The surprising ways Harrison Ford unknowingly helped create Bend It Like Beckham
Gurinder Chadha, writer and director of the popular 2002 film do like Beckhamhas revealed that Harrison Ford unknowingly helped create her film.
Chadha struggled to get funding from one of the UK public film funding agencies for the film, which is about a British-Indian girl (Parminder Nagra) whose family refuses her to play soccer despite having an excellent right to walk.
Speaking at the annual Winston Baker International Film Finance Forum in Cannes this week, the filmmaker said, “I struggled to make this film because I really believed that the world was changing at that point and I believed that my cultural Paradigm relevant and I was fresh and new to British filmmakers.
“I had written a screenplay with my husband Paul [Mayeda Berges] and it was very international… and a very human story, and I just didn’t understand why the gatekeepers were passing it along.”
Accordingly meetingChadha said that when she learned her application for funding from the former UK Film Council would be rejected, she spoke to new CEO John Woodward and told him, “I’m angry because you all want me to do panels.” about how hard it is to make films, especially when you’re a person of color, they push me onto all these platforms to talk about it and now they don’t support me – they have to support me.”
Chadha said she was told she would never make the film because she couldn’t find an Indian girl who could actually bend it the way Beckham can. “That was the main reason they turned the film down,” Chadha said, explaining that she came back with, “Do you think Harrison Ford jumps out of helicopters?”
This point about the Indiana Jones star seemed to persuade Woodward and helped Chadha secure £1million for the production of her film.
Chadha said that when she first met Ford at a dinner in Cannes earlier this year, she told him the story and he replied, “Well, I’m so glad I was able to help you with your career… and by the way, me.” jump the fuck out of choppers.”
Kiera Knightley and Parminder Nagra in “Bend It Like Beckham”
(Christine Parry/Bend It/Film Council/Kobal/Shutterstock)
Hollywood’s best converged in Cannes this week for the premieres of many highly anticipated films, including that of Martin Scorsese Killer of the Flower Moonand Alicia Vikander leading lady arsonist.
The standing ovations at numerous events in Cannes made headlines. The longest ovation in the festival’s history is said to have lasted a whopping 22 minutes, for Guillermo del Toro’s 2006 fantasy horror film Pan’s Labyrinth.
