Before White Castle, there was McDonalds and before ‘Roldie and Kooomar, there was Kumar Pallana, a man whose rise to fame began, ah, not by making an ass out of himself, but by making friends with Mickey Mouse, The Rat Pack and a young man whose love for him is the basis of this inelegantly titled documentary:

KUMAR: MY 88 YEAR OLD BEST FRIEND provides a unique window into the fascinating and unlikely friendship between eighty-eight year old cult film icon Kumar Pallana (The Terminal, Royal Tenenbaums, Rushmore) and thirty-year old indie label proprietor and PR/management guru Dave Brown.

And, as we are told, even though much of the film follows Pallana and his vaudevillian plate-spinning act to ‘rock venues, senior centers, state prisons, dive bars, comedy clubs, wrestling matches, yoga classes and everything in-between’ the true story of this documentary is one of mythic love, a form of adoration so pure and…

… driven by a sincere desire to show the world the Kumar that he knows, the one who spins a story as well as a plate, who talks of his lessons on love in such a romantic way it would make Casanova blush… But what this film will eventually discover is… the simple magic of Brown and Pallana’s unique friendship, a friendship that’s stronger than mere words, one that transcends age and shatters stereotypes.

Hmm. Sounds like Chico and the Man.

Indie-film fans of course know that Pallana also shares a unique relationship with director Wes Anderson (the two apparently spent fifteen years meditating on the finer points of life, such as why an Indian manservant would be named after Asian architecture). However, lest anyone get the wrong idea as to who saw Kumar first:

Many mistakenly believe that Wes Anderson and Owen Wilson “discovered” Kumar when they plucked him out of seeming obscurity from behind the counter of his eclectic cafe. But in reality…

And, the rest is all suspense, notes and bits that you’ll discover by watching the documentary (no spoilers here). In the meanwhile, just to soothe our expectations, lets take a moment to bow our heads in thanks that–after his notorious absence in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou–our pal Pallana will be reaffirming his love for Anderson by appearing (late-2008), in the director’s long-anticipated India ballad, The Darjeeling Limited, starring Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman.

(FYI: Dipak Pallana, son of Kumar Pallana, has also been in every Wes Anderson film except The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou which, incidentally, featured another up-and-coming cult icon: Waris Singh Ahluwalia)

(FYI redux: Schwartzman is Francis Ford Coppola’s nephew and, Coppola’s son, Roman Coppola, is co-writer of The Darjeeling Limited which means, in 2007, three Coppolas will be involved with two films shot in India)