Memoir
With a View
Ismail
Merchant comes across as a charming raconteur
Feb. 10
issue - The Indian half of Merchant Ivory Productions got his
start in a scene worthy of one of the duo’s opulent period
films. Ismail Merchant was only 13 when Bollywood starlet Nimmi
invited him to the Bombay premiere of her first picture, “Barsaat.”
AS THEY ARRIVED
in her green convertible Cadillac, the crowd showered them with
thousands of golden marigolds. “It seemed so magical—like
the movies themselves,” writes Merchant in “My Passage
From India” ( Viking Studio ), a slim, jovial memoir. “I
can remember thinking, ‘If this is what the film world is,
I want to be a part of it’.”
Merchant has
been ever since. He neglected his studies at St. Xavier’s
Jesuit College at Bombay University, preferring to stage flamboyant
productions. While a graduate student at New York University’s
business school in the late 1950s, he spent most of his energy
hustling diplomats, bankers and entertainment folks, trying to
raise film funding as well as his profile. Then Merchant met James
Ivory, a young Oregon-born director. They went for coffee at the
Right Bank on Madison Avenue. And, as Merchant proudly writes
in the book—twice—there will soon be a plaque commemorating
that meeting. Merchant recalls listening attentively as Ivory
talked about film. Ivory remembers Merchant’s jumping up
to make repeated calls on the coffee shop’s pay phone,
even borrowing a dime when he ran out of money.
After reading “My Passage From India,” it’s easier to believe
Ivory’s recollection than Merchant’s. In this entertaining
collection of anecdotes, studded with famous names and illustrated
with candid snapshots, Merchant comes across as a slick but charming
operator who will do whatever it takes to get what he wants. And
it appears that what he has wanted from that marigold moment forward
was fame. He managed to hold the gala premiere of the first Merchant
Ivory film, “The Householder,” at the American Embassy
in New Delhi, where he sat with U.S. Ambassador John Kenneth Galbraith,
Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi.
Later, after “Room With a View” and “Howard’s
End” became huge hits, he writes about how thrilled he was
that “Merchant Ivory” had become an adjective to
describe sumptuous, meticulous period films.
Not that
Merchant comes off as a braggart. From his opening recollections
of his mischievous boyhood in Bombay to tales of his on-set,
home-cooked-curry
parties, Merchant is a generous, engaging raconteur. His grounding
comes from the artists who most influenced him. In addition to
Ivory, Merchant struck up a friendship with Ruth Prawer Jhabvala,
the German-born author who has penned most of their screenplays
and who, until her association with the pair, “regarded
film people as time wasters and, quite possibly, charlatans,” Merchant
writes.
But
he reserves his deepest admiration for the legendary Indian director
Satyajit Ray, who helped edit the first Merchant Ivory film
and
scored several others. Throughout the book, he heaps praise on
Ray’s work. He also recounts how in 1992 he personally lobbied
the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to award Ray a
lifetime-achievement Oscar, and oversaw the rerelease of Ray’s
greatest films. It was a rightful homage to the community that
sparked his passion for filmmaking. Merchant may have left India
to find fame, but he returned to it to find humility.
© 2003 Newsweek, Inc.
MY PASSAGE
FROM INDIA
by Ismail
Merchant
Viking Studio; ISBN: 0-670-03163-1
On-Sale: November 25, 2002
Price:$35.00; Pages:160
For more
information or to schedule an interview, please contact:
Gretchen Koss, Director of Viking Studio Publicity at 212-366-2440
gkoss@penguinputnam.com
