The Guru is a 1969 film by Merchant Ivory Productions, with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and James Ivory.

The Guru
Theatrical release poster
Directed byJames Ivory
Written byRuth Prawer Jhabvala
James Ivory
Produced byIsmail Merchant
StarringRita Tushingham
Michael York
Utpal Dutt
Madhur Jaffrey
Barry Foster
Aparna Sen
Zohra Sehgal
Saeed Jaffrey
CinematographySubrata Mitra
Edited byPrabhakar Supare
Humphrey Dixon (assistant)
Music byUstad Vilayat Khan
Production
company
Distributed by20th Century Fox
Release date
  • 10 February 1969 (1969-02-10)
Running time
112 min
CountriesUnited States
India
LanguagesEnglish
Urdu
Budget$970,000[1]

Plot

edit

A rock star, Tom Pickle (Michael York), travels to India to learn to play the sitar with the great musician Ustad Zafar Khan (as George Harrison did when he studied under Ravi Shankar). Khan (Utpal Dutt) is not happy with his disciple but still takes him to Benares to meet his own guru.

Cast

edit

Box office

edit

According to Fox records, the film required $1,675,000 in theatrical rentals to break even. By December 1970, it had only made $625,000 in rentals, causing the studio to take a loss.[2] This was equivalent to estimated box office gross receipts of approximately $2 million.[3]

References

edit
  1. ^ Solomon, Aubrey. Twentieth Century Fox: A Corporate and Financial History (The Scarecrow Filmmakers Series). Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press, 1989, ISBN 978-0-8108-4244-1, p. 256
  2. ^ Silverman, Stephen M (1988). The Fox that got away : the last days of the Zanuck dynasty at Twentieth Century-Fox. L. Stuart. p. 328. ISBN 9780818404856.
  3. ^ Vogel, Harold L. (2010). "Table 3.4. Motion picture theater industry statistics, 1965-2009". Entertainment Industry Economics: A Guide for Financial Analysis. Cambridge University Press. pp. 88–9. ISBN 978-1-139-49732-9. 1965 (...) MPAA U.S. + Canadian rentals % of BO (...) 29.8
edit