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My Passage from India:
A Filmaker's Journey from Bombay to Hollywood and Beyond
My Passage from India is
a fascinating look at the Bombay film industry-called
Bollywood-from the 1950s through today, and how Holly- and Bollywood have intersected
through Merchant's film career. Merchant amusingly recounts how his passion for
movies was born in the streets of Bombay. He details his precocious wanderings
from London to New York, where he first encountered his lifetime collaborator,
James Ivory, and raised money for his first short film, and ultimately to Hollywood.
Merchant lovingly recalls the circumstances of the movies he's shot in India,
the Western stars he cast-and entertained-from James Mason to Jeanne Moreau to
Vivien Leigh to Greta Scacchi, and the vast obstacles that his home country often
presented-along with the movie magic that was the frequent result of his efforts.
With seventy-five photographs and a fabulous narrative, My Passage from India
is a vivid memoir and colorful account of the lasting impact India has had on
the thing Ismail Merchant does best: filmmaking.
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Ismail
Merchant's Paris: Filming and Feasting in France
Film,
food, and cooking are Ismail Merchant's great passions. And
nowhere are these passions more intertwined than in France,
where Merchant has made eight films, among them Surviving
Picasso and A Soldier's Daughter Never Cries. In this treat
for film buffs and food lovers, illustrated throughout with
color photographs, Merchant serves up hilarious vignettes
from his filmmaking days in France-starring Anthony Hopkins,
Emma Thompson, Vanessa Redgrave, Isabelle Adjani, and Paul
Newman, among many others-as well as mouth-watering stories
about the many memorable French meals he's prepared and enjoyed.
To top it all off, he presents his 40 favorite French recipes,
from culinary masterworks created by famed four-star chefs
to actress Jeanne Moreau's pte de pomme.
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Ismail Merchant's Passionate Meals:
The New Indian Cuisine for Fearless Cooks and Adventurous Eaters
Featuring over two hundred Indian-inspired recipes adapted
for Western cooks, Ismail Merchant's Passionate Meals takes
readers on an unforgettable culinary journey. From refreshing
and delicious appetizers like Cucumber Raita and spicy vegetable
fritters to meat, poultry, and seafood entrees that show the
author at his most creative, these tempting recipes also lend
exciting new dimensions to American staples like veal, turkey,
and even hamburgers.
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Ismail Merchant's Florence: Filming
and Feasting in Tuscany
Ismail Merchant's lively account of the filming of the hugely
successful A Room with a View is really a song in praise
of the Tuscan table. Through vivid prose and extraordinary
photographs, Merchant enables the reader to fully experience
Tuscan cuisine—whether dining at Florence's famous
Il Cavallino restaurant or in the stately Villa Maiano, whether
enjoying a picnic spread out on a hillside or sampling the
fruit and vegetables fresh from the farms that give Tuscan
cooking its incomparable quality.
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The Proprietor: The Screenplay and
Story behind the Film
Unique among film books, Ismail Merchant's
The Proprietor not only includes the screenplay, it also
shows the creative
and practical process in close-up. In finding material for
his European-American directorial debut, Merchant wanted "extraordinary,
unbelievable things to happen" through the seemingly
random events of everyday life such as: a meeting with the
great French film actress Jeanne Moreau; a magnificent apartment
in Paris, which was to become Merchant's own home; and the
intricacies of the traditional French property auction. As
the script developed with writers Jean-Marie Besset and George
Trow, the story grew to become one about a seminal writer
of the '60s who realizes that she no longer recognizes the
world she helped invent. With the incomparable Moreau, the
international cast also stars Sean Young, Sam Waterston,
Nell Carter, Austin Pendleton, Marc Tissot, Jean-Pierre Aumont,
Pierre Vaneck, and Charlotte de Turckheim. Included here
are hilarious details from the production such as how Merchant
impersonated the Maharaja of Jodhpur to gain access to a
hotel and how, unable to find a suitable Parisian apartment,
an entire scene was suddenly shifted onto a barge in the
middle of the Seine. With a foreword by Moreau, lavish illustrations,
screenplay, synopsis, and a special section on the making
of the film, The Proprietor reveals some of the secrets of
the acclaimed Merchant Ivory working method. It also shows
how, despite the rigors of making an important artistic statement
today, the final result can live happily ever after.
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