'Fan': An Indian film for non-Indians.

I saw Shah Rukh Khan's innovative crowd-pleaser Fan for the second time on Saturday. Not out of obligation to my friends at Mind Blowing Films, not to appease my SRK-loving wife (she's in Las Vegas), and not as a mere 'time pass' -- a term used by many Indian moviegoers to denote a dull but passable film.

I went because in a world of bloated franchises and indie predictability, Fan sizzles from first shot to last and boasts a performance from SRK that's as brilliant as any in his 25-year career.

About the finest testament I can offer Fan is that the second viewing was better than the first. It's not tortured plot twists or cartoon violence, the bane of so many Bollywood films, that carry Fan: It's a well-constructed story that avoids the Untainted Hero vs Diabolical Villain cliche and forces its audience to find moral clarity in the fog of its flawed protagonists. Leaving a packed cinema on opening night my wife and I agreed we'd enjoyed Fan but struggled to explain why. If you know the man's history you can't help but be burdened by expectation, and this film defied them all. No silly cheesecake item numbers, no shoe-horned romance with a woman half his age, no anthemic theme song ... Fan is a thriller made for all moviegoers, not just Indians raised on Bollywood formula.

Which is why the film won't break attendance records in India and, at this writing, is doing exceptionally well in international markets.

Watching the film for the second time I was struck by how carefully the film avoids passing judgment on obsessive fan Gaurav Chandna. His acts of vengeance are wrong, of course, but how much is he a victim of the industry created around superstar Aryan Khanna or the punishment meted out by cops acting at Khanna's behest? Gaurav's hero worship is a boon to both himself and his parents and he's a local celebrity to the people of his Delhi colony. All is well until Gaurav travels to Mumbai to show Khanna his most recent trophy for winning the colony's talent contest. Why shouldn't he expect an audience with his idol? Conversely, Khanna's sense of entitlement is understandable but years of being worshiped give him a deluded sense of control. He's oblivious to the possibility that screaming throngs at the bottom of a two-story fence in front of his Mumbai fortress might not be satisfied with a once-a-year birthday wave.

As Gaurav states repeatedly to questioners of his obsession, "You wouldn't understand."

Opening night ticket.

Khan's transformation into Gaurav is as believable and potentially iconic as Marlon Brando's turns as Vito Corleone in the first two Godfather films. The difference, of course, is Brando didn't have to portray both Corleone and those who wanted him dead. Dual roles have been a Bollywood trope for generations but not like this. Nine-time Academy Award nominee and 3-time winner Greg Cannom's first Indian cinema effort results in a character that's similar enough to Khan's to make his Aryan-impersonations legitimate yet sufficiently unique to make Gaurav magnetic in a way Aryan is not. Fan doesn't rely on special effects to make you care for its anti-hero -- that's all Khan's doing -- but Cannom's brilliant work means you're never distracted from Gaurav's worshipful bliss or unhinged torment. You're just captivated.

In place of item numbers director Maneesh Sharma fuels Fan with breakneck chases along the facade of Mumbai's crumbling Delite Hotel, atop the clay rooftops of Dubrovnik and through Delhi's Inder Vihar colony. Thunderous, Mission Impossible-esque music accompanies each sequence and each is edited like a particularly frantic Bourne film. Deliberate or not the connections are clear and make Fan relatable to Western audiences in a way no film from fellow superstars Salman Khan or Aamir Khan has ever been.

Of the three Indian cinema heavy hitters, Aamir's created the most creative template for box office hits with 'big ideas' in India -- but those big ideas are very India-focused. Salman's films are the most simplistic, aimed most at the 'common man', and therefore the most commercially successful. (A trailer for his upcoming Sultan brought cheers from the opening night crowd -- but not the second.) The feral fanbases of Shah Rukh and Salman guarantee good opening weekends but each release is run through a prism of past cinematic glory that leaves little room for growth. Like college students forced to produce first grade report cards to prove their worth the two Khans are shackled by their pasts. One, Salman, chooses not to fight it. The other, Shah Rukh, fights to expand it.

If Fan is the template for SRK's cinematic future releases, he just might find himself becoming a household name amongst a new variation of fan: Non-Indian ones interested in the quality of each film ... and absolutely nothing else.

A brush with Shah Rukh Khan's 'Fan' phenomenon.

My ticket into the SRK fan universe.

In a few hours I'll be in a cinema packed with fans of Shah Rukh Khan when his latest -- a Yash Raj Films production called Fan -- premieres here in Melbourne and around the world. It comes a week after a dozen or so local media reps and movie writers converged in a CBD conference room for a video press conference with the man himself courtesy of Mind Blowing Films (MBF) and its fearless leader Mitu Bhowmick Lange. I've attended many such PR events in my career but this was the first to leave me walking along a sidewalk afterwards thinking it's a shame that so many with access to our most brilliant actors, musicians, artists, athletes -- dare I say writers -- are too often jaded to surrender to the simple satisfactions of full-on, no-apologies, slap-a-naysayer-in-the-face fandom.

I don't mean 11-year-old girls screaming at boy bands manufactured to the specifications of breakfast cereal, or boozy thugs hurling abuse at multi-millionaire sportsmen, or zombies queuing up for the latest perfume/watch/sneaker/hair product branded with the name of a reality TV personality.

No. I mean experiencing, even for the fleetest of moments, the company of someone whose work has taken root in your life and become a fixture, a constant, a necessity: You can't imagine life without it.

So there I sat last Friday afternoon, riding a train into Melbourne's CBD and a semi-private audience with Shah Rukh Khan. (That sentence will rattle the bones of 99.9% of Indians reading this and do nothing for 99.9% of everyone else.) I'd received an email with the subject line 'Invitation to chat with SRK' the day before. If it hadn't come from MBF's Divya Thaper I'd have written it off as unusually well-targeted spam. But ... no. It was legit. MBF had sprinkled Tweets and Facebook posts about Fan for weeks but there'd been no hint of an opportunity to speak with a man known as 'King Khan' to Indians and, more pertinent to the last 12 years of my life, 'God Incarnate' to my wife, Aradhna.

There's no way to recount this tale without mentioning my wife's, ahem, 'fondness' for SRK. Like many Indians born in the 1970s she grew up watching the Delhi native evolve from villian in thrillers like Darr (1993) and Baazigar (1993) to household name in a romance classic called Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) that's literally the Star Wars of Indian cinema: It tattooed a generation of cinema goers and redefined the term ' Bollywood blockbuster'. DDLJ paired SRK for the first time with an actress named Kajol; they've done several films together since and are arguably Bollywood's favourite on-screen couple of all time. (In real life SRK's been a faithful husband for 25 years to Gauri Khan. They jointly run a production company called Red Chillies Entertainment while raising three kids.)

SRK & Kajol in DDLJ.

I first heard the name Shah Rukh Khan on the second or third date with Aradhna. It was autumn in NYC, 2004. Though unfamiliar with his work I quickly grasped his influence not only on Aradhna but on other young Indian women raised by insanely protective parents. SRK's romantic heroes weren't just handsome and suave -- they were dedicated and honest and ferociously committed to love. SRK's passion was molten. Heroes of Hollywood rom-coms were cardboard cutouts beside a man who'd sacrifice everything, be left broken and bloodied, for the hand of his beloved.

This was the man who looked down from my wife's bedroom walls when she was young. I quickly caught up with SRK's filmography and have been an astute fan of Indian cinema since. We watched our first Bollywood film together in a loft I rented in Manhattan before she returned to Australia in late 2004. It was DDLJ. Watching it was like gazing at a crystal ball into her heart. The music to an SRK blockbuster released in November 2004 called Veer-Zaara became the soundtrack to our whirlwind NYC romance. The first film I ever saw in an Australian cinema was 2006's Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna. Aradhna and I have watched the glorious Om Shanti Om (2007) a half-dozen times together.

These and other SRK-related thoughts swirled in cool autumn air as I walked up Collins Street a week ago. MBF and Mitu have provided the opportunity to meet many of Hindi cinemas biggest names -- none larger than Amitabh Bachchan, whose hand I shook two years ago in another scenario that hundreds of millions of Indians would have killed to experience -- but this was different. Like Springsteen to me, this was a man my wife got hooked into at a young age and whose career trajectory defined mileposts in her life.

To the 14th floor of a 110 Collins Street I rode. Mitu gave me a welcoming hug and the waiting began. I caught up with her and chatted with a Malaysian man named Steve whose Bollywood knowledge and Elvis Presley looks were equally beguiling. Two hours later the conference room was full and we were informed SRK had just left his Mumbai residence and was en route to whatever secret location he'd be speaking to us from.

Mitu did her best to engage the room while we waited for an empty chair in Mumbai to be filled by one of the most famous men in the world. No one spoke. Fan movie posters ringing the far wall reminded us of the subject at hand but the electrical activity of a dozen brains supercharged in anticipation of Shah Rukh Khan speaking with us made every molecule pause. Heady anticipation filled the windowless room: Twenty-five years of hits, flops, lust, laughs, songs, dialogues, heroines, Bollywood intrigue. rivalries, gossip, on-set injuries, TV shows, concerts, Filmfare awards, cricket teams, endorsements ... the enormity of a life lived at centre stage in a country where celebrity worship is a competitive sport and access to those celebrities a never-ending, high-stakes pursuit.

A flurry of activity in Mumbai signaled SRK's arrival and he soon appeared in a leather jacket and perfect hair on our video monitor. Molecules regained their crackle, Mitu greeted the man she'd worked with during the shooting of Chak De India in 2007 and, without warning, I began speaking with Shah Rukh Khan.

King Khan fields a question.

Mitu's introduction was a blur, mimicking the time she'd introduced me to Amitabh Bachchan while my brain watched from the ceiling as the great man shook my hand and I coughed up sounds devoid of cohesion or substance. The lack of physical proximity made this encounter less paralysing, however, even as cameras atop the monitor wheeled around to focus on me. I was determined to ask about Fan but curiously found myself sharing this self-denigrating anecdote: Mr Khan and I are both 50. He was born 19 days before me in November 1965 and is a spectacular physical specimen. I, meanwhile, look like the 'before' photo to SRK's 'after' in a weight-loss ad, a discrepancy my wife has been known to point out. My 19-days-older quip got a laugh out of Khan but I quickly moved onto a question about the unique challenges of playing both the pursued and pursuer in Fan.

What followed was a masterclass in human connection. Of course he's an actor and a man accustomed to fielding questions under more trying circumstances. But I was born and raised in the great state of New Jersey and have been bombarded with bullshit all my life. Shah Rukh Khan is no bullshitter. His answers and banter weren't forced, condescending or rehearsed. He addressed everyone by name, putting a roomful of strangers at ease. Very quickly this gathering felt more like after-work drinks than a press conference separated by nearly 10,000 kms.

It was remarkable.

Maybe it was the lack of pressure that freed SRK to respond so genuinely -- Australian box office numbers aren't exactly make or break for an Indian release -- or maybe it was the ease of someone who's earned a fortune in front of the camera. Whatever it was it was unexpected and a genuine pleasure to witness.

On the subject of surprises: About halfway through the press conference SRK was speaking about the facial prosthetics he wore to portray Gaurav, a 20-something man bearing a striking likeness to the actor (Aryan) he's obsessed with in Fan. According to Khan, the jaw is identical to the one worn by Brad Pitt in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (both films shared the talents of Oscar-winning makeup artist Greg Cannom). Out of the blue, while referencing a conversation about his look for the film, SRK remarked that he "... didn't want to look like Joe at 50."

Holy shit, I thought to myself. Freakin' Shah Rukh Khan is busting my chops.

Soon everyone had asked their questions and Mitu praised SRK for making himself available for this Q&A and for the excessive kindness he'd shown MBF crew when filming in Australia in 2007. An hour before I may have regarded such praise with suspicion -- Hollywood is rife with self-serving phonies who owe every iota of community goodwill to personal assistants, PR firms and 24/7 lawyers.

No. On this occasion I was glad to have walked into that conference room a fan of Shah Rukh Khan's 25-year career because when I walked out, I was a fan of the living, breathing, chops-busting man himself.

Normally that's where this post would end (I'll reveal more of SRK's press conference bon mots after seeing Fan tonight). But this brush with Khan lasted throughout the weekend and, like the tiniest sliver of a scorching chili pepper on the tongue, left an indelible impression of the enormity of his fandom.

I posted two press conference-related tweets on Saturday. This in the morning ...

... and this in the afternoon.

With Aradhna in Sydney for the weekend a friend named Jamie came by my place Saturday afternoon. We met friends Mary and Piera for dinner before venturing to the Elsternwick Hotel to see Dave Wright and the Midnight Electric play an 11:00 gig. An ambitious but hardly risky evening for a geezer like myself. As Jamie and I had pre-dinner drinks at a local RSL, however, the night ventured into the unknown.

My Twitter feed was blowing up.

During Springsteen's 2013-14 tours I'd generated mild Twitter activity when my photos and reviews were published on Backstreets.com. Couple dozen likes, a few less retweets. Sitting at a side table at the RSL, in-between glances at Carlton getting smashed by West Coast on a big screen, my Twitter feed was utter madness. Likes, retweets, comments from fans using the terms 'love', 'luv', 'lv', etc. The worldwide fan storm continued unabated through dinner and the DWME show, social activities that kept me from gleaning the source of the deluge. Even without paying strict attention I knew this much: These tweets had nothing to do with me. They were the heartfelt words of fans directing their affection to SRK directly, as if he was reading them off his phone in an Italian restaurant in Australia. The man receives such online messages of adoration and loyalty and support and lord knows what else every minute of every day. Then there's the crowds that sit outside his home Mumbai, throngs that chase his cars down the street, mobs that gather at film shoots. Alongside a perfect pizza I got a taste of what a monstrously famous human being gets fed by his fans. I was glad to have a bottle of pinot noir nearby to wash it down.

On Sunday morning the source of the deluge became clear. It appears at the top of this post, but here's a closer look:

This fan of Shah Rukh Khan had been retweeted by Shah Rukh Khan after a press conference for a Shah Rukh Khan film called Fan. He'd gotten the 19 days thing backwards but, on a weekend that for him included an appearance at the Miss India pageant and meeting British royals William and Kate, he'd still managed to thank me and bust my chops. Again.

Another reason to call him King Khan.

CBD culture clash.

A recent trip into the CBD to see Shah Rukh Khan's 'Ra.One' allowed Aradhna and I to glimpse a rarely displayed fissure in Melbournian society. The start of Victoria's annual spring racing carnival coincided with a march down Swanston Street (above) by protesters inspired by the 'Occupy Wall Street' movement in the US. Six days earlier police on horseback had used extreme measures to clear them from the small public square along Swanston Street where they'd peacefully camped for a week. This well-organised march of perhaps a thousand people marked their return to the CBD and media spotlight.

Intentionally or not, their demonstration coincided with a parade of antennaed women in stilletos and haughtily dressed men using public transport to carry them to Flemington Racecourse just northwest of the CBD. Aradhna and I were flagrantly under-dressed among the clothes horses at Balaclava train station, though our attire was surely more appropriate for the sterile environs of the train (above). A week of grey skies dissolved from memory beneath trees bursting with fresh foliage along Swanston Street. A phalanx of police on horseback near the Flinders Street intersection hinted at what was coming, but the only commotion in sight was tourists snapping photos.

Aradhna and I walked up Swanston and came upon the march at Town Hall (right). Nowhere near the 'feral' or 'unwashed' mob that Murdoch-owned tabloids had labeled them to the delight of their suburban readership, they banged drums and yelled in unison and carried signs and tore the veil of preciousness from self-absorbed racegoers like a tornado through a clothes line. Men and women wearing 'Official Observor' placards and carrying clipboards monitored the police, who to their credit gave the marchers space and halted traffic at intersections. The protesters stopped briefly beside the square where they'd camped for a week -- their proximity eliciting a chant of 'We'll be back!' -- and that's where I broke off and walked back to where my wife was waiting across from Town Hall. Two men behind me loudly discussed the merits of the march; "These people should do their protesting online!" the most memorable line.

The marchers eventually turned left at Flinders Street, spent a few hours in Treasury Gardens -- where police made it clear they were not free to camp -- and retreated to an alleyway near RMIT a few blocks away. The march made the evening news but proved no match for spring racing carnival hype, which continued unabated through the week. I was having coffee at Gattica in Balaclava when this trio of racegoers (above) passed by, theirs the parade of choice for Melburnians accustomed to still waters and faux prosperity and obeyance. But what do I know ... even after 4 years in Melbourne I fail to appreciate a weeklong 'celebration' of dress-up and gambling and inebriation. Bloody Philistine.