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By Root 993 0

was long after I had left. I have rarely been much of a partier, and I’m constitutionally unable to hang with the late-nighters. I know I miss out on so much fun, particularly when I’m making movies. Norma Jean and Marilyn, which filmed in Hollywood, was one of the only movies during which I could partake in the afterhours moveable feast, partly because the feast so often landed at my hotel, the Chateau Marmont. I have amazing memories of being up so late with Mira Sorvino and Sean Penn, both of whom were nominated for Oscars that year, that we were still drinking champagne and swapping crazy actor stories when the daily trade magazines were delivered, with both of them featured on the covers. But last night I had missed my chance to meet Shahrukh because I needed to poke around my hotel room in my nightgown and write in my journal. The irrepressible Kate, though, had been willing to take one for the team and wait for his arrival. He had wanted to meet me, and when he asked her where I had gone, her patented charm had yielded an invitation to visit him on set to discuss his joining the YouthAIDS campaign. She explained what an opportunity this was, quite possibly the biggest box office draw in the world, with hundreds of millions of fans. “He’s the Brad and Angelina, the George and Julia, the Bruce and Arnold, all combined,” said Kate.

Expectations are usually disastrous, and I assumed that a film set, surely, would be … well, a film set. I didn’t think I was going to 20th Century Fox or Warner Brothers, but it’s such a powerful, influential industry in movie-crazy India, I figured it would be at least a little upscale. Wrong. We turned off the crowded, honking highway onto a dusty secondary road that passed stagnating rivers choked with debris and rubbish. Litter lined the verges. A few tattered picnic tables and snack stands were open to the public. I saw a man, asleep in his rickshaw, looking for all the world as if someone had broken his neck. Ubiquitous stray animals scrounged by the wayside, their ribs as prominent as the flying buttresses of Notre Dame Cathedral.

The studio itself was a plain, large, unadorned building with a tin roof. I wondered immediately what they did for sound during the rainy season. Before we got out of the car, Kate and I invited God into the experience. I realized I was “Bono-ing” this movie star, reaching out to a powerful entertainer to encourage him to use his substantial fame for good, reminding him he could effect great change through the ever-growing pop culture machine.

On the darkened stage were about twenty dancers dressed in a 1970s disco interpretation of traditional Indian classical dance costumes, with dazzling hair and body jewelry. The backdrop was painted an atmospheric gray-blue. Trees, painted silver with jingly bits dangling off branches, added to the Deco-Hollywood-fantasy-musical-gone-Bollywood camp. It was pure moviemaking magic: In person, it was all smoke and mirrors.

We were served tea and our host arrived, wearing an open shirt over his bare-chested pantaloon costume. Pleasantries were exchanged, and then I immediately said, “Please tell me what you’d like to know about what I do.” Shahrukh looked at me evenly and gave a most interesting, blunt reply. He said he didn’t know why I did it, and he didn’t need to know. He believed, based on my commitment, that the work is credible and the situation is urgent. He was happy simply to do whatever I asked him to do, because I was the one asking him. End of conversation. In sixty seconds, we had a commitment and a plan: We would draft public service announcements for him to shoot while on set. He would designate PSI as a charity on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, the wildly popular show that he hosted (and that the world later came to know Indians love via the film Slumdog Millionaire). He was willing to talk about “sensitive” stuff, like married men who paid for sex. He offered the premiere of this film as a fund-raiser. He agreed to be the “face” of our new Indian financed hedge fund to benefit grassroots programs.