Walkaway’s wherewithal

One of the few films produced by Indian Americans to have a red carpet premiere in New York, Walkaway explores the lives of a handful of immigrants whose past and present lives impact their matrimonial prospects. A light comedy, directed by first-timer Shailja Gup­ta with the assistance of executive producer Kurush Mistry, Walkaway takes the viewer into the lives and loves of four New Yorkers — Darius, Vinay, Shridhar and Soham.

As Gupta acknowledged in an interview at the time of the film’s release in October 2010, "I was fortunate that I didn’t have to struggle for the initial funding to get it off the ground. The credit goes to especially Kurush Mistry who… first believed in my project, put in the first check on the table. After that my technology company and 15-20 friends chip­ped in. The problem arose just before the shoot when the film snowballed into a much larger project than what I had been prepared for.”

Shailja Gupta (left) and Kurush Mistry;

It is an exploratory movie "made with Bollywood flair,” declared the director whose past experience included developing Shah Rukh Khan’s entertainment portal, working on Rahul Nanda’s Film Publicity Design in Bombay as also FilmFare Online owned by The Times of India group. Thanks to her Bollywood contacts, for her post production effort Gupta was able to garner support from Shah Rukh Khan’s Red Chillies Productions. For sound mixing she was guided by Resul Pookutty, Academy Award winner who won acclaim for the sound editing for Slumdog Millionaire. Mega music directors Vishal and Shekar contributed their romantic song Dheere Dheere to this film.

publicity material on Walkaway

The 97-minute film is primarily in English with some Tamil and French dialogs incorporated but as New York critic Arthur Pais commented, "English subtitles consistently accompany Gene­vieve’s French-accented English yet they sometimes disappear when non-English dialog is spoken. There are mentions of cultural traditions like Genevieve’s wedding ritual that needed more explanation… Still the problems didn’t hamper my overall comprehension of the movie’s universal themes. Walkaway is a promising first effort…”

Amongst the subjects that Parsis would probably identify with is the dominating mother-in-law who views her daughter-in-law with disdain. One of the hapless brides candidly expresses in the movie, "There’s a reason why fairy tales always end with the wedding.”