Off Air... with Jane and Fi - This is my Super Bowl!

Episode Date: February 15, 2023

Jane and Fi have swanned off on holiday, so Chloe Tilley and Calum Macdonald are here to hold down the fort. They're joined by Director Shekhar Kapur to talk about his new film 'What's Love Got to Do with It?', in cinemas on February 24th. If you want to contact the show to ask a question and get involved in the conversation then please email us: [e-mail] Assistant Producer: Kate LeeTimes Radio Producer: Rosie Cutler Podcast Executive Producer: Ben Mitchell Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello. Do you want to say hello? Yes, okay. You can say hello too. We'll both say hello. Give us the nod, Kate, when you're happy. Hello, hello and welcome to Wednesday's Off Air with Jane and Fi. But as you know, this week it's with Chloe and Callum. And it is our privilege to be, well, in your ears, in your podcast feed

and as part of your lives this week actually as well. I'm being sincere. Today, Callum walked into the office. It's about one o'clock. A bit later than normal. I was a bit late, sorry. Which is fair enough. Callum walked into the office at about one o'clock, a bit later than normal. I was a bit late, sorry. Which is fair enough. Walked in and said, this is like my Super Bowl. In reference to Nicola Sturgeon resigning.

Not because he was joyful at the resignation, but Scottish politics is a thing, along with American politics, to be fair, just burns bright in your soul. You absolutely love it, don't you? I do. It's like the story that you just, if there was a little Christmas list, it'd be there at the top,'t it scottish politics resignation is that sort of thing that you always want to cover i think and yes i was expecting not really i was expecting rihanna to pop up and do another halftime performance she's busy yeah she's probably quite busy also that i

i'm feeling smug is too strong a word but i did predict that nicola sturgeon would resign at some point this year. I made that prediction at the start of January, or the middle of January, I think, officially. But I didn't expect it to happen quite so soon. I mean, you're correct, but yeah, it happened a lot sooner than you. Yeah, so people have been tweeting me all day as a result of that, saying, oh, can you do the lottery numbers next? Oh, Callum, you're so clever.

And I'm like, well, yeah, I can give you the lottery numbers today, but they'll probably only come real in, you know, six weeks. I've got to timer right it was interesting today though speaking to lots of different people i mean you spoke to your counsellor didn't you who was i mean was moved to tears basically uh and it shows i mean we were discussing on the program weren't we and i think we probably didn't get into it as much as we could have done the depth of feeling or you know love or animosity towards nicola sturgeon there's very few people who go nicola sturgeon she's all right she provokes strong emotions in people and i think that was demonstrated really through the guests and the interactions we had today from listeners it's

really interesting because i think all politicians all high profile politicians have an element of you love them or you hate them and you kind of have you kind of come down on one side or the other but i think nicola sturgeon has just become even more of a lightning rod since the referendum so since she took over since she was crowned as the next first minister next snp leader after alex salmon the debate around the referendum was already pretty toxic particularly online it has to be said but then from there the sort of pursuit of independence and the difficulty in discussing when it should happen as a referendum if it should happen how it would work what are the details what

do you do then she goes for the kind of de facto referendum via a general election that would be an indicator that was people took a real grudge with that that's not what this election is for stop making it about that and so she becomes this really divisive polarizing figure and i'm fascinated that the passion people have towards nicholas sturgeon i'm not sure i mean maybe boris johnson is possibly one but other than that there doesn't seem to be the same kind of passion for politicians certainly prime ministers in england is it because of her charisma i want because she is charismatic. Of that, there is no doubt.

Or is it without being awful, because it's Scotland and it feels like it's fighting the oppressor. For some people, they feel like it is a fight against England. We want our independence, particularly people who support independence. 100%. I think that's absolutely right. I think for some of those independent supporters, Nicola Sturgeon as the figurehead is somebody to love.

And you mentioned the councillor, Lloyd Melville, who, yes, absolutely, was so passionately keen on Nicola Sturgeon as First Minister, SNP leader. And almost speaking to him, we almost heard this sort of sense of futility in what happens now. If not her, then who? And nobody's been very committed on who they want to back to be the next First Minister for obvious

political reasons today. But there is a feeling I think among SNP supporters as to, well, who is it? Who should take over now? Well there's lots of people aren't there who are kind of being touted. It'll be interesting to see. Listen, I'll let you kind of get back on your phone kind of bidding all the people that you want to speak to

behind the scenes. Bidding is good jargon. Should we explain bidding? It's not like the Indian cricket auction or the women's auction. £4.30. That's right. Yes, but when we request interviews with people, I'm trying to, all I'll say off-air listeners, is I'm trying to lock in an exclusive with...

Someone. Someone. With someone who is already quite high profile in Scottish politics and who will, I imagine, continue to be so. And could play a central role in all of this. Yes, yes. I would laugh if they said no. No, I'm being mean.

I'm speaking to them tomorrow. I imagine they'll say no. Okay, we'll get an update tomorrow then. Right, let's talk about our big interview today because we spoke to Shekhar Kapoor, an award-winning director he was a bollywood actor actually been hugely successful many many films under his belt his new film well it's a rom-com what's love got to do with it it's really interesting actually it's got lily james in it it's got emma thompson and it's addressing what is kind of a tricky issue of arranged marriage or

as it's discussed in the film, assisted marriage. Which is a really interesting terminology shift, just to be aware of. And it is funny, you know, it's designed to be funny, so there's that bit of it, obviously, as a rom-com. There's also the bit of it that makes it feel like a documentary, like you're getting a glimpse into that sort of cultural discussion that is very prescient.

And Shaker explains to us what he's hoping to achieve by making this film. I was aiming to get a sense of emotionality in it. I was also very aiming to get the fact that forget, let people forget about the cultural differences. Because ultimately, at the bottom of it, when we think about love, we think about forgiving, we think about compassion. at the bottom of it, when we think about love, we think about forgiving, we think about compassion. When you get into those very internal bits, then you forget who's on screen or what color they are or what nationality they were, or they are on screen. So it was really important for me to be able to get the audiences into the skins of the characters. And once again, the skin of the characters, it was very important for you to be able to recognize your own grandmother, whichever culture you come from, or your own mother, or your own son, or your own lover. So that was of prime importance to make this what people call culture clash, not to make it a clash like these are us, this is us on screen.

And in dealing with the issue of arranged marriage, or as it's described in the film as assisted marriage, did you want to challenge the preconceptions that a Western audience may have of arranged marriage? Yeah. Arranged marriage has become like a big term. Like, you know what? It's an execution. It's not.

In which culture is there no arranged marriage? I mean, if you go to New York, I have friends where the Jewish mother is constantly trying to get the son married, or in Japan, or in China, anywhere else, there's an arranged marriage. It's just that in India and Pakistan and that part of the world, arranged marriage has become a term because our weddings are eight days long and nine days long, and we put so much effort behind marriage so that it does not end in divorce. And so there's a term called arranged marriage.

But which is the culture that you go to where marriages and young people are not arranged to meet? Every culture that happens. I guess there's a subtle difference, isn't there, if you've got maybe some people would say an interfering mother or father who says, come on, you're getting old, you need to get on. But they don't necessarily introduce you to someone, though, do they? They don't necessarily say, you know, come and meet this person. They might just put pressure on you to find someone. breakfast some friends of mine and downstairs and they're perfectly white right they're from england and they were just talking the other one and they were trying to set up their friend because the friend is lonely and it's valentine's day and they don't have a boyfriend so they were just setting somebody up uh it was assisted was it arranged was it pressured the other person kept

saying no no i don't want to do it yeah you have to come on you're too lonely you have to meet someone um it's there in every culture we just got just got a term for it. We have a system. And that term and that idea has become a system. So we say it's arranged marriage. And it really is a way, you know, narratives have always gone from the West to the East, and it's time for it to change. The narrative has to flow, the winds have to flow the other direction. And over time, the West has always found ways to beat up the East or their tribals, you know, this idea that the tribals are different. They do things in a different way. It's the same thing we're doing. It's exactly the same thing. We just have a different term for it. This culture difference

has been created by a Western attitude towards the East. And that's why we fight it. Otherwise, there would be no fight if the West was a little bit more open. I suppose with that in mind, I'm thinking of one of the scenes in the film where the family go to see the, I suppose, the sort of agent who's going to try to help match their son with a suitable bride. And it struck me that actually it feels kind of awkward and that he's asking for kind of specifics what are you looking for what are you not looking for but actually i was reminded of dating apps where people swipe through based purely on a job or appearance or these sorts

of characteristics and it kind of dawned on me that perhaps it's not that dissimilar yeah you actually hit absolutely right on the point there. Dating apps do exactly the same thing in a different way. The difference is that there's no secret about it now, and in the East there's still a little bit of privacy that prevails. If you looked at the times of India, let's say, a few years ago before dating apps came into India, four pages were devoted to

matrimonials. And they're exactly like dating apps, exactly like that. So it wasn't that you had to go to an agent, you just had to open the Times of India. And they're all these little, little ads about we need a fair bride of this cast with a job with a guy. And you know, what is the biggest thing at that time? See, it's west it's like has green card has green card you know that was the big thing that the guy has a green card so you know you can leave leave india and go overseas so yeah the dating apps are exactly the same thing interesting card but i wonder i wonder if we're at risk are we at risk of of trivializing um arranged marriage? The other phrase that sticks with me was when the documentary maker in the film refers to this as being love contractually.

And while that is witty and funny, is there any danger of making it a bit flippant that actually this is something that concerns lots of people and we shouldn't let that wash over us? Marriages were not initially when we had arranged marriages, let's take the term arranged. It was arranged between families. It was arranged because two families got together. And the world has changed a little bit now. Because now it's families, we don't have this this idea of the joint family was very big in the East, it's always both joint families living together. And so therefore, families got together and they arranged the way that, okay, we can all live together even if these two get married. The world is different. Now, it's a sense of two people have to carry each other's burden individually.

The moment that changes, the moment that social system changes, then the idea of arranged marriages also changes. It's very different, very different now. And so when you said trivializing, I'm just wondering whether this idea of arranged marriages will last as a system anymore. And it'd be exactly the same thing as dating apps. It's exactly the same thing that, you know, so-and-so's girl is there at college and she's lonely and let's get them together. Or in China where that system of the arranger still exists, they even go down to malls, find girls that are not married and then find families with boys that are not married. It's just there all over the world. find families with boys that are not married. It's just, they're all over the world.

But in India, I think, and in Pakistan, in those places where families, we had this system of joint marriages, joint families. That gave rise to this idea of arranged marriage, and that's going. My heart really went out to the central character, who you could see at the beginning of the film, was struggling, something that many people in this country do struggle with that their parents were born in a different country they were born

in british they feel british but they also have another identity and it's kind of that push and pull of the conservative values of the parents and the more modern values that that they live by living in britain today and i had a real sympathy for the character. Was that something that you wanted to create in the film so that people could understand what it's like for people who have that conflict, I guess, in some ways, in their lives? You know, I was 18 when I first came to London as a student, and I saw that conflict a lot.

I saw that amongst my friends a lot. And some of them did have actually fell in love, had very strong love affairs with, you know, a brown guy and a white girl, for example. And when they went back to India, they got married to somebody else. And they would not even reveal that they had a girlfriend here. And I've always wondered why did they do that?

And I can tell you what I feel. I feel that there used to be a very strong insecurity about being able to adapt to a different culture. There was a very strong insecurity about being able to adapt to a sexuality of a different culture. You know, there's some kind of safety in the fact that you have an arranged marriage where you are not completely on, you know, you're not, your sexuality is not challenged because it's arranged, so it's not your fault. We've not gone down that way, but it was true. A lot of my friends at that time went back

and they were challenged constantly by this different culture. Now, given that, the culture wasn't as, you know, will the parents get used to it? No, it was there, but there was something very individual about the fear of being challenged. But that doesn't exist that much now. Now it's not that prevalent.

It's like when I meet my friends now, say from India or Pakistan or even from South America, everybody's becoming very similar. So everybody's problems are very similar. So yes, it does exist within families. I think that the main character that you're talking about has that problem, and they still have that problem because the family is not fully integrated. It's not a problem between the characters.

It's when immigrants, okay, let me backtrack a little bit. Immigrants, when they come to a different nation, they feel a lack of identity. They feel a little afraid that they'll lose their identity, and they haven't really got an identity of the majority so they have they individualize themselves and in time to individualize themselves they overexert the pressures of their identity so when i if i um say go to the west coast in in the u.s and and they'll say oh oh, my God, you know, the values here. And it's true.

When they talk about the values in the West not quite aligning with the Eastern values, I try and say, you know, the Eastern values that you talk about don't exist there anymore. It's just you trying to individualize it, to find who you are in this majority society as an individual who you are. It's trying to find who you are in this majority society as an individual who you are. It's trying to find your own identity. And often that becomes a problem.

The search for identity becomes a problem. You're listening to Off Air with Jane and Fi, but of course this week with Chloe and Callum. So we're talking to Shekhar Kapoor about his new film, What's Love Got To Do With It? Really interesting that it shows the kind of challenges for people living in modern Britain whose parents have been born in a different country to a different culture.

So, for example, in this situation, the mum and dad of the central character were born in a small village in Pakistan. They had an arranged marriage, very small community, not much choice without being awful. situation the mum and dad of the central character were born in a small village in pakistan they had an arranged marriage very small community not much choice without being awful whereas their son is very modern british he's a consultant he's very successful he leads a very modern life and there's a real culture clash there what the parents want in the arranged marriage is somewhat different to what Kaz actually wants. So we asked Shekhar Kapoor about the relationship between

being honest with yourself and being honest with your family in his film. Are you saying that we are all honest with our families? Well, that's what I wanted to ask. I don't know. I guess we probably aren't, are we? No, none of us are. None of us are. We all have our little hidden secrets in ourselves, but if you live in a joint family, that constant push and pull is the conflict of the joint family encourages you at one time or the other to communicate.

honesty out of it, I would say that a joint family encourages communication because what we say at the end of the film, loneliness really is a disease. It says of Western societies, but I would say loneliness is a disease of modern societies. As we become the burden of individuality, we're encouraged to be I, me, me, me. You know, I have to fight this world. And I have to succeed. And I have to do this, this question of I has becoming much, much more important in modern societies. And therefore, but if you look at still in the east, when I go back to India, I still find people living together. And yes, the politics of living together, two families living together are huge. Yet the I'd never becomes that important because you're constantly in dialogue. You're constantly in dialogue. And even when you're in conflict, you're in dialogue. So you're not lonely.

In your experience, do you think people find some sort of sadness in the erosion of tradition. Yes, there is a sadness in the erosion of culture because often a culture or tradition, I'm excluding the word because tradition has some kind of negative values to it. Culture doesn't. So the erosion of culture becomes an erosion of identity. I'm Indian, right? Or I'm an accountant or a filmmaker.

Whichever identity you give yourself, it is an erosion of culture is an erosion of identity. And the erosion of identity creates a sense of loneliness and emptiness like, okay, I'm not this. If I'm not this, who'm not this who am I who am I becomes a very predominant question and then if you don't find another culture you tend to find a tribe and that's becoming a big problem in our world especially in the Western also then you become tribal and therefore you flit from track to tribe and you become vulnerable to tribalism. So I'm just trying to relate this idea of when your culture, what you call tradition, if culture goes away,

we tend to become more tribalistic. So we just flit from tribe to tribe. And we have already seen in so many parts of the world what tribalism can do. And that is probably an erosion of culture with that in mind do you think there will be some who will watch the conclusion of your film and feel regret about the family's modernization i suppose i think there's a lot of regret about modernization if modernization leads to aloneness.

If modernization leads to an overemphasis on I am the individual, therefore I stand apart from society, I stand apart from family. It's a personal point of view, which comes across in the film, that yes, that erosion of the idea of family can be very negative. Let's talk a little bit about the people who were involved in this film. You've got some great names, Emma Thompson, Lily James, my personal favourite, Asim Chowdhury. He always makes me laugh in whatever he's in. What was it like working with such a strong cast? A more general answer to that is that one

of the jobs of a director is to bring the strong cast together to some kind of a common culture that belongs to that film. If I would say the strong cast to me, strong cast means very, very good actors and very good actors are defined as people that have the intelligence of actors, but also actors that come onto the set willing to reveal themselves. I assume Chaudhary has been like my favorite because I traveled to BA a lot between India and here and I constantly see those ads and I couldn't stop laughing. I used to wait to see those ads. Yeah, he is a bit of a steam stealer.

I sat down and said, you have to bring yourself to this part. Emma Thompson brings herself to the part. Lily James brings herself to the part. This is not Lily James playing Zoe. It's Zoe emerging from inside Lily James, and that's why she looks so real. That's what a great actor is. That's what makes a great cast.

And we mustn't forget, of course, that Jemima can't write this. Yeah, isn't that interesting? When I read Jemima's script first, I thought, I said that this is an unfinished script. And then I got some actors to sit down and read it to me. And I said, well, that's actually the most brilliant and the most beautiful thing because it's an unfinished life. And why should love, love is a work in progress.

Love is a constant yearning. And then when I saw and I read the script again and again, I realized that maybe that's what the ultimate message of that film is. And that's what Jemima consciously or subconsciously, message of that film is and that's what jemima consciously or subconsciously in trying to find the real stories but not defining the real stories of the characters become became the beauty of the script to me when you read the script and continue to read the script to what extent did you consider it actually to feel almost like a documentary well isn, isn't drama or great drama, great documentary? A great documentary reveals the characters.

A great documentary will show you and allow you to indulge in the characters. But that's what a great feature does to me. I'm not a big visual effects person. I don't make huge, big Marvel films, but I make films about people. And if the people are real, it should be a great documentary,

compressed together, with a narrative controlled by the makers of the film. That was director Shekhar Kapoor. What's Love Got To Do With It? That's the name of the film. That will be in cinemas as of the 24th of February for that really quite interesting, funny, charming glimpse at

this cultural conversation that I think it's good to be aware of and it's quite a helpful way to access it I think through this kind of format, this sort of rom-com format I quite appreciated that actually As ever we love hearing from you so do keep getting in touch with us with all of your thoughts, you can get in touch on email janeandfee at times.radio.

Of course, you can tweet us at times.radio. Quick winning word for you. Oh, yes. Day three. Thanks for being here, off-air listeners. Today's winning word, three of five, I should say. You'll get the fourth one live on Times Radio between three and five on Thursday afternoon. You'll get the fifth one live on Times Radio between seven and nine on Breakfast in the morning on Friday.

Today's winning word, in tribute actually to Shekhar Kapoor, Bollywood. We'll chat to you tomorrow. You have been listening to Off Air with Jane Garvey and Fee Glover. Our Times Radio producer is Rosie Cutler and the podcast executive producer is Ben Mitchell. Now, you can listen to us on the free Times Radio app or you can download every episode from wherever you get your podcasts.

And don't forget that if you like what you heard and thought, hey, I want to listen to this, but live, then you can. Monday to Thursday, three to five on Times Radio. Embrace the live radio jeopardy. Thank you for listening and hope you can join us off air very soon. Goodbye.