It’s been a movie-full week.
Reason being my son finished his ICSE boards, my daughter recovered from an attack of viral flu, and one of my best friends had a much-needed break between schedules of the film he’s working on (the film’s directed by another mutual friend, John Mathew Mathan of Sarfarosh fame).
So the past week I saw a number of movies, mostly on DVD.
There was the very hilarious Harold And Kumar Go To Whitecastle. Did I mention this before? (Must read my own blog, if only to know what I’ve blabbered before. Anyway, if I have, then pardon the reprise.) It’s about what you’d expect from an American teen comedy: vulgar, obscene in parts, outrageous throughout, sentimental and schmaltzy, and very very funny.
What makes H&K a bit different and refreshing is the fact that it features two non-WASP protagonists, a Korean and an Indian. The Indian is played wonderfully well by Kalp Penn, whose full name is actually Kalpen Modi, and with the success of H&K, he becomes perhaps the only Indian actor to successfully headline a mainstream Hollywood movie.
He’s definitely one Modi who’s more welcome in the USA than the other one who got denied a visa!
If you want a good laugh, and your parents, kids and pets aren’t around to be offended, you could do worse than snorting for an hour or two with H&K. It’s a fun ride.
The Indian connection led us to Kal Penn’s earlier film, National Lampoon’s Van Wilder.
This one wasn’t half as much fun or one-third as funny as H&K, but it was worth taking in for Kalp Pen’s very charming send-up of an Indian exchange student desperate to lose his virginity.
Even the typically grating (and let’s face it, typically racist) Hollywood caricature of apna desis seemed less offensive and more amusing when sketched by Mr Modi.
This one’s worth keeping an eye on, and here’s hoping he finds better material than Van Wilder, or even H&K next time out of the stalls.
Then there was Flight of the Phoenix, a remake of a 1946 (or was it 1956?) film of the same name, the new one featuring Dennis Quaid and an ensemble cast playing a bunch of survivors who, um, survive a plane crash in the Gobi desert and have to build a new plane to get back to civilization.
It was a passable TP film, with excellent CGI effects for the storm and the crash - reminded me of The Aviator, because even in that film the plane crash stayed with me much longer than the rest of the film. See it if you want some thrills and chills but don’t expect anything gurreat, paaji.
The Final Cut starring Robin Williams was more promising. A science fiction film about ‘cutters’ who edit a person’s life story into a feature-length film it looked like a good serious whack at the age-old Luddite fear of technology taking over our lives.
I for one actually like Robin Williams doing serious roles - I thought he was marvellously creepy in Insomnia (playing the serial killer opposite a tired but still dependable Al Pacino) and in One Hour Photo (playing a serial killer opposite nobody) - and he’s as trusty as ever. But somehow the script disappears halfway through, alongwith most of the major characters, and the film sadly ends without any real climax, just a clever ‘ending’ which delivers nothing.
It reminded me of another thriller, Eye of the Beholder, which was such a wonderful ride - much, much better than The Final Cut, I hasten to add - and which featured wonderful performances (by Ashley Judd and Ewan McGregor) but crashlanded at the end, as if (and this is quite possible with independent films on tight schedules with even tighter budgets) the producer had pulled the plug and said, “Okay, that’s it, we’re out of time and money, so let’s wrap it up right here and now and call this the climax.”
I saw a couple other things but I’ll get back to you on that in a day or three.
Oh, and I Limewired a whole bunch of alt rock. Have you heard Smashing Pumpkins? They’re smashing! And Crash Test Dummies I like partly because their lead singer has that gravelly kind of voice like Matchbox 20’s Rob Thomas that’s lovely to listen to on a lazy Sunday morning.
But right now, I want to share with you this curiosity I found in my archives. It’s an obituary I wrote for spymeister Robert Ludlum a few years ago for The Indian Express, New Delhi.
Now, I haven’t read a Ludlum for years, but I can’t deny having really enjoyed his work, especially growing up and in my younger days.
Everytime I get in over my head in terms of work and deadlines and other pressures, I keep telling myself that I’ll take a vacation, go off somewhere to a resort hotel with a bunch of Ludlums and just read till I burn my eyes out.
(I don’t drink or smoke or do any other kind of stimulant so that’s the closest I come to living dangerously, apart from movies and music, sorry to be so boring, guys.)
The other writer I think of doing that with is Herge. I still have the whole bunch of Tintins and still re-read them every year or so.
But I still haven’t got around to redoing Ludlum’s oeuvre. I’ve been saying that for, like, ten or fifteen years, and I’m no spring chicken. Pushing 42 now, and there aren’t many vacations left to take before I get my final cut. So must get around to doing it sometime.
Before someone writes an obituary like this for me…
The Ludlum Identity
He woke in a strange room dressed in strange clothes with no recollection of anything. For a moment, he didn’t even remember his own name or identity.
He knew then that this was it. They were coming for him now, and this time there was no getting away. There was no place left to run anyway. He was tired of running, it was time to make a stand. So he sat on the bed and waited. And while he waited it all began to come back to him.
He had fled from New York city where he was born on May 25, 1927, to suburban New Jersey where he had grown up, just another normal average American kid. Baseball and bowling, bubblegum and prom night.
But after his father died in 1935, things changed. His mother sent him to one, then another private school, both in Connecticut. That was when he knew that he would be running all his life, and decided to make the most of it.
So he had tried acting. There was something about standing on a wooden stage in front of an audience and pretending to be strange men, other men, that was exciting. It helped him forget they were out there. That they might come at any time and take him back.
Acting was great. Like “running away to join the circus” as he told a reporter from The Chicago Tribune much later. In 1943, he got a role in the Broadway production of a play called “Junior Miss” and became a part of the show’s national touring company. More moving around. Good. Safer. From them.
Somewhere on the way, he passed through Detroit, got the bright idea that he should join the Royal Canadian Air Force, crossed over into Windsor, Ontario and applied but was turned down. “Too young,” was the reason given. But he knew the real reason: Them. In 1945, the Marines took him in, and he saw active duty in the South Pacific.
That was when he started writing. Just a log, really, an account of his experiences in combat. It was over 500 pages by the time he was discharged in San Francisco. But it was lost in the excitement of that night–or taken away for evidence. You know who.
He came back to the stage. Small parts in Broadway productions, more than 200 appearances in television dramas. Mostly as a lawyer or a homicidal killer. Because of his lean mean looks. But inside, he was less than mean, he was hungry for something more than just being told what to do, what to say, where to stand, the usual gripe of an actor’s life.
He turned producer, moving again, always moving. One step ahead of the piper. And them. Fort Lee, New Jersey. Paramus, New Jersey. Finally, he had had enough.
That was when it began. He taught himself to wake at 4.30 every morning, to scrawl 2,000 words or more (never less) on a yellow legal pad. To make up the stories that filled his mind. Not just stories, but things he knew were real, were happening all around him, to people like him. Big corporations, big governments, big people, tracking down, victimizing little people like himself.
Novels of paranoia, that’s what he liked to call them. Not thrillers, as the publicists labelled them later. Stories about individuals trying to deal with giant forces and systems.
The first publisher turned it down. The second took a chance on it. And on his next book. And the one after that. Meanwhile, he kept doing voiceover work for television commercials, just in case the writing thing fizzled out. He was the voice for Tuna Helper and Plunge bathroom cleaner, and other domestic miracles.
But the first two books both sold brilliantly, and the third book busted the bank. And that was it. After that, no more voiceovers, no more producing stage plays that nobody saw, no more bit parts playing serial killers in TV dramas.
He was Robert Ludlum, bestselling novelist.
And now, on this cool March morning in the first year of the new millennium, he was still Robert Ludlum. 73 years old. Author of 21 novels, every single one a New York Times Bestseller, an unbroken record for 30 years. 210 million copies sold in 32 languages and 40 countries.
His current bestseller was The Prometheus Deception. His previous one The Hades Factor was just out in paperback. It was the first in a series co-authored with different writers, called the Covert-One Series. The next title, The Cassandra Compact, co-authored with Philip Shelby, would be released on 15th May 2001.
There was a big Hollywood movie coming out too this year. An adaptation of his best-selling (and some said best) novel of all: The Bourne Identity. Currently under production by Universal Pictures, it starred Matt Damon. And if it did well, then Hollywood would want to make a whole lot of pictures from his books. And there were a lot of books.
Just look at them now, lined up on that shelf in reverse order, marching back through the years.
The Cassandra Complex (With Philip Shelby)
The Prometheus Deception
The Hades Factor (With Gayle Lynds)
The Matarese Countdown
The Apocalypse Watch
The Road to Omaha
The Bourne Ultimatum
The Icarus Agenda
The Bourne Supremacy
The Aquitaine Progression
The Parsifal Mosaic
The Bourne Identity
The Matarese Circle
The Gemini Contenders
The Holcroft Covenant
The Chancellor Manuscript
The Road to Gandolfo
The Rhinemann Exchange
The Cry of the Halidon
Trevayne
The Matlock Paper
The Osterman Weekend
The Scarlatti Inheritance
He got up to pick up one of them, his favourite, the one he had loved best because he had written it at white heat, never knowing what was going to happen on the next page. That was his only secret, to keep discovering page after page what happened next, and that was what kept his readers turning those pages too.
But before he could reach out and take the book, they came for him. They caught him in a vise around the heart. And laid him out on the bed. The hospital bed.
He went quickly and peacefully. His wife and grown children were well provided for. All his affairs were in order. Even his publishers would be pleased they had just signed him to the series, so the books could continue to appear years after his death.
And in any case, he had known that they would come sooner or later. No matter how far or how long he ran. He smiled a last smile. For Bourne. For Rhinemann. For Scarlatti. For Osterman. For Holcroft. For every last one of them.
And then he let the light fade from his eyes.
The last thought that flashed through his mind was: But who are they? And why do they want me?
And then he was gone.
The answer would have to remain a secret to the end.
Like a final twist at the close of one of his own stories.
