Yesterday I went up to the Peabody Essex Museum near Salem, MA for part of the Bombay Film Festival there. Anupama Chopra was to hold a discussion about her biography of Shah Rukh Khan, and then Eklavya—this year’s entry from India to the Oscars—was showing, followed by a discussion with Vinod Chopra.
We didn’t think about the fact that October is basically Crazy Person Month in Salem—tourists from all over participating in the Disneyfication of the historical tragedy that was the Salem witch trials, dressing up like slutty witches or pumpkins and creating traffic snarls and parking nightmares (the usual museum parking garage fee was hiked up from its usual $5 to $20, for instance); and apparently the whole scene scared the Chopras too, because they fled soon after Eklavya started and there was no post-film discussion. Sadly, Filmigeek who was supposed to meet me there also got trapped in the mayhem and hightailed it out too.
MemsaabStory 