"We have made a raucous sex comedy, and I expect people to have fun," said director Daisy von Scherler Mayer as she predicted that The Guru would have 'an excellent word of mouth'.
"It is also a film with heart; it is about relationships," she continued. "You leave the theatre thoroughly entertained, but you will also remember the underlying themes: love conquers all and we ought to accept everybody for who and what they are."
Scherler Mayer, who grew up in New York, says The Guru ultimately "is about embracing humanity. And at this time, its underlying themes are very crucial to everyone in America."
As for critics who slammed the film for being too formulaic, she said, "I did not make the film for snobbish critics."
In the United Kingdom, audiences ignored mostly negative reviews and led the film to a strong $10 million gross. It was released on 368 screens in August and opened as the No 1 film of the week. Shekhar Kapur, who suggested its story of a sex guru who realises he is leading a sham life, had predicted correctly that the movie was going to be a crowd-pleaser. Kapur served as executive producer of the film that was produced by the British company Working Title, which made huge hits for medium budgets (say $30 million) such as Bridget Jones Diary and About A Boy.
The Guru was made for about $20 million.
In France, where the reviewers were even more hostile than in England, the film took a paltry $1.5 million whereas in Australia, where too the reviewers were not flattering, the film honeymooned for a decent $3 million. "In many countries, Heather Graham is a big draw and her popularity helps to build publicity for the film," said the director. "But she is not famous in every country."
The director, whose previous films Party Girl and Madeline, were profitable, hopes that The Guru, which opens in Los Angeles, New York, and a few select cities on Friday, will emulate its success in the UK and Australia. In the former territory, it made nearly three times as much as Mira Nair's Monsoon Wedding.
Nair's film grossed $14 million in North America. It is not always that a hit movie in one territory duplicates its success in another. Deepa Mehta's Bollywood Hollywood, for instance, grossed about $2 million in Canada, but made just about $250,000 in America.
Early reviews in America did not find either enlightenment or happiness in The Guru. 'Some advice for your spiritual well-being: avoid The Guru,' wrote the reviewer for Associated Press. 'What starts as a promising transplantation of India's Bollywood musical fantasy to America quickly devolves into a predictable, lame comedy of errors, secrets and lies.'
But Scherler Mayer and first-time screenplay writer Tracey Jackson are convinced their film will have solid legs in America. The film pays homage to a favourite American theme -- an outsider in a big city, said the director. "There have been many successful films and Broadway shows on this theme," she said.
"This has been the theme of musicals like 42nd Street and dramas like Midnight Cowboy," she added. "But this time around, Ramu migrates from one country to another. But he also has to undergo life lessons and challenges like the Americans did in many classic movies when they migrated to the cities."
The movie revolves around a Delhi dance teacher Ramu (Jimi Mistry) who comes to New York with starry eyes. "You are a fool," a friend tells him. "Do you know why they call it the American dream? Cause it only happens when you're asleep!"
Ramu soon ends up working in a porno movie where he gets to know his co-star (Graham) who has kept her secret from her fiancé. Ramu falls for her quickly, but meanwhile he accidentally plays a seer, and is on his way to becoming a celebrated sex guru, thanks to Lexi (Oscar winner Marisa Tomei), a deeply unhappy woman.
But like in a typical Bollywood movie, he has a change of heart and renounces his newfound wealth and fame to win his true love. "I wanted to make a refreshingly different movie that was also very entertaining," the 38-year-old director said.
Her previous film, Madeline, starring Oscar winner Frances McDormand and the late Nigel Hawthorne, the distinguished British actor, was a box-office success about five years ago. "And yet I did not rush into making another film," she added. "I reject projects if they do not stimulate me immediately."
"I like to have a bit of spectacle, fantasy, and theatricality in my films," she continued. "If the movie project doesn't promise to be a crowd-pleaser, it does not interest me at all."
Bollywood is an integral part of The Guru. One of the highlights of the film is the Bollywood dance spectacle.
The director readily confessed that she did not know much about Bollywood till the other day. "Now, I can't say how many Bollywood films I watched in preparation for The Guru," she said with a chuckle. "My assistants made sure that I watched song and dance sequences from major movies with the big heartthrobs, particularly Hrithik Roshan."
The Indian movie industry was influenced by American musicals and India went about reinventing the musical, and now the reinvented musical is bouncing back, she continued. Her movie is also a homage to several American films, she said. Ramu's ideas about America also come from the American films he must have seen in India," she said. "It leads him to a very romantic notion of what his life here could be like."
"We have hit, especially in the climax scenes, the traditional marks like rushing to the church to break up the wedding," she explained. "And even though Ramu is new to America, he has seen such things in many American movies, including The Graduate."
The scene in which an older woman seeks the guru's insights on sex is inspired by the famous fake orgasm scene from the 1989 hit movie When Harry Met Sally, directed by Rob Reiner, starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. "We showed our film to Billy Crystal," the director said. "He liked it a lot."
