When the filmmaker took Rediff.com on a tour of his lavish New York estate where he has lived and worked for decades.
Photographs: Dominic Xavier/Rediff.com
James Ivory created history on March 4 when he became the oldest Oscar winner. The 89-year-old screenwriter and co-producer of Call Me by Your Name won the Oscar for adapting Andre Aciman's 2007 novel of the same name for the Luca Guadagnino-directed film.
This was Ivory's maiden Oscar win 30 years after his first nomination. Before Ivory, Ennio Morricone, who had won the Oscar for original score for The Hateful Eight in 2016 at age 87, was considered the oldest winner in a competitive category.
Ivory, however, is better known among Indians as one half of Merchant Ivory Productions, one of the most long-running independent filmmaking duos in film history.
Ivory and his partner Ismail Merchant -- often in collaboration with author Ruth Prawer Jhabvala and Bollywood actor Shashi Kapoor -- mounted several literary adaptations like The Householder, Shakespeare Wallah, The Guru, Bombay Talkie and In Custody. Ivory films had earned 31 Oscar nominations and six wins before Ivory won his Oscar.
While film buffs raved over his shirt emblazoned with the face of Call Me By Your Name star Timothee Chalamet and his speech after the Oscars, we revisited the time Ivory welcomed us into his sprawling country home in upstate New York.
Scroll down for a tour of the picturesque estate.
Ivory bought the 19-room home on the Hudson in upstate New York, a region known for its natural beauty, in 1975 for about $105,000 and patiently restored it.
Let's go in.
Jhabwala passed away in 2013.
