http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/6247418.html
MUMBAI, India This tangled neighborhood of pieced-together shacks along a railroad track seems an unlikely residence for movie stars. But here is where two of the child stars of the hit movie "Slumdog Millionaire" live, amid the rusted tin lean-tos in the shadow of this city's high-rises for the wealthy. The 8-year-old actors are at the center of controversy surrounding the Golden Globes-winning rags-to-riches movie. The film hit a nerve in India, launching soul-searching debates over the actors' compensation, the movie's portrait of the country's vast poor and the title's use of the word "dog," which some slum dwellers consider so offensive that they ransacked a theater in Bihar's state capital of Patna, where the film was being shown in India for the first time. Emerging from her tiny, windowless shanty, the pixie-haired Rubina Ali, who plays the young romantic interest early in the film, says she loved making the movie and snapping photographs of Bollywood idols on the set. For the first time in her life, she set foot inside the city's many five-star hotels. But her father, Rafiq Ali Kureshi, a carpenter who said he was a set builder for the film, broke his leg during filming and has been unemployed since. Living farther along the sludge-coated tracks is Azharuddin Ismail, who played the young brother of the film's main character. His family's illegal shanty was recently demolished, and his father is suffering from tuberculosis. They live under a tarp. Much of his salary from the film has been spent on his father's treatment and feeding his family, he said. "Uncle Danny has sent us to school and is paying for that and we are happy," said Rubina, using a term of affection to refer to Danny Boyle, the film's British director. "But it's still very tough for us." "Slumdog Millionaire" or "Slumdog Crorepati," as the Hindi-language version is known received 10 Oscar nominations and became the modern-day fairy tale of the year in multiplexes across America. Amid the film's U.S. box-office success it had grossed almost $60 million by last weekend comes ever-rising scrutiny within India of Boyle and the film's distributors. They are accused of not having done enough to compensate some of the younger Indian actors and extras who worked on the film, and have been called peddlers of the country's poverty. Editorial writers and film critics have said that "Slumdog's" popularity raises a larger issue: To what extent are filmmakers and artists responsible for improving the lives and fixing the societal dysfunction that made their movies possible? Or does that responsibility ultimately rest with a society or government, once its conscience has been pricked? "We feel strongly that we want to do all we can for Rubina and Azharuddin, especially long term. And we have started the process of talking about what our responsibilities are. But at the end of the day, it is just a movie," Boyle said in an interview. "In the end, India will have to address its own issues. They are too big to be solved by our efforts alone, although we can try." Despite its recent economic growth, India still has the largest number of malnourished children younger than 5 in the world a total estimated by the United Nations at 57 million along with some of the largest slums, especially here in the country's entertainment and financial capital, where a vast stretch of low-lying tin roofs is the first thing visitors see from airplanes on arrival. Boyle has put both Rubina and Azharuddin in schools their first time to attend and set up a trust fund that they can access once they finish their education. The film's producers insist they have been generous, paying them more than three times the average annual salary of any adult in their neighborhood. The children's parents dispute those figures. This week, Britain's Daily Telegraph quoted the parents as saying Rubina received 500 pounds, or roughly $730 at current exchange rates, for filming and Azharuddin, $2,475. The film producers have said the actors were paid more and given monthly and yearly stipends for schooling, although they did not release specific amounts. A third young actor, Ayush Mahesh Khedekar, comes from a middle-class family; his compensation has so far not been an issue. Filmed on a modest $15 million budget, the two-hour film tells the harrowing tale of Jamal Malik, an orphan of Mumbai's teeming slum, whose search for the girl he loves leads him to try to win India's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," hoping she will see him on the popular show. He answers the questions correctly but is arrested for cheating because no one believes a slum boy could have such knowledge. The film, however, has a happy ending, with a classic Bollywood song-and-dance extravaganza. The filmmakers, though, get a more troubled ending. Some in the Indian media have called the movie "a poverty tour" that turns a profit by using India's slums as its cinematic backdrop. Playing on 350 screens across India, the film grossed $2.8 million in its opening weekend, according to Fox Star Studios the box office gross reduced because of rampant piracy. The film has also been slammed because the main stars speak English, rare for slum dwellers who don't have access to private schools that teach the language, a point of tension here. Nicholas Almeida, a social activist and slum dweller, has filed a complaint in Indian court against Boyle and the Indian actors, contending that the film's title is discriminatory and harks back to British rule, "when they called Indians `dogs.'" "Slumdog" is far from the first film that has been accused of profiting from pain. The child stars of "The Kite Runner" said they were paid $1,000 to $1,500 per week, even though Screen Actors Guild members are paid $2,634 per week for principal speaking roles. Those involved in making that film point to another comparison to justify the actors' pay rate: Average per capita income in Afghanistan is about $300 a year, according to the World Bank. "It's a very delicate issue. Because we know Danny Boyle means well. He was very good to the kids," said Krishna Poojari, co-founder of Reality Tours and Travel, a company that uses part of its profits to run a school that teaches English in the Mumbai slums featured in the film. "If `Slumdog' wasn't such a big hit, what Boyle did for them would have been OK. But it's making so much money around the world. More has to be done." --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Duveyoung <no_re...@...> wrote: > > In the news we see that two of the film's child actors are living in > the slums again -- both so young as to not know the complexities of > the world, both still, a week later, wearing the clothing they wore > while walking the red carpet at the Oscars. > > I think that the producer of the film should reward these kids' > families with enough money such that the kids can have far better > homes. It seems the money went into trust funds for the kids, but > there should have been "agent fees" or something to reward the parents > so that these kids -- who got to live a western lifestyle for a while > -- should not be victimized by having been shown heaven and then sent > back to hell. > > I've been to cardboard and corrugated iron shack-towns in Indonesia, > and it boggled my western sensibilities. It is one thing that these > exist at all, it is one thing that 30,000 kids die each day from > living in such conditions, but it is another to take a child from such > and then put them back into it. > > It may turn out that the producers did the right thing and gave the > parents some decent bucks to escape the slums, and maybe the parents > are living in the slums purposely to shame the producers into giving > more money and using photo ops of the kids in the slums as a way to > "beg," but I doubt that. > > To me this is a pretty open and shut case of greedy marauding that is > made all the more egregious by the fact that the film was such a > financial success and yet, still, the coffers didn't overflow to these > poor kids. Probably there's many others associated with the film that > are equally left out of the sharing of profits. > > I wrote one of the most successful infomercials ever for Ed Beckley > who promised me and another person that if the infomercial hit the big > time "he'd take care of us." We were both working for Fairfield > standard pay -- $2,000 a month. The infomercial went on to rake in > over $180,000,000 in sales -- pots and pans if you can believe it. > What did I get for my success-reward? Nada. > > Well, I'm a big guy and I learned to never work on a handshake again, > but I think it's one of the worst kinds of sin when one is shown > heaven (Oscars or Cookware Sales) and then the promise is simply > broken by those who should be so overflowing with happiness at the > wind-fall success, but it seems that the more money that comes to one, > the more one feels like even more money must come before one is "safe > enough" to have an overflowing of the heart. > > And what the hell, eh? The director, Danny Boyle?, of Slumdog > Millionaire, the producers, and others must have personally made > millions of dollars from this film -- and no one could pony up a few > bucks for decent living conditions for the actors? WTF are they > thinking -- where's their PR agents screaming at them to get these > kids out of the headlines? Where's them thinking about a sequel and > how the world will view it as an abuse upon children, etc.? > > Those kids stole the hearts of the audience, and I predict that > someone is going to cough up something for them, but shame, shame, > shame on those who have not yet done so and should have. > > Edg >
