IMAGINE the scene. A young Dalai Lama fixes his robes in the mirror, looks menacingly at his reflection, and says: 'You talking to me? Ain't nobody else here . . .' Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic Taxi Driver - starring Robert De Niro as the unstable loner Travis Bickle - this week started doing the rounds in American cinemas, with its 20th-anniversary re-release putting the spotlight on one of the greatest directors never to win an Oscar.
But just as a new generation of film-goers becomes acquainted with the violent urban themes of Scorsese's work, news emerges of the director's latest project, which is many incarnations away from the stream-of-consciousness cussing and shooting of Taxi Driver, Mean Streets and Goodfellas.
Scorsese will depart for India this spring to shoot Kundun, the story of the Dalai Lama's life until 1959, when he fled to exile after the Chinese occupation of Tibet.
But don't expect to see De Niro, Joe Pesci or Harvey Keitel within an expletive's length of the set - the producers are eschewing box-office stars in favour of a nearly all-Tibetan cast.
The film is the long-standing pet-project of scriptwriter and producer Melissa Ford, wife of actor Harrison. It was her interest in Tibet which took the couple there. Later they heard their tour guide had been jailed by Chinese authorities and this was the catalyst for their campaigning for Tibetan rights.
Adding muscle to the US$30 million ($HK232 billion) project is the fact that Disney, now led by super-agent Michael Ovitz, is backing it.
