(projector whirring)
(slow dramatic music)
(projector whirring)
(slow dramatic music continues)
(slow dramatic music continues)
(hooves thudding)
(slow dramatic music continues)
(slow dramatic music trails)
(gentle music)
(gentle music continues)
(gentle music continues)
- The whole lot of them
are totally unusual.
It was just like you could
have done a, what's the word?
A big dolly shot of Ruth
writing in one room,
Ismail shouting in another
room, d*ck practicing.
They all lived together,
they worked together.
It was a really
symbiotic relationship,
all those four people.
But then individually
they're all utterly unique.
I mean, it all
reads like a novel.
That's the thing, is being
part of them backstage,
you'd think, "No one
would've written this."
And this was reality.
(exciting music)
- At the side of the
everlasting why, there is a yes.
- I first saw a Merchant Ivory,
it was probably
"A Room with a View."
- The oddest people,
the queerest people,
but we rather liked
them, didn't we?
- You know, of course
I fell heavily in love
with Julian Sands, and
the beauty of that piece,
and the fact that it
was just so delicate.
- England has always
been disinclined
to accept human nature.
- Both "A Room with
a View" and "Maurice"
seemed to be profound works
on how one should
live one's life.
(character laughing)
Be true to your
nature, trust yourself,
as E.M. Forster says,
which is, "Only connect."
- [Speaker] We're
not odd, really,
we're just over expressive,
that's all.
- The more a lady has
to say, the better.
- After 25 years, not all
films look quite as important
or impressive as
"Howard's End" still does.
It really, really works
and I feel hugely privileged
to be any part of it.
- I'm certain His Lordship
is acting with the highest
and noblest motives, sir.
- Don't you see, that's exactly
what makes it so abominable.
- Of course, in those days
we fancied each
other on film sets.
Now everyone's just
looking at their phone.
There's no interaction at all.
But in those days,
film sets crackled
with subliminal lust.
(laughs)
(singer vocalizing)
- I mean, first of all,
there's Jim and Ismail.
It was very unlikely
that meeting
of minds, and bodies, and love.
There was a love story at first.
- These are two of the
most laid back, pleasant,
civilized, literate filmmakers
I've ever met,
and their work reflects that.
- The two together
are formidable.
One of the most particular
things about James
is he's meticulous.
Ismail, to me,
represented the finest
of Indian intelligentsia.
Oh, those were the days.
(slow music)
- [Speaker] Have you
come to forge a bridge
between east and west?
- No.
- I really can't think of any
other director and producer
who've made such a
variety of films.
I mean, basically they made
the films they wanted to make.
- This glamorous couple appeared
in our dull Indian lives.
And my father said to my mother,
"Don't have anything
to do with them.
"They're crooks and cheats."
And he's still saying that
45 years later.
(laughs)
- For years and years I
remember things got so bad,
I wondered how they had
the courage to carry on.
But they always did.
- These projects are
very special projects
and you have to fight for it,
hustle for it, cajole people.
You have to seduce people.
You know, all this is
a part of this game.
- You always felt that
you were in the presence
of really fascinating pirates
charting their own course,
and making their own way,
and making it work somehow.
You could think that it was
all bedlam and all that stuff,
but you couldn't stay mad.
(John laughing)
- The money, the time,
the staffing, and everything.
And the compensations
are it's always
gonna be a brilliant
script, brilliantly cast,
and probably be something
you're wildly proud of.
But time and money both
together are fairly tricky.
(slow dramatic music)
- [Speaker] 166, take one.
- You required an
immense amount of stamina
to work for Merchant Ivory.
At the end of every movie,
everyone says, "Never Again."
Not because they're
not wonderful people
who make great movies, but
because it's low budget.
It's just tough.
- People worked for
very little money.
And Ismail said,
"How can you not want to
work for Merchant Ivory?
"Do I not take you to
these wonderful places?
"Do I not feed you?"
(laughs)
- He'd cook these
incredible meals
and there were lots of sort
of raised voices and passion.
Of course there was a
dysfunctional element
to a lot of the dynamics,
but it was a very
open dysfunction.
- Ismail was particularly
keen on this idea
that there was a sense
of family about it.
Not in a sort of
Norman Rockwell sense,
but family in the sense of
a great, big sprawling mass
of people arguing
with each other,
but believing in the
end we would survive
any argument that we had.
- It was extraordinary.
You really didn't
want to be around
when you could sense
sometimes the friction.
- Yes.
Ismail, and Ruth,
and Jim, and d*ck,
they knew that they
produced good sh*t.
- Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
for "Howard's End."
- Ah.
(audience applauding)
- Emma Thompson
for "Howard's End."
- Jenny Beavan and John Bright
for "A Room with a View."
- And they weren't
going to sacrifice that
because of emotions.
- Their personal relationship
was very, very volatile.
And when you've got your
producer and your director
who are actually a couple.
I wasn't even aware of that.
It was so not alluded to.
You could never quite
work it out, you know,
the relationship between d*ck
Robbins, and Ismail, and Jim.
You didn't ask.
You were English.
You were too polite.
- [Presenter] And
the Oscar goes to-
- [Presenters] James Ivory,
"Call Me by Your Name."
(audience applauding)
(gentle music)
(vehicle honking)
- Well that's-
- [Stephen] Like
personal conflicts.
- Yeah, I don't know whether
that was that easily done,
in fact, and whether we...
I think maybe that's
something of an overstatement.
(slow jazz music)
(crowd chattering)
- Why is love like Rasputin?
- Haven't the faintest idea.
- Because you can poison it,
and you can stab it,
and you can knock
it down in the mud,
but it will always get up again.
- Ha.
- Don't you think that's good?
Don't you think that's funny?
Love will not die.
It simply will not die.
Just like Rasputin.
(slow jazz music continues)
- I think we chose
certain projects
because they were particularly
interesting to us
for all kinds of reasons.
It appeals to you
in some kind of way
and you don't really
know why perhaps.
And you don't think of it in
terms of your own life perhaps,
or that in some sort
of deep emotional
or psychological
way it's necessary
for you to make such a film.
I mean, I didn't
think like that.
And so many of our projects,
like adaptations of books,
were just simply the fact that
there was a book lying there
and out of curiosity
I picked it up
and read it and I liked it.
And then I thought, "Well
let's make this into a film.
"This would be a great film."
Like as simple as that.
Like "Quartet" was
an example of that.
Ruth was reading Jean Rhys'
novels one after the other
and she left "Quartet"
lying around.
I read it and I thought,
"Well I'd love to make
this into a movie."
Ruth was against making it.
She said, "Oh, Jim,
it is so low spirited.
"You don't want to make
a film out of this book."
And I said, "Yeah, I do."
(upbeat jazz music)
It was set in
Paris in the 1920s.
I've always been interested
in Paris in the 1920s.
And we sort of made it
less low spirited
by having all those
nightclub scenes in it.
- You just want to shut
me off and shut me in,
make me into a tame husband.
- As if anyone could do that.
- Then later on,
after we made it,
I began to see in the film,
well there are things going on
in the relationship
between the couple
and the whole thing
of Marya coming in
and I can identify
with all that,
which is to say
there have certainly
been convoluted relationships
in our lives, so.
(gentle music)
(gentle music continues)
- [Stephen] Most
audiences associate
Merchant Ivory Productions
with their films
from the 1980s and '90s,
mostly period pieces,
many British costume dramas.
But before "A Room with a View",
they produced
15 films shot on location
almost entirely in
the two homelands
of Merchant and Ivory,
India and America.
So it's fitting
that they first met
at the Indian Consulate
in New York City.
- My old neighborhood, this was.
I lived on 62nd but
also on East 80th.
I came here in May of 1961.
I'd been showing one
of my Indian documentaries,
"The Sword and the Flute,"
and afterwards he was here
and he walked up to me
and said, "I'm Ismail Merchant."
He said how much
he liked the movie
and then asked me
if I'd like to come
and have a cup
of coffee with him.
And I said, "Sure."
And we tried to talk,
or I tried to talk to him,
but he was always
on the telephone.
- No, no-
- Oh yes, oh yes.
And you actually-
- I was concentrating.
- Someone you had
known for 20 minutes.
- I was concentrating-
- No, Ismail.
- On this American who
was a very sensitive man.
- No, you weren't.
He was on the phone all the time
and borrowed the nickel.
- [Stephen] At the
time, Jim was 32
and had made his first
films, both documentaries,
and Ismail was 24 and had just
gotten an Oscar nomination
for his short film,
"The Creation of Woman."
- He was a friend of Madhur
Jaffrey's and Saeed Jaffrey.
They're the ones
who sent him here
because Saeed had
narrated that film.
And I mean, we got
on, and we talked,
and we decided that we would
go and see a Satyajit Ray film
that we thought was playing.
It wasn't in fact, but we
made a date for two days later.
- [Stephen] And it was a date?
- Well, you know, dates had
different connotations then.
This was a friend asking
me to go and see a movie
that he thought we
would both enjoy.
Date today means another thing.
- I wouldn't say that, no.
Maybe second sight, I would say.
- [Stephen] Prior to the release
of "Call Me by Your Name,"
Jim's sexuality was rarely,
if ever, discussed publicly.
He has since become a g*y icon,
but it's not something he's
always eager to talk about.
- Isn't that all rather a
different kind of topic?
I mean, do we have time
for what it was like?
Many people I interviewed
were reluctant to go
on the record
with stories of Jim and Ismail's
personal relationship.
Many said it was out
of respect for Jim.
What we know is that they
quickly became inseparable.
They'd only spent two weeks
together in New York
before they reconnected in Delhi
with a plan to meet
novelist Ruth Jhabvala.
- The year before
I'd gotten money
from the Asia Society
of New York to make a film,
a sort of historical portrait
of the city of Delhi.
And I wanted to go back
and do some more sh**ting.
While I was there, we
began to think seriously
about doing a feature together,
which was a novel
of Ruth Jhabvala's,
her fourth novel,
"The Householder."
- The story goes
that Ismail phoned
and asked for Mrs. Jhabvala.
She very rarely
answered the phone
'cause she didn't want
to speak to strangers.
She was quite reticent
and secretive.
So she pretended to be
her mother-in-law.
But they were very different
to people she had around her
or people she'd met in India.
And they were very
interesting people.
Ismail was such a dynamic,
handsome young man.
You can't resist him.
I think she enjoyed the
razzmatazz that came with it.
(singer singing
in foreign language)
- We said, "Well, why don't
you write the screenplay?"
And she said, "Well, I've
never written a screenplay."
So I said, "Well, I've never
produced a feature film,
"nor has Jim directed
a feature film."
- [Stephen] For advice,
Jim looked to Satyajit Ray,
the legendary Bengali filmmaker
whom he had previously
sought out for mentorship
during the production
of "The Delhi Way."
Merchant Ivory would hire many
of Ray's family of collaborators
on "The Householder"
and their subsequent
Indian films.
- Well I was amazed because
the train arrived from Calcutta
and then the crew
started unloading
boxes upon boxes
of camera equipment,
and all this stuff
came off the train
and there was a mountain of it.
And I looked at it in amazement
and I had no idea what
we'd gotten ourselves into.
- You can't go.
- Can't go?
You will see tomorrow,
11 o'clock train.
- Indu, please listen to me.
- I've listened enough,
to you and to your mother.
- I was making a film
about people and families
of which actually
I knew very little.
I mean almost everything we did
was entirely new
and foreign to me.
Somehow, because of
the actors themselves
who were easy, and
approachable, and gifted,
it all came together.
But it was amazing that it did.
- The whole film
was done for $90,000
in two languages,
English and Hindi.
- Little more, I think.
- Well.
(slow music)
My sentiments and emotions
are connected with it
because on this film
I was the driver,
I was the production manager,
I was the accountant,
I was the cook, I was
the lawyer of the film.
You know, this was
like baptism by fire
and I don't mean
an ordinary fire,
I mean an extraordinary fire.
- We did run out of money
before we had finished
sh**ting in Delhi
but I was glad in a way
that that had happened
because by that time
it was 105 degrees in Delhi.
It was hard for me to sh**t
in that kind of heat.
I thought, "Well, it's
good to have a little rest
"and we'll come back in August
once the monsoon has begun."
I just had to hope for the best.
I never ever gave up hope.
I mean, I always knew
he'd pull it together,
and he always did.
(slow Indian music)
We did the further sh**ting
and at that point
it was okay as edited,
but it was just too much
of it and it was kind of clunky.
And so we took it to Ray
and we screened it for him,
and he liked it and offered
to recut it for us.
And then he turned the
whole film into a flashback,
which was an unexpected thing,
but it lent itself
to that anyway.
So yeah, it was great.
And then by some miracle
it seemed to me almost
Ismail succeeded in selling
it to Columbia Pictures
for a worldwide release
and that's really
how we got going.
- Well, I think I was
about 12, 13, maybe just 14.
And they, I think were going
to make "Householder"
with Shashi, my brother-in-law,
Shashi had worked actually with
my father's theater company.
Ruth was one of my sister's
closest, if not closest friends.
Jim and Ismail became friends.
They came around to the flat.
They were just a very
young, cool couple.
And I didn't pay them
much notice really.
I remember going
once to a cinema
and Ismail was
there eating crisps.
And he said, "Do
you know, one day,
"I'm going to put
you in a movie."
(audience applauding)
- [Speaker] Do you like acting?
- Of course I like it.
Well, I mean, I've never
known anything else.
- Ruth wrote the screenplay
from my father's diaries.
So it was based on truth,
but with a Merchant Ivory twist.
I think I just happened to
be 17, and there, and cheap.
I think I got 175 rupees.
And they said, "Oh well,
you can play Lizzie."
It was really as casual as that.
(birds squawking)
Well I think the last little
scene was shot outside Bombay
and they only had enough film
and finances left
to do one shot.
And I remember them having,
and that's all and
it had to be timed.
If it didn't work,
that was the end of it,
we didn't get the scene,
and we did it in one shot.
- You know, you don't
look like an actress.
- Of course I do.
- Uh-uh.
With our Indian actresses
you can always tell, but you,
you look like a nice
little English girl.
(vehicle revs)
- Ooh!
Come you.
Come back and you.
(quirky music)
- We made that out
of the money that we got
from Columbia Pictures
for "The Householder".
But Columbia Pictures didn't
want to pay us in dollars.
They wanted to pay
us in blocked rupees
because in those days,
you couldn't repatriate
your earnings
if you were a movie company
or any other kind of company,
you had to keep
the money in India.
And the studios,
the Hollywood studios
all had millions of dollars
just blocked sitting
in Indian banks
and they did pay us
and we used that for
"Shakespeare Wallah"
and then "Shakespeare
Wallah" really took off.
(rhythmic ethnic music)
- The film, which
they didn't know
was going to be a huge success,
went to the Berlin Film Festival
and the London Film
Festival and Ismail said,
and this was the beginning of
you could suddenly
see the feathers,
you know, going up a little bit,
they're growing a little
bit more colorful,
"Right, well, we're all
going to the film festival."
- I am Manjula!
Where I go, hundreds,
thousands follow me.
- I was in bed, with just
a cover on me, naked.
I just had a shower
and gone into bed.
And then Jim called
me from downstairs.
He said, "Come
down immediately."
And he said, "You won."
I said, "What?"
He said, "The Silver Bear."
It was a total shock.
I never thought
it was even possible.
I think I was in a daze still
the time I went up
to get the award.
- You could say that
"Shakespeare Wallah"
was a complete fluke really.
(chuckles)
I mean, Jim,
he didn't really know
what he was doing
and he was out in the wilds
of North India.
I mean, it's a miracle really
that the film came out
so well, but it did.
- When you see their film
"Shakespeare Wallah",
about this wandering
company in India,
I often found myself
thinking that it's the model
that Ismail and Jim
had for their own group,
this almost vagabond
group of gypsies
moving from one
place to the other
creating and just living
this kind of circus life.
(rhythmic ethnic music fades)
(enlightening music)
- [Stephen] After four
films set in India,
Merchant Ivory began
working in America
as well as London and Paris.
With the addition of
composer Richard Robbins,
the Merchant Ivory
style was fully formed.
Beautiful music,
worldly sensibility,
lush settings, and
complex characters.
Their films appeared
at major festivals
and attracted the talent
of actors like Raquel Welch,
Julie Christie, Christopher
Walken, Lee Remick,
Maggie Smith, and James Mason.
- Mostly he said,
"Mrs. Penblock says
you are a degenerate."
"What is a degenerate,"
he asked me.
- [Stephen] In an era
that rarely saw
LGBTQ representation in cinema,
Merchant Ivory chose to depict
characters and situations
that today seem ahead
of their time.
They also took on
major literary works.
In 1984, Merchant Ivory adapted
Henry James's "The Bostonians"
with Vanessa Redgrave
and Christopher Reeve
as rival cousins competing
for the same woman.
- Promise me not to marry.
- [Stephen] Vanessa
Redgrave was Oscar-nominated
for the role of
Olive Chancellor.
Perhaps more unique than
the Merchant Ivory style
is the way in which
the films were produced.
- What are you gonna do
about makeup and hair
with the organist?
They don't need
those people around.
- You may just get us profile.
You'll have to have, I mean-
- We don't have them-
- If you hire them-
- You did say that the
hands are the only ones
that are important.
Organist hands.
I can't understand it.
I'm finished.
I'm just not going to make
any more films. That's all.
That's the end.
- [Jim] He's been saying
this since "The Householder".
(Ismail chuckles)
- I could tell, at a very
early stage in the career,
that they were yin and yang.
Jim was calm and gentle
behind the camera,
and Ismail was a firecracker.
And he would just turn up on
set and say, "Right, action,"
and nobody had even
rehearsed the scene.
- There's a free expression:
"sh**t, Jim, sh**t. sh**t!"
- "sh**t, Jim. sh**t, sh**t!"
- "sh**t, Jim. sh**t, sh**t!"
(chuckles)
- The argument always seemed
to be between Jim and Ismail,
that from Ismail's
point of view,
Jim was gonna bankrupt
the business commercially
by insisting on mere perfection.
And Jim thought that Ismail
was gonna bankrupt
it artistically
by insisting on every
possible economy.
- Jim was very obsessed with
things when he was sh**ting,
and he needed Ismail
to prod and to push.
And it was better that way.
You couldn't dwell
on one particular scene
or one particular
line because Ismail
short films on pennies
and his budgets were ridiculous.
(laughs)
- The fact that he managed
to get these films made
for goodness sake.
(laughs)
Especially a feature film based
on some of the great novels.
I mean, when you're going
into that territory,
you enter into a world
where illiteracy is rampant.
But with Ismail's ingenuity
as well as his implacable
determination
plus a sense of fun,
he would set out
to find a solution
to absolutely every
single problem
and finding solutions
very quickly.
Because if you don't
find them quickly,
you spend another $100,000.
(quirky music)
- [Stephen] In some cases,
Vanessa Redgrave herself
was responsible for
creating those problems.
I was told privately
that she and Ismail
had frequent shouting matches
on the set of "The Bostonians".
In 1985, Jim penned an essay
for Sight and Sound magazine
titled "The Trouble with Olive".
He wrote, "In the end,
we parted as friends
and collaborators.
In the course of the
intense relationship,
tinged with lunacy,
that a film sh**t forges
between director and star."
And it's not hard to believe,
given my own experience
of interviewing Vanessa.
- Oh darling, films
are not family affairs.
Please don't let's go
down that road, come on.
- It's not the questions.
Now you're getting
a bit dramatic.
I'm not sitting out
to make you uneasy.
I'm sitting out to
give you the best.
Why am I talking to you
about Merchant Ivory?
Because actually I care
deeply about them.
Don't you believe in the coming
of a better day,
that it's possible to do
something for the human race?
- We offered her that
part at the beginning,
and she didn't wanna do it.
She was with an extreme
leftist party in England
that wanted to
overthrow the government
and all this kinda stuff.
And what she mainly wanted
to get from that meeting
was for me to give some
money to this party
to overthrow the British
government.
I said, "Well, I don't really
think I can do that, Vanessa."
And then Vanessa, it was assumed
that she was anti-Semitic
because she went
off to Palestine
and was photographed
holding a Kalashnikov
r*fle or something.
And then we cast Glenn Close,
but she wanted to make a
film simultaneously with us
and with Robert Redford
in Buffalo.
Ismail wasn't, you can't
have that on a, you know,
when the leading
lady likes to come,
then she comes, otherwise.
And he fired her.
Vanessa came and did her part,
got nominated for Academy
Award and all the rest of it.
But meanwhile, Vanessa had run
into all kinds of difficulties.
And she was busy suing, I think,
the Boston Symphony
Orchestra at that time.
- I was got rid of from a
contract already agreed.
And I knew it was a
political decision.
Ismail and Jim flew out to
explain, as witnesses for me,
the huge damage done to
my reputation as an actress.
And forever and ever
I love them.
That doesn't mean I wouldn't
disagree with them,
of course, on things.
The more you love someone,
the more you're ready to
disagree with them in my book
because you really care
about them.
What I want to say to you
is that when there
is a great cause,
the individual is of no account.
You've come to hear not
the voice of one individual,
however sweet,
however harmonious,
but the cry of all women.
- They had various
issues on that film.
I mean, they'd had to cut
the budget drastically.
They had no facilities,
no caravans or makeup buses
or anything like that.
I think the story was that
some of the money
had dropped out
when Vanessa Redgrave was cast,
and so nobody got paid
for three weeks.
And of course Vanessa
became the kind of,
the shop steward, union leader
organizing all the
meetings at night.
"When are we gonna get paid?"
(gentle flute music)
- [Stephen] This wasn't
the first or last time
Merchant Ivory would
have budgetary issues
in the middle of sh**ting.
Their previous film
"Heat and Dust",
based on Ruth's Booker
Prize-winning novel,
was planned as a celebration
of their 21st year.
And while it would go on to be
Merchant Ivory's biggest hit
since "Shakespeare Wallah",
its production was so perilous
that it nearly brought
down the company.
- Every last shot of "Heat and
Dust" was my sweat and blood.
- Well, that could be true, but-
- I thought
(speaks indistinctly).
- One of the financiers
had run away to Hong Kong
and the other one had
gone to Latin America.
And Ruth said, "Well,
why do we have to do it?
We can just sort of,
you know, call it off
and everybody can go home."
Well, we are already 40 people
sitting there in Hyderabad,
you know, waiting, and contracts
were all done and signed,
as in, no, no, this
is not possible.
We just have to forge ahead.
- I first met Ismail in 1980.
He said, "You know, we're making
this film 'Heat and Dust'.
We will all go to India.
And I'd like you to
start a London office
because we're basing
everything here,
and you'll be at the very
center of operations,"
which as I'd never worked
in film production before
and hardly knew
how to use the photocopy.
It was pretty daunting.
He was rupee rich, and everybody
lived very well in India,
but we were pretty sterling
poor in the UK.
And I had to field high-rate
calls from wives,
still friends,
husbands of the crew
that were not being paid.
People talk about independent
producers
acting on a leap of faith.
They trust that the last portion
of the budget will come,
starting off with 70, 80%.
I think we probably had
30%, 40% of the budget
when we actually started
filming in India.
- I remember that time
that the actors were sitting
around in the restaurant
and there had been
already some bad feeling.
Kevin, our first AD, came
to us cap in hand and said,
"We've got the caterers
demanding that they get paid
in advance,
otherwise they're not
coming to the set tomorrow."
So if the caterers don't arrive,
then the crew have already
booked their flights out.
(Nickolas and Greta laugh)
- The actors' agents were
sending telegrams to the hotel,
saying, "Stop working,
no money's coming through."
And Ismail will get up
early in the morning
and he would steal
all the telegrams
so the actors never found
them, so they carried on.
- And everyone was
very angry with Ismail.
And, you know, people were
just not talking to him.
But the next day, sure enough,
he'd had a palace opened
that nobody could get into
and everyone was dying to see.
And not only had it open
so we could see it,
but he had arranged a picnic.
You don't want to forget
what he's doing to you
and how he's conning you,
but the next moment this
glorious picnic is all laid out
and we are at a place
we could never be
and everyone's having
a wonderful time.
And you come back saying,
"This rascal has done it again.
Again he's charmed us."
(laughs)
- It was extraordinary
how in one day
you could have the whole gamut
of experiences with Ismail
and he would always,
at some point, be gleeful
about what he had achieved
against all odds.
(cameras clicking)
- He's got infinite charm
and part of persuasion.
Like, I didn't wanna go
to a certain film festival
and I begged my agent, I said,
"Please be firm with Ismail.
I don't wanna go."
And I get ready to give him
a fight
in terms of, "Go to hell."
The phone ring, "Tony," he said,
"the film is so wonderful.
You are so great
in the film, oh."
I mean, he could charm
the birds out of the trees.
(upbeat percussion music)
(vehicle honks)
- [Stephen] Ismail Merchant
was born in Mumbai in 1936
to a devout Muslim family,
shortly before the
partition of India,
a violent period
when many Indian Muslims
were displaced to Pakistan.
As a teenager, Ismail
formed a close relationship
with a family friend,
the Bollywood actress Nimmi.
- There was a friend
star called Nimmi.
And I call my friends and I
would go see all her films.
We even sometimes went
three or four times.
- [Stephen] He fell in
love with the movies
and went to America, seeking,
as he often said, name and fame.
After getting a business
degree from NYU,
he set out for Hollywood.
- He had made "The
Creation of Woman".
So he went out there
to get it nominated
for the Academy
Awards, which he did.
To get to California,
he took a train from
New York to Los Angeles.
But he said on a press
release that he was arriving,
and he expected, I suppose,
that there'd be a lot
of people at the train
with cameras and lights and
stuff and asking him questions.
And he got off the train
and there wasn't anybody there
to receive him and exalt,
that he had come to, you know,
shake things up in California.
But he met a lot of people,
particularly he met
great many actresses.
I don't know how he got
past their security guards,
and maybe they didn't
have them in those days.
There's so many photographs
of him with stars, so.
But that's the kind
of thing he did.
(graceful music)
- As many people
would've told you by now,
he wasn't a conventional
producer.
Very often films
got made and you'd say,
"Who's the money
behind this film?"
And at that point,
there was no money.
(chuckles)
He still had to get it.
- Ismail was very vivacious.
And he was just a
great character.
He was like a film impresario,
the kind that you read about.
He just had the gift of the gab.
And he used to say things like,
"You know, I'm a magician,
because I can make
this film out of nothing."
- There was no one like him,
because if Ruth and
Jim and Ismail decided
that they were gonna make
a film out of a script
or one of Ruth's books,
Ismail would raise the money.
There was no question
he would do it.
And you don't find
many producers
able to do or say that.
(phone rings)
- Hello, Merchant Ivory.
- I remember staying
with him in New York
and I went to the office
and I had to wait,
I don't know, maybe a ride
to the airport or something,
I was there for hours.
Ismail was on the phone,
phoning up everybody.
He'd phone up tens
and tens of people.
He knew their kids' names,
what they were doing.
His ability to seduce,
that got him through,
but it's a precarious
way of financing a movie.
- He had that very
aristocratic quality
of making everyone feel at ease.
He could be in a hovel in
India or a Maharaja's Palace
and he'd be equally comfortable
and he'd make the people
there equally comfortable.
He wasn't a snob at all.
He was always surprising,
totally unpredictable,
never dull.
And you never went to bed
without trying to dream
up ways of k*lling him,
but you couldn't not love him.
You couldn't not love him.
(pan sizzles)
- [Martha] Ismail, you've
written several cookbooks.
- Yes, when we make a film,
I always cook once a week
for the cast and crew.
So we are about 40 to 50
people or sometimes 100.
And then the whole crew
and cast would be there
and it gave a wonderful feeling.
- [Stephen] In the early '70s,
around the same
time Madhur Jaffrey
introduced Indian cuisine
to British television,
Ismail began cooking regularly
for the crew on his films.
While he liked to say
this was to create
a family atmosphere,
it was also one of
many ways he deflected
when money was short.
- It was always really tight
and it was very emotional.
And all you have
to know about Ismail,
and I may have said this before,
is that he grew up in a market
alleyway in India
where, when he made
his first movies,
he was paying people out
of a plastic bag in hard cash.
So he never got out of that.
- Jim once said to me, "Oh
Kathy, don't pay him any mind.
He's just like, it's
a bizarre mentality
as in bizarre, you know.
He's a bargainer."
And that always offended me.
Now, Ismail made
those movies happen.
He wheedled and cajoled
and dealt and so on,
but it wasn't pleasant
for a lot of people.
- [Stephen] How was
all this financed?
I mean, was it just-
- You ask Ismail. God knows.
I really just don't want
to know what he does, so.
You know, what he juggles
and what fearful illegalities.
I only had this one vision.
Wherever we go, I look around
where the nearest jail is.
I said, "One day I'm
gonna visit you in there."
(Ruth chuckles)
- Ismail had like
a guru side to him.
I think that the guru figure
that you often see
in Ruth's fiction
is on some level
a bit of Ismail.
(character speaking
in foreign language)
- He's passionate,
passionate about art
and a film sandman
on some level.
You know, it's both.
And that's what made
him a great producer
and revolutionary in a way.
I mean, it's sort of the first
of the great
independent producers.
(Jim chuckles)
- I don't care what they think.
I really don't.
He was a con man.
I mean, you have to be a con man
to be a successful
film producer anyway.
(gentle piano music)
- I have a pet theory
about Miss Honeychurch.
Does it not strike you as odd,
that she should play
Beethoven with such passion
and live so quietly?
I suspect one day music
and life will mingle.
- I trust that day is at hand.
- It was my luck to be involved
because that was the
cornerstone, in a way,
of my whole career.
And I remember Ismail phoning
me really early on going,
"No, you don't
understand, Helena.
This is changing your life."
I always think,
but maybe wrongly,
that it was the first
big commercial hit
of a costume drama.
Before period costume dramas
are always art house.
They don't think they
could actually make money.
(ethereal music)
(boys chuckle)
(water splashing)
- We almost didn't make
"A Room with a View".
Ismail had already made
a deal with King's College
for the rights, but Ruth and I
were working on a screenplay
for a contemporary film.
And at that point,
I didn't want to do
another costume film.
I didn't wanna do
another period film.
- It does frustrate me that,
often if you talk to many
people in Britain at any rate,
for instance the director
Alan Parker
and you mention Merchant Ivory,
they just have a
particular image.
- There was a lot of
criticism at the time
that it was sort of
Laura Ashley film making,
which I thought,
you're just looking
at the pictures,
you're not looking at the story.
'Cause the story,
it seemed to me,
almost the exact
opposite of that.
- I mean, these are not films
that are in love
with the aristocracy
or the old ways of doing it.
If you read the scripts
and listen to the
dialogue carefully,
they're often quite
subversive about things.
They're quite critical.
- I believe in democracy.
- No, you don't.
You don't know what
the word means.
- When Jim was looking around
to prep "A Room with a View",
he rang me up and invited me
out to dinner, and he said,
"Tony, you know," he said,
"You know, the
most exciting thing
that happens in a Merchant
Ivory movie is a tea party.
Is that right?"
And I said, "Yeah, that's
great, Jim, it's fine.
I'd love to do it."
The next thing I knew I
was doing a m*rder sequence
with Ismail running around
saying, "What is this?
Is this a horror movie?"
I guess there was
blood everywhere.
- Oh, you should
see the dailies.
(dramatic music)
- I think they had
a huge influence
on how we thereafter did
what are really
irritatingly known
as period movies actually
because every movie
is a period movie.
I suppose people associate
them with frogs.
As my mother said to me,
"Are you sure you want to play
another good woman in a frog?"
- Mind you, you know,
when I started out doing
these costume films,
I didn't know anything
about costume.
I didn't have a clue.
I knew a lot about
interior design
because I'd been
to architecture school,
but I didn't know
anything about costume
or makeup and hair and
all those kinds of things.
I had to learn
absolutely everything
from the people who
worked in my films.
(pensive music)
- Merchant Ivory scripts,
you always knew you were
gonna get a good script.
And for me, that's always the
absolute basis of everything.
Normally, when the day
finished for cosprop,
we'd make a cup of tea.
And I used to do the breakdowns,
and John would already
be rummaging around
in the deeper recesses
of cosprop
to find wonderful clothes.
- "Out of Africa". Goodness.
"Dad's Army", "King's Speech".
So this is a group of
Merchant Ivory clothes.
"A Room with a View".
This is from the evening
scene where Mrs. Vyse
meets Lucy for the first time.
We went to the Linley Sambourne
House in Kensington
and they had a lot
of Chinese lanterns,
so we created a dress that
was like a Chinese lantern.
This is Maggie Smith.
This is Mrs. Honeychurch
at the garden party.
Helena at the magic pond
or whatever it was called.
- This is the Sacred Lake.
- They go out on exhibition.
I mean, a lot of the stock
that was used in "A
Room with a View"
it's been out and again.
And I'll see something
on television, I think,
"Oh, I know that blouse."
But no one else would,
because on somebody else
it looks completely different.
(bright music)
- For "A Room with a View",
I'd never been to Florence
and I didn't know what
our backgrounds would be.
Jim gave us a handful
of Alinari photos,
and Ismail gave us a colored
brochure of Florence.
(Jenny laughs)
Actually a colored
brochure was quite useful.
- [Jenny] Quite useful.
- The crowd, often up to 150,
were dressed by myself,
six months pregnant,
Elena Politi,
a local, very lovely Italian
costume woman,
and William Pierce.
Nowadays, you would have
four people on the set,
one running the truck,
the crowd supervisor,
fitters, and dressers,
and the designer would not
be in there doing it.
It was DIY productions.
So it was incredibly tiring,
but satisfying
'cause you walk then
on to the Piazza Signoria
and you saw a recreation
of an Alinari photograph.
(soft music)
- Merchant Ivory, you know,
it was just a golden period.
I have good memories,
but then I think
human nature does tend
to gently brush aside-
- Soften the edges.
- Soften the edges, yes.
- Yeah, it does.
- [Jenny] I was once told,
"You know, Jenny, Jenny,
I got you your Oscar.
Why do I now need to pay you?"
- (chuckles) Yes.
(Jenny laughs)
That's good.
- Well, do you know what?
It doesn't pay the mortgage,
Ismail.
It's jolly nice to have, but
I still have to feed my family.
- Jenny Beavan and John Bright
for "A Room with a View".
(audience applauding)
(feel-good music)
- Jenny and I are really pleased
to have won this award
on behalf of Merchant Ivory.
(audience applauding)
- It's one of the few scripts
I've read where I thought,
"This will do really well."
It was a brilliant script.
Changed my life completely.
Changed all our lives actually,
all of us who worked on
"A Room with a View".
(upbeat music)
- "A Room with a View" exploded.
It was huge. It
was a massive film.
- In England certainly,
and I believe, to some
extent, in America.
A lot of young people
would sort of dress up
as the characters or have
"A Room with a View"
parties or evenings.
- Whatever does it mean?
- I think it's a
mixture of profundity,
deep spiritual issues,
but told with a
beautiful lightness
and a very beautiful
palette, too.
It's just very easy to watch.
- It looks a very sensitive
sort of film, is it?
- Yes, I think it is, yes.
I'm not the most sensitive
character in it, though,
but I think the film is, yes.
It's been directed
very sensitively.
(cheerful music)
- One of the lovely things
about James Ivory,
which you kind of understand
or appreciate later,
is just how relaxed
and unneurotic James is.
And I assumed that all directors
are gonna be like Jim,
but they're not.
Of course you have
to fight some directors.
I mean, he's a
proper collaborator.
He feels his job is to bring
together what people give.
- I was so surprised
because, see,
I never watched a film
being directed or anything.
And I figured the
director was like
one of those films with the
guys in his director's chair
with a big mega, yeah,
I didn't realize Jim
was just very quiet
and let everybody bring their
own interpretation to it.
- The detail work.
They were very, very
good at giving you
the opportunity to develop that,
which is very, very rare.
(camera flashes)
(character gasps)
Especially when there's a lot
of money around, you know.
The whole thing has
been kind of mapped out
in quite a lot of detail,
and then you're just expected
to make it all happen.
Whereas with Jim, you're
still part of the development.
- I sometimes had trouble
with trimming scenes down
and getting them tight.
Jim would tell you about
how he'd like to have waited
'till the sun reached round
to light the lace cap
before editing out.
So he knows about this.
And, you know, I'm not
telling tales out of school.
And I was finally,
as helped by Jim
on "A Room with a
View", and he said,
"I want this picture
to be tight."
I said, "It's good, good.
It'll be a success then."
- I learned so much from Jim.
I mean, so much from Jim,
because his taste, his
knowledge was extraordinary.
We were filming in Fortnum
for "Howards End"
and literally we must've had
100, 150 extras,
and then one man had
said to one of my guys,
"I can't have a haircut."
So they'd sort of cheated it
and I didn't know.
Jim stopped and he said,
"There's someone there
with a wrong look."
Nothing went past him.
Once you say,
"Yes, I've got it,"
he trusts you to just do it.
When we were about
to do "Jefferson",
I knew it was gonna
be a huge product
and I really wanted to
get inside it if I could.
Helena's aunt knew all
about Mary Antoinette.
She had more artifacts
of Mary Antoinette
than any private collector.
So Helena said, "Go
and see my aunt."
And Jim came to join
us, and he said to me,
"Just soak this up.
It's not about hairdos
or makeup.
Just soak it all up."
- Some directors take the view
of the hiring of the people
and then they tell everybody
exactly what to do.
Jim takes the opposite.
That is hire the best people
you can,
then let them get on and do it.
- I think he had
this wonderful gift,
which some directors
are graced with:
the skill to cast, it's a gift.
- He was brilliant like that.
And, you know, we
used to have endless,
endless casting sessions,
which were enormous fun.
We never auditioned.
They'd just come in
and sit and talk.
But anybody he ever met,
he would remember
for films much later on.
And he's got wonderful taste.
- I don't go in
for being superior.
- Don't you? I do. The thing
about, for my money,
all good, interesting directors
is they appear to not
be doing very much.
And Jim is like that.
I'm not for a moment suggesting
that he isn't doing very much,
he's a very articulate man,
but he doesn't articulate
much to actors.
- Well, he's quietly determined.
He's very laid-back.
But he has that elegance of
knowing exactly what he wants
and being able to get it.
He was collaborative,
but he was very sure
of his own vision.
- He loves actors.
He loves what we do.
So he goes to the theater a lot,
and Ismail allowed him
to follow his instinct
about who to cast.
And when you look back
at who he allowed
to have important
roles in his films,
a lot of them were unknowns.
- I remember in our press
junket, people would ask me,
you know, how it was
to be directed by Jim,
and I had said something like,
"Oh, he doesn't direct.
He's just really nice."
And then he came up to me
at lunchtime or something,
and he said, "I don't
know if it's so great
to say that I don't direct."
Actually what he did was trust.
- You're left very much alone.
So he'll just sort of sit
in the corner of a room
and watch all these actors
doing their thing.
And then Jim would let you
have a bit of time on set
without any cameras,
without anyone around,
to just wander
through your scenes.
- He's incredibly visual.
Jim sees something's not right.
"You know, I don't like it
when you touch your ear."
And you think, "Well, really
what's so wrong with that?"
And then you'd sort of work out.
I had the wrong
thought in my head
at that moment in the scene.
- I don't like being
given notes anyway.
I really just think
that it's much better
to just wind me up
and set me off.
There was one particular scene,
I was getting into a carriage,
I just remember Jim sticking
his head and going,
"Oh, it was really boring."
(Emma laughs)
- Yeah, he was just,
"Do it again,"
and you make it
more interesting.
It was boring, okay.
It's marvelous that there
was no cotting.
There was no, "Oh, that
was so fantastic, oh."
I can't bear that.
"I didn't like it. I was bored.
Let's do it again."
Fantastic.
(bell tinkling)
(bright music)
- [Stephen] James Ivory grew
up in Klamath Falls, Oregon
during the Great Depression.
Adopted at birth, he had
a largely privileged
and all-American upbringing.
His father managed
the Ivory Pine Company,
whose clientele
included MGM Studios.
He encouraged
Jim's artistic ambitions
and funded a number
of his early films.
With dreams of becoming
a Hollywood set designer,
Jim attended the
University of Oregon
where he studied architecture
and the University
of Southern California's
School of Cinematic Arts
where he made "Venice:
Theme and Variations",
a half hour documentary.
- "Mr. and Mrs. Bridge"
was autobiographical for me
in the sense that it was a
family like my own family.
Klamath Falls was a much
smaller town than Kansas City,
but it had all the rituals
and associations and so forth
that you see in that film,
and the whole sort
of class thing.
- [India] What
does his father do?
- Mr. Davis is a plumber,
I think.
- I see.
- And I can remember scenes
very like Paul Newman
going through the World w*r I
trunk
and taking out the uniform
and this and that.
I can remember those very
same things with my father,
the semi warnings of my father
about how his health
is perhaps not gonna
be so great forever.
- It seems that there
is some irregularity.
It may not be serious,
but I feel that some
preparations are in order.
I wanted you
to be aware of that.
- I mean, I had all those kinds
of conversations with my father.
I never had the conversation
with my father
that you have at the end
of "Call Me By Your Name".
That's a completely, completely
different kind of thing.
A different kind of father.
- Yeah.
(soft sentimental music)
- How you live your life
is your business.
Just remember,
our hearts and our bodies
are given to us only once.
- Well, let me put
it another way.
I never felt uncomfortable.
I never had the sense
of guilt, which is lucky.
And in high school,
I mean I just went along
and had close relationships
with certain guys.
But, you know, we were careful.
We didn't go talking about it.
You didn't make anything of it.
It's not like now.
I've met people, you know,
who were maybe 50, 60
and I think in a way
have led an,
romantically,
led an uneventful life
and I feel sorry
for people like that.
- Mm-hmm.
- Fine.
I mean, the family
would not have accepted it
and would not have
understood it and,
but it was not presented
to them.
It was never an issue that
they had to deal with.
I was just his American friend.
In his lifetime, it was
not really something
that one wanted to talk about
because it would be so upsetting
to his family,
who are very conservative
Muslim family.
But now most
of that family's gone,
and the sisters have
all died, and so on.
There's only one sister left.
It was unheard of that their son
would not get married,
and of course he never did.
- No.
Nothing.
But I think my father,
I think my father was,
I don't know, he perhaps,
he dealt with it.
It was not a problem.
And I mean he loved Ismail.
And he was glad that Ismail
was there to take care of me.
(James chuckles)
It was never talked about,
but it was just understood.
If you live with another man
for more than 40 years,
that's not exactly private.
They all knew.
Of course they did.
Even the crew knew when we were,
I remember in "The Householder",
they called us Jack and Jill.
(chuckles)
I just wanted to say that...
(clears throat)
I live in New York
and sometimes I'm going along
the streets
and people come up to me
that I don't know
and they take my hand
sometimes and they say,
"I wanna tell you that
you changed my life."
(audience applauding)
But they're not saying that.
They're not saying that about
"Call Me by Your Name"
because it's too soon.
They're talking about "Maurice".
(audience cheers)
(audience applauding)
which I made almost
30 years ago.
(gentle music)
(thunder rumbles)
(gentle music continues)
- [Stephen] "Maurice" was the
second of three adaptations
Merchant Ivory made from
the novels of E.M. Forster.
Completed in 1914, the book
remained unpublished
until after his death in 1970.
The characters were inspired
by a close friend of Forster's,
Edward Carpenter,
a well-educated middle
class intellectual,
and his partner George Merrill,
a working class man
from the slums of Yorkshire.
Forster himself spent 40 years
in a discreet relationship
with a married policeman,
Bob Buckingham.
At the time the
novel was written,
men in the UK could be
imprisoned for sodomy
and acts of gross indecency.
In the 1980s, when Merchant
Ivory set out to make the film,
the A*DS epidemic had created
a new crisis for g*y men.
- You know, the world has
changed so much for men,
but I think "Maurice"
was hugely important
to a whole population that
in many ways was invisible.
Many, many, many
people weren't out.
- I used to get letters from
people in prison saying,
"If I'd seen 'Maurice',
I probably wouldn't
where I am today."
It's certainly very
moving as an actor
to have been part
of a piece of art.
That it can have that sort
of effect is extraordinary.
- We were going through a
slightly h*m* phase
in this country.
There was certainly an increase
in h*m* attacks.
Thatcher just brought out
a thing called Clause 28.
- Children who need to be taught
to respect traditional moral
values are being taught
that they have an inalienable
right to be g*y.
- The atmosphere was febrile,
to say the least,
around this particular subject.
Television was full
of Gothic horror adverts
funded by the government
of collapsing black tombstones.
I remember being almost
intimidated by the prejudice.
I was taken aside on a meeting
and asked, with some amazement,
"Why is Merchant Ivory
making this kind of film
when they could make almost
anything they wanted
after 'A Room with a View'?
The world is in your feet,
why should you make
this kind of film?"
(heartfelt music)
- I'm an unspeakable.
The Oscar Wilde sort.
- Rubbish.
- I think that Jim's personal
psyche
is courageous beyond belief,
but he comes from that world.
He comes from that
Edwardian world
where such things
were not mentioned
and such things were
definitely not approved of.
I became involved in "Maurice"
because Jim wanted somebody
who knew accurately
the upper middle
class of Britain,
the settings, the court
in it of it at all.
He's so precise on detail,
which is why his movies
are so beguiling, I think.
Ruth had of course, naturally,
been asked to do the screenplay,
she was occupied with a major
novel at the time,
and he felt it wasn't
really her territory.
It was a tremendously quick
writing process, far too quick.
Ismail was in two minds about
doing "Maurice" anyway.
He was on edge
and tetchy, you could see.
I think his concerns about it
were principally budgetary.
I mean, Merchant Ivory was
going through a tricky time
despite the success
of "Room with a View",
and I don't think they recouped
an enormous amount
of its success,
that went to the distributors
and whatever.
They weren't flush.
But Jim was determined
it should be made.
You put them together in a room,
you would expect that Ismail
would override Jim.
In fact, Jim's quiet, dogged
determination
always actually won the day.
- Hall. Hall.
- [Maurice] Durham.
Where did you get to?
- [Clive] I know you read
those books in the vac.
- How do you mean?
- You'll understand then.
I don't have to explain.
- [Maurice] Understand what?
- That I love you.
- Don't talk rubbish.
- I'd pretty much given
up acting at that point.
I'd segued into writing
comedy sketches
with a couple of friends
and we also used
to write and produce
a lot of radio commercials.
I very rarely spoke to my agent.
And then one day the agent
did ring, he said,
"Oh, they want to see you
for this Merchant Ivory film."
And I said, "Oh, I
can't be bothered."
And my brother, who I was
living with at time said,
"No, no, don't be ridiculous.
You have to go. They're classy."
Astonishingly, Jim seemed
to think I was right.
It was very easy to say yes.
And apart from anything
else, my first film,
I mean, you know,
dazzling prospect.
I think what happened was
Julian Sands was gonna do it.
Then, for mysterious reasons,
suddenly he wasn't.
- This is what I understand,
is they were all at the
Venice Film Festival
with "A Room with a View" and
Julian stood up and announced
that he was going to leave
that minute, Venice,
his agent, his wife,
and he couldn't do "Maurice".
And it was about a month
before principal photography,
and Jim said, "Well, there
was this blonde actor
who came in and looked
too like Julian,
so I couldn't have
him in the film."
- So he came around
and we practiced a bit
in my house in Shepherd's Bush,
and then he did the audition
and got the job.
- And I think Ismail
was very close to pulling it.
I was completely, I'd
never done a film before.
- I do, do beg you to resist
the return of this obsession.
- I don't need advice.
And flesh and blood, Clive,
if you'll condescend
to such low things.
I've shared with Alec.
- Shared, shared what?
- Everything.
- I remember when we saw the
first screening of the film
and I was sitting
behind Ismail, I think.
When the credits rolled,
I just saw, you know,
I just saw his
shoulders doing that
and tears rolling down his face.
He turned around to me.
"I mean, it's so
beautiful. God."
But it was entirely genuine.
- I think it's, in some ways,
a finer movie
than "A Room with a View".
I mean, it's stupid
to compare the two
'cause they're very different.
But because
of the subject matter
and because of the society
at the time
and because the time
when the movie was out,
it kind of goes deeper, I guess,
into the characters' anxieties.
It's beautifully made.
James and Hugh are
brilliant in it.
Really, really brilliant.
- I'm just terribly grateful
that "Maurice" has
finally achieved
its place in the pantheon,
and with the retrospective
of really quite a lot
of g*y films
that have been made since.
You suddenly realize that,
yeah, this was the granddaddy
of it all
and it was very brave of Jim
to make it at the time.
One could quite see
why Ruth was uneasy about it.
Although she was
on hand obviously
to lend her extreme wisdom
and made one or two very,
very good suggestions,
which were incorporated,
particularly the
Lord Risley epithet.
- [James] No. Hmm-mm.
- [Stephen] And she never-
- As she said, I mean, you know,
it was not a first-class
Forster,
and so that made it not,
automatically not
first-class Ivory.
(tense music)
I think what bothers
most people about "Maurice"
is Clive's change of heart.
Clive goes off to Greece
and comes back and then says,
"I'm no longer like that,"
about being h*m*.
That's not something
that people can accept.
You would definitely,
if you were a novelist,
find that a weakness
in the novel.
And one of the ways
we got around it
was to have Clive's change
of heart come about
because of the arrest
of Lord Risley.
- I am satisfied
that you will pay for this
for the rest of your life.
Take him down.
- Which is Ruth's idea.
Isn't that interesting?
- Yeah, she did.
(upbeat rhythmic music)
- God, Eleanor, you're so lucky.
I mean, you get to
live in New York,
you have a boyfriend
who's a famous artist,
an interesting life.
- In the early '80s,
The New Yorker was
publishing my stories
and Ruth, unbeknownst to me,
kept passing 'em
on to Jim saying,
"Listen, you should make
these into a movie."
And it turned out Jim
had wanted to do a film
set in contemporary New York.
What they didn't realize
was that Andy Warhol
had already bought the rights.
Andy died in '87,
and then Merchant Ivory
came along and said,
"Look, we'll buy the rights."
So I was like, "Oh my God."
Stash is a genius.
And so of course he's
a little eccentric,
and I'm the type of person
who mates for life.
You know, like a goose.
- I was very surprised.
I thought there would
be a harder edge to it.
This is pretty
lightweight material.
- If lightweight is the word
for it, it flows right out
of the theater.
One of the things
that shocked me
is that they didn't have
the nerve or the imagination
to make these people a little
smarter than they were.
- [Gene] I agree with you.
- Critics were so vicious about
the film when it came out.
And I always felt so bad.
Like, I felt like I personally
had ruined
and destroyed everything
by my terrible film.
But all of them were so
supportive of me, so nurturing,
and I love them so much.
You have no idea.
They treated all the writers
like an essential
part of the group.
And even Ismail took out an ad
in The New York Times saying,
"We, Merchant Ivory, thanks
the writers who are our roots."
- We are proud of our roots,
from Forster to Ruth Jhabvala
to Tama Janowitz and Naipaul
and, you know,
all, this is our philosophy.
- It's obvious in their films,
you know, that they love books
and that they respect books.
So as a novelist, they're
very appealing filmmakers
because you feel like
they're gonna change it
and make something different.
But they're going to make a film
that in some way values
the essence of the book.
Whenever I thought about
having a film made of my books,
I always first thought
about Merchant Ivory.
There'd been a review
in The New York Times
of "The City of Your
Final Destination".
Jim told me that Ruth
had seen that review
and clipped it out
and sent it to him.
It was a dream
that I always said
that always seemed
like a fantasy.
- The films as a whole
are kind of like a three-part
autobiography, I feel,
because they do
represent our interests
in various things
at various times.
And so we were always
a bit like the US government.
I mean, I'm the President,
Ismail's the Congress,
and Ruth is the Supreme Court.
And Ruth was like that.
I mean, if we came up
with something or other
that, from her point
of view, was ill*gal,
speaking in terms of literary,
I mean we didn't do it.
- [Stephen] Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
was a two-time
Academy Award winner
for Best Adapted Screenplay,
although she never attended
the ceremonies.
Author of 12 novels, contributor
to The New Yorker magazine,
Booker Prize recipient
and a MacArthur fellow,
Jhabvala was one of the
most accomplished writers
of the 20th century.
She lived most of her life
in England, India, and America.
But Ruth was born to a Jewish
family in Germany
in the 1920s.
- She and her brother
and her parents
lived a perfectly normal
German middle class life,
until of course 1933
when Nazis came into power.
They stayed on 'till 1939.
And they came to England.
Within six months, she mastered
the English language.
She was writing since
she was six years old really.
Suddenly she said
she was flooded
with this feeling of what
was her destiny was to write,
and she never stopped
'till almost in her last days.
She met my father in London.
They got married and then
she went back to India with him.
She lived through
pretty awful time
during the w*r, post-w*r.
So going to India was suddenly
the opening up of these senses,
which she's written about,
the color and the smells
and the sweets.
That was wonderful
for her at the time.
(audience applauding)
- My first encounter
with Ruth was in 1958.
My first husband,
Charles Wheeler
had been sent to India
as the foreign correspondent.
A plaintive-looking
young woman in a sari
came up in the garden path
and said, "I am Ruth.
I'm your neighbor.
Have you brought any books?"
(guest and audience laugh)
And I said, "Yeah, sure."
My God, she took the book
and she gave this tiny
scream of horror, and said,
"But I've already
got all these."
(guest and audience laugh)
- I did an interview once
with Catherine Freeman.
I said, "Well, tell me
about Ruth, Catherine."
And Catherine said, "Well,
she's like the guest
who comes to your door, presses
her nose to the window,
and sees all this
wonderful jollification
and people hailing
affairs and all that."
It's the notion of the outsider.
- There was a sort of very
Forsterian quality about Ruth.
One of the points about Forster
is that he was at an angle.
As a g*y man, he had
a different eye on society.
And Ruth had a different
eye on society.
- In her novels, there's
a lot of outsiders.
And very often she takes the
foreigner's point of view.
And the same with me.
I mean, I could not imagine
myself as Indian.
I didn't think like an Indian,
I wasn't an Indian;
I was an outsider.
And same with English,
I'm not English;
I'm an American
from the West Coast
and who am I to deal
with E.M. Forster?
I didn't really know that
world of E.M. Forster,
except as it's expressed
in his writing.
But that's powerfully expressed.
After we had made
"Maurice", Ruth said,
"Look, there is a mountain there
you really ought to climb,"
and that's the mountain
of "Howards End".
- [Leonard] I left my office
and walked right out of London.
I was walking all
Saturday night.
- [Helen] In the dark?
- So dark I couldn't
see my own hand.
- Mr. Bast, you must
be a born explorer.
- [Speaker] "Dear Jim,
this is a sort of
work in progress report
on "Howards End",
which is proving to have
unsuspected difficulties.
An overall problem is that
it's so much a novel
of the landscape,
a song of the Earth,
or must appear to England.
How to bring that
into the script?
It has to be more
than just directions
for beautiful camera work.
I feel we need something more
than just ordinary scenery."
- When I was walking
through the bluebells,
an iconic picture,
which a lot of the time
represents the film,
which is extraordinary, I said,
"Jim, just in the book,
when I'm walking all night,
and the sister say-"
- Was it wonderful?
- And Leonard, with
unforgettable sincerity, said...
No.
(Helen and Margaret laugh)
It was only gray.
And suddenly all the
pretension falls off him
and you see the spine that
might've been straight.
As Forster says,
"The man who swapped the
dignity of the animal
for a tailcoat
and a couple of ideas,"
that wonderful phrase.
And I say, "But I'm walking
through a field of bluebells,
it's beautiful, and I'm
calling it not beautiful."
And Jim said, "Oh, but Sam,
it has to be beautiful.
Otherwise, where are we?"
There are literally
hundreds of decisions
that could've been less
well made with that film
from casting and sh**ting
and script and art direction.
And they all combine somehow,
and it's an enormously
impressive thing still.
- All the Schlegels
are exceptional.
They are, of course,
British to the backbone
but their father was German,
and that is why they care
for literature and art.
- [Speaker] The characters
are absolutely perfect.
And the same might be
said of the entire book.
Paradoxically, that seems
to be the trouble.
Too perfect.
- Emma Thompson was not
an actress that I knew,
and she was just really starting
out in films at that time.
There were a number of actresses
who did come to read
and she was the last one.
She didn't have the script
as she read it straight
from the novel.
Well, she got
this job on the spot.
I mean, I had my Margaret.
- He says that I read
from the book,
but I don't remember doing that.
I remember reading from Ruth's
extraordinarily
beautiful script.
I wrote him a letter
when I'd left,
which I've never
done before or since,
and I just said, "I absolutely
know how to play this woman,
because she reminded
me so much of me
in the sense that
she was interfering
and loud and opinionated
and wanted to make the world
a better place, but was
also quite keen on blokes."
And I had a women's group,
Margaret's constantly
having women over
to talk about
issues of the date.
- [Helen] So what do you think
is the most important
thing in the world then?
- Well, I suppose it is whatever
matters to you most.
- Like love, for instance?
I remembered reading
a script and loving it,
and being quite relieved
'cause, for me,
when I was doing
"A Room with a View",
I was sort of resentful
'cause I just thought
I'm the ingenue,
and I basically knew that
I was a character actor.
And when I got Helen,
I thought, "That's it.
She's more of a character."
- [Leonard] Why should
you worry about me?
- Because we like you!
That's why.
You noodle.
- There's no cause
to call a person names.
- Oh yes there is.
When a person is being
tremendously stupid.
I thought she was funny.
I loved her passion.
There was a kind of connection,
a sort of eerie connection
between that and my grandmother,
Violet Bonham Carter.
She would've been
the same age as Helen.
So I read her
autobiography actually
'cause I thought
you're my direct peer.
And years later,
I found out Forster
was a personal friend of hers.
I wondered if he ever based
some of the Schlegel
because Violet was a
liberal radical on her.
(gentle music)
- I didn't think people like you
existed except in books.
And books aren't real.
- Oh no, they're more
real than anything!
When people fail you,
there's still music and meaning.
- That's for rich people
to make them feel good
after their dinner.
- [Speaker] "Then of
course there are the Basts.
Leonard, a genteel clerk
with literary aspirations
and dialogue to match,
is not an attractive character
at the center of a film.
But I do see Leonard
as attractive,
with all the eagerness of youth
brushing away the cobwebs
of the depressed clerk
he appears to be
at first sight."
- I didn't think Forster
necessarily knew Leonard
as well as the other characters.
And I thought I knew him
better than Forster did
and perhaps Jim
trusted me on that.
Leonard is a South London boy
who talked a bit like that,
you know, which is how
I talked when I grew up,
very close to where he grew up.
But it is a very complicated
story, "Howards End",
and it needs a filmmaker
at the top of their powers
to juggle and shuffle and
control those three families.
- [Speaker] "I also have
trouble with Mr. Wilcox,
and indeed all the Wilcoxes.
They're so dead on target
the jolly, hearty empire
building Englishman
that it might be difficult
to get any sympathy for them.
Why should Margaret
want to connect
with such awful people?"
- You're too kind.
You behave too well to people,
and then they impose on you.
I know the world
and that type of man.
- Oh, but he is not
a type, Mr. Wilcox.
(Henry chuckles)
- Tony had just become
more famous than God
by being in "Silence
of the Lambs",
and he was completely
pure and natural.
And Vanessa
was just so brilliant
at portraying something so
completely different to herself.
- You will laugh
at my old-fashioned ideas.
(Margaret chuckles)
- I will not.
- When we finished
editing "Howards End",
Ruth and I came out
from the editing room,
she wasn't quite satisfied
with the final form of it,
and she said, "Well, whatever
it is, it's what it is."
And that was sort of
her last word on it.
"Whatever it is, it is."
- I think that the
moment that I knew
that we'd made a really great
film that we were all proud of
was when we opened it in Cannes.
(dramatic music)
- [Stephen] A strong favorite
to win the Palme d'Or,
the jury at Cannes instead
gave "Howards End"
a sort of consolation prize
they called
the 45th Anniversary Award.
(dramatic music builds up)
(dramatic music fades)
It went on to become Merchant
Ivory's most decorated film
with nine Academy
Award nominations
and wins for Adapted
Screenplay, Art Direction,
and Best Actress.
Almost immediately,
a second consecutive film
went into production with Emma
Thompson and Anthony Hopkins
in the leading roles.
- Andy Marcus, who
edited "Howards End",
I remember having
a drink with him
when he was doing
"Remains of the Day".
They'd gone down
to Devon to do it
and it felt like
quite a small crew,
and he just said,
"It's kinda legendary.
They've hit something."
That's the holy grail
as a filmmaker, isn't it?
To find the people that you know
can embody these parts
and just, "Let's go and do it,"
and that was them at their
height of their powers.
- History could well
be made under this roof
over the next few days.
You can, each and
every one of you,
take great pride
in the role you will play
on this momentous occasion.
- "The Remains of the
Day" is, in a way,
the jewel in Merchant
Ivory's crown.
I think it was the combination
of that marvelous country house.
Almost every interior
shot was beautiful.
And of course, the relationship
between Anthony Hopkins
playing Stevens the butler
and Emma Thompson
as the housekeeper,
particularly when they,
not quite at the end
but the cl*max of the film,
confront each other
and almost say what they think
about each other.
- [Kenton] Flowers.
- [Stevens] Hmm?
- [Kenton] Flowers.
You're reading.
- [Stevens] Yeah.
- [Kenton] Very dim
in here. Can you see?
- [Stevens] Yes, thank you.
- [Kenton] What are you reading?
- [Stevens] A book.
- [Kenton] Yes, but
what sort of book?
- [Stevens] It's a book,
Ms. Kenton. A book.
- I remember that day very well
because I came in a state
of sort of tension.
I was heightened.
And I came in and we played it
a couple of times.
And I thought,
"Not quite working."
I said, "Ton, I'm
not getting this.
I don't know."
And he said, Tony said
it's one of those afternoons,
but there's a very tired
bee buzzing around,
or a fly actually, nothing
is romantic as a bee
against the glass
occasionally hitting it.
(imitates bee buzzing)
It's a sleepy afternoon.
He's reading, you come in,
you have no intentions.
Relax, and let's see
what happens.
Why won't you show me your book?
- This is my private time.
You're invading it.
- Oh, is that so?
- Yes.
- I'm invading your
private time, am I?
- Yes.
- What's in that book?
Come on, let me see.
And then what happens
is this extraordinarily sexual,
erotic moment where
at the end of each take,
you know, I've felt quite faint.
Quite faint.
And of course, Ton.
It's not scandalous at all.
It's just a sentimental
old love story.
The way in which he looks
not at her eyes but her mouth,
and then the hand comes down
and you think he's going to
touch her, but he never does.
- I really must ask you, please
not to disturb the few moments
I have to myself.
- If your heart isn't broken
by that scene,
it will not be broken
by anything.
- It's a towering performance.
Absolutely.
It's perfect.
- My God, he was
good in that film.
If someone said to me, "Show
me perfect film acting,"
I'd show them Tony Hopkins
in "Remains of the Day".
And, in fact, I'd say
"Remains of the Day"
is one of the best films I've
ever seen, let alone being in.
- It is absolutely my favorite.
It's one of my favorite films
of anything I've ever worked
on and things that I see now.
Sometimes I think
there are projects
that meet actors right
in the center of them.
And that in the same way
as Margaret Schlegel
met me in my center,
met Tony right in his center
'cause he was,
you know, from a very poor
working class family.
And I think that the story
of "Remains of the Day"
met Jim and Ismail
and Ruth right in their center.
Why, Mr. Stevens?
Why do you always have
to hide what you feel?
It's about people in disguise,
people who can't really
be themselves.
That film somehow incarnates
a lot of that struggle
and the false personalities
that we are forced to,
events, forced to put
on because society,
because culture, because
the world is what it is.
(dramatic music)
- [Stephen] "The
Remains of the Day"
found nearly as much
a claim as "Howards End"
with even more success
at the box office.
It may have conquered
awards season, too,
if it wasn't for another
World w*r II era film
released the same year.
(audience applauds)
- The Oscar goes to...
- Michael Kahn
for "Schindler's List".
- Steven Zaillian
for "Schindler's List".
- John Williams
for "Schindler's List".
- The Oscar goes to,
this is a big surprise...
- [Audience] Yes!
- Steven Spielberg for
"Schindler's List".
(audience applauding)
- d*ck had been
nominated for an Oscar
for the "Howards End",
but he didn't win.
But he had been nominated.
He had been Ismail's closest
friend, apart from myself.
And then they sort of broke up.
And suddenly Ismail said,
"Well, he's not gonna
do the music. He can't.
I don't want him
to do the music."
And then Ruth and I were
just horrified at that
because by that time it seemed
to us, and to me certainly
and I think to Ruth, too,
that d*ck's music
was absolutely vital
to the beauty and the success
of a Merchant Ivory movie.
That a Merchant Ivory
movie would not be
a Merchant Ivory movie
without d*ck's music.
So what were we gonna do if now,
and we're embarking on this,
this huge project
of "Remains of the Day"
if d*ck isn't
gonna do the music?
d*ck was here in Claverack,
in his own house,
and we weren't even
supposed to see d*ck.
So it was like that.
(dramatic music)
- [Stephen] Hailing
from Massachusetts,
Richard Robbins was
raised in a musical family
and became a
multi-instrumentalist
at a very young age.
He was classically trained
at the New England Conservatory
and went on to
become the director
of the Mannes College
of Music in Manhattan,
where Ruth's daughter
was a student.
In 1976, he made a documentary
about the school
entitled "Sweet Sounds",
which was produced
by Merchant Ivory.
After helping Jim select source
music for their films,
he began composing scores.
Influenced by the compositions
of Steve Reich and Philip Glass,
he combined his knowledge
of period music
with the emerging
style of minimalism.
- [Jim] I went to a Steve
Reich concert in Carnegie Hall,
and I just thought, I thought
that was fantastic.
And I came out afterwards,
and d*ck hadn't been there,
and I said, "Why can't
we have music like that?"
And by that time,
I'd probably heard some
Philip Glass music.
And he said, "You want
that kinda music?"
And I said, "Yes."
- I think d*ck's
most polished score
was "Remains of the Day".
It is the most complete,
cohesive score.
And it is powerful,
and dramatic,
and conveys so many emotions.
- Miss Kenton, you mean
a great deal to this house.
(pensive music)
You're extremely important
to this house, Miss Kenton.
- Am I?
- Jim and Ismail's
films almost always have
this sense of internal turmoil,
yet there's always
this calm facade.
And d*ck managed to do that
by creating this very motoric,
almost at times frenzied
minimalist motor
that would drive
the score forward,
but yet on top of it there
would be this very serene,
calm, melodic, oftentimes
filled with suspensions
that would create
that kind of tension.
(pensive music)
(car engine whirs)
Just like there was Bernard
Hermann to Hitchcock,
you know, Rota to Fellini.
d*ck's music is critical to
the Merchant Ivory experience.
(performer singing
in foreign language)
I selected period music for
several Merchant Ivory films.
And d*ck said that I was a part
of the Merchant Ivory
music department,
as he liked to call it.
And I was very much changed
by working with d*ck
and Jim and Ismail.
I learned so much
from all of them.
Anyone who has been within
that Merchant Ivory vortex
is forever changed,
were imprinted.
It was an extraordinary
convergence of diverse people
who had this drive to create
these extraordinary
works of art.
And we were all connected
by the fact
that we had made these
wonderful things together.
- [Stephen] In the 1970s,
Ruth moved to New York City.
And around that time,
Jim bought a house in Claverack
in Upstate New York.
What started as a weekend
retreat became the center
of the entire extended
Merchant Ivory family.
- Ismail and Jim,
and Ruth and Jhab
all lived in the same building
on East Fifth
and Seventh Street.
And when they went
to the country,
they all went en masse
together to the same house.
- The four together
worked very well.
They almost lived together.
It was very much a family unit.
They had the same sense
of humor.
They would laugh at the same
things and crack jokes.
And my father's all making
jokes at their expense,
and they thought that
was funny as well.
- I can't tell you enough
how much fun it was
just to be in this
whole ambience.
You'd get into Ismail's
insane Mercedes-Benz,
which kinda smelled like,
you know, how an old car
has like the petrol fumes
coming up from the floorboards.
So we'd get into that car
and go touring around
the countryside.
And the dynamics between Ismail
and Jim, they were so funny.
Jim would be sitting
there like, "Oh my God."
And Ismail would be
just like carrying on,
saying every insane thing.
And it was like a Laurel
and Hardy routine.
And Ruth was always in her room
and just writing or, you know.
Jhab and Ismail
were always fighting
in the kitchen over cooking.
- It's this sort of weird
idyll in Upstate New York.
This halcyon setting with a lake
in which we used to go
and swim every evening
and eccentric characters
bonding day and night
at this ravishingly
beautiful house
who are personally
connected or not.
You could never
quite work it out.
- [Stephen] In one
barn on the property,
Jim and Ismail
hosted art exhibitions,
parties, and performances.
- They would have these
events at the mill.
It was incredible
crossroads for people.
Every luminary artist
type would be here.
And that would be
one of the ways that,
frankly, Ismail would,
he would make it
so that people would
wanna work for him.
It was very familial,
and he knew that.
- [Stephen] In another,
they edited their films.
- I wish the room was still
set up for you to see it,
but this is the old
upright Moviola,
which is the one piece that
Jim is not gonna give away
because it's a piece
of cinema history.
Use a grease pencil and
mark on the actual frame
that you're cutting on.
Pull it out, cut it,
hang it in the bin,
wind it back up by hand.
It's all very physical.
Then we move to these.
This is the machine that a lot
of the films were cut on.
It's an eight-plate Steenbeck.
So you'd put up one roll of film
here and another roll here.
Benches with rewinds.
This kinda sound was
constantly going on
while you're editing.
All the leaders are still here.
The tape is still
here, you know.
It was a workshop.
The assistant would
often live downstairs.
You know, it takes a
certain kind of person
to give up your life
for a few months
and come up to the country
and live in an apple barn
where the editing is
happening above you.
But we would work
in this space every day.
And in the winter,
we'd have a fire
in the fireplace downstairs.
It was very homey.
(soft music)
- [Stephen] Eventually, d*ck
rented his own house
just down the road
where he composed music.
- I adored d*ck.
He was just the loveliest,
dearest, kindest person.
d*ck would've composed
brilliant music wherever,
whatever he had to compose for.
There was one year in Cannes
when he'd had enough of it.
He just wanted to leave.
And one night, we were supposed
to be going out to another,
it's this one social thing
after another in Cannes,
and we both were exhausted.
So we just grabbed a couple
of bottles of wine and escaped,
and we crawled out
into the garden
and went and hid behind
the bushes with our wine.
And we could hear them
shouting for us 'cause,
"We are ready to go.
Come, we're going
to leave without you."
And we want them
to leave without us.
And he just left one day.
He couldn't take anymore.
It was all getting
too much for him.
And Ismail had to get
and bring him back.
There was a lot of tension
for a lot of reasons.
'Cause I know one
of your questions
was about the open secret.
- d*ck's relationship.
But I have to say this,
but I can't say more.
But it wasn't an open secret
for the people who
were closely involved.
d*ck left Boston to come
and live in Claverack.
And it was Jim who wouldn't
let Ismail move in with d*ck.
And of course when
Michael came along,
Michael made a play for d*ck.
And when that
happened, Ismail was,
I can't even begin to describe
the heartbreak.
It was dreadful.
- [Stephen] It's not easy
to sort out the intricacies
of every relationship within
the Merchant Ivory family,
but it's clear d*ck Robbins
was romantically linked
not just to Ismail, but
also Helena Bonham Carter.
- I was totally
besotted by d*ck, yeah.
We ended up being mates for,
in all senses but one,
for about six or seven
years, yeah.
I was completely in love.
I was the ingenue in this
group of extraordinary people,
you know, at Claverack,
and it felt like I was
in my own film.
I was definitely a surrogate
for all of them, I think,
the little thing.
It took me years to work out
why they called me little thing.
And then they said,
"Well, you don't remember?"
- So you do love me,
little thing.
- I was half d*ck's age but,
you know, I meant it.
I was totally in love, you know.
And I think he was
in love with me, too,
as much as his mom would
allow him.
(laughs)
- [Stephen] Jim,
too, had affairs
during his long partnership
with Ismail,
including with the famed
British travel
writer Bruce Chatwin,
which he revealed to Chatwin's
biographer in the late '90s.
- [Speaker] "From then
on we were together,
united in a purpose,
and that purpose was
to make films together.
I came to feel that two g*y men,
united in their commitment
to each other,
single-mindedly pursuing
a common goal,
could end up ruling the world."
- I do feel that.
(chuckles)
- Right. Well, you know,
and at a certain point
Ismail began to have
other partners.
And they were those
who'd would usually be rather
intense relationships.
And for quite a while,
they would go on.
And then usually whoever
was with Ismail
became dissatisfied and left.
And I suppose it's because
I was there.
So many of my friends said,
"Well, I don't see why
you stay on with him.
I mean, he's there
with so-and-so,
why would you do that?"
But then they weren't
making films with him.
It's better if you read
that in my book.
I mean, there are complicating
sentences and thoughts
just coming out like that,
may not sound so good.
That doesn't mean that Ismail
had no other partners,
he was a highly-sexed man,
or that I would not.
One or two of these
were very seductive,
and when they were,
we shared them.
I was never going to leave him
because of his temporary
infatuations,
and was I ever voluntarily
going to give up
our work together.
I was a bit like a powerful
French matriarch,
it occurred to me, who knows
her husband has mistresses,
but who also knows that she's
at the center of his world,
his home, his children; and
if she's clever, his very life.
And in another way,
which made me laugh,
when I thought about it,
I recognize that
his Muslim husband
would probably in time
take a second wife,
and the third,
and finally a fourth,
which is all the Quran allows.
In this way he and I went
on for more than 40 years,
weathering everything
good and bad, together.
- Yeah, well, there would be
tensions on the films
about certain kinds of things.
I mean, people who were
really very important
would come and say,
"Jim, we can't do this
for that kind of money."
I could not make promises
to anybody
that they would get more money,
but I could bring pressure
on him, which I did.
- Jim and Ismail used to argue,
and a Merchant and Ivory
argument
was almost a national event.
Jim would shriek
at the top of his voice.
Ismail would go a
deep shade of purple
and bellow at the top
of his voice.
On two occasions, our neighbors
in the next office
actually called the police
to come to our offices
because they thought somebody
was being horrifically m*rder*d.
The intense and
constant pressure
of making independent
films of huge ambition
with limited resources
put pressure on both of them
in very different ways.
When Ismail came on set, he was
full of smiles and laughter,
patting backs and instilling
confidence and joie de vivre.
Back in the office and
in meetings, it was chaos
and teetering
on a financial edge,
cliff edge most of the time.
What held everybody
together, I think,
was a belief in the stories,
a belief in the films,
a belief in the product.
This was fundamental
to their very existence.
This wasn't work, this was
an almost physical part of them
that they had to keep
going no matter what.
(enlightening music)
- [Stephen] In the mid-1990s,
Merchant Ivory chose
to work with major studios
like Disney and Warner Bros.
While grander in scale,
these films were less successful
with critics and
at the box office,
and didn't connect with
the Merchant Ivory audience
in the same way as
their earlier work.
- The last films,
the films that came after
"The Remains of the Day",
they've been dismissed
on the whole.
A number of huge studio films,
"Surviving Picasso",
"Jefferson in Paris",
"A Soldier's Daughter
Never Cries",
a wonderful film set in Paris
and in the United States
based on the
novelist James Jones.
Ishiguro's second film
for Merchant Ivory,
"The White Countess", set
in Shanghai just before the w*r.
And of course "The Golden Bowl",
the last of the adaptations
of Henry James
that came after "The Europeans"
and "The Bostonians".
Although "Howards End"
is perhaps
Merchant Ivory's
most fully realized film.
I would say that
"The Golden Bowl", for me,
is unequal footing.
And Ruth once said to me,
"With a book, it comes out,
it gets a bad review or it gets
an indifferent review,
that's not the end.
If the book's worth anything,
it can have a second life."
Now, she said, "With a film,
it's all or nothing."
- I suppose it spoils
your picture of me.
That perfect one you
have inside your head.
- Well, I thought that
was rather defeatist.
If people really looked
at these films,
they would see these
films had merit.
And as the years have gone
by like vintage porch,
they've actually got better.
(horse rider shouts)
- You don't know how
we live in Monticello.
It's unspeakable.
- God Almighty never
meant for human beings
to be like animals.
We has a soul.
You do what I says
and you and me is free.
- Every time I see
"Jefferson in Paris",
which isn't all that often,
but whenever it's shown
on a big screen,
I go and see it 'cause it's,
you never get a chance
to see your films.
And I do feel this is,
you know, this does hold up,
and this is very much in
people's minds now, the story.
But that film was damned
by the press. They hated it.
They said that was impossible,
that a fine man like Jefferson
would've actually had
a Black mistress
and father of her children.
That was really the feeling
of all these people.
A lot has happened since then.
I mean, the examination
of the DNA
of those Jefferson descendants
disproves that it happened.
But it was a hated film.
It's interesting because
there were two films
that were like that,
that were hated.
One after the other.
The next was
"Surviving Picasso".
- To make a woman, you first
have to wring her neck.
- And I suppose it's because
Picasso was a god
and Jefferson's a god.
And to show the human qualities
of these great men,
who had problems with women,
people didn't like that.
- People have said,
and I think they have a point,
that those films lacked
the intimate charm
of the earlier films.
There didn't seem to be that
kind of close relationship
with an audience that films
like "A Room with a View"
and "Howards End" and
"Remains of the Day" achieved.
Financing was easier.
The budgets slowly began
to creep up,
as did the ambition
in terms of casting
and production value.
What didn't scale up
to manage that
was the actual mechanics and
construction of Merchant Ivory.
We were still operating
on a pretty meager basis
with a very low overhead
with only a few people
in key positions.
And also, Ismail started
making his own films,
almost in parallel to Jim's.
- He started with a short
film in Bombay
about a very poor boy,
a beggar on the beach,
and then he made a very,
very good documentary
called "The
Courtesans of Bombay",
(lively ethnic music)
about the singing
and dancing girls
who inhabit a quarter
of Bombay called Pavan Pool.
And then he decided
he wanted to make a film
of the novel "In Custody"
with star Shashi Kapoor,
and it was a story
about an old Urdu poet.
Urdu is very much the literary
language of North India,
and always was, and it's
associated with Muslims,
though millions of Hindus
also speak Urdu and write it.
(Ismail speaking in
foreign language)
- Urdu, a language
which I grew up on,
and poetry gives me
the greatest satisfaction.
And then suddenly this
division has been created.
So the time has come to speak
out about the language
that is being, you know,
languishing in India.
A relationship between a Hindu
teacher and a Muslim poet
that also brings the culture,
you know, we've shared
things in India.
We want oneness, a feeling
of togetherness, you know.
- Then he wanted to make
this film with Jeanne Moreau,
which he made, called
"The Proprietor".
Some of which was
shot in New York
and some of which
was shot in Paris.
He did another feature
called "Cotton Mary",
starring Madhur Jaffrey,
which was about an aya.
An aya is like a nursemaid,
who goes crazy.
And then finally he made
a film in Trinidad
called "The Mystic Masseur"
based on a novel
by V.S. Naipaul.
And that was
particularly interesting
because the story is about
a man who invented himself
and invented his role.
- I go write books.
- You start drinking rum.
That is it.
- Mrs. Cooper, one day
I go stand at the center
of world literature.
- It was sort of a portrait
of Ismail in a way.
And I'm not saying that Ismail
was a totally self-admitted
character, he wasn't.
But his personality took on
more and more sides to it,
and that sort of ultimately
becoming a film director was.
The only further thing
he could've done
apart from becoming
a government minister,
which is what happened
in that film.
- There has to be a special
feeling about your work,
a passion about your work,
a commitment about your work.
And if that is the case,
then it never dies.
You see, anything is possible.
- [Stephen] During
post-production
on "The White Countess"
in London,
Ismail underwent surgery
for abdominal ulcers.
He died unexpectedly during
the operation on May 25th, 2005.
He was 68 years old.
- Ismail's sudden and shocking
death really winded us all.
But Jim was absolutely lost.
I remember I went out
to see him in New York.
I was waiting in a diner,
and it was a six-lane avenue,
Jim started crossing
and then stopped
in the middle of the traffic
and the lights went green
and these great big juggernauts
were descending on him.
And I was panicking, and I sort
of ran up and rescued him
and got him to the pavement.
And he said the most
heartbreaking thing, he said,
"I was prepared for the
emotional effects of grief.
I wasn't prepared for the
physical effects of grief."
And he went into a long,
long widowhood,
and we kind of thought,
"Well, that's it, you know.
He needs his Ismail.
He needs somebody to galvanize
him and persuade people
that what they were doing was
worthwhile," which it was.
(film crew speaks indistinctly)
(film crew speaks indistinctly)
- [Film Director] Action!
- [Stephen] Merchant
Ivory's only project
after Ismail's death
was "The City
of Your Final Destination".
(dog barks)
Shot in Argentina,
the film follows
an American graduate student
seeking permission
to write a biography
of a recently deceased writer,
leaving his unconventional
family to manage his legacy.
- How could any outsider
understand this place?
Or what it was like
to all live here together?
Or what it's like
now without him?
- The first time
since Ismail died
that I had actually felt happy
was during the sh**ting of that.
Ismail had gone actually
to Argentina with me on a scout.
That big house that
we used in that film,
Ismail was actually there.
- I know that it was a film
that Ismail felt
passionately about.
I know it was a film that
Jim felt passionately about.
It expressed something very
evocative of their other films,
but it was completely different.
There's a very,
very strong feeling
whilst we were making the film,
that it was like a sort
of perfect end.
- Well, I just wanna
say to you all,
it's been the most enjoyable
movie I've been in many years.
Thank you for having me back.
- I think to embark on
"The City of Your Final
Destination"
so soon after Ismail's death
was a difficult job
for everybody involved.
It didn't have its figure
who was central
to everything we did
around the film set,
and that was unsustainable.
(camera project whirring)
- [Stephen] Without an
adequate budget in place,
principal photography
began in 2006.
Producer Richard Hawley
attempted
to fulfill Ismail's role
in securing financing.
- Richard took on Ismail's
attempts at spreading confidence
and telling people not to worry
and everything was going well,
while underneath
he was struggling around,
financing, borrowing, begging,
anything he could from
any source that he could,
legal or slightly otherwise
to keep the whole ship afloat.
- That film was made
on credit cards.
One of the producers
who had worked for us for years,
he could never, ever get
the money together.
You know, actors
will come on and act
whether they're paid or not,
but they have to be paid.
You can't just not pay them.
But we didn't have
any money to pay them.
We had no money to edit with.
So that's when
Anthony Hopkins sued.
But then we were able to,
you know,
get it together finally.
- Yeah, absolutely. It did.
(somber music)
(somber music continues)
(somber music continues)
- [Stephen] After
years of pursuing
his own projects
with no success,
Jim was approached
by Hudson Valley neighbors
with an offer to adapt
Andre Aciman's novel,
"Call Me by Your Name".
(audience applauding)
- I wouldn't be standing up here
without the inspired help
I received
from my life's partners
who are gone.
Our writer, Ruth Jhabvala, who
received this award twice...
(audience applauding)
and our fearless producer,
Ismail Merchant.
Working with them for close
to 50 years of Merchant Ivory
led me to this award.
Thank you very much, everyone.
(audience applauding)
- [Stephen] At 89, James
Ivory is the oldest person
to have won an Academy Award,
and he hasn't stopped there.
Following his win,
Jim continues to write.
In 2020, during the COVID-19
pandemic,
he stayed in Claverack, adapting
the Edouard Louis novel
"The End of Eddy".
Changing the setting
from Louis's homeland
to Jim's own in Oregon.
In better times,
he travels the world
attending film festivals
and retrospectives.
(speaker speaking
in foreign language)
(audience applauding)
- If you'd asked me years ago,
right at the beginning
when I met them back
in the 18th century,
who was gonna last the longest?
It wasn't gonna be Jim.
And now he seems
to be going backwards.
He seems to be getting
younger in spirit.
There are not many people
who really are happy
in their old age.
And I think on some level,
although he might say I'm wrong,
I don't think
I've ever seen him happier.
Maybe Jim has been able to grow
in a dimension that he
wouldn't had Ismail lived.
I don't know.
(bright music)
I've just loved this last time.
He's much more on the surface
and available and open,
and is curious
and excited to be alive.
Maybe I'll die before him, but,
the way he's carrying.
(laughs)
- [Jim] Perhaps, though I got
a relatively late start
as a director, perhaps
I'll go on longer than some,
I mean, maybe another
20 years, I don't know.
I hope so.
- Well, I'd hate to be,
you know,
one of those people
that gets kicked upstairs.
(dramatic music)
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Merchant Ivory (2023)
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