"Foreign Body's" Beauty

"Foreign Body" (see "Movies," page 22) is a romantic comedy about a young man from India who seeks prosperity and sexual awakening in London. What you see here is not an actress from the movie but its scriptwriter. How did she come to pose for Playboy? She's a writer. We'll let her tell the story.

It's four A.M. at Lee International Studios in London. Two hundred male extras of Asian extraction are boarding buses to go on location. Their destination? Although the script calls for Calcutta on a hot summer day, the scene will be shot in midwinter on a shipping dock in Bristol, more than two hours away. Feelings run high among the men. For just one day, they will share in the magic of making a movie with legendary director Ronald Neame and their idol, (text continued on page 186) "Foreign Body" (continued from page 144) Indian actor Victor Banerjee, fresh from his success in A Passage to India.

At ten A.M. the same day, I'm standing on an enormous crate, one of the props, so as to get a full view of the scene. Our extras, their breath showing in the cold, have been made up and costumed in flimsy cotton dhotis and sandals. The lucky ones are the Sikhs, who, for religious reasons, wear turbans, which help keep them warm. Patricia, the unit nurse, is frantically handing out hot-water bottles and steaming cups of soup in an attempt to prevent the extras from turning blue.

One of them, a dashing Indian in an officer's uniform, has spotted me. He swaggers in my direction and, flashing a set of perfect white teeth against his smooth coffee-cream complexion, inquires, "Are you one of the stars in the film?"

"No," I reply, rather flattered, and wait for him to ask what I really do. He doesn't. Instead, he starts chatting me up, telling me all about his former life in India and about his parents, his grandmother, his brother, not to mention his ugly sister.

From the corner of my eye, I see executive producer Christopher Neame approach. "It's just as we thought," he informs me. "We'll need your narration over the long shot." Now realizing that I wrote the screenplay, the man in uniform, perhaps feeling that he's overstepped his position, sheepishly saunters back to his colleagues. I want to call after him: "Hey, wait a minute. Don't go away. Tell me more about your ugly sister and about...." Too late. He's already vanished. I take out my writing pad and make notes for the requested voice-over.

In midafternoon, as I watch the scene finally being shot, the story begins to take life. Before me is Bristol, looking more like India than India itself. On the word "Action!" from the director, the extras, mindful not to breathe in the cold air, start loading or unloading cargo, buying or selling, begging or just mingling around Victor Banerjee.

Banerjee plays the leading role in Foreign Body, a romantic comedy about a young Indian named Ram Das who purchases false papers to come to London in his desire to seek love and fortune and, he hopes, lose his virginity along the way. Initially, all he finds is rejection on all counts. In his passionate search for romance, Ram Das gets involved in a series of contretemps and ends up posing as a doctor in Harley Street, London's renowned physicians' quarter.

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When I stop to think of it, it isn't too farfetched that director Ronald Neame chose me to adapt Roderick Mann's book. After all, I am a foreign body myself. I was born in the north of Quebec in a small gold-mining town. When it ran out of gold, my father, a smalltime gambler, chose to move on to bigger and better things. That ambition took him and the family to Montreal, then to northern British Columbia, where, at the age of 16, I learned English. After graduating from school, armed with a basic knowledge of the English language and a dubious talent, looking reasonably attractive (see pictures), I decided to make Vancouver my home and resume an acting career that had started in French Canada when I was 12.

I was 19 and had been starring in a Canadian Broadcasting Corporation comedy series for the better part of a year when one day, the producer arrived at the studio in a particularly bad mood. Her nostrils flaring and her face growing a bright red, she threw the show's latest script at me. "Now look what you've done," she said rather bitterly. "The writer just quit because of your constant criticism of his work. From now on, you write the scripts!"

Only ignorance and perhaps a certain degree of arrogance made me do it, but I remained on the payroll of the government of Canada as a scriptwriter for two interminably long years, bashing out 13 episodes per series. I then wrote a documentary series and commentaries, did interviews on subjects on which no 21-year-old had any right to have a serious opinion and progressed to awful films. One of them was a rather infamous disaster movie that was so big and so disastrous that the publicity surrounding it almost sent me into oblivion.

Between jobs that paid the bills, I would lick my wounds and write stories about women yearning for love, about their need for friendship and their desire to accomplish something important. Eventually, I was able to draw male characters, which helped me understand and resolve relationships from my past. For years, in the privacy of my modest apartments near the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and on Fountain Avenue in Hollywood, I lived a double life. It never occurred to me that those personal stories would ever interest anyone but myself, until I met Ronald Neame.

I suppose you could say that the ghost of Judy Garland brought us together. I had sought Neame out as part of my research on a screenplay I was writing about her. He had directed Garland in her last picture, I Could Go On Singing. He also happened to have made two of my favorite films: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and Tunes of Glory. I took to him immediately and, apparently, he to me. In time, he became my friend and mentor. He read my sad and funny little stories and, to my immense surprise, liked them and suggested that we form a production company with his son Christopher.

Diligently, we started to revise several screen projects of mine. We counted 35 refusals on Foreign Body. It took Orion Pictures' head, Arthur Krim, for whom Neame had made several pictures, to give us the go-ahead. From then on, things moved rapidly to location and scouting, casting, rehearsals and several rewrites. On the day I handed in my final draft, I felt both happy and sad. I had done a good job, but my part in the project had come to an end. It was everybody else's job now to make the film happen.

Then, out of the blue, I was brought back to Foreign Body in a rather offbeat way. The script called for a picture of a pretty girl on a Playboy cover. When Ronnie and Chris half-jokingly suggested that I pose for it, I surprised them both by accepting. And then Marilyn Grabowski, West Coast Photo Editor and Playboy V.P., approached me about doing a layout for the magazine. I was genuinely flattered. Besides, the idea appealed to the writer in me. This was an opportunity to experience something new.

Having the photographs taken was almost as major a production as making the film. Several weeks and 400 pictures later, Marilyn finally presented me with the proofs, all carefully divided into A, B and reject categories. I studied the model as if she were someone else. "She looks pretty good," I said. Marilyn had the good grace to smile and agree.

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Seven P.M. It's a wrap! It's been a long day for everyone. Battered and exhausted, our extras line up for a most deserved dinner. Very kindly, the production has provided a car to take me home. As the car pulls out, my Indian friend waves at me. He doesn't look quite as handsome without his splendid officer's uniform. "Goodbye," I wave back, "see you in the movie!"