'American Chai' draws huge crowd

HOLLYWOOD: Director Anuraj Mehta was pleasantly surprised when his American Chai drew an audience of well over 500 college-age Indian Americans at its first public showing as part of the American Cinematheque film series at the Egyptian Theatre here. Only weeks earlier, at the Slamdance Festival in Park City, Utah, which screens films by first-time directors while the Sundance Film Festival is having its annual event, his American Chai won the Audience Award for Best Film.Even then the film attracted audiences of no more than 200 at a time, "and there were hardly any Indian people in the audience, maybe just a handful," Mehta confided to India-West. "So it was really encouraging that people of all different backgrounds liked the movie." What was even more encouraging was the size of the turnout for the film''s first public showing. "In fact, the American Cinematheque people told us it was the highest turnout they''ve ever had for a Slamdance movie," he added. The theme of the film, pursuing one''s dream, is embodied in the character of Sureel, played by Mehta''s brother Aalok, a college student who, despite his father''s insistence that he study to become a doctor, secretly goes his own way in hopes of one day making his name as a musician. Aalok composed the entire film score but it was collaborator Jack Bowden Faulkner "who really fleshed out a lot of Aalok''s ideas," Mehta said, adding that there is a strong possibility a CD will be released. As a musician, Sureel leans toward "fusion," weaving raga-like passages on the sitar into a Western melody line. In singing the film''s main song toward the end of the film, Aalok''s vocal style at times reminds one of Michael Franks, a jazz stylist popular in the ''70s. "He''s also gotten a lot of George Michael references, which he is not a 100 percent fond of," Mehta chuckled. For the role of the father, a part that is crucial to the film, Mehta succeeded in casting Bollywood film veteran Paresh Rawal, who at the time of filming was touring the United States with Khel, a Hindi version of Peter Shaeffer''s play, Sleuth. "We were lucky to get him, because he liked the script and we didn''t have to pay for his visa," Mehta laughed. Both Sheetal Seth, who played the love interest Maya, and Aasif Manvi, who played Aalok''s friend Engineer Sam, appeared in the popular Desi film ABCD and, it seems, are on a roll in terms of their acting careers. This coming spring, Sheetal is scheduled to appear in an NBC Television Network film, and Manvi is currently on location in Trinidad filming Ismail Merchant''s Mystic Masseur, based on the critically acclaimed V.S. Naipaul novel. His formative years spent in Cherry Hill, N.J., and, like Steven Speilberg, so enamored with film that he and his friends made their own small movies, Mehta ended up graduating from Rutgers University in 1995 with a degree in business. The university "didn''t have much of a cinema program, so they wouldn''t let me major in it, (even though) I pretty much took every cinema class they had," Mehta recounted. Eager to pursue a career in film, Mehta moved to Los Angeles and worked for a number of producers, "but I was constantly writing the whole time and sold a couple of scripts to independent producers that ended up not being made," he said. But selling the scripts gave him enough money to allow him to devote full-time to his writing and in 1999 he spent three months shaping and revising American Chai until he had a script he liked. The first rule of story-telling is to write what you know, but American Chai is not autobiographical. Unlike Sureel, "my parents have been very supportive," Mehta said. "But a lot of the issues in the story I''ve dealt with personally. And there was a bit of a dual life outside of the house." Mehta''s main concern now is landing a distribution deal. "A lot of the people who came to the screening were not the decision-makers, so now we''re in the process of showing it to their bosses," he said. Meanwhile, for his next film project, "I have a bunch of ideas, and I''m ready to dive into writing another script," he admitted, "but I''m waiting to see where I''m going to end up with this film first to give me an idea of which project is the best for me to go for." (India-West)