India?s Brad Pitt comes to Brampton: Director Anees Bazmee, right, decided to film Thank You in Ontario with leading man Akshay Kumar, left, and Sonam Kapoor, middle.
As the camera crane zooms in on the black Mercedes convertible parked on the cobblestone driveway of a mansion in Brampton, Ont., Bollywood director Anees Bazmee looks at the video monitor. "Move the car closer. Yes, right there," he yells in Hindi to the driver, before discussing the scene with his cinematographer.
A small crowd is gathered by the house's wrought-iron gates - family friends of homeowner Anil Ahluwalia. The men - most of them mustached, and sporting designer wear and dark sunglasses - scroll their BlackBerrys. The women, also dressed to impress, exchange the latest Bollywood gossip. All of them are waiting to get a photo with leading man Akshay Kumar, beloved for his martial-arts high kicks, slapstick routines and romantic dialogues, not to mention his gravelly baritone.
Manoeuvring her way around the entire scene, greeting everyone with a smile, is Mala Singh. The founder of Brampton-based South Asian Modelling Agency, better known as SAMA, she has helped cast local South Asian talent, as background dancers and actors, and in a few principal roles, for Thank You, the movie being shot in this city just northwest of Toronto. "The director is busy, but here's the lady of the house," Singh says as she pulls Rajni Ahluwalia out of the hubbub to meet me. "It's such a gorgeous house, perfect for this movie."
A big-budget film set to open in Canada next spring, Thank You features, alongside Kumar, such Bollywood celebrities as Sonam Kapoor, Suniel Shetty, Celina Jaitley, Bobby Deol, Rimi Sen and Irrfan Khan. It's the latest comedy from Bazmee, whose plots inevitably demand complete suspension of disbelief, involving as they do identity mix-ups and their ensuing romantic entanglements, along with the odd philandering husband thrown in for good measure.
Thank You is also the latest Bollywood movie to be completely set in Canada. In contrast to many American films, in which Toronto and Vancouver substitute for American cities, Canadian landscapes have recently played starring roles - as themselves - in such movies as Sirf Tum, Neal 'N' Nikki and Kismat Konnection. No longer anonymous backdrops for the elaborate song-and-dance dream sequences that are part of the Bollywood arsenal, snow-topped peaks in Calgary and misty sidewalks in Niagara Falls have been integral to those movies' storylines.
Of course, such Canadian settings still provide an escape from reality, and in fact, with Thank You, Bollywood idol Kumar is nodding to his other role as the Canadian Tourism Commission's ambassador for India. Bazmee, for one, can vouch for Kumar's persuasiveness. "Akshay was keen to shoot in Canada," says the director.
"I said, I will check it out. I really liked the locations, and the people were friendly. Canada is very picturesque," he added, noting that he was working hard to make it even more so. "It will look more beautiful than what it is, in the film."
The Bollywood-in-Canada trend certainly hasn't been hindered by the fact that several Canadian cities are also home to lots of aspiring Bollywood actors, happy to stand or dance in the background in exchange for an honorarium and a photo with their favourite star. It's all about bragging rights, explains SAMA's Singh.
When she cast models from her agency's roster for Bell Canada and TD Waterhouse advertisements, and for the Mike Myers and Jessica Alba movie, Love Guru, her talent was compensated handsomely. As both talent scout and fan, Singh is happy to see Indian films being shot on Canadian soil. "Two years ago, a boxing scene for [the Bollywood film] Apne was shot at the Living Arts Centre in Mississauga," she says. "They made an announcement on community-radio stations for seat fillers. Hundreds lined up. People just wanted a glimpse of [veteran star]Dharmendra."
An employee of Citizenship and Immigration Canada by day, Singh, through SAMA, has provided modelling talent for everything from community events to Bollywood megastar concerts at the Air Canada Centre. But it's her work on such film sets as 2008's Kismat Konnection that gets her feeling giddy. "I did everything for them - got them licences for locations, cellphones, long-distance calling cards," she says. "Every night I got the requirements. One night, they needed a Rastafarian band and blond girls. I was scrambling for people, but I did it."
For Thank You, Singh was asked to find attractive young women fluent in Hindi for a couple of scenes. Among those who fit the bill was Mehak Ahluwalia. A university graduate in the sciences, 21-year-old Ahluwalia had never acted before. But the shoot (which, as it happened, was at her uncle's Brampton house) sounded fun.
The scene entailed a flirtatious exchange between Ahluwalia and Shetty, interrupted by Jaitley playing Shetty's wife. Ahluwalia was given one line - and lots of encouragement. "The director acted the whole scene out for me, and Suniel Shetty told me how to say the lines, how to react." Even Jaitley, she says, was helpful. "I didn't think they would be so patient with me," she says.
Aware that her brief appearance may not make the final cut, Ahluwalia is circumspect about her big break. "I'm not going to brag about it," she says. "It was just about the experience for me. That was priceless."
Special to The Globe and Mail