawns here by the way. I had naan with mine. The rest of the guys had roti. The food was amazing, but it was the little interlude we had during the meal that really made it for me.

We were eating when suddenly we heard some shouts and shrieks from the table next to us, which was big group. One guy jumped up and a waiter rushed over. They scrambled around a bit. Milind turned around to look and very casually said, "Is it a ratatouille?" Yes it was a little rat running around. They tried to catch it but it got away. Most of the other guests just glanced over the went back to their meals. No big deal. I laughed out loud. "Ratatouille?" I asked still chuckling. It turns out that Pixar's Ratatouille was very popular here so rats in restaurants are now sometimes called Ratatouille.

Keep in mind this was a nice place. Yet here we are, a little rat running around and a waiter and one of the guests trying to track it down.

Yes, I'm in India.