Hullabaloo in Old Jeypore: The Making of The Deceivers. Ismail Merchant (H/B)

HULABALOO IN OLD JEYPORE: THE MAKING OF THE DEEIVERS by Ismail Merchant. (With photographs by Mikki Ansin)

At a time when film-making was still dominated by the major studios, the twenty-five-year-old Ismail Merchant, with one short documentary film to his credit, established as an independent producer of feature films. In partnership with the American director James Ivory and the German-born riter Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, his company Merchant Ivory Productions, has been responsible for some of the most critically acclaimed films of the last twenty-six years.

Ismail Merchant is now one of the most distinguished film producers in contemporary cinema. Revolutionary in his approach to film-making, his films were the first to use the abundant material of the Indian subcontinent as a subject for feature films aimed at an international audience. Unable to interest the hidebund film industry in his own country or in Hollywood in his ideas, he was forced to reject conventional methods of film financing and film making and he bacame a pioneer of independent cinema.

This book is an account of the making of one film in the life of an extraordinary film-maker. At the end of 1987 he realized two long-cherished wishes: to fim the John Masters novel THE DECEIVERS and to work with new collaborators under the Merchant Ivory umbrella.

While making THE DECEIVERS, merchant's set took on the nature of a battlefield. He had to face conflicts with new collaborators, internal feuding, the complexities of the Indian legal system, local politics and local corruption and, finally, arrest.

Merchant has never been interested in committing his life to a self-congratuatory autobiography, but the making of THE DECEIVERS has finally drawn him to record, within the context of his recent experiences, something of his unorthodox methods, his work, his philosophy and his life.

A FIRST EDITION hardback published in 1988 by Viking