When writer Cecil Pinto met Homi Adajania
in May of 2009, Homi spent some time reading the script of Finding Fanny to
Cecil and outlining his vision for the movie. Cecil’s responsibilities were
clear. He had to authenticate the Goan-ness of the scenarios, characters,
dialogues etc in the script. The next 40 days saw a series of emails being
exchanged between the two – emails containing a scene by scene description of
the script, changes to characters, dialogues and scenarios to make it
authentically Goan. It was all going fine until the team reached a dead end
when the project was shelved.
Whether it was the director’s faith in the
script or the strong will of the people involved in the film, Finding Fanny was
resurrected last year in 2013. It was time for Cecil to get involved again and
the work resumed from where it had stopped. Cecil says, “My primary role was
strictly to modify the script to make it more Goan. But yes I did get involved
in other minor tasks like arranging for a ‘table reading’ of the script, using
local people I knew who closest resembled the characters in the movie. Also,
when the movie was being shot I was asked to be present for some scenes to help
the actors get their Konkani accents right and sometimes even to suggest
alternate phrases.Although a great guy to work with, Homi is very fastidious
about getting every detail right in his films. Clothing, props, situations,
language – he would insist on knowing the exact reasons for any change I made
or suggested.”
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While Cecil played a major role in shaping
the script of the film, another local man, Newton Dias took charge of finding
the right people to play the different Goan characters in the film. Having
successfully worked on multiple Bollywood and Hollywood films shot in Goa,
Newton was the obvious choice to be the Casting Director of Finding Fanny.
Newton says, “In this movie, they were looking specifically at certain unique
characters to bring out the Goan flavour and mannerisms. Accordingly I chose
the people and they were finalised after auditioning. The overall experience
was very trying and testing because Homi wanted people who could stand out on
their own and not the usual ‘everyday Joe’. I’m glad that for once, the
filmmakers have moved away from the typecast Peters, Julies and the Rosies and
have tried to show the real Goa to the world.”
The
names of some of the Goan artists who have acted in Finding Fanny:
Elvina Fernandes from Ucassaim, Kevin
D’Mello from Panjim, the children (choir group) from Chubby Cheeks Spring
Valley High School from Sangolda, Sidharth Nagochi, Siddhesh, Bond Braganza,
Nasim Shaikh, Les Menezes, Connie Fernandes, Tracy Pinto, DJ Akbar, etc
