And the dancing is really a substitute for sex
If you’ve ever seen the movie Ghost World, you know that it opens up with an incredibly infectious tune taken from the 1966 Bollywood musical Gumnaam. The song, "Jaan Pehechaan Ho", by Mohammed Rafi, sounds like a surf instrumental crossed with a James Bond theme song and the horns from a James Brown song with amazing Hindi vocals on top. (I would point you to a sample of the music on the Ghost World site, but the whole thing is done in Flash. You need to click on the boom box, then click on the CD on the floor to get a selection of tunes from the soundtrack.) Laura was reading Cool and Strange Music magazine last night, and in an interview Ghost World creator Daniel Clowes mentioned that he had gotten his original 20th generation copy of the scene from someone who had been housesitting for Peter Holsapple, guitarist-songwriter for the dB’s, my favorite band from the 1980s, and copied it from Peter’s collection. Amazing. Incidentally, the Ghost World DVD includes the entire scene from Gumnaam, and it’s spectacular.
Meanwhile, Bollywood seems to be becoming quite an industry for Britain. The Guardian reports that with Bollywood films shooting location shots in the UK on a regular basis now, Indian tourists are taking package vacations to visit the scenes of their favorite movies.
Posted at 1:05 PM
hey, ralph--
loren has a 20th generation copy of the entire film, and we watched it on new year’s eve. the scene that made it into ghost world is the best part, but the rest is sort of fascinating, too. this is just one of many reasons for you and laura to come back to visit.
by the way, listen to the new billy bragg single ("half english") and tell me he wasn’t inspired by that scene!
Posted by sbt at 6:47 PM, May 9, 2002 [Link]