Production
Dev Anand was approached by American director Tad Danielewski and Pearl Buck to be cast in an American film based on a novel by an Indian author. Although Dev Anand had refused, he took up the opportunity for a collaboration when he met Tad again at the 1962 Berlin Film Festival. Somebody suggested The Guide. Dev Anand purchased the book and read it at one go. He called up Pearl who invited him to the United States to discuss the project. With their approval, he called up R. K. Narayan and procured the rights to the book.
The movie was planned to be an Indo-American co-production to be shot simultaneously in Hindi and English. The idea was to film the scenes common to both versions simultaneously. Pearl tutored Waheeda Rehman on her diction for the English part. But because of differences of opinion between the two production teams, Dev Anand postponed the Hindi version, thereby freeing Chetan Anand to direct Haqeeqat which was later highly acclaimed. It also became an opportunity for Vijay Anand who stepped in, as the film proved a landmark for him.
The climax of the film was shot in Limdi town, 90 km from Ahmedabad, where Chetan Anand taught English in 1941. Towards the end of the film, there’s a scene where a foreign journalist arrives to interview Raju (Dev’s character in the movie) after he becomes an ascetic. Dev wanted a young, good-looking foreigner for the role. So, he asked an associate to get one in five hours! The associate rushed to Ahmedabad. Walking down a road, he spotted a tall, well built foreigner. He went up to him and bluntly asked: ‘Do you have a good-looking wife?’ He glared at him. Realizing his blunder, he clarified that the unit were looking for a foreigner to feature in an Indian movie. The couple agreed, and he drove them back to Limdi for the shoot.
Read more about this topic: Guide (film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“To expect to increase prices and then to maintain them at a higher level by means of a plan which must of necessity increase production while decreasing consumption is to fly in the face of an economic law as well established as any law of nature.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)