Remember cute, little Dr. Hammond, the elderly developer of one of the most famous parks in cinematic history? Here’s a hint if you can’t recall him: his park had dinosaurs in it. It’s name was Jurassic Park, of course; and what a great vision he had for it (though there were a few kinks to work out…). Idealistic to the end, though, Hammond shares with a horrified Dr. Ellie Sattler, “Creation is an act of sheer will. Next time it’ll be flawless.” This is after dinosaur rampages have killed several people. Anyway, the point in bringing up dear Dr. Hammond and his desire to achieve a seemingly impossible dream is that the actor who played the great innovator/dreamer (Richard Attenborough) was in real life a pretty spectacular creator himself—and the director of this week’s Best Picture winner, Gandhi (1982, Indo-British Film Production; Columbia).

Dr. Hammond in his Jurassic Park (i.e. Gandhi’s director, Richard Attenborough).

Gandhi (the film) became Richard Attenborough’s dream project after he was contacted by a former follower of Mahatma Ghandi and had read Louis Fischer’s Life of Mahatma Gandhi (1950). “I just love biography,” Attenborough once confessed, “and I’m fascinated by people who have shifted our destinies or our points of view.” However, only after a series of setbacks delayed film production for 18 years, was Attenborough finally able to raise the money and assemble the cast and crew needed to complete the massive project. For just a taste of the challenges involved in making the film, here’s a fun fact: the funeral scene alone features more than 300,000 extras. Incredible!

Attenborough faced another challenge that had nothing to do with money or with human participants in the making of the film. He had to figure out how to deal with the legacy of a man whom many in India viewed as a deity. Years before the film actually went into production, then Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru warned Attenborough to be careful not to “deify” Gandhi because he was too great a man to be given such treatment in film (sounds a bit like circular reasoning to me…). However, the Indian government funded one third of the film, and popular opinion is always a strong influence…Suffice it to say, the debate continues about whether the film portrays Gandhi in a truly historical way or whether it shows him to be more than human. But such is the struggle when making a film about a larger-than-life personality from the past (Exhibit A: Braveheart (1995), a lovely but inaccurate historical account of the life of Scotland’s William Wallace).

A shot from the funeral scene in Gandhi. Yes, those little dots are all real people.

Years later, Attenborough himself commented on the challenges of creating a film like Gandhi: “Those movies are very difficult to make, and if you’re not prepared or interested in science fiction, which in terms of movies I’m not, if you’re not interested in terms of all the CGI stuff that you can now do in the cinema which is quite remarkable compared to the time that I was making movies, 30, 40, 50 years ago, then if you’re not prepared to indulge in the pornography of violence or overt sexual matter, it’s very, very difficult. It is hard to raise the money…And if you don’t have something which they believe will reach an enormous audience, then they won’t go for it. And so you fall out.”

Despite the years of struggle, Attenborough and Gandhi were dynamically successful, garnering eleven Academy Award nominations and taking home eight Oscar statuettes for Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, Costume Design, Writing (Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen), Actor in a Leading Role for Ben Kingsley as Mahatma Gandhi, Director for Richard Attenborough, and Best Picture. It did not win for Sound, Makeup, and Music (Original Score). The loss in the Music category was probably expected, for who can really compete with John Williams and the score from E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial? Ironically, Attenborough was absolutely convinced that E.T. was a better film than his own Gandhi and greatly deserving of the BP win it didn’t get. So a little over a decade later, when Steven Spielberg (E.T.’s director) requested that Attenborough return to acting after a 14-year hiatus to play the deluded, optimistic Dr. Hammond in Jurassic Park (1993), Attenborough was more than honored to work with his former competition—and the rest is cinematic history.

Steven Spielberg and Richard Attenborough at the premiere of Jurassic Park.

For more thoughts on Gandhi and its significance, please check out the full post this weekend!