Growing up, most of my friends were Pakistani immigrants. We were all quite poor. Cinema, be it Bollywood or Hollywood, was my way out. Half a century on from those night-time flits out of his bedroom window, the year-old millionaire businessman has used the money he made from his double-glazing empire to bankroll his movie-making debut. How on earth did, with all due respect, a pair of cinematic nobodies manage to get such talent on board?
We just kept asking. And then people started saying yes. But why would a Golden Globe-winning actor agree to appear in a film made by a double-glazing tycoon with no film-making experience? And then he agreed to be in the film. Not really. You know, the big mic? Gabriel heard and I got summoned to his trailer. When I got there, he had his shirt off and was marching up and down. That made him laugh. Another reason Byrne stayed, presumably, is that by the time shooting began on Lies We Tell two years ago, Misra had surrounded himself with accomplished movie professionals, not least his director of photography, Santosh Sivan.
Once Byrne agreed to be in the film, Misra and McDermott used his name as leverage to get other stars. One of them was Keitel. So I lost my temper.
What happened? The year-old had other ideas. So we had a huge argument. After Misra tells me this story, his daughter Aarti shows me photos on her phone of Keitel chilling in Bradford. In one, he is helping the Misra family prepare dinner in the kitchen. In another, he is on his hands and knees in the hall romping with their family dog, Meg. For all the famous names Misra wooed for his project, though, it is a relative unknown who steals the film.
But in trying to do so, Donald gets dragged into her world. He raped Amber, prompting her to get a divorce. McDermott and Misra now want to make more films. Misra has written three more scripts. He was a racist and that needs to be shown. He is pleased, though, that the film has survived its first ordeal β its Bradford premiere.
