I wanted to work there even before we had our story because I’m so enamored of the place. I love it there. It’s a place where I feel very foreign but also very welcome, where I’m continually surprised. You’ll look around and something makes you laugh, or it strikes you in a way that’s very moving. It’s just very intense, that place. Which is why foreigners who visit, it often becomes a big part of their lives. I’ve been four times. The last time I went was when they were shooting.
How do you think Indian viewers will respond?
My movies get mixed reviews everywhere, and I can’t imagine that they won’t get mixed reviews in India, too.
How’s Owen Wilson doing these days?
I talk to him all the time. He’s doing very well.
He suffers similar vehicle smash-ups in Darjeeling and in the Royal Tenenbaums. Is there something about him that leads you to create these self-destructive characters for him?
The character that he’s playing in this movie — I was like Francis. There’s a degree to which we wrote the character for me. We just knew that the guy who was actually going to bring it to life was Owen. But that was never really part of the equation.
I don’t really like the song that you used as a running motif, Peter Sarstedt’s 1969 tune “Where Do you Go To (My Lovely),” but I can’t get the melody out of my head. How’d you choose it?
I heard that song a couple of summers ago. Only English people know this song. I’d never heard it in my life. I’ve never found an American who knows this song, but every single English person knows it very well. It didn’t seem to cross the Atlantic. But I really like it. I started writing the short film listening to that song. Later, I learned he was born in India. And there are a lot of references to Paris in the song. But I wasn’t thinking about that, either. As it happened, I was living in Paris, and the scene was set in Paris, and there’s some weird French-Indian connection that goes on between these movies anyway.
How easy or hard is it to ask Bill Murray to come to India for a tiny cameo?
I ran into him at a movie. We had been talking about how our ideal guy for this part was Bill, but it was impossible because he’d have to come to India, and there’s no part here. But he asked me what I was doing next, and I said I was working in India. And I told him there’s no part for you, it’s about these three brothers, but there is a part that’s not even a cameo, it’s more like a symbol. But he said, “I’d like to be a symbol.” He actually had to come to India twice, and he stayed for a couple of weeks each time. You can’t do better than that, to have Bill Murray, even if you get him for only a few moments.
