Director Albert Brooks and his production team worked closely with the Indian government prepping the stunning locations in Delhi and Agra for three months prior to shooting LOOKING FOR COMEDY IN THE MUSLIM WORLD. They wanted to capture India as it really was in 2005, a modern India, which is not often seen in Western movies. From the beginning of the process Brooks was “thrilled that India is one of the big stars of the movie.”
The director and his producing team were granted unprecedented access to mosques, temples, and monuments. Many of these precious locations had never opened their doors for a film crew before, including the sacred Taj Mahal.
The film shot at the Taj Mahal for two days under strict regulations. One of them was that tourism had to continue as usual. So the crew had to integrate people passing by into its daily work and into the plan for the scene.
“It was a great challenge having 800 people a foot away from your lens staring into the camera,” says Brooks. “We had to keep the illusion that a movie is going on despite all the on-lookers.”
Brooks and the crew devised a strategy in which they formed a moving human daisy chain comprised of their own extras who would move as the camera moved. The production even recruited some members of the Indian army who were tourists watching from the sidelines to help accomplish this. Says Brooks, “I was worried for a couple of hours that we were not going to get what we needed. And then I kept thinking how lucky we were to be filming at the Taj Mahal at all.” Finally, after many takes, they got one with no bystanders looking into the camera.
Shooting in a country as densely populated as India was complicated. Brooks jokes that it wasn’t like Los Angeles where you could shut down Wilshire Blvd. at rush hour. In India there were no street closures or block lock-ups to help secure a location. “You can’t stop life in India,” says producer Herb Nanas. “Whether it is people—or in some extreme cases, cows, elephants or monkeys—moving through your shot, we had to incorporate them into the scene and embrace the uniquely crowded environment.”
Adds production designer Stephen Altman, “From the get go you couldn’t fight or control what was happening around you like you can when you are shooting on a Hollywood back-lot. So the only choice was to embrace the surroundings, and as a result we achieved the realism of India that Albert wanted all along.” Part of the challenge was capturing the vibrancy of the Indian culture on film. “I knew once I arrived in Delhi that the color palate for the film’s costumes would continue to change as our environments changed,” says costume designer Deborah Everton. “India’s cities are so rich in color from the women’s saris, to the men’s pagris (turbans), to the women’s chunis (long scarves)…. Our costume design became just a small part of what was already out there. It all merged together so beautifully.”
As is the case with all productions, only more so here, the crew had to be ready for enormous changes at the last minute. “When you shoot in India, even if you have approved permits and plans and all systems are a go, things can change at any minute,” says executive producer JoAnn Perritano. “You can’t prepare for it. Change is inevitable and became part of your day.”
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