After the Shipa-Gere hullaballoo, Richard Gere seemed a natural choice to come on Koffee with Karan. He appeared much the same as he did in “Pretty Woman”, maybe frailer and with glasses. Charm flowed in a direct stream from Gere to me, the viewer, the TV screen and the thousands of miles being not a problem. Very suave, talks the talk and seems to mean it. When they defined charisma, they must have had him in mind !
Gere seems very disarming and youthful – the glasses add some age, but other than that he looked like a leading man. To guess at his age, one had to look at the skin on his neck which seemed wrinkled and belied his youthful manner. Karan was his usual – piercing and looking out for that slip-of-the-tongue moment, at one point reminding Gere that his answers on the rapid-fire were not very hamper friendly. Gere, on his part, once he’d received the hamper, took a formal bow, thanked Karan and everyone including his Mom and Dad for the great hamper honor. Come to think of it, it would have seemed odd had any other male anchor had a “hamper” thing on his talk show, but on Johar’s show it seems just right.
Politically correct answers were the order of the day. Gere loved Bollywood, women and the acting community the world over -felt that they were all brothers and sisters, they had a connection. He spoke approvingly of Salman, and Shahrukh and others in supporting AIDS awareness in India. He admitted to not having watched many Hindi movies. “Have you seen Lagaan – the film that everyone has seen ?”, asks Johar. Unfortunately no. Gere thought that all Bollywood actors (or at least all the famous ones that he was familiar with) had it in them to make it in Hollywood – and he likened Amitabh Bachchan to King Lear !
It was interesting to hear Gere’s views because they brought cultural differences vis-à-vis Bollywood/Hollywood to the fore. About differences in Mumbai and LA, he felt that they lived normal lives in Hollywood – he (Gere) could walk down the street in New York, and SRK couldn’t do that in Mumbai. There was also talk which hinted at the culture of social work in the US – a tradition Gere called it, “a responsibilty that we all have whether we are movie stars or technicians”. There isn’t such a tradition in India, but given time, hopefully it will develop.
