We had a lot of problems shooting The Deceivers, a lot of which were caused by this lack of co-ordination between the Merchant Ivory element and the Pinewood element. Because Nick Meyer insisted on shooting in the town of Jaipur, which was under the control of a, sort of, the Indian Mafia, and Ismail said, 'I wouldn't do that because I have no way of influencing them, dealing with them. Why don't you shoot it in Jodhpur?' 'No, we want to go there. The first night we had trouble'.

The first night we'd set a night scene and it couldn't go ahead because the local mafia hadn't been placated and the people refused to erect the camp... the tents, or something. Anyway, there was continuous trouble all the time, because the local mafia hadn't been paid off, as it were, which is always necessary. And, it culminated in trouble with the authorities, that the man who's supposed to watch all the shooting to make sure that nothing derogatory to India is put in, he wasn't always there. And then one day the police arrived and there was a ludicrous scene where the police went in the back door... in the front door and somebody carrying the rushes went in... out the back door and escaped over the roof of... something ridiculous like that happened. But there was trouble all the time.

And for me, the biggest trouble arose on a night scene... near the finale of the picture you have a night scene where they... the... all the loot is being carried to the place where they can sell the diamonds and the loot that they gather, these Thuggies gather, in the course of their murderous activities. And they go to a certain market in a village and they sell all their stuff to the diamond dealers and the jewellery dealers, and so on. And Ken Adam had decided that he would string wires between the houses and he would hang lampions, so the whole set was covered in these... was surmounted by these 30, 40 lampions which were lit with low bulbs, like they had candles in them. That was difficult... already difficult because I had to light... I had to use the rooftops as well, of the existing houses, in order to position my lights. That's the only place I could've put the lights, and I had to light between these strings of hanging lampions. So that was difficult.

But then, it became impossible, because a wind sprang up and the lampions started swaying, you see, and getting into the lights, of course, and casting enormous shadows. So we finished that scene by the skin of our teeth. So I wasn't very pleased with Ken Adams, who had a lot of experience. But if you were working in Pinewood Studios, the cameraman and Ken Adam would have had certain discussions, and he would've said: yes, I want this, that and the other... And there would always be backup and there would be a way out.

But working in... at that time we were in Khajurao. We were based in Khajurao, where the famous erotic sculpture is, and we were a long, long way from any backup, and communication with the labs was difficult, as always. And... and to deal with things like that under those circumstances is extremely difficult, extremely difficult. So that caused me a lot of headaches. But the bulk of the film wasn't too difficult to make and it was quite exciting and quite... There's some wonderful locations. On the river there... there's some lovely stuff in that film. But a lot of that stuff was cut in the final version. There's a lovely scene where a sandstorm comes up. A lot of that got lost. Basically, the worst thing was that the re-cut, even the final final re-cut, undermined the Pierce Brosnan character, the hero, to such an extent that he was, sort of, in limbo. The preview cards had said, 'We don't like the wife'. So he cut out a lot of the wife, so the poor man is, kind of, left floating in limbo. All his relationship, which placed him in a certain situation, with a wife and then the Indians he has to deal with, that all became very tentative, because certain key elements had been cut out because the preview card said that they don't like the wife. She wasn't very good, but she was adequate. You know, she was perfectly all right, in context. But the final result, of course, was much worse than it could've been.