Spielberg and Geffen--like everyone--are looking for cash. And they're going to India for it. An interesting spin on what used to be Japanese corporations getting involved with huge stakes in major movie companies. We saw how that culture influenced films at Universal. It will be just as interesting to see how Indian sensibilities, corporate culture, and management etiquette, will influence the usual pap from DreamWorks.

This comes on the heels of Spielberg opting out of producing the opening and closing ceremonies of the 2008 games--very recently--because of what China has or hasn't done in Darfur. Spielberg didn't realize the regime in Beijing was evil before they ignored one of his celebrity vanity projects. Or, he may have been trying to sabotage the Chinese two months before the Games. That is hard to imagine. Something else may have intervened...

Back to the DreamWorks deal. Since India and China are enormous emerging markets, will we see Spielberg directing an all-Indian, Indian language film in the near future? Could this be a trend? Tarantino has already dipped in here, large parts of Kill Bill were in Japanese and Chinese and the American and Asian cuts were substantially different. Will we see more young filmmakers trying to break into showbusiness and get their work out there by appealing to a foreign audience? I'd like to see a three-hour David Fincher musical about marriage customs in New Delhi, called.....what?

I'm not feeling witty enough to think of a good title...but if you really want an anti-climax...I once heard a first-hand story about Salman Rushdie that will make you pull your hair out: Salman Rushdie was sitting at a table with another famous novelist, don't remember who, and a large group of journalists. They started making fun of the titles of Robert Ludlum's airport paperbacks. They couldn't get over how pretentious the titles were. Titles like The Jansen Directive, The Parsifal Mosaic, The Icarus Agenda--etc. Someone wondered aloud what Shakespeare's plays would be called if they were written by Ludlum. According to Legend, Rushdie rattled off in rapid succession alternate names for Macbeth, Hamlet, and Romeo and Juliet all of which brought the table to tears. But guess what, dear reader, I don't remember any of them. Sorry.

good morning.