Shooting stars

It's over a month now, and each morning we are 8216;treated8217; to newspaper reports of yet another episode on the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie story.

It8217;s over a month now, and each morning we are 8216;treated8217; to newspaper reports of yet another episode on the Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie story. The celebrity pair was first accused of making themselves unavailable to the press despite the fact that the cameras followed them around like their shadows. Then we were fed almost hourly bits of information on what the celebrity couple were up to, right down to the point when their security guards were involved in a slanging match outside a Mumbai school last week. This daily soap threatens to continue until the unit packs up and leaves the country.

Today most big-budget and even mid-budget Bollywood films have at least one foreign locale sequence thrown in by way of value addition. There is an on-going exodus of film crews from India travelling to places on the map that were earlier unheard of. Bollywood filmmakers actually prefer to shoot abroad, while Hollywood filmmakers often seem to find our part of the world irresistibly exotic.

All this reminds me of the afternoon we spent at a wayside cafe in Interlaken, while touring Switzerland a few months ago. It was a beautiful, sunny day and the sky was dotted with para-gliders. Like gigantic multi-hued butterflies, they would land, one by one, on a large open field across the road. The cafes were full of people, most of them intently watching the graceful landings.

Suddenly we noticed an Indian film crew on the pavement across the road. They were shooting a song sequence, with the gliders behind them. The main actors, in outlandish outfits, traipsed some distance towards the field. Leave alone the crowds, no passers-by so much as glanced at them. With a sense of bonhomie we crossed over and spoke with the director. They were all well-known Kannada film artistes. The stars were almost relieved to meet us and get some recognition at last!

A few minutes later we left the place. The shooting continued undisturbed. Interlaken as a locale first made its appearance in Indian films some 45 years ago, when Raj Kapoor came up with Sangam. Since then several films have been shot here. Over the years, the Swiss have become nonchalant. But we continue to be as obsessed as ever about film stars of every kind 8212; both Indian and Western.