IN THE RISQUÉ BUSINESS

At a US biennale this month, hangs the photo of a Bombay boy, who pursued, achieved and was then stripped of his ‘american dream’. Steve Banerjee, an Indianamerican, founded the famous Chippendales brand – men dancing for women at nightclubs. So why have

In the California of the ’80s, two men in a rundown club struck a deal by the dance floor. The owner of the club was Steve (Somen) Banerjee, a Bombay boy who had landed in the US a decade earlier and after failing to run a gas station, was now hoping to hit gold with a nightclub. He was a dreamer, he had initiative, and he was willing to put his money into an idea that makes most music halls sing: Place some half-naked girls on a revolving stage. And then play the organ.

Steve just wanted to do it the other way around. He wanted to put men on stage, oiled, dancing, and cuffed, nearly in the buff, and see women outside the ring screaming. Nick De Noia, a choreographer, said he could make that happen. When Steve got into business with Nick, the agreement was Steve would sign the cheques. And Nick would show the boys how to move.

Steve’s club and the Chippendales troupe, were soon booming. The concept of men dancing for women at a nightclub was novel for that time. It made Steve nearly a pioneer in America’s adult entertainment industry. By the late 1980s, writes Anirvan Chatterjee, a writer-activist of California, in his blog, diasporic.com: “The Chippendales were almost a household name. Over a million copies of their calendars were sold every year. Touring profits exceeded $25,000 per week, and at its height, Steve controlled an $8-million-a-year business.”

AN INDIAN IN AMERICA

Steve’s success, even though it went unacknowledged by the Indian or the Bengali community, was reported in the media of that time and that is how Pablo Bartholomew, one of the front-ranking photographers of India, then in his thirties, who had arrived in America on an Asian Cultural Council grant, heard about him.

Bartholomew used the grant money to document the lives of the Indian community for his project Indian Emigres. He was familiar with America as he had already worked for a French-American photo news agency. From 1983, Bartholomew began researching for subjects to photograph; he scanned Indian community newspapers like India Abroad, India West, and various archives and local Indian associations with the US. He found that Steve was one of the many Indians who had been finding a foothold in the US as economic migrants.

If Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, was one of the pinnacles of Indian-American success in the ’80s; Steve Banerjee with a mini empire of road shows, satellite clubs and merchandise such as the Chippendales Calendar, and an annual turnover of several million dollars, was no less than a stalwart of the Los Angeles club scene. Bartholomew did portraits of both.

This month, Steve’s photo is hanging – along with 34 other photos from the Indian Émigré series – at the FotoFest 2018 Biennale in Houston, organised around contemporary photography within India and the global Indian diaspora. And Steve’s is the photograph that perhaps messes the most with the neat narrative of the American dream, or the story of the Indians as a model community, a homogeneous collective as it were, where all its members land equally on their feet.

MEETING STEVE

So let’s meet Steve. Bathed in cherry-pink club-lights, dressed in sharp suit and tie atop a bar stool with a blonde hunk in the background, he has a cigarette in hand and a Screwdriver to his side. Steve may not have had an all-American bone structure, but you’d think this was what an all-American success looked like. Running establishments in New York, Dallas and Denver, he could steer California if need be! You’d think this was a guy at the top of things.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Bartholomew met Steve at his flagship club, Chippendales in Los Angeles, in 1987, a year before the unravelling of his business and three years before the FBI would begin to build the evidence to make a case against him. In 1986, a year ago, he had allegedly got his creative partner Nick De Noia murdered, who, according to the The

DIRECTOR GOUTAM GHOSE ON FACING THE CAMERA FOR MAJID MAJIDI

maker,” recalls Ghose with a laugh, “And said there was this character in the film for which he thought I was perfect.” Akshi, the character played by Ghose, is a cameo, but the director says he is a significant part of the plot and responsible for many of the twists and turns in the narrative. “Akshi is a poor man from the south who leaves his family and comes to work in the dhobi ghats of Mumbai.”

Shooting started in March 2017 and Ghose, who shot for 12 days for his role, is all praise not just for his director, but also his co-actors and the entire unit. The film has music by AR Rahman and stars Ishaan Khattar and Malavika Mohanan. “Acting is no big deal for me. As a director I have worked with all kinds of actors – good actors, bad actors, non-actors – and made them act. Also in the 1970s I had some training in theatre and was taught mime, expressions and voice modulation, which still stand me in good stead.”

What he does find difficult at times as an actor is to distance himself from the director in him, he confesses. “Sometimes I feel a certain thing could have been done differently, but I have to remind myself that the director might have a different vision. If I do feel strongly about something though, I make a suggestion to the director. After all, cinema is a collective art. Even when I am directing, I take suggestions from others.”

Working in Beyond the Clouds was different, though, since Ghose says Majidi would himself show him the shots and ask for his opinion. He has not seen Beyond the Clouds yet. But says, “Whoever has seen it, says it has come out very well. I hope to see it at the premiere.” The film releases in India on April 20.

As for Majidi, the shared passion for cinema is an enduring connect between the two that should continue beyond the sets of their respective films. “Majidi is a great Satyajit Ray fan. If he comes to Kolkata for the premiere of Beyond the Clouds I will take him to Ray’s home. That will be a treat for him,” muses Ghose.