Latest / MUBI Podcast / BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM — Gurinder Chadha shoots and scores

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BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM — Gurinder Chadha shoots and scores · MUBI Podcast

• 0:00
  Heads up, this episode contains adult language, irresistible beats and spoilers.
• 0:09
  Gurinder Chadha was born to Indian parents in Kenya in 1960, but when she was two they moved to Southall, a part of London locals called Little India, where her folks tried to keep her in touch with her Indian roots, starting with her first trips to the cinema.
• 0:24
  My first experience must have been going to see Indian movies with my parents, because there were three cinemas that showed Indian movies, and my dad was a great lover of Indian movies, but they were three hours long, so I always remember going and sleeping through them.
• 0:41
  And when her folks took her to her first Hollywood flick in a posher part of town called Ealing, she also wasn't impressed.
• 0:48
  At first.
• 0:49
  It was showing The Wizard of Oz, and I remember being super excited because we had to get the bus to go to Ealing and going in the cinema and the film starting.
• 1:03
  And it was black and white.
• 1:05
  And I remember being so upset that this film that was supposed to be so special that we'd come all the way to Ealing for was in black and white.
• 1:16
  And I threw a massive tantrum in the theater, kicking the seat in front of me because I was so disappointed.
• 1:24
  And then, of course, it goes into glorious Technicolor.
• 1:28
  Toto...I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore. And then I felt like a right lemon after that.
• 1:36
  But I remember that very clearly.
• 1:39
  It sounds like an early memory for you is- that movies can surprise you.
• 1:41
  - Yes.
• 1:43
  Or I'm spoiled. One of the two.
• 1:49
  A few decades later, Gurinder surprised a lot of people herself by making a mega hit movie that was just like Southall, a collision of East and West.
• 1:59
  A lot of it set to a Punjabi beat that helped turn dance floors technicolor.
• 2:15
  I'm Rico Gagliano, welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 2:18
  MUBI's the global film company that champions great cinema.
• 2:21
  On this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 2:24
  This week we are continuing Season 11, which we're calling
• 2:27
  Needle On The Record: Side Two.
• 2:28
  Needle On The Record: By popular demand, this is the sequel to our season a while back all about needle drops.
• 2:33
  Needle On The Record: Those moments when filmmakers take a tune, drop it in their movie and magic happens.
• 2:38
  Needle On The Record: A few weeks ago, we dropped our first episode of the season about the classic animeWhisper of the Heart and its fixation on the Americana anthemTake Me Home, Country Roads. But I realized as we put these next episodes together, that we kind of accidentally on purpose are looking at movies full of needle drops from the UK circa the '80s and ''90s.
• 2:59
  Needle On The Record: Hmm, weird.
• 2:59
  Needle On The Record: Only a time and place some of my favorite music ever, comes from.
• 3:03
  Needle On The Record: Because for one thing, there was all this cultural crossbreeding that made for crazy, unexpected music hybrids and subcultures.
• 3:09
  Needle On The Record: The skinhead movement was born out of a love for reggae, and I couldn't believe that there was such a thing as a black skinhead.
• 3:16
  Needle On The Record: I'd never, ever, ever heard of it.
• 3:18
  Needle On The Record: And it was also a time when England was going through such huge social and political change that even the poppiest glammest bands or songs had something to say.
• 3:26
  Needle On The Record: It's operatic and it's slightly ridiculous, but also it was about the power of love in the face of AIDS.
• 3:34
  Needle On The Record: That's why they wrote it.
• 3:35
  Needle On The Record: So it's no surprise filmmakers into the 21st century have been using this music to say something themselves.
• 3:40
  Needle On The Record: And Gurinder Chadha's sleeper 2002 hit Bend It Like Beckham is a great example.
• 3:47
  Needle On The Record: On the surface, it's a relentlessly optimistic comedy that is actually about the relentlessly tough task of fitting into two cultures at once.
• 3:55
  Needle On The Record: People referred to you as suffering Who said, "Oh, you're having an identity crisis"because you don't know which culture you are." With a soundtrack full of feel good party music, that's also the sound of British Asians finding their identity.
• 4:09
  Needle On The Record: Yeah, my mom and dad were constantly drumming this Indian sound into my head, whereas I was more Top of the Pops, man.
• 4:15
  Needle On The Record: That is superstar DJ and producer Bally Sagoo, one of the remix wizards of bhangra music, a phenomenon that exploded in the ''90s and is all over this movie.
• 4:24
  Needle On The Record: And I talked with him, the film's music supervisor, Liz Gallacher, and Gurinder herself, to learn how this little indie rom com sports flick and its soundtrack scored some big, big goals.
• 4:35
  Needle On The Record: So just in time for the World Cup kick off this week, take a knee as we drop the needle on Bend It Like Beckham. So first off, quick note to my fellow Americans.
• 4:49
  Needle On The Record: For the rest of this episode, I'm going to defer to my British guests and also to most of the world by referring to what we call soccer, as football.
• 4:57
  Needle On The Record: And back in the late ''90s, if you were going to pick one Brit to make one of the best known football movies ever, it probably wouldn't have been Gurinder Chadha.
• 5:06
  Needle On The Record: Bend It is written by three people, which is myself, my husband Paul, and my friend Guljit and Guljit is a big football fan.
• 5:16
  Needle On The Record: And that's where all the stats and sports trivia- in the movie came from.
• 5:18
  Needle On The Record: - Yes. Yeah.
• 5:20
  Needle On The Record: Guljit and my husband, Paul.
• 5:20
  Needle On The Record: He's a big Lakers fan.
• 5:24
  Needle On The Record: He's more basketball.
• 5:25
  Needle On The Record: But any sport he's into, they were the football people.
• 5:29
  Needle On The Record: For me, it was the political precinct.
• 5:33
  Needle On The Record: Let me put an Indian girl in the middle of this world where she's not supposed to belong, you know, and see what happens.
• 5:42
  Needle On The Record: Because, yeah, back then British football was an especially unwelcoming world.
• 5:47
  Needle On The Record: Growing up, football was a kind of no-go territorial white male domain.
• 5:55
  Needle On The Record: Often at football matches you have terrible fights and there's a lot of violence.
• 6:01
  Needle On The Record: Different sides are always beating each other up, you know.
• 6:04
  Needle On The Record: There was this term football hooligan here.
• 6:07
  Needle On The Record: German fans cheering their teamis the only provocation the English need. And some football teams were incredibly racist.
• 6:19
  Needle On The Record: We had the right wing party, the National Front, in the '70s, their emblem was the Union Jack.
• 6:26
  Needle On The Record: And so sometimes people would be carrying those flags at football matches and for me, that always signified that's the right wing.
• 6:34
  Needle On The Record: You know, that's a right wing supporter.
• 6:36
  Needle On The Record: Until sometime in the late ''90s, she remembers seeing black football hero Ian Wright score a goal, then race onto the field shouldering his own Union Jack.
• 6:47
  Needle On The Record: And my head exploded and I was like, wow, that is an incredible image.
• 6:58
  Needle On The Record: And that's when I started thinking about this.
• 7:03
  Needle On The Record: And David Beckham gets the ball yet again for Manchester United.He's really taking responsibility every time they have possession.Bend It Like Beckham starts appropriately enough, with a televised football match.
• 7:15
  Needle On The Record: There's the actual football star David Beckham killing it for his team, Manchester United, until suddenly he gets the ball and passes it to a female Indian teammate.
• 7:25
  Needle On The Record: It's a decent cross and there is Bhamra.That's a fine header.
• 7:27
  Needle On The Record: And she's scored!Oh, it's a goal by Jess Bhamra! An unbelievable moment because, yeah, of course it's only our hero Jesminder Bhamra's daydream, which she is jolted out of when she imagines her own mother appearing during the post-game analysis.
• 7:43
  Needle On The Record: Mrs Bhamra, you must be very proud of your daughter.Not at all.She shouldn't be running around with all these men showingher bare legs to 70,000 people. It's the clever kick off.
• 7:56
  Needle On The Record: Yeah, I said it to a movie about a southhall girl with her feet in two cultures, neither of which want her to do the one thing she loves, play football.
• 8:05
  Needle On The Record: Jess's mom thinks it's scandalous and will keep her from finding a good Punjabi husband, while her jaded dad knows it's crazy hard to be a brown person in a white Britain's game.
• 8:15
  Needle On The Record: None of our boys are in any of the football leagues.You think they will let our girls.She will only end up disappointed like me. But in this story, there is a local girls team that wants her, no matter what her folks think, led by spunky Keira Knightley in one of her first starring roles.
• 8:30
  Needle On The Record: My mum doesn't want me to play anymore.That's Bollocks!My mum's never wanted me to play.You just can't take no for an answer. And the team's coach, a dashing Irishman named Joe, wants Jess too.
• 8:41
  Needle On The Record: Alas, she knows her folks will explode if she dates outside her community.
• 8:44
  Needle On The Record: White, no. Black, definitely not.
• 8:44
  Needle On The Record: A Muslim... And yet, by the end, multiple spoiler alert, she does get to date who she wants.
• 8:53
  Needle On The Record: She does get to kick ass in football.
• 8:55
  Needle On The Record: She does win the big game, and she does get to fly off with her best buddy Keira to a football scholarship in the USA.
• 9:02
  Needle On The Record: Santa Clara is in California.
• 9:02
  Needle On The Record: It's like one of the top teams.Oh, it's so amazing.
• 9:06
  Needle On The Record: Me and Jess there together. In other words, for a tale that tackles racism, sexism, social conservatism, all the isms, Gurinder Chadha and her co-writers still knocked out the happiest screenplay ever.
• 9:19
  Needle On The Record: A vision of a potentially more accepting, multicultural UK.
• 9:23
  Needle On The Record: She got a glimpse of when Ian Wright flew his flag.
• 9:27
  Needle On The Record: I think that's just my worldview.
• 9:29
  Needle On The Record: That's how I get through life and that's how I see the world.
• 9:32
  Needle On The Record: And I wanted this girl to get it all, have it all, everything she wanted.
• 9:37
  Needle On The Record: I wanted her to have it all.
• 9:39
  Needle On The Record: And when she imagined a soundtrack, she knew it was going to spotlight a kind of music that actually got her into films in the first place.
• 9:46
  Needle On The Record: A style that also, against all odds, had it all.
• 9:53
  Needle On The Record: Wow. Where do I start?
• 9:55
  Needle On The Record: My name is Bally Sagoo from the UK. Music producer, DJ.
• 9:58
  Needle On The Record: I want to tell you the story of one of the guys who defined that style and made Gurinder fall in love with it.
• 10:03
  Needle On The Record: Bally Sagoo who is seriously one of the coolest, most positive and excited people I have ever interviewed.
• 10:11
  Needle On The Record: Especially when he talks about playing music.
• 10:13
  Needle On The Record: I get more fun when I see non-Indians, non-Asians dancing up and down on my music.
• 10:17
  Needle On The Record: Of course Spanish, Latino, you know, English, Americans, Jamaicans, all these people, they have no idea what the language is.
• 10:24
  Needle On The Record: But you don't need to do because there's no language.
• 10:25
  Needle On The Record: 'Cause music never has a language, man.
• 10:27
  Needle On The Record: There's something that everyone relates to.
• 10:29
  Needle On The Record: Bally actually had to learn early how to speak that universal language.
• 10:32
  Needle On The Record: As the child of immigrant parents in a lonely part of the industrial city of Birmingham.
• 10:37
  Needle On The Record: It was a mainly white area.
• 10:40
  Needle On The Record: We had no foreigners there at all, so we had a lot of racism.
• 10:43
  Needle On The Record: We had a lot of problems growing up.
• 10:44
  Needle On The Record: I used to get my turban knocked off.
• 10:46
  Needle On The Record: I used to have a lot of issues growing up in the UK.
• 10:48
  Needle On The Record: He took refuge with other kids of color and their music.
• 10:51
  Needle On The Record: I had Black friends.
• 10:52
  Needle On The Record: I was more into the Black music scene.
• 10:55
  Needle On The Record: More of my friends were Black.
• 10:57
  Needle On The Record: I had hardly any, like Indian friends.
• 11:00
  Needle On The Record: And then I got heavily into the reggae and Bob Marley and I would save my week's dinner money and buy Bob Marley's new record and blah, blah, blah.
• 11:06
  Needle On The Record: And I built up a massive music, which I still have.
• 11:09
  Needle On The Record: I have, I don't know, 20, 30,000 records more than that.
• 11:12
  Needle On The Record: But the music he definitely wasn't collecting back then was the stuff his parents listened to...
• 11:19
  Needle On The Record: called bhangra.
• 11:21
  Needle On The Record: Bhangra is a Punjabi style of music and a dance, and it originates from Punjab, north of Punjab.
• 11:29
  Needle On The Record: I basically was listening to it at my mom and dad's house growing up.
• 11:32
  Needle On The Record: It was more traditional, consisting of a dhol, a big heavy drum that they use.
• 11:41
  Needle On The Record: And there's a little string instrument called the Tumbi, which is a one string instrument.
• 11:44
  Needle On The Record: Those are the two key elements in any bhangra song, really.
• 11:47
  Needle On The Record: So yeah, my mom and dad were constantly drumming this Indian sound into my head, whereas I was more Top of the Pops, man.
• 11:53
  Needle On The Record: I was more disco and soul, Motown...
• 11:58
  Needle On The Record: That was all I ever listened to.
• 12:00
  Needle On The Record: Not a single Indian tune.
• 12:00
  Needle On The Record: Not a single Indian influence.
• 12:03
  Needle On The Record: I didn't have no influences from India.
• 12:05
  Needle On The Record: I didn't like anything remotely to do with my culture, my country.
• 12:09
  Needle On The Record: Well, India.
• 12:09
  Needle On The Record: Because I was growing up in the UK.
• 12:11
  Needle On The Record: Instead, he spent a lot of time obsessing over like the sparkling disco production on theSaturday Night Fever soundtrack, or the heavy reverb on those reggae records.
• 12:20
  Needle On The Record: Until in his teens...
• 12:22
  Needle On The Record: he got a couple of cassette decks and started making his own remixes of whatever was on the radio.
• 12:29
  Needle On The Record: Every week, top of the pops top 40 would come on.
• 12:31
  Needle On The Record: I would record the songs, chop them up on my cassette players, bounce one to another to another, full of hiss and full of noise.
• 12:38
  Needle On The Record: And the Dolby would never help.
• 12:39
  Needle On The Record: Dolby noise reduction couldn't do nothing because I'd made so many copies of a song.
• 12:43
  Needle On The Record: So then I started doing these, like, little mixes in my room, and then it kind of exploded from there.
• 12:50
  Needle On The Record: Yeah. Bally became a local teen music mogul.
• 12:53
  Needle On The Record: He gave his attic studio a name, Curry Wood, and started hustling his tapes to other kids.
• 12:58
  Needle On The Record: Yeah, I was on the streets outside my college in the rain, selling like a drug dealer.
• 13:02
  Needle On The Record: I was selling my music tapes out of my rucksack, doing ten, 12, 15 pounds a week, sometimes selling these mixtapes, and people come along and say, mix me Bob Marley with Boney M and mix me Bee Gees and mix me, blah blah blah.
• 13:14
  Needle On The Record: And right around then, something new got thrown in the mix that was gonna end up making him way more than 15 pounds a week.
• 13:23
  Needle On The Record: I think it happened when my little sister came into my room one night and she said, stop playing around with those records.
• 13:29
  Needle On The Record: Try mixing this.
• 13:30
  Needle On The Record: She gave him a cassette of homegrown Bhangra acts, UK based bands who'd started off doing gigs in working class Indian pubs in Southall and now were growing their own national circuit, playing anywhere British Asians partied.
• 13:43
  Needle On The Record: Yes, well, I'd go to a wedding or a birthday party with my mum and dad, I'd see them on stage like the three giants, Alaap, Heera, Premi, dressed like, you know...
• 13:51
  Needle On The Record: Yeah, they were properSaturday Night Fever. They all had theSaturday Night Fever clothes on.
• 13:55
  Needle On The Record: Big white shirts and flarey trousers and hairy chests- just piling up the bloody...
• 13:59
  Needle On The Record: - Medallions.
• 14:01
  Needle On The Record: Yeah, yeah, yeah, you know the scene.
• 14:03
  Needle On The Record: Anyway, so my sister brought a cassette to my room and she said,"See if you can play around with this." Maybe because he could literally see the funky disco connection.
• 14:11
  Needle On The Record: He took her advice.
• 14:12
  Needle On The Record: Like I would be doing, you know, I'd take a western drum loop or a James Brown drum beat or something, and I see what it would sound like...
• 14:21
  Needle On The Record: and then I'd take that Indian beat and put it on there, and it would go out of sync in places, but the vibe was there.
• 14:26
  Needle On The Record: And then my sister like,"You should do something like that and release it." And then I thought... Maybe.
• 14:33
  Needle On The Record: Flash forward to 1990 and all the British Asian cool kids knew Bally Sagoo for tracks like this:Hey! Jamalo where he took a groovy but more traditional sounding tune from UK bhangra star Malkit Singh, added synth, that James Brown beat and a little turntablism...
• 15:00
  Needle On The Record: and sent it into dance club overdrive.
• 15:12
  Needle On The Record: He wasn't alone.
• 15:13
  Needle On The Record: Acts like Apache Indian and B21 were also fusing bhangra with reggae or pop.
• 15:18
  Needle On The Record: This stuff was blasting out of car cassette decks in Birmingham at packed bhangra based club nights in Southall, and then a new audience started getting into it.
• 15:27
  Needle On The Record: Indian music was crossing over into the mainstream in the UK.
• 15:30
  Needle On The Record: That is Liz Gallacher.
• 15:32
  Needle On The Record: She has been music supervisor on hit UK movies since the ''90s, likeThe Full Monty and Notting Hill. It was very positive, uplifting.
• 15:41
  Needle On The Record: Artists started appearing and I think as well, British audiences that didn't know this kind of music were kind of drawn to the beat, the fun. Bally Sagoo.
• 15:49
  Needle On The Record: Punjabi MC had a massive hit.
• 15:55
  Needle On The Record: There was real energy in the music and it crossed over.
• 15:59
  Needle On The Record: You know, there were great hooks, great melodies.
• 16:01
  Needle On The Record: It was easy to listen to.
• 16:01
  Needle On The Record: It's not challenging.
• 16:04
  Needle On The Record: Still, back then, this was revolutionary.
• 16:07
  Needle On The Record: British Asian culture getting embraced as the coolest thing going?
• 16:10
  Needle On The Record: Crazy.
• 16:12
  Needle On The Record: And when Gurinder Chadha heard Bally Sagoo's feel good music, to her, it sounded revolutionary.
• 16:17
  Needle On The Record: At last, a celebration of cultural fusion.
• 16:23
  Needle On The Record: Because until that point, you know, you have this idea where people refer to you, second generation Asians in Britain, as maybe suffering.
• 16:32
  Needle On The Record: People who said,"Oh, you're having an identity crisis because you don't know"which culture you are." And it comes from people who are monocultural because they don't understand what it's like to easily slip into different languages and different cultural frameworks.
• 16:53
  Needle On The Record: So it was when the bhangra explosion happened in Britain, the British Asian bhangra music scene, I wanted to document that.
• 16:59
  Needle On The Record: I was a journalist at this point with the BBC, but I felt I wanted to document the music.
• 17:07
  Needle On The Record: Gurinder's very first film is a 1990 BBC documentary calledI'm British But...Shut up!Right, boys. And right from the opening theme music, a bhangra take on Rule Britannia. She connects that multi-culti bhangra sound with its fans' multi-culti identities.
• 17:30
  Needle On The Record: I see myself as a British...
• 17:30
  Needle On The Record: Maybe, well, Welsh, I suppose...I would prefer to be described as a Scottish Pakistanirather than British. I had five characters, four were four young Asians, and I asked them all how they identified themselves.
• 17:49
  Needle On The Record: And then the music was the fifth character which added a whole new layer, and that idea that you could fuse music to represent yourself as these combinations.
• 18:01
  Needle On The Record: Mixing together Bengali music, folk music and West music,and making people appreciate and actually forcing themto dance to our music. That fusion kind of helped a whole generation crystallize their identities.
• 18:18
  Needle On The Record: And so that music in my films to this day is representative of that.
• 18:24
  Needle On The Record: When Gurinder moved on to features, she kept casting bhangra as the fifth character, like in Bhaji on the Beach, about British Asians on a seaside holiday.
• 18:33
  Needle On The Record: That soundtrack's full of bhangra reggae remixes, and for Bend It Like Beckham, she figured she'd kind of do a remix of her own, pairing bhangra tracks with... everything.
• 18:43
  Needle On The Record: Because this girl Jess Bhamra could be everything and so could I and so could the soundtrack.
• 18:49
  Needle On The Record: There's no rules to that soundtrack of that film.
• 18:52
  Needle On The Record: No rules.
• 18:57
  Needle On The Record: Alas, the folks who finance movies have lots of rules.
• 19:01
  Needle On The Record: How Gurinder Chadha gotBend It Like Beckham into scoring position anyway.
• 19:05
  Needle On The Record: That's coming up in just a minute.
• 19:05
  Needle On The Record: Stay with us.
• 19:14
  Needle On The Record: Alright, everybody, MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema, bringing it to you wherever you are, in as many ways as we possibly can.
• 19:21
  Needle On The Record: We stream movies, we produce them, we distribute them in cinemas, movies from any country, from legendary auteurs to brilliant first timers.
• 19:28
  Needle On The Record: We've always got something new to discover.
• 19:30
  Needle On The Record: And hey, like I said at the top, today's episode is posting on the same day that the 2026 World Cup kicks off.
• 19:37
  Needle On The Record: So how about discovering some football movies?
• 19:40
  Needle On The Record: Or again, soccer movies if you're one of my American homies.
• 19:43
  Needle On The Record: Streaming on MUBI in the US and Canada starting Friday, June 12th, we have put together a program of films we are calling, The World's Game: Football on Screen.
• 19:52
  Needle On The Record: And one of the movies in there I want to tell you about is Scottish director, Bill Forsyth's just delightful movie,Gregory's Girl, which was a sleeper hit when it came out back in 1980.
• 20:02
  Needle On The Record: It's about the lovably awkward teen Gregory, who plays for his school football team.
• 20:07
  Needle On The Record: They kind of suck, so they recruit a great new player, a girl who, of course, Gregory immediately falls for, and soon, one of the most offbeat and unpredictable dates ever ensues.
• 20:18
  Needle On The Record: This would actually be kind of a great double bill with Bend It Like Beckham. Again, Gregory's Girl is streaming on MUBI starting Friday, June 12th in the US and Canada as part of our film group called, The World's Game: Football on Screen.
• 20:30
  Needle On The Record: And I also want to call out another movie we've got in some other countries that would be the Iranian comedyOffside, and that's from director Jafar Panahi.
• 20:39
  Needle On The Record: He made a huge impact last year with his Oscar nominatedIt Was Just an Accident.Offside is about a group of Iranian women who try to sneak into a 2006 World Cup qualifying match because women aren't allowed into football stadiums in Iran.
• 20:54
  Needle On The Record: Portions of this thing were filmed during the actual match between Iran and Bahrain, and Panahi had two different endings ready, depending on who won.
• 21:02
  Needle On The Record: It's just a great, cool movie that is streaming on MUBI now in the UK, Germany, Netherlands and Latin America.
• 21:09
  Needle On The Record: Go subscribe and check it out at mubi.com And I'm aware that was a lot of movies and countries I just ran by you, but don't worry, as usual, we have all the links and info you need about all of this in the show notes of this episode.
• 21:22
  Needle On The Record: Speaking of which, let's get back to the episode.
• 21:29
  Needle On The Record: So, it's the late ''90s, Gurinder Chadha is shopping around the script to Bend It Like Beckham looking for funding and sunny and accessible as it was, you can imagine a few issues that might have made an investor nervous back then.
• 21:42
  Needle On The Record: The movie deals with touchy issues of race, there weren't stars attached, but weirdly, the only part readers really seem to have a problem with...
• 21:52
  Needle On The Record: was the football part.
• 21:54
  Needle On The Record: There were women's teams, but women's football was seen as a very second rate, slightly apologetic sport, you know.
• 22:03
  Needle On The Record: Yeah, in the '90s, a decade when the US women's team won the World Cup twice, UK women's football was only just building steam.
• 22:11
  Needle On The Record: There was no money.
• 22:12
  Needle On The Record: Some top players worked part time jobs so they could afford to pay their own bus fare to big games.
• 22:17
  Needle On The Record: And media coverage was more or less zero.
• 22:20
  Needle On The Record: So trying to get the film financed was particularly tough because everyone thought it was a joke.
• 22:26
  Needle On The Record: The idea of women playing football, and the fact that I wanted to make a film about women playing football, people honestly laughed at me and said, "This is so funny.
• 22:37
  Needle On The Record: "What? Are you serious?
• 22:37
  Needle On The Record: No way." In fact, when she submitted the script for public funding at the UK Film Council...
• 22:43
  Needle On The Record: A producer had told me that a reader had read my script and that it wasn't going to get commissioned.
• 22:51
  Needle On The Record: And I was like, "Why?" And they said,"Because they'll never find an"Indian girl who can bend a ball like David Beckham." And I was so frustrated that I went down there and shouted at everybody.
• 23:03
  Needle On The Record: I said, "It's fucking racist.
• 23:03
  Needle On The Record: How dare you?
• 23:06
  Needle On The Record: "Do they think Harrison Ford jumps out of helicopters?" The good news?
• 23:12
  Needle On The Record: The council's then new honcho, John Woodward, took her script past the readers, straight to the folks who could give a green light.
• 23:19
  Needle On The Record: And he walked down to the committee and he said,"I've read this.
• 23:22
  Needle On The Record: "I don't care what you do, but you're going to pass this script"at this meeting today." And that's exactly what happened.
• 23:31
  Needle On The Record: And I got 957,000 pounds.
• 23:35
  Needle On The Record: That money attracted others to kick in money, but it was Gurinder's script that attracted her music supervisor, especially the football part.
• 23:48
  Needle On The Record: It kind of resonated with me.
• 23:49
  Needle On The Record: It was kind of weird because my family are Irish.
• 23:53
  Needle On The Record: Once again, Liz Gallagher.
• 23:54
  Needle On The Record: There's kind of similarities with Indian and Irish culture.
• 23:59
  Needle On The Record: My mum was very...
• 24:01
  Needle On The Record: I wanted to play football when I was young.
• 24:03
  Needle On The Record: I was really into football and it was like,"No, you can't play football.
• 24:07
  Needle On The Record: "Girls don't play football." It's very different now.
• 24:09
  Needle On The Record: They didn't want me to be seen as playing football or doing boys things.
• 24:14
  Needle On The Record: So just like the movie's hero for Liz, football equaled liberation.
• 24:18
  Needle On The Record: And musically she associated that with the UK nightclub scene at the time.
• 24:23
  Needle On The Record: One club in particular.
• 24:24
  Needle On The Record: You know, Ministry of Sound was huge.
• 24:26
  Needle On The Record: Oh my gosh, it was a real groundbreaking-- It was like kind of this massive, massive club.
• 24:31
  Needle On The Record: And they even set up a label because they were just like, you know, so groundbreaking musically.
• 24:36
  Needle On The Record: They'd have the best DJ's, the best nights. It was-- What was-- Describe what that space was like.
• 24:42
  Needle On The Record: Gosh, I can't, I mean, it's a bit unfair to ask me that because I was probably a little intoxicated most of the time but...
• 24:49
  Needle On The Record: But I was there! But she did remember the music they spun there, electronic acts like Basement Jaxx with a sense of playful euphoria.
• 24:58
  Needle On The Record: Meanwhile, Gurinder tossed in her own favorite classic and modern pop tracks with the same vibe from Blondie to the Scottish band Texas.
• 25:06
  Needle On The Record: Every track was on my iPod.
• 25:08
  Needle On The Record: They're all tracks from my iPod at the time, and I thought,"Oh, I like this track, let me put this in.
• 25:13
  Needle On The Record: "Oh, I like this, let me put this in." And Bend It Like Beckham, almost any time Jess kicks a ball around, that's the kind of freewheeling mix of music you hear.
• 25:22
  Needle On The Record: But not bhangra, by design.
• 25:25
  I always thought of it as: the freedom and Jess expressing herself, we used the pop contemporary music, and then often the Indian music was around her family and tradition.
• 25:36
  I always thought of it as: Yeah, I think of UK bhangra as the super expressive party music but for a lot of the movie, you hear it when Jess is being held back by family and tradition, like in one of Gurinder's favorite scenes in the film, when Jess is crushed to learn she's got to miss the big game.
• 25:52
  I always thought of it as: Your sister needs you. To attend her sister's wedding.
• 25:55
  I always thought of it as: Cut to her in the backyard, bereft.
• 25:58
  I always thought of it as: And when she's crying, there's a Punjabi song that comes on called Jind Mahi. Which I didn't subtitle at all.
• 26:11
  I always thought of it as: I just left it as a treat for us Punjabis who understand.
• 26:15
  I always thought of it as: And the song says,"Strive hard, do what you want.
• 26:20
  I always thought of it as: "Don't forget who you are.
• 26:20
  I always thought of it as: Don't forget your land.
• 26:24
  I always thought of it as: "Don't forget your culture and don't forget who you are." It's the sound of a character who wants to cut loose from her culture while also loving the hell out of it.
• 26:38
  I always thought of it as: But then, I love this, just a few minutes later in the movie's final act, Chadha finally uses bhangra as the bridge between cultures.
• 26:46
  I always thought of it as: Look at how happy they are, Tony, I don't want to ruin it for him.- What are you going to ruin?
• 26:49
  I always thought of it as: - Nothing. It's okay. That's right after the aforementioned wedding, when Jess's father realizes the error of his ways and gives her his blessing to leave the reception and get in the game.
• 26:59
  I always thought of it as: If this is the only wayI'm going to see you smiling on your sister's wedding day,then go now. Suddenly, there's a montage.
• 27:06
  I always thought of it as: While her entire family danced deliriously to the band B21 and a tune called Darshan, the bhangra music carries over into a football match for the first time.
• 27:15
  I always thought of it as: What's happening?Start warming up, we're one-nil down. And then Chadha cuts back and forth between the two spaces, the reception and the game, which of course, Jess wins.
• 27:26
  I always thought of it as: And then she comes back to her family and happily joins the dance.
• 27:32
  I always thought of it as: Finally, in the story and on the soundtrack, Jess Bhamra has it all.
• 27:47
  I always thought of it as: So in a minute I'm gonna tell you how this movie was received.
• 27:50
  I always thought of it as: But to get there, first I want to mention a visual and musical metaphor Chadha uses all the time in Bend It Like Beckham, aiming for the sky.
• 28:00
  I always thought of it as: Southall, you see, is near Heathrow Airport.
• 28:02
  I always thought of it as: So she throws in all these shots of jets soaring right over Jess's neighborhood, like her sky high dreams, just out of reach.
• 28:11
  I always thought of it as: Appropriately enough, the first song you hear in the movie is a track calledElevation, and the last song, as Jess gets ready to finally board a plane herself to go chase her dreams, has an airborne title, too, that also happens to be Gurinder's favorite tune in the movie.
• 28:25
  I always thought of it as: The real moment for me is Curtis Mayfield, Move On Up.Just move on upTo a greater day Because the idea of taking a song written by an African American about the civil rights movement and standing up for yourself, taking that song and making it my song in my movie.
• 28:52
  I always thought of it as: That actually gave me chills.
• 28:53
  I always thought of it as: And for Liz Gallacher, it was just the obvious choice to end with.
• 28:57
  I always thought of it as: I think it's just got great momentum.
• 28:59
  I always thought of it as: It's a classic.
• 28:59
  I always thought of it as: Everyone knows it.
• 29:01
  I always thought of it as: It's a toe tapper.
• 29:03
  It's very: where Jess is going in her life.
• 29:05
  It's very: Yeah. I mean, what I kind of love about it is that it is so, like, exactly on the nose.
• 29:10
  It's very: She's literally taking off in a plane and this music is Move On Up. Yeah, yeah, probably a bit on the nose, but you know, it's a great ending.
• 29:19
  It's very: It's such a great track.
• 29:20
  It's very: I don't mind that it's a bit on the nose.
• 29:23
  It's very: I'm cool with that.
• 29:25
  It's very: So all this was more than a little ironic when right in the middle of post-production, with everyone's hopes soaring, three planes laid everything low.
• 29:35
  It's very: All the original score that you hear is Bally Sagoo.
• 29:41
  It's very: And when I was making the soundtrack, actually, I was with Bally Sagoo in his studio in Birmingham, and his wife called and said, "Put the telly on.
• 29:52
  It's very: "Put the TV on, quick!" So we put the TV on and we saw the second plane go into the towers on 9/11.
• 30:03
  It's very: We were working on the one of the scenes and we had to stop.
• 30:06
  It's very: Me and Gurinder were standing there in my studio, we paused and this 9/11 thing was going on and this plane crashing.
• 30:12
  It's very: And I was like,"Is this some movie or something?" And it was like, real.
• 30:15
  It's very: We just dropped everything and we kind of just sat there and we thought, this is just really sad.
• 30:20
  It's very: We were like, oh my God, what's just happened?
• 30:23
  It's very: But the movie had been made at that point.
• 30:26
  It's very: It was finished.
• 30:27
  It's very: I'd made a movie that was a pre 9/11 movie.
• 30:32
  It's very: One that even ends with Jess's family seeing her off at her departure gate.
• 30:36
  It's very: Post 9/11, they wouldn't even be allowed through airport security without a ticket.
• 30:45
  It's very: So there was that, the fact that the movie was about a woman's sport Chadha's own country didn't pay much attention to, the fact it had no stars...
• 30:53
  It's very: When the movie finally debuted April 2002, Gurinder had her hopes pretty grounded.
• 30:59
  It's very: Oh, I expected, my cousins to like it.
• 31:03
  It's very: I expected people like me to like it.
• 31:05
  It's very: I thought some cool people in New York might like it...
• 31:10
  It's very: but I did not expect it to have the impact that it had.
• 31:15
  It's very: Bend It Like Beckham opened at number one at the UK box office and stayed there for weeks.
• 31:21
  It's very: It was the biggest non-hollywood hit of the year, and when it opened overseas it got bigger, earning the modern equivalent of 170 million bucks.
• 31:33
  It's very: Well, I didn't know it was going to be so big, otherwise I would have asked Gurinder for more money.
• 31:36
  It's very: What the hell, man?
• 31:37
  It's very: I thought it was going to be a small movie.
• 31:39
  It's very: Well, I mean, what was your first inkling that this thing was blowing up.
• 31:43
  It's very: When I was seeing it everywhere, left, right and center, man.
• 31:45
  It's very: I was traveling around the world and I was seeing it being played and my non-Asian mates were all getting into it.
• 31:52
  It's very: That's when you know you've crossed over because now it's not just Asians or, you know, your local people that are into it.
• 31:58
  It's very: People had been reeling from 9/11, globally.
• 32:02
  It's very: And so when this cheerful cultural movie came out, it was something for people, I think, to hold on to.
• 32:09
  It's very: They needed something, you know, to balance out the terror.
• 32:14
  It's very: And I think that's another reason it became so popular at the time.
• 32:19
  It's very: Of course, having the name of the world's most famous football player in the title might have driven some interest.
• 32:23
  It's very: But the movie was also huge in the USA, where it earned five times its entire budget, despite the title, which by the way, Gurinder's US distributor hated.
• 32:33
  It's very: Searchlight bought it.
• 32:34
  It's very: I went to the States to do publicity.
• 32:37
  It's very: No one knew who David Beckham was.
• 32:39
  It's very: I did interviews, very clearly remember this, with the Washington Post and the man was saying to me,"Who is Beckman?""What, who, why?""Beckman". And Searchlight wanted to change the title because they said,"No one knows who David Beckham is,"you can't release a movie with that in the title.
• 32:58
  It's very: "You gotta call it 'Soccer and Me' or something like that." You know?
• 33:01
  It's very: And by this point it had been a big hit in England.
• 33:04
  It's very: And so we kept it as Bend It... And of course, the film did so well in the States that David Beckham became a household name in the States.
• 33:12
  It's very: So we did, in the end, you know, he helped us and we helped him.
• 33:20
  It's very: And this would be to win it for England. The movie also gave a boost to another rising star, UK women's football.
• 33:30
  It's very: England are champions again! That's the sound of England's national team, the Lionesses winning the women's Euro title in 2025 for the second time.
• 33:39
  It's very: These days, women's clubs like Arsenal pack 60,000 seat stadiums, and their star players definitely don't have to pay their own bus fare to games.
• 33:48
  It's very: A lot of them trace their inspiration to play back to Bend It Like Beckham. In the 2010s, some decided to start their careers at US colleges'cause that's what Jess does in the movie.
• 33:58
  It's very: Brighton player Caitlin Hayes told sports websiteThe Athletic, that before every game, she blasts, Move On Up. Which goes to show the MVP of the movie even now, is its soundtrack.
• 34:12
  It's very: I felt like it was a kind of special film.
• 34:15
  It's very: I didn't realize that it would cross over so much, and honestly, I didn't realize that people would talk about the music so much.
• 34:21
  It's very: I used to get emails all the time, mainly from young American girls who were really into football or soccer as it is over here, loving the music.
• 34:30
  It's very: Where can I get the soundtrack?
• 34:30
  It's very: What was this track?
• 34:33
  It's very: I loved that track.
• 34:34
  It's very: It was, I was just blown away, you know, it seemed to really resonate with people.
• 34:39
  It's very: Well, Gurinder Chadha thinks she knows why.
• 34:42
  It's very: What it did was having Texas and Basement Jaxx and Blondie, I had Atomic in there, Blondie, you know, all these sort of pop songs as it were, mixed with bhangra music.
• 34:56
  It's very: It just all, it just represented all different sides of myself around the world.
• 35:02
  It's very: It spoke about all the different sides of us, really.
• 35:05
  It's very: I mean, it just somehow just I think it captures the exuberance of the movie.
• 35:10
  It's very: This leads nicely to my last question.
• 35:12
  It's very: I know we're about to run out of time here.
• 35:14
  It's very: The cheerfulness, both of the soundtrack and the movie itself, I know you're doing a sequel...
• 35:19
  It's very: In the current global and particularly UK environment right now, it seems like it would be much harder to make a movie about identity as just relentlessly cheerful as this movie is.
• 35:32
  It's very: Will it be this relentlessly cheerful?
• 35:34
  It's very: And how do you do-- How can you do that?
• 35:36
  It's very: And maybe why would you do that?
• 35:39
  It's very: Well, I think that's why it still is seen and talked about constantly because it's a good counteract to, you know, some of the terrible things going on around us, particularly right now.
• 35:52
  It's very: Do you imagine the sequel having like a similar hail effect on people in the midst of what's like a pretty dismal time, globally, in a lot of ways?
• 36:01
  It's very: Well, I think the reason why I haven't done a sequel or even thought about going beyond that was because I knew it was-- It's a very tough act to follow, you know?
• 36:11
  It's very: The only reason I'm considering it now is because of the way the game has changed and the world has changed, and I feel like now is the time to bring that much loved world back and do some more good, I hope.
• 36:29
  It's very: Yeah, maybe in a polarized world where everything's framed in black and white, exactly what's needed is a sudden pop of color.
• 36:48
  It's very: And that's the MUBI Podcast for this week.
• 36:50
  It's very: Follow us for more stories about great movies with great music.
• 36:53
  It's very: Next week, writer/director Andrew Haigh looks back on his gorgeous 2023 tearjerker,All of Us Strangers, and the UK pop hits that kept him sane in the '80s.
• 37:02
  It's very: Like now as an adult, when I go back to those songs, it drags me back to the feeling that I felt at that time.
• 37:10
  It's very: So I really used music as a way to time travel, I suppose.
• 37:15
  It's very: If you dig the Pet Shop Boys, The Housemartins, Fine Young Cannibals, you want to follow us so you don't miss that one and have your hankies at the ready.
• 37:21
  It's very: Till then, if you love the show, seriously, hit pause and leave a five star review right now, wherever you listen, won't you?
• 37:27
  It's very: Let the world know we're not your standard movie chat show.
• 37:29
  It's very: You can also find me on Threads or Instagram at Rico Gagliano that is Rico G-A-G-L-I-A-N-O.
• 37:37
  It's very: I'm currently taking suggestions for your favorite bhangra tracks because I'm now obsessed.
• 37:42
  It's very: And now let's roll credits.
• 37:43
  It's very: This episode was written, hosted and edited by me, Rico Gagliano.
• 37:46
  It's very: Ciara McEniff is our producer along with assistant producer, Kat Kowalczyk.
• 37:50
  It's very: Jackson Musker is our tireless booking producer.
• 37:53
  It's very: Mastering by Stephen Colon.
• 37:54
  It's very: Martin Austwick composed our original music.
• 37:57
  It's very: This episode you also heard the tracks Blueprint by Jahzzar and Special Vibe by Yarin Primak.
• 38:02
  It's very: Those are both courtesy of Tribe of Noise, plus the bhangra songPoor Artist by Ribhav Argrawal.
• 38:07
  It's very: Special thanks this week to Louis Nash for taping Gurinder and to Peter, Therese and Karina Lesser.
• 38:12
  It's very: This show is executive produced by me along with Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman, and Michael Tacca.
• 38:17
  It's very: And as always, to watch the best in cinema, subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com Thanks for listening.
• 38:23
  It's very: Go watch the movies.
• 38:25
  It's very: And this Sunday I am rooting for the Netherlands vs Japan.
• 38:29
  It's very: Go Oranje.