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While wasting a million dollars in India during the production of jackass number two, the cast and crew amassed itself on the streets of Jaipur before the archaic tripod camera of a sidewalk photographer—a term used by definition as, yes, he was the one operating the camera, but galloping Ganesh, composition anyone? Situated as he was beneath the black hood of his late 19th century bellows-type camera, I’m lead to believe the fellow was doing some kind of “wet plate collodion” work, a development process that involves the making of a negative on a glass plate, I think, but don’t ask me to bullshit anything beyond that because if it’s not CMOS I don’t go there these days.

Anyway, the final printed result was a very era-unauthentic representation of the cast and crew. By this, I mean it looks exactly like, if not worse, than some of the photos my grandfather has shown me from his armed forces stint in the South Pacific islands during WWII. I doubt you’ll be able to pick out all the indistinct faces here—aside from maybe Rick Kosick, Loomis Fall, and the great white void of Preston Lacy—but one of the more worthy of note is Raj Acharya (the darker grey blotch seen at bottom right).

Raj was basically the Indian version of Jeff Tremaine—minus the blue eyes, extra chins, second trimester, drunken proclivity, and pretty much every other characteristic aside from the ability to direct—from India Take One Productions, the company we’d hired to assist us with locations and the wrangling of Aghoris and indigenous midgets, and he did a super bang-up job for us. So much so that Tremaine basically sat in the shade most of the time while Raj raced around managing anything and everything—well, aside from that bit of “up dog” that was requested of him on one particularly hot and complicated afternoon in Mumbai.

Unsurprisingly, Raj went on to become the First Assistant Director on Fox Searchlight’s Slumdog Millionaire, the recent 800-pound gorilla of the 2009 Academy Awards. Congratulations, Raj!

(color photo by Sean Cliver; Mumbai, India; 2006)

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