Word: film
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...completely fresh look at India. I spent a long time in the Juhu slum in Mumbai. I was trained as a documentary director, and I just went back to doing that. I listened to people, talked to people." From these wanderings came moments that give the film its pungent life, like the scene in which Jamal jumps into a mound of human waste to get the autograph of Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan...
...want me to do my Amitabh look or my Shah Rukh Khan look?' I'd say, 'No, do your own look.'" Having slum children play two of the three 6-year-olds meant shooting their scenes in Hindi. But as Boyle says, "Nobody comes out of the film saying, 'I just watched a subtitled film.' They just say, 'Weren't those kids great...
...what if you made a great movie and nobody saw it? When Warner Bros. (which is owned by TIME's parent company, Time Warner) folded its "indie" arm last year, Slumdog was suddenly without a U.S. distributor, and producer Christian Colson was told the film would be shelved. The parent company could have just sat on it--as Colson explains the industry logic, "It's better to let a film die than to have someone else turn it into a big hit"--but Warner Bros. "did the right thing" and let Colson show it to other indies. "Fortunately and extraordinarily...
...tightening market for indie films, Fox Searchlight is that rare ministudio that's on a roll, with breakout hits like Little Miss Sunshine and Juno. Searchlight president Peter Rice saw the magic the movie had on its viewers: "It's like they've discovered such a unique experience, they immediately want to share it with other people." Late-summer screenings at the Telluride and Toronto film festivals got a rapturous response, and Searchlight quickly pegged it as a November release, with eyes on critics' awards and the Oscars. (Warner retains a share of revenues.) It all worked perfectly...
...surprises everyone," says an industry insider who has worked on Oscar campaigns and spoke on condition of anonymity. He thinks the movie's own history will help it win over Academy voters. "The thing about the Oscars is that backstories count. In Slumdog's case, it was this little film in Hindi that lost its distributor. You tell this story to a producer, who's used to films not getting made or appreciated, and they're going to say, 'Wow, that story's amazing. It's so great that this movie is getting appreciated...