In all the films I have ever seen about Hollywood, when a director finishes shooting a movie, everyone on the set claps and cheers as if the movie had already won an Oscar. So I figured that showing parts of my movie to key investors would actually be a good idea. They could see the product and see how this wonderful venture was turning out. They might also continue to return my phone calls, but that's another matter.
We had finally finished production of a feature film,
My Bollywood Bride, about a young American novelist who falls in love with an Indian movie star and journeys to the subcontinent's film capital, Bollywood (located in Mumbai), to pursue her. We were hoping for a crossover hit that would resonate in both India and the West. We chose to shoot the movie in India, where we could afford a lot more movie for our dollar.
NOT SO FAST. Even so, the project had proven tricky to pull off for the small budget of about $1 million we had available. We needed to develop an interesting script with good cultural sensibilities. We needed to recruit the right actors for each role, then design and create realistic sets. We had no margin for error. The only way to recover from a major snafu would have been to restart the project.
In other words, it's much more difficult than my past career starting tech companies. In those efforts you can revise and fine-tune your product until customers are happy. But I was learning that a movie is like a mission to Mars. You either succeed wildly -- or you crash and burn. You have once chance to get it right, and that chance is probably your last.
After watching the production of the film, I thought we would just cut and paste the best scenes together, and end up with a great movie that we could market worldwide. The acting seemed very good, at least as realistic as any play I had seen. And the video clips that we replayed after shooting each scene seemed great. So, we were just about done, right?
POPCORN PANEL. Not so fast. I made the mistake of asking that the film's producer, Brad Listermann, put together a collection of the best scenes. I wanted to share them with my friends who had invested in this venture. After all, everyone felt ownership of this project, and while they weren't able to be in Mumbai to watch the shooting, I wanted them to see the wonderful job the director and actors had done.
I first realized that this wasn't a good idea when Ashok Rao, an investor and a friend, called to express his concerns with the film. Ashok had built four successful technology companies. He knew he was watching uncut versions of the scenes -- the equivalent of "alpha" software -- yet he was worried about the apparent "lack of chemistry" between the lovers in the film. Worse, he was afraid that the film would not "work" because of this. Another friend and investor, neurologist Dr. Daljit Buttar, thought the chemistry was good, but was concerned that the film "didn't seem refined". Another friend had reservations about the background music. Even my wife, Tavinder, commented that the scenes "did not look real", and that the "story did not flow". As I learned, everyone wants to be a movie critic!
Needless to say, these comments got me really worried. In a panic, I called our film's executive producer, Duncan Clark. Duncan had been the head of Columbia TriStar's international film division, and had managed the release of hundreds of films, including some of the biggest blockbusters. Duncan simply laughed and reminded me that we had not even started postproduction yet. We had only just recruited one of the top editors in Bollywood, Sanjay Sankla, who had worked on Bollywood blockbusters like
Kal Ho Na Ho, and
Kabhie Khushie Kabhi Gham (which are household names to Bollywood fans). And we were still in the process of selecting a music director. These talented craftsmen had not even started work on our project.
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