An Interview With Gurinder Chadha, Director of Gibson's New "Empress" Ad
by Kate Richardson

Golden Globe–nominated, feature film director and writer Gurinder Chadha is the director of Gibson Guitar’s new “Only a Gibson is Good Enough” Empress commercial. Gurinder, who employed the same vivid colors and off-beat humor that made her films such as Bend It Like Beckham and Bride & Prejudice international box office hits, spoke to Gibson from her home in the U.K., where she is currently finishing the script for an upcoming Paramount feature.

KR: How did you get involved in the Gibson commercial?

GC: I got called up by Tom Korsan, who runs Great Guns in LA. I hadn’t really done commercials before; I’d always been busy with features and writing scripts. He’d seen Bride & Prejudice and thought the look might work for the Gibson ad. So, he sent me an e-mail and it just so happened I was free. I really liked it! I got it immediately. I knew that I would be able to bring more production value to it, if it was done with the people I knew in India and done my way.

KR: The commercial was shot at ND Studios in Mumbai, India. Had you shot there before?

GC: I hadn’t shot at that particular studio before, but I’ve shot at other studios in India. I had worked with Nitin Desai, who is one of the big production designers in India. It is his studio.

KR: How did directing a commercial compare to directing a feature film?

GC: For me it was fantastic! Once we’d given the brief to the designer to start building the palace set, I walked on and said, “Oh, this is great,” because I only had to worry about one set. Normally in a movie, I’m like, “Well this one is all right, now how are the other ten getting on?” So, for me it was a luxury to focus on what effectively was one scene as opposed to 50, 60, or 70 in a movie. So, I liked that, but I also liked the intensity of all the energy that went into that one scene. In a feature you want to put in as much intensity as you can, but then you have to move onto the next scene. Once you’ve gotten what you want, you have to move on. It felt good to be able to focus really deeply on the one storyline and one narrative and then tell that story from many different angles.

KR: Do you have any memorable or funny stories from the shoot?

GC: We had all these extras come in, and we asked them, “Well what do you do?” They would say, “We eat fire” or “We do this” or “We do that,” and we’d say, “OK great.” With the fire eaters, we did our shot and then afterwards one of the guys came back and wanted to be in it again. He said, “One of the other things I do is set fire to myself, and I can be standing here in front of the camera.” (laughs) I was like, “OK, thank you, maybe not.”

The other thing that was kind of scary was the way that fire eaters work is they basically put petrol in their mouths and when it is time to do the flame, they spurt it out. Filming-wise it is really tricky because they have to be standing by ready for action before they let the petrol out. That is quite a long moment. The camera has got to go, the action has to be ready, all the people. Even 10 seconds is long. So on one occasion, we were trying to do it quickly, but by mistake the guy actually swallowed some petrol. I felt so bad for this guy. He went off and then he came back 20 minutes later, saying he was ready to do it again. I said, “No, no, no, are you OK?” He said, “I’m fine. I’ve had some Coke to drink, so I’m all right now.” Apparently if you ever drink petrol, if you drink some Coke, you’ll feel all right (laughs).

KR: You are a successful director, writer, and producer. Which of these roles do you prefer?

GC: Directing, although I have gotten into writing more and more. I must say there is something quite fabulous about sitting down at your computer and having a really good day writing. You sit down at 10 and you get up at 6, and there are three or four scenes that you’ve written, and you can’t stop smiling because you just love that scene. If you come up with a good line, that feeling is so great! I think that sort of stuff is great when you’re writing. It comes out of nowhere and then it’s there, and it exists, and it makes you smile. And if it makes you smile, chances are it will make other people smile.

I do enjoy directing as well. There is something wonderful about having 100-plus people all there working with you to create this one thing; each person who is really good at their own job, working together to make it happen.

KR: Tell me about your approach on casting. The three actors you cast in Bend It Like Beckham—Parminder Nagra (ER), Keira Knightly (Pirates of the Caribbean), and Jonathan Rhys Meyers (Golden Globe-winner for Elvis, Mission Impossible III)—were then relatively unknown, and these were huge breakout roles for them.

GC: I think casting is about instinct really. Someone walks in the room and you know that that person is right. In the Gibson ad, casting the Emperor and Empress, from the moment I first saw them, when they were presented to me with lots of other people, I immediately knew that these were the two people that I would choose. But the way you do commercials is a little different and everyone is involved in the approval process. The choices were sent to the agency and Gibson. I was glad that everyone agreed to the actors that I thought would be right.

KR: Do you or your husband play any instruments?

GC: Neither of us do, and that’s sad, but I don’t leave home without my iPod. If anyone was to see my iPod, they would be shocked to see the range of music and artists I have on there and my play lists. I spend hours making all my own play lists up for different moods and different times.

KR: Who are you listening to?

GC: I play Bruce Springsteen and then I play Bally Sagoo, who you won’t have heard of. Bally is a British producer of a lot of Bhangra fusion music. You’ll see the evidence of my music in my films. Like in Bend It Like Beckham, for example—every single song on that soundtrack is a song from my record collection. It’s all my own songs. So I thought, ‘I love this song, let’s see if this works here.’ In my films, I try to use music, as part of the narrative, not just to stick a song in.

KR: Your movies have started to introduce U.S. mainstream audiences to Bollywood and Indian culture. Is that a goal for you?

GC: I think a goal for me is to make movies that talk about the world from my perspective, that show the world from my perspective. So that’s British and Indian, it’s that combination.

KR: What are you working on now? What upcoming projects do you have?

GC: I’m working on a fantastic script. It’s a project at Paramount and Nickelodeon, and it is these wonderful books from the New York Times Best Seller’s List. There are five, and the first one is called Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging: Confessions of Georgia Nicolson by Louise Rennison, and its kind of Bridget Jones at 14. It’s about first love and that whole thing girls go through when they don’t really know how to kiss or what to do with their hands when someone kisses them. It’s just really quite innocent, but it’s also quite funny.

KR: The thing that is most compelling is that your films contain so much humor and yet they are so poignant. They explore diversity, domestic violence, coming of age, even female empowerment. How are you able to be so successful, transverse those boundaries with such universal appeal?

GC: God knows! (laughs) Well, you know, it is who I am. I mean, I live my life like that. I care and I’m concerned about very many social and political issues that affect us all. At the same time, I have a great love of comedy. I have a great love of culture and that’s not just my culture, lots of different types of cultures. When I’m in L.A., one of my favorite things is to go to different street festivals and just hang out and take in their world. Take in that real sense of diversity, when you see people living with each other and celebrating who they are.

Watch the commercial here!