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Next on HBO.
A cluster of snow peaks, a crown of pinnacles lifted high above the distant ranges like the towers and turrets of some fabulous city.
These words belong to MMK's international bestseller, The Far Favillians, captured on film in HBO's most ambitious production yet.
One that brings to life a story of love, honor, and betrayal, played out against the sweep of history and the majesty of a continent.
A production almost as epic as the story it recreates.
In 1978, Molly Kaye published the novel that took 15 years to write and captured the attention of 15 million readers and every major filmmaker in the business.
Quiet, rehearsing, no noise.
But it wasn't until producer Jeff Reed proposed the idea of a six-hour mini-series that Molly allowed her story to be filmed.
It's taken almost three years to get as far as beginning making this book into a film and it's been extremely exciting for me.
I still haven't quite got the hang of what's happening in the film because I hadn't worked out that they don't do the thing in sequence.
But it's fascinating to watch and I've enjoyed every single minute of it.
Shot on location in Jaipur, India, the production of The Far Favillians was like the book, vast in scope and painstaking in detail.
It took four months to shoot and required 1,000 extras and 5,000 original costumes in its 547 scenes.
It boasts a prestigious cast, including Ben Cross, Amy Irving, John Gilgud, Omar Sharif and Christopher Lee,
and an equally respected crew headed by noted British director Peter Duffel and Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff,
the men to whom fell the monumental task of guiding the translation of a novel to the screen.
I must honestly say I've never had the opportunity to work before on such a vast canvas.
This makes it tremendously exciting. I mean our very first day's work was incredible.
We had this enormous wedding procession which was, I don't know how long, seven, eight hundred yards long,
with twenty elephants, camels, soldiers, cavalry infantry, camp followers and so on.
It was an enormous thing and it was most exciting to suddenly have all these elements to use to make a picture.
An authentic Indian cavalry. Elephants that actually belonged to three different labor unions.
In a procession that took two and a half hours each morning just to arrange in the proper order.
But this wasn't the only challenge. Transforming the blue-eyed, auburn-haired Amy Irving into an Indian princess was another.
It took two hours to get me ready in the morning between dark makeup, the coal, the black wig down to here,
and the costumes were just, I mean, layers and layers of costume, the jewelry.
On my wedding day it would take two and a half hours just for an extra half hour for my jewelry.
With her specially tinted eyebrows and lashes and headpiece made from two wigs,
the only American in the cast became the regal Anjali.
And for Gob, befitting a princess, costume designer Raymond Hughes created a hand-embroidered wedding gown
whose cost, because of its gold content, was determined by weight.
Hughes also designed literally thousands of other costumes at a cost of over half a million dollars,
relying on local experts to produce the fine embroidered silks and to advise him on the most authentic look possible,
including a special khaki dye used to create the uniform of a British soldier.
Well, I mean, the visual aspect is terribly important, and we would not have discovered that had we not come here.
I mean, we are living and breathing in India in a space that actually is wide enough to encompass the scope of the story.
India. In her novel, Molly Kay calls it that mixture of glamour and tawdryness, viciousness and nobility,
a land full of gods and gold and famine, beautiful beyond belief.
And it seemed only fitting to recreate Molly's words in the place that inspired them, however difficult at times.
It is indeed about a period of Indian history which I don't think has ever been on the screen.
I believe that every character in the fire pavilions, in the film of the fire pavilions, and indeed in the book, is based on a real person.
It is an enormous story in the breadth and scope of what actually takes place.
And with an undertaking of this magnitude, there were bound to be problems. The language barrier had to be surmounted.
Phone communication was often impossible, and the largely western cast and crew had to adapt to India's more exotic way of life.
The food and the locations, the journeys are rather bumpy.
The roads are very tortuous and you never stop evading camels and bullock carts and bicycles and people swarming everywhere.
But no other place could have set the scene for images of such awesome and sometimes awful beauty.
This marks, for instance, the first time a production has captured on film a reenactment of the ancient Indian rite of Sati,
which states that if a ruler dies, his wife is to be burned along with him on his funeral pyre.
Now illegal, the reenactment was shot on a closed set with only two cameras allowed to record it.
Something that could never have been done on a studio backlot.
Just one part of a production that encompasses both the epic backdrop of 19th century India and a love story played out against it.
What I've seen of it here is going to be all the magic of what it was like.
Do you love me?
I have loved you all my life, from the very beginning.
A classic love story, an epic adventure, a glorious time in history, all captured in MMK's international bestseller
and brought to life in a long-awaited HBO premiere film's event, The Far Pavilions.
The Far Pavilions
Coming May 3rd, making its national television debut on HBO, the one and only Tootsie.
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The following feature has been rated PG by the Motion Picture Association of America.
Parental guidance is suggested.