Thaindian News

By Subhash K. Jha
Mumbai, May 31 (IANS) Eva Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and Vivien Leigh… these are four legendary Hollywood beauties whom director Madhur Bhandarkar will use as reference points for Kareena Kapoor’s character in upcoming film “Heroine”.

And to make Kareena’s job easier, Bhandarkar has prepared a three-hour documentary on the quartet of Hollywood greats. But unfortunately he couldn’t get enough visual material on the classical Indian screen beauties to put into the documentary for Kareena’s reference.

“When I set out to put together a documentary chronicling the lives of the screen legends I was also simultaneously enhancing my own knowledge of them to make Kareena’s character of Mahi Khanna more rounded complete and contemporary,” Bhandarkar said.

In fact Bhandarkar has just returned from a trip to Singapore where he discovered loads of invaluable footage on Hollywood greats.

“For example, take Vivien Leigh. Her stormy relationship with Sir Laurence Olivier is so eventful, dramatic, passionate and romantic. Unfortunately there’s no valid and substantial footage on Madhubala or Meena Kumari revealing their relationship with Kishore Kumar and Kamal Amrohi respectively,” he said.

Bhandarkar was appalled to note the lack of visual or even written records on our screen legends.

“When a director wants to make a film about an Indian actor or about our movie industry where does he look for references? On the other hand there’s no dearth of material written and filmed on Hollywood’s icons.”

So for want of choice his documentary portrays only Hollywood actresses. But the filmmaker is keen that Kareena refer to Indian actresses too.

“I do want Kareena to refer back to our great actresses like Madhubala, Nargis and Nutan. But I can only brief her verbally on our screen legends. It’s really sad.”

But Kareena, who’s shooting with Shah Rukh Khan for “Ra.1″, will be able to watch Bhandarkar’s three-hour documentary only when she’s free in September-October.

“She’s shooting for ‘Ra.1′ and ‘Golmaal 3′. Once she’s done she will watch the documentary repeatedly. I’ve chosen footage that represents Eva Gardner, Liz Taylor and others most tellingly. Her character Mahi Khanna is an actress of today, not of yesteryears,” the director said.

The shooting of “Heroine” has been pushed to December, so that Kareena will have time to study the documentary put together by Bhandarkar carefully.

The director rules out rehearsals and worskshops to prepare Kareena for the big challenge. The only director who managed to get Kareena on the rehearsal route was Sudhir Mishra for her role in “Chameli”.