Special Episode: Gurinder Chadha Spills The Chai on 'Bend It Like Beckham' - The Film & The Musical
In this Special Episode, Shireen sits down with the legendary filmmaker Gurinder Chadha. They talk about the reverberations and impact of 'Bend It Like Beckham' on generations of people, adapting the movie into a musical, and what the music means. They discuss the effect of the film on women's football, and Gurinder Ji shares lots of juicy behind the scene tidbits, and very poignant moments, including her vision for making films and shows that represented people that look like her, and different communities.
Transcript
Shireen: Hi flamethrowers, Shireen here. I’m so excited to bring you a very special episode of Burn It All Down. Before I begin, I would like to thank Suzanne Cheriton for making this happen, my co-hosts Amira, Jessica, Brenda, and Lindsay, for giving me the support and encouragement and amplification to make this episode possible. And above and beyond, I would like to thank Gurinder Chadha for sitting down with me and sharing her thoughts and opinions with me on Bend It Like Beckham. Without further ado, here’s that conversation.
Hello, flamethrowers! It’s Shireen here. I am over the moon to have with me Ms. Gurinder Chadha, who is an award winning film director, she’s a producer, she’s a writer, she’s a creative genius and responsible for the most important film in cinematic history, in my opinion, Bend It Like Beckham. Yes flamethrowers, I am sitting here with the genius mind that created the. best. film. ever.
Gurinder: Hi.
Shireen: Hello!
Gurinder: What an intro!
Shireen: I can wax poetic about you all day.
Gurinder: Can I just say, they said come and do this podcast, it’s a sports podcast, so I walk in the room and expected to see some jock-type person, and then you’re sitting here! I’m like, wow, talk about bending it! Bending the rules! But you’re amazing!
Shireen: First thing she says to me is “YOU’RE ASIAN,” delightfully. I will carry that with me forever.
Gurinder: But that’s an interesting point because when you say sports, we never think a podcast that’d be done by women, necessarily.
Shireen: Right?
Gurinder: A brown woman! And so even me, who made this iconic movie, I’m like, “Oh! That’s not what I thought a sports podcast person would look like!”
Shireen: Plot twist!
Gurinder: Plot twist!
Shireen: So, I will do a formal introduction of you. Among her accomplishments, Gurinder Ji in in possession of an Order of the British Empire. She was born in Nairobi, Kenya. She is a renowned film director, I’ve already said that, and whose work impactfully explores the lives of Indians living in England, women in particular, and in my opinion all South Asian communities are reflected in this, and they’re navigating their existence between two worlds. Some of her other notable films are 1993’s Bhaji on the Beach, 2004’s Bride and Prejudice, 2008’s Angus, Thongs, and the Perfect Snogging, 2010’s It’s a Wonderful Afterlife, 2017’s Viceroy’s House. Her work also includes musical comedies, which she will talk about.
Gurinder: Blinded by the Light.
Shireen: Blinded by the Light.
Gurinder: The Bruce Springsteen movie.
Shireen: Right! And the TV show Beecham House, which is coming out.
Gurinder: Coming out on PBS in March 2020.
Shireen: Her most recent project is one in Toronto itself, which will be shown at the St. Lawrence Center in Toronto from December 7th to January 5th, is actually Bend It Like Beckham the musical, the show-stopping, accelerating, incredible musical that I cannot wait to see.
Gurinder: Oh my goodness, it’s so good. I love it, I love it. And I know it’s a controversial thing to say, and I know the film’s good, but I actually think the musical is better than the film.
Shireen: Oh! I just got goosebumps! How is that possible.
Gurinder: The film is very emotional, as you know.
Shireen: Oh definitely.
Gurinder: And the purpose of the film for me was to show women in a very athletic, strident, empowering way, which I very rarely saw onscreen. So what I’ve done is taken that core idea onto the stage, and so it’s full of women who are very empowering, very athletic, very sportswomanlike. So we created songs and dances with them, right? But at the same time you’ve got all the Indian family story going on, so you’ve got a lot of traditional Indian music in there, and you’ve got the immigrant story. So it’s a wonderful combination of the two worlds of Jess and what she’s gonna do: is she going to follow her dream, is she going to follow her duty. All told through song and dance and that’s what makes it so special, because the dad gets to sing, the mum gets to sing! Jess and Jules get to sing! So when you sing you sing from the heart, you sing what’s in your heart, but also emotionally you’re expressing what’s wrong with the world around you and that you can’t get to where you want, and that’s why it’s moving. Because suddenly you’re in Jess’s head or Jules’s head or mum’s head, and you start seeing them in a much more emotional, layered way.
There’s a beautiful moment where the dad, in the film, the dad says, after Joes comes to the house and says, “No, you can’t play football.”
Shireen: “Don’t play with your future, putar.”
Gurinder: Yeah, and now dad gets to sing to her, and says, “Listen, people like us can’t aim that high. People like us, we’re not allowed to be at the top. We can clean tabletops, we can work in bars, we can serve in restaurants, we can be in nail bars, but we can’t aim so high. Don’t aim so high, Jess, because people like us, we don’t get those positions.” And every bone in your body is saying, NO! Don’t say that, dad! Don’t say that!
Shireen: Yeah, yeah.
Gurinder: But the dad is speaking the truth, his perspective about the racism he experienced when he came to England, and it’s terribly moving. And Jess is at first really cross with her dad, and then she has to appreciate it, you know. Then that song comes back in a different way later, which gives you goosebumps, as Jess challenges the dad and says no, people like us can dream.
Shireen: Mm-hmm. (Affirmative)
Gurinder: I’m getting all goosebump-y myself. It’s an amazing moment in the show when that comes back. So there’s lots of exhilarating songs with Jess, when she’s with the Harriers. There’s a song called Girl Perfect, you know, she’s girl perfect, she’s living her dream. Then when they win against Germany – in the film they lose against Germany, but in the musical they win! And there’s an amazing sequence called Result! where the girls go from the football pitch into the changing rooms, into changing into beautiful clothes.
Shireen: For the nightclub.
Gurinder: To go to the club, yeah. And it’s all one big song, and it’s called Result! (singing) Result! The girls are gonna go…
It’s a really great anthem, you know.
Shireen: I love how when you said the film was good, so, if I may, if I may just interject here, when she means ‘good’ she means the most brilliant thing ever to be concocted in the mind of anyone, and I like to speak for myself only, and I only do speak for myself, but I was quoted in a beautiful article. I wasn’t sure if you had seen it, by ESPN, by my friends Aishwarya Kumar and Katie Barnes, and they wrote a piece about what the impact of your film had on them. Katie, they’re an amazing, amazing writer, and Aishwarya, I love her work. They went together and they interviewed me for this, I was very honored. I was actually saying that I feel that my magnum opus as a writer will be an essay on what your film did for my life.
Gurinder: Oh, that’s amazing, I would love to read that.
Shireen: Well, I have to write it but yes, definitely. The thing is is that I as a South Asian girl playing football since I was five, I never saw myself. One of the most poignant moments for me in my life was sitting there and watching Jess unwrap her sari to Darshan, which I’ve danced to in so many parties, epic song, and get into her kit. How many times have I done that?
I’ve also played rugby, same thing, and my mother’s got baby wipes in the car for me, because she’s like “You’re gross, but where can we shower?” I remember going to a cousin’s wedding directly from a match, and just seeing that, I’m like…I had never seen, and I was in my twenties, I was a mother, I think, by then. But I was so moved. I had never seen my experience reflected anywhere in film, on TV, anywhere. And this is one of the things I wanted to ask you, because football is such a personal thing. Are you a fan of the game?
Gurinder: Well, the film is written by three people. That’s me, my husband Paul, and my friend Guljit. And Guljit was a novice writer, she was starting out, but she’s the big football fan and a huge supporter of Manchester United.
Shireen: I thought so!
Gurinder: But her favorite player was Ryan Giggs.
Shireen: Oh was he!
Gurinder: Because her husband’s Welsh.
Shireen: Okay.
Gurinder: So they were Giggs fans and I was like, hmm, what can’t it be Beckham? He’s sort of cool, because back then, we’re talking about end of the 90s, when he still played for Man U, he wasn’t married. I loved him because he was really happy being a gay icon, having advertised Calvin Klein underwear.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: And all these gay guys were kind of crazy about him.
Shireen: And he wore a sarong. Yeah.
Gurinder: Exactly. He was like the new man. So I was like, this is the kind of guy that we should be supporting. And can you believe that when I made that film and it opened in North America, nobody knew who David Beckham was.
Shireen: Well I knew who David Beckham was!
Gurinder: You did! Yeah, because you’re a sports geek! But I was doing an interview with the Washington Post, and the man said to me, “Who is Beckham?”
Shireen: Oh. My god.
Gurinder: And all these people were just like, we don’t know who he is. And Fox actually wanted to change the title of the film.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: Because they said, “No one knows who he is. Can you call it ‘Soccer and Me’ or something?” And we couldn’t come up with a better title so we stayed with Beckham.
Shireen: Yeah. Which is brilliant.
Gurinder: Yeah. And when he got his Galaxy 250 million check, I was like ah, okay. Well, good for you because you gave us your support and look how it’s come back to you.
Shireen: Right. Did you think about re-releasing the film when he moved to the US?
Gurinder: No, but let’s see, in…three year’s time, it’ll be the 20th anniversary.
Shireen: Oh my goodness.
Gurinder: So I might do a new cut.
Shireen: Oh!
Gurinder: Yeah. Because there were scenes that were cut. Quite a few scenes that were cut.
Shireen: Okay, so I need to see all of these scenes. I need to view all of these scenes.
Gurinder: Yeah!
Shireen: I have so many questions…
Gurinder: And I might just go back and re-cut it a little differently now that I know…You know what I mean? Because there was times when I was told to cut things out I didn’t want to, but I think I might just go back and just do a whole new director’s cut. But the other thing is is that at some point, with the musical, I’d like to do the musical version in film form too.
Shireen: Yeah. For sure. So this film, it addressed homophobia.
Gurinder: Yeah.
Shireen: It addressed interracial relationships, cultural expectations in South Asian communities, class systems in the UK, it addressed all of this. That was all intentional?
Gurinder: Absolutely, yeah.
Shireen: Was there anything you omitted or added on top of that?
Gurinder: It’s a film about identity and the multiple identities that we all have, you know, it’s not just about race. It’s also about gender, it’s also about sexuality, and so it just was natural to make it all those different things.
Shireen: Because it’s tied in so beautifully. You couldn’t have woven a better way to address…One of my favorite lines, for so long, was when Jules and her mom are in the car on the way back from the match, and she’s like, “Well it’s not such a bad thing if I was gay!” and her mom’s like, “No, poppet! I cheered for Martina Navratilova as much as the next person!” I felt that was so funny. There are peeps on Twitter, I will tell you this, people saying, “Why couldn’t Jules and Jess just have become lovers!”
Gurinder: Yeah, yeah. I think that’s definitely one way the story could’ve gone. Definitely. We were working with a company at the time, and originally Joe, the coach, was much older. And then someone in the company said why don’t you just make him younger. And then I was like, oh! Have Jess and him fall in love. I was like yeah, I can see that. That gave it a new engine, you know.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: For Jess’s story it gave it a new engine. Suddenly he was this coach but becomes this soft guy who she changes, she makes him softer, and then she leaves him to follow her dream. So I just thought that was a really neat story. But there’s no reason why that other story wouldn’t be just as valid. Maybe, who knows, if we ever do a sequel…I know there was an article recently in the press where Keira was quoted as saying, we should do a sequel and make Jules a lesbian, right.
Shireen: Yes!
Gurinder: I was like okay, come on Keira if you want to do that, we can do that.
Shireen: That was my next question, will there be a sequel and do you need an extra? Because I volunteer myself.
Gurinder: Why not. Who knows! I never say never. I think a sequel with Jules as a lesbian would be quite cute. So who knows.
Shireen: And just to see like, 20 years on, where they are now. One of the things I also thought was really sweet, in the film, was how Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who played Joe, was Irish! So when Jess is sobbing…I think I’ve seen the movie in clips about 800 times. I’ve calculated.
Gurinder: Well that happened because the actor was Irish.
Shireen: Yeah, he is.
Gurinder: And I never realized he was Irish, because in all the films I’d seen he plays English.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: So when I met him he had this beautiful accent from Cork, and he was trying to do a West London accent. And I said why don’t we just go with your accent, it’s so lovely. And then we rewrote Joe as Irish. And there’s a few other things, in the scene when after Parminder got the role…And I’d been following her for quite a while, theatre and everything. Her agent wrote to me and said, “Look, there’s something we need to tell you. We didn’t want to tell you before…” And I said, oh my god, what’s the problem? And they said, “Parminder had an accident when she was young and burnt the whole of her leg.”
Shireen: That was real, that wasn’t makeup!
Gurinder: No. “…And if she’s gonna be in shorts, we need you to know she’s got a huge burn down her leg. We didn’t want to tell you before in case that influenced your choice, but now we need to tell you.”
Shireen: Wow.
Gurinder: I think they thought I was not gonna give her the role because of that, and I went, “Well, let me see it,” you know. She came in and she showed me the big scar and everything, and I said what happened, and she said she was making beans on toast
Shireen: That’s…Oh, brilliant.
Gurinder: And so I just wrote that into the script, that that’s exactly what happened.
Shireen: And then when her mom sees her and says, “Everyone’s seeing your scar!” Because for some ideas of beauty, it’s shameful.
Gurinder: Exactly, yeah. I thought it was a gift, you know, that we can expose that. So yeah. God works in mysterious ways.
Shireen: Totally. So, Jess Bhamra and Juliette Paxton, how did this even come to you, this idea–
Gurinder: So, Juliette’s character, Paula, her name is, Juliette Stevenson plays her. She was sort of based on a lot of my friends’ mums, who would be like oh, I cooked a lovely chicken korma, and all those sorts of conversations. So she was sort of based on mums of friends of mine. And I never played soccer, but I understood the metaphor of it and for me it was a film about people breaking the rules, but actually you’re bending the rules. So what I did my whole life was bend the rules, and there were expectations of how I should behave as girl, as an Indian girl, and then a woman. I kept trying to duck and dive that to be who I am.
And so for example my parents, in many ways based on my parents, my mum’s obsession with me growing up was that I should learn how to cook perfect Indian food so that when I did get married, into this new Indian family that I was going to get married into, in her mind, that my mother in law would be very happy that my mother had taught me how to cook beautifully.
Shireen: Respect, too.
Gurinder: Respect. Because that was, for her, that was her duty to teach me how. So I just would fight that constantly. And to this day I don’t make chapatis myself, I refuse to, because that idea of sitting there making the dough, getting your hands dirty, rolling around, putting it onto a hot tava, burning your hands, I’m like, why the hell am I gonna do that! No thanks. So ironically, my son who’s twelve, he likes to do it. So I taught him how to do it, and now he makes them.
Shireen: Which is brilliant.
Gurinder: Which is brilliant! Or I get them ready made.
Shireen: Yeah, for sure.
Gurinder: But I’m not doing that. No way. And then I would say to my mum, I’d say I’m not doing that mum, because it’s highly sexist, and she would say in Punjabi, say “Sexist, tell your mother in law it’s sexist! It’s your mother’s face you’re going to darken!” (Speaking in Punjabi) You know? And I’d go yes mum, but I’m not doing it. And the on the DVD, there’s a wonderful extra which you might’ve seen.
Shireen: The one of her actually cooking.
Gurinder: Yeah. They said to me, let’s do a nice thing where you cook aloo gobi and just teach me how to do it. And I said well, that’s very boring. But what I will do is cook it with my mum there and my auntie there and that’ll be funny. And so that’s what we did. We did it! My mum had her TV face on, she was like being the opposite of the mum, you know. Occasionally she’d say, you know, “Cut it smaller, the salt won’t go in,” this and that. Critical, critical. And then at the end they all tasted it and they all said oh yeah, it’s lovely, my aunt and my mum, and then and soon as the cameras were off my mum said, “Not enough salt!”
Shireen: My biggest problem. And I love cooking, and I think it’s maybe because my mother didn’t cook. My mother chose a route that was very nontraditional.
Gurinder: Really?
Shireen: She chose to be a doctor, and she was married at 24.
Gurinder: So who did the cooking?
Shireen: We did fine. She was busy, and then I started to cook when I was eleven because I enjoyed it, I mean, we survived, it was my brother and my mother would cook when she wasn’t working. But she didn’t love it. She doesn’t love it. You could perform surgery anywhere in our house because it’s so clean, but the cooking she doesn’t love. So even now I love cooking, and it’s so funny that recipe, I do that main recipe, absolutely, because if people don’t know: actually cook your spices first.
Gurinder: Absolutely.
Shireen: People don’t know this! Why are you doing that? It’s upsetting me. I find it traumatic.
Gurinder: Yeah. Yeah. You have to cook the turmeric. And the coriander.
Shireen: You have to.
Gurinder: Exactly. It has to be fried in order for the aromas to come out.
Shireen: Yeah. One of the other things I was going to ask, and I saw this in that article somewhere, because I read almost everything I can about you, was that you actually have your mom in small cameos.
Gurinder: Yes, my mom is there.
Shireen: In most of them.
Gurinder: My mum is one of the women in the wall, she’s the one in the brown suit going like that, and it was very funny, she’s one of the women with the mobile phone…
Shireen: And walking, the joggers–
Gurinder: No, that was my auntie. And me. But then there when they’re making samosas, and the line of women.
Shireen: Yeah, she’s beautiful.
Gurinder: So my mum’s in that, my bhua’s in that, my masi’s in that. And Guljit, you know my friend, her mum’s in that. Both her mum and dad are in that scene. So yeah, I did really well on cheap extras. But it was very funny, there was a very funny moment in this scene when Jess, at the engagement, is handing the mithai to all the aunties. They were all my aunties, right, they’re not actors. And the first take she passed it round, and they’re all frozen solid. They didn’t know what to do or say or anything, they were just solid. Then I said cut, and I went to them and I said look, bhua ji, mum, just be natural, just be normal! She’s offering you mithai, what are you gonna do? If you want a piece, take a piece! If you don’t want a piece just say no thank you.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: Just like, think you’re at a party! Don’t worry about the fifty people over here filming you! So they were like okay, okay, okay. So then Jess comes back and she starts handing them mithai, and my bhua ji stops her and says, “No, I’m not having it because I’ve got diabetes and my doctor says I’m not allowed sugar, but it looks very nice, but because of my diabetes I don’t walk very well, I don’t…” Like, it was a whole thing! I went, “CUT!” They were all trying to be stars after that. But it was wonderful making the film in that part of the community, and we never knew it was going to be as successful as it was. We never did. It’s amazing to me, because I do go around the world, and I do get a lot of emotional people come up to me, and often women come up to me and start crying.
Shireen: Case in point: me.
Gurinder: Yeah! Because just to be seen, and to be visual, is a big deal. And the whole reason I went in to making movies was to tell stories about people that looked like me, you know. So to see that in practice, that’s incredible. But more than that, what was really wonderful for me was in the last Cup, the Women’s World Cup, there were all these interviews with the American champs, the women who won, saying yeah, they got into soccer from watching Bend It Like Beckham.
Shireen: Really!
Gurinder: Same with England. A lot of women who play football today started playing because they watched the movie. And now they’re world champs!
Shireen: Yeah. That’s brilliant.
Gurinder: That to me is like, wow. Whatever I set out to do…Job done. Because it cuts across race, it cuts across feminism, you know, gender, but also Bend It Like Beckham has been voted one of the top three best coming out movies ever. Because it’s a coming out movie too. But without being really heavy and punishing you for being gay. It’s just like, Tony, all he says is “I really like Beckham.” That’s all he says and he comes out.
Shireen: I also felt that Jess’s reaction was so natural, because she’s like, “What’s your mum gonna say?”
Gurinder: Well what she says is what I said, the first time someone came out to me, I literally said this to them. It was an Indian person who came out, and I said, “But you’re Indian!”
Shireen: But you’re Indian.
Gurinder: But I literally said that.
Shireen: Right. And then she’s like, “It’s okay with me.” And there’s a really cute scene at the end after Jess goes, Tony takes her, and then she comes back and the he’s dancing with the cameraman, there’s a little bit of a flirtation going on there between Tony and him. So we’re all like, heart fluttering…
Gurinder: Oh, you mean at the wedding.
Shireen: In the wedding scene.
Gurinder: The cameraman was an extra. That was cute.
Shireen: Yeah, I was like, I love the little nod to that. Because we all wonder, as people who love this film, what happens with that person.
Gurinder: Well I think Tony needs a sequel, doesn’t he.
Shireen: Tony needs a sequel. I would watch it.
Gurinder: Tony needs a sequel I think.
Shireen: He was a very beautiful young man at the time.
Gurinder: He was lovely. He’s married now, with a kid. I think I’d like to see that movie, actually, how Tony navigates being gay.
Shireen: Are you still in touch with any of the actors?
Gurinder: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, all the time.
Shireen: That’s amazing.
Gurinder: I see Archie, Archie came to the premiere of Blinded. Jess, Parminder, is in LA so we’ve texted in the past.
Shireen: Because they’re pretty big stars now!
Gurinder: Yeah, absolutely.
Shireen: So when you put a call out for the film, for the cast…Is the process, they applied…
Gurinder: Yeah, auditions. Yeah, Keira came in with forty other girls that day and just auditions. And I thought hm, I like her, she’s very natural. And she came in and sat down and put her legs on the chair crosslegged and she said, “Have you been in my house?” And I said, what! She was sixteen. She said, “Because everything you’ve written is what happens with me and my mum.” You know? She said that’s the same conversations that I have with my mum all the time.
Shireen: Wow.
Gurinder: And I was like, okay, that’s very good. There was something about her that was very appealing to me.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: And that’s why I cast her. She was probably as surprised as any of us, you know, that it took off in that way!
Shireen: I mean, when you see it, it makes sense. I have shown this film…I’m a soccer coach, I’m a mom, I’m a soccer player, my teammates all have seen it. Every single person regardless of the community they’re from loves this film. Because of so many stories that are woven in, but also the way that you reach people. That one scene when Jess is forced to quit and she’s cleaning her boots, I cry every time.
My story is not Jess’s story, my parents were very supportive, I did not fall in love with an Irish bloke, and my parents were very excited about me playing, but still so much of her story…People used to say to my mom, (speaking Urdu). “She’ll turn black if you let her play.” So that shade-ism that we know in South Asian communities, that anti-blackness that I’m talking about. My mother had to say thank you, thank you, leave…she’s great.
Gurinder: But I think the scene with the boots, the reason it’s so emotional is because Parminder’s crying as well, which you know, which breaks your heart. But also, it’s that idea that as a kid, when you really have a dream, and you want it so bad but you also want to keep your parents happy. But that’s never seen, because normally up til that point, normally what it is is, “I want the dream, fuck you all, I’m gonna go follow my dream and if it means that I don’t have to talk to you, so what. I’m gonna do it.” Because normally in films, you’re rebels, you break the rules, you’re a rebel and you go off, you know, and you have to sacrifice something. For me, Jess never sacrifices, because it’s important that Jess takes her family with her.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: And so when she’s crying it’s that amazing moment when, we’ve all been there, when like, “I want this, but I also want that. I want both, why can’t I have both?”
Shireen: And that’s something that I think I really got, was that “I can’t have happiness without them,” in a way.
Gurinder: Which is a very culturally-specific thing for us, but I also think it’s universal for a lot of people. You don’t have to be Indian to experience that, everyone wants approval from their parents, everyone wants their parents to support them and applaud them and validate them. And that’s why I think the film is so universal. And it has the record of no other film in the world, which is it’s been disputed in every single country, including North Korea. No other film has that. But I do think the universal quality of it is the fact that it’s that idea of, as child, wanting something so bad but acknowledging that you need your parents on your side.
Shireen: Yeah.
Gurinder: And drama, up until that point, wasn’t really showing that onscreen.
Shireen: Not to mention the South Asian experience, the Indian experience or whatnot, and how do you feel that representation of South Asian women in the mainstream, has it come a long…Because you provided most of it, quite frankly. But do you feel like it’s coming along now, are people in the UK or US, Canada, is there more happening?
Gurinder: Not enough. Not for me. I mean, I just don’t see enough films about our experience, I just don’t see it out there. Obviously there’s some very bad films, you know. I’ve seen people try and copy what I’ve done but don’t put enough attention into it, and strive to make it authentic and truthful and good, you know. But I have to say, I haven’t really seen it. I mean, I quite like the Mindy Kaling show, you know. But she really downplays her Indianness because it’s a mainstream Hollywood show. So I understand that, and I respect that if that’s the way she’s got to go. But like, why can’t we have it all, is what I say. Why can’t we have both. So yeah, I’ve obviously gone on and always make sure my female characters are strong and strident…Yeah, there’s just not enough of our stories out there.
Shireen: Mm-hmm. (Affirmative)
Gurinder: I’m trying to think of another film that’s come out like Bend It…I mean, obviously I made Bride and Prejudice with the four girls…
Shireen: Which is so fun.
Gurinder: And Angus, Thongs, you know, which is these four girls again as friends. It’s wonderful, very funny, I don’t know many people saw that film. It’s a great film about women and body issues. And then Viceroy’s House, Huma Qureshi. Not much out there is there?
Shireen: No, like if you take your work out, there’s really…I mean, we’ll see spots or cameos of people in certain places but I’m really talking about, you know, particularly in a time where discussions like this can be very polarizing. Particularly in North America. It’s so refreshing that your films still, to this day…I showed it with my three teenage boys, and they loved it. One way for them to unlearn toxicity is to literally see these experiences from an Indian filmmaker telling these stories that need to be told. I’m just so appreciative of that. I told my son this morning, “Can I tell her this movie is the best ever and it changed your life? And you are so grateful?” He’s like, “Yes, you can, yeah.” I’m like well, I was going to tell her anyway, but…
Gurinder: Well they’ll enjoy the show!
Shireen: Yeah, for sure.
Gurinder: Not least because there’s women in it in sports bras. With abs! Solid abs.
Shireen: Solid! So quick question, Gary Lineker, how did he agree to do this? Because I know who he is! He’s this major pundit in football. All the pundits! That was so amazing.
Gurinder: Yeah, I mean we just reached out. He was a bit moany on the day you know, he was a bit moany…Because he is quite moany.
Shireen: Oh really.
Gurinder: Yeah. Or he was then. He got into it by the end. But I think because John Barnes wanted to do it, John Barnes was right there from the beginning.
Shireen: He seems like the type that would support that.
Gurinder: Yeah, and then Alan was great. He sort of went along with it and stopped being a curmudgeon. And we went to him, he was in Twickenham Studios so we did it there. And he is amazing. She…
Shireen: Oh, she was…
Gurinder: She was so funny. So they were a little scared of her, actually. But the wonderful thing about the mums, is that Shaheen is one of my favorite actresses, I love her to bits. She used to spend at least half an hour if not longer sitting in here room becoming Mrs. Bhamra.
Shireen: Oh!
Gurinder: Yeah, because she’s like a gorgeous young mum, right? And no one could believe that she could play her. I said she’s amazing, she did a great audition where she just sent me a tape of peeling potatoes and moaning about her daughters! She said, “The older one, always out sneaking out with boys! This one thinks she’s a boy…” She did one of those auditions, it was fantastic. And then she would sit in her room and sort of become Mrs. Bhamra, like give herself a rounded shoulder look, do this furrowed brow, and she’d sort of become her. And then she’d remain like that until she got off set, and then she’d go back to being herself. When she walked onto that set with Gary Lineker and everyone, she was scary! And they were all laughing and chatting, but she wouldn’t, she stayed in character.
Shireen: Wow! And then her hand gestures…
Gurinder: Yes.
Shireen: It’s a typical kind of thing, it was just so…I do that from time to time, I try to get out of it but I’m like, “I’ll give you a danda!” I’ve never given my kids a danda, for the record, I’ve threatened them, in fact. And I am doing this as tactfully and gracefully as possible without sobbing…
Gurinder: Well I think you’ve done a lot for women’s football as well, and I think, because this is a sports podcast, the most amazing thing is…And my husband is a massive sports fan, you should know that. We live in London but he gets up regularly in the morning to watch the NBA, to watch the Dodgers, every time when I wake up in the morning and go onto the computer, he gets up before me and you can always guarantee he’s looking up scores from some kind of sport the night before.
Shireen: So who’s his team?
Gurinder: Tottenham.
Shireen: Oh! Mourinho’s there now.
Gurinder: Yeah, my cousins all have seats…They’re all Tottenham. You’re not allowed to say (whispers) Arsenal, in our house.
Shireen: Okay. Because I’m a long suffering Arsenal supporter.
Gurinder: You are a Gooner.
Shireen: I’m a Gooner. But the women’s side has brought me happiness and pride.
Gurinder: Well my husband, just before I joined you here, he said there was recently a match with Arsenal and Tottenham women, at Wembley stadium. 38,000 people.
Shireen: Just two weeks ago.
Gurinder: I mean, that is incredible. And then of course the Women’s World Cup broke all kinds of records.
Shireen: It was amazing. I went to France, actually.
Gurinder: Did you! And Wembley was sold out, in a recent game.
Shireen: It’s not that the attention and love isn’t there, it’s that we don’t invest in it the way we ought to.
Gurinder: We ought to. There was over a billion people watching the Women’s World Cup.
Shireen: Yeah, absolutely. On Burn It All Down we had a whole feature about it, we dedicated week and weeks and weeks. Three of us were there, Brenda, Jessica and I. I think that in addition to women’s football you have helped so many people from marginalized communities with your work, and heartfelt thank you so much for that.
Gurinder: Thank you.
Shireen: I can’t tell you what this means to me to be sitting across from you.
Gurinder: Oh bless you.
Shireen: Next time I would love to take a jaunt to Southall next time I’m in London.
Gurinder: Please do. Please give me a shout. We’ll have jokes about this, whenever we’re driving around Southall he’s always like “GC Tour! GC Tour! That should be on the GC Tour!” You know, all these different films that I’ve shot, he’s like “GC Tour! GC Tour!”
Shireen: In fact, we had Eni Aluko on the show, I interviewed her in the summer, and I’m talking again about your film, I was, next time, you know that she’s never had paneer! So I told her that when I come…She’s like, “I don’t know what that is.” I’m like, next time I come to England, and if you’re there, I will take you to have paneer. Because palak paneer is one of my favorite things in the world…
Gurinder: Do you know JusReign?
Shireen: No…Oh, the comedian!
Gurinder: Yeah. He has a brother who’s an amazing artist, and his brother has got a lot of work on my early films and he has a whole series of paintings about them. And so he reached out to me quite a while ago and so we’ve been having this exchange. And it’s wonderful, his pictures are wonderful. And then he was coming to London and he wanted to meet me, and he said please will you take me to Southall and show me your sights?
Shireen: Show me your Southall!
Gurinder: So I took him around and we ended up going to Jess’s house, the location, it’s called Southern Square. It’s in Heston. A house with green in front of it. So I took him down there and we were looking at the house and he was all like, wow! There’s the two lions in the film at the front, I have those. I kept those, those are outside my swanky little house in Primrose Hill, not in Southall. But I have those at my front door.
Shireen: Brilliant.
Gurinder: I kept those from the film.
Shireen: That’s so great.
Gurinder: But we were standing outside the house there and these kids came up on bikes and said, “That’s the house where they shot Bend It Like Beckham!”
Shireen: Oh!
Gurinder: And I said, really? And he went, “Yeah, yeah a lot of people come and look at it.” And I said oh, that’s good. And he goes, “And then round there they shot the sign, that’s down that alleyway, and this is where Jess hides her bag…” And this little kid was giving me the whole tour!
Shireen: He wasn’t even alive, probably, when the film came out.
Gurinder: No, no. And then I said how come you know so much about this, and he said “Oh, a lot of people come and we tell them, and sometimes they give us some money.”
Shireen: You’re creating industry!
Gurinder: Exactly! I’m not giving you a penny, mate! I know all this!
Shireen: Micro economies in the neighborhood. Bravo.
Gurinder: It was an incredible thing for me to see. It’s like a shrine now. But you’re right, I’ve made about six films since that film but everyone just goes on about that film. I think that sometimes magic happens and I think that film came at a very important time in the world, because it was just after 9/11.
Shireen: Yes it was.
Gurinder: The world changed overnight after that, and I think that film touched so many people because it was so pure and innocent, about a cultural experience that was universal, that was multicultural, and it was something for people to hold onto at that time, when the world was in flux. And I think that’s another reason why it’s held so dear for people. I think the musical now is a great time, because the movie doesn’t age. Those issues are still there, and with the musical now, in England, we have Brexit, a lot of xenophobia. In America, obviously there’s stuff going down. I just think the film is so relevant today, which is why I’m happy that the musical is coming to Toronto, and then hopefully will tour.
Shireen: Can you tell me a little bit about music in the music in the musical, where that came from.
Gurinder: So the music is by Howard Goodall, a brilliant British composer. And the lyrics are by Charles Hart who wrote the lyrics for Phantom of the Opera. And we spent a lot of time sitting, discussing what the songs should be, and I would tell them about all kinds of moments in my life, because in many ways Jess is my life, and her parents my parents. Out of that came these beautiful songs, and Glorious is the song that I’m sure people will play at my funeral. It’s like, so much mirrors Jess’s quest for her dream to be an all star soccer player, but at the same time the lyrics reflect what I’ve done in my life, and when people would say to me, “No, you can’t do that.” Or my careers teacher would say, when I said I wanted to go to university, they’d say, “You should go to secretarial college.” All that is in the song Glorious. And there’s a line in it, I’m just a girl from Southall with nothing but a dream, but lonely girls from Southall aren’t always what they seem.
Shireen: Yeah. Beautiful.
Gurinder: And so it sort of mirrors my career as well. And then there’s some lovely songs with the Harriers, the footballers, energetic, anthemic, about girl power. Result! is a fantastic song, as is Girl Perfect. One of my favorite moments is when the parents get to sing, and they sing a song called Look at us now, and it’s all about coming to England and working hard, double shifts in factories,
Shireen: Or at the airport.
Gurinder: Or at the airport. And then struggling, but it doesn’t matter, look at us now! Look at our house, we’ve got the lights on, the daughter’s getting married, look at us now. And it’s that wonderful way that our parents struggled but then also celebrated, and that’s in Look at us now. The music really does build in how it is amazing in doing choral music, and so it works really well with fusion. You have east, you have west, and then all these different choruses. And for Jess it’s great, because football, family, where am I gonna go. All that’s embodied in music, and by the end it’s wonderful.
Shireen: Amazing. I’m really looking forward to the music, because it’s so emotive. It will really relay the stories, and enhance and embolden what you’re trying to do. I can’t wait for this to come out.
Gurinder: Excellent. Get your tickets now!
Shireen: Again, I just really, really want to thank you for being on our show, this is a dream come true for me. On behalf of Lindsay, Jessica, Brenda and Amira, I just cannot thank you enough for being here on Burn It All Down.
Gurinder: Oh, thank you so much, and come to the theater! Come see the show. I look forward to seeing you all there.
Shireen: Thank you.
Thank you so much for listening to our special episode. As Brenda would say, burn on and not out. And as I would like to add, keep bending the rules.