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A few pages prior to Gabbar Singh's account, Bennington captures another Singh on his lens - the YashRaj protégé Ranveer Singh - a month after his debut in Band Baaja Baaraat when he is all set to perform what appears to be a fairly intense stunt onstage. The then one-film-old Ranveer tells Bennington about his journey from University of Indiana to Bollywood - how he enrolled for an acting class at the last minute, came back to India to find a career in films, rejected some small budget movies and then landed the big ticket role in the YashRaj film.
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Living the Dream was an idea that took root nearly seven years ago when, during a trip to India, Bennington decided to photograph different acting communities. But 'acting communities' in India are not just limited to Bollywood - there is regional cinema, arthouse cinema, theatre... "The only reason I focused on Mumbai was because I was living in Mumbai. I didn't want to only represent the stars. I didn't want to only represent the strugglers. My plan was to capture every branch of the tree, maybe not every leaf. So I was looking for representatives in each cluster. You have Salman representing the stars, you have Dharmendra and Hema Malini representing the Sholay generation. Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Deepti Naval representing parallel cinema. So, it was always very much a community representation."
Any book on contemporary Bollywood would seem incomplete without the reigning troika of the Khans. Even though Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan are conspicuous by their absence, Bennington not only manages to photograph Salman Khan but also becomes a first-hand witness of the actor's famed generosity. "He is the eye of the storm - very calm, very centred. There is a hurricane of bodyguards with machine guns, secretaries, fans that swirl around him. But he is quiet, composed, thoughtful. I witnessed first-hand how generous he is. While on the sets of Bodyguard, I saw a man coming to him with a box of Rolex watches. Soon after, Salman was picking out different watches. I realised he had bought them for his cast members. The gesture was incredible. For the record, I didn't get a watch," he jokes. The easy camaraderie the photographer shared with his subject reflects in some of the powerful thoughts the superstar shares with him. "It's the actors who are the last people to know that they've fallen because everyone around them is blowing smoke up their a***s. Actors are the last people to know, 'Oh s**t, this isn't working anymore,' and by that time, it's too late because their egos have been overfed on so much bulls**t," he tells Mark.
The refusal to sequence the photographs has, according to Dibakar Banerjee, lent gravitas to the project. "His exposure meter juxtaposing various skin colours in the same frame brings out the Indian fascination with the fair and the lovely with deadly accuracy. His portrait of Mithun (Chakraborty) is probably the most eloquent piece on the ageing hero I have ever seen. I so wish there was a poster of the young Mithun somewhere in the background. That would raise it to a statement on morality and its opposite."
Despite its titular ode to the 'life of the Bollywood actor', Living the Dream pays due respect to parallel cinema and theatre. Voices such as Naseeruddin Shah, Deepti Naval and Shabana Azmi reflect on the more meditative, more philosophical aspect of performance. While on one hand, Shabana Azmi talks about the importance of proper training while reminiscing about her early days in theatre, Deepti Naval emphasises the need for empathy in order to become a better actor. Peppered in between these anecdotes is a commentary on how Bollywood goes about conducting the business of cinema. Naseeruddin Shah, for instance, talks about the randomness of how awards are given away. "All these awards are deadly dull and rigged anyway. I have, in fact, on several occasions been told, in so many words, 'You will win if you turn up, and if you don't, you won't. We will gladly give it to somebody else who cares to turn up.' It's absolutely insane. And people actually go and accept these stupid things and act honoured and cry. They are jokers as far as I am concerned." Not oblivious to the fact that he himself has been a recipient of several of these awards, Shah adds, "In the beginning of my career, I was deluged with awards for my first three or four movies. And then I realised, in hindsight, it was only because the entire press machinery was backing these artistic movies. You see, there is this magazine, which had this editor, who was supportive of art cinema. That was the only reason I won all those awards because there were people lobbying for me. Ever since I started blasting these awards in print, I stopped receiving anything."
Western media tends to be myopic about the Indian film industry, often thinking of it as cinema where "actors break into song and dance". As a 'foreigner', Bennington was keen on ensuring his artistic lens was not marred by stereotypes. "But it's not just up to me; the reader plays a big role too. Writing about the book, somebody asked why was I showing rickshaws. But that's also Bombay. You may want to show some people in their living room, but you would also like to see some people on the street. So, my quest to show the city can be viewed as a 'westerner's view'. When you go looking for the human story, you won't be able to stereotype."
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