MakingOf: How did you get involved with this project?

(Brett Ratner): I’m in basis with Reliance Big Pictures, the Indian company that made it, and the chairman was at my house in LA just for dinner and he brought this filmmaker, Rakesh Roshan, whose the producer of this film to my house for dinner. And he was like: ‘You want to come see this move I produced tomorrow?’ And I said: ‘Yeah.’ He said: ‘My son’s starring in it.’ I said: ‘That’s fantastic.’ I go see it and it was incredible because it was an Indian/Bollywood movie that was made for a Western appeal. It was shot in the United States… it was very different than what I expected from a Bollywood movie. He said: ‘What would you do if you released this in the United States?’ And I go: ‘Well what do you mean what would I do?’ And he said: ‘Well how would you change it for an American release?’ And I said: ‘Well, I would change the music probably, I would shorten this, I would take out this scene’… and as I rattled of like 20 ideas, he goes: ‘Well can you do that for us?’ I said: ‘What do you mean?’… ‘Can you go into the edit room and do what you just recommended?’ I said: ‘You want me to actually do this?’ And he’s like: ‘Yeah.’ So, I was like, what did I get myself into? And I’m sitting in the edit room cutting this movie, and I’m like: this is crazy… these guys worked on this movie… I would die. Say, one of my movies, for instance like “Rush Hour” doesn’t really work in Italy. It’s not funny to Italians, I don’t know why. Or in Japan they laugh at everything that people don’t laugh at here… its like the opposite. So, imagine if I went to an Italian director and said: ‘Can you re-cut “Rush Hour” to make it funny for Italy,’ I would be so nervous to see what the outcome was. So I was nervous doing this for them. They went back to India. I spend weeks and weeks and weeks doing it. They come back and see the movie, and I was so nervous. The lights went on and I looked at the star, because the star was in the movie, and I look at him and he goes: ‘this is incredible, oh my god.’ And I go: ‘you don’t hate it?’ And he’s like: ‘this is amazing! I don’t even miss the dance sequence!’ So I was really happy and it was a great experiment basically and I think it worked and that’s why my name is on the poster.

MO: How long did you have from the point when you first saw the movie til that screening when you had to show them?

(BR): Oh my god… maybe 4 weeks, 5 weeks. Yeah,  I mean I really spent time. Because I really didn’t want to change the intention of the filmmaker, of the story. Even in the post-process after they loved the cut I temped it with their music, so I kept all their music, and then when I showed it to them and I said: ‘okay guys, remember my other note was to change the music.’ They were like: ‘okay,’ so I kept the intention. You know, they go a little bit farther in melodrama, they go a little bit farther in humor. Its just cultural, its just a cultural thing. And I love their music… the love theme was so beautiful, and I kind of emulate it a little bit, I had the composer emulate it. But I didn’t change the intention of what they were going for. I tried to understand it and kept it consistent, and that’s why I think they loved it when they saw it.

MO: You’re a pro when it comes to action scenes and this movie is filled with quite a few of them. What makes a successful action sequence?

(BR): First of all, I was so impressed, because I was like: ‘how did you afford this?’ I mean the action sequences were huge in this movie. And they just did it in the Indian way, which is very practical and very simple, and they did such a great job with the action. I didn’t really have to do a lot, I think I just shortened it because I think there were things that were spectacular but because of the world that we live, because of these huge action movies that we shoot in Hollywood, there was a lot of stuff that was kind of redundant, that you had seen maybe on TV a lot. So I eliminated those moments…meaning moments that could be considered cliché to an American audience. I tried to keep it fresh, and stuff that you hadn’t seen before. Whereas in India they had never seen it so it was amazing for and Indian audience.

MO: Now were you really familiar with Bollywood pictures before you started working on this?

(BR): No, I mean I’ve seen Shahid Kapoor’s movies, I’d see some Indian influenced movies, some movies that Indian filmmakers had done. But I wasn’t a student of it like I am of Hong Kong cinema. It’s a totally different world. And I didn’t feel like I needed to go and study Bollywood to do this job because the film spoke for itself. It was such a great film, it really worked, and I saw what they were going for: they were making a Bollywod film that appealed to Western audiences. So I said: ’let me just take it a step further.’

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