The Party

The Party is a 1968 American comedy film directed by Blake Edwards, and starring Peter Sellers and Claudine Longet. The film has a very loose structure, and essentially serves as a series of set pieces for Sellers's improvisational comedy talents. Based on a fish-out-of-water premise, the film is about a bungling actor from India, Hrundi V. Bakshi (portrayed by Sellers), who accidentally gets invited to a lavish Hollywood dinner party and "makes terrible mistakes based upon ignorance of Western ways". The protagonist Hrundi Bakshi was influenced by two of Sellers' earlier characters: the Indian doctor Ahmed el Kabir in The Millionairess (1960) and Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther series. In turn, the character Hrundi Bakshi went on to be influential, inspiring several later popular characters, including Amitabh Bachchan's character Arjun Singh in the 1982 Bollywood blockbuster Namak Halaal, and Hank Azaria's character Apu Nahasapeemapetilon in the American animated sitcom The Simpsons. Plot A film crew is making a Gunga Din-style costume epic. Unknown Indian actor Hrundi V. Bakshi (Peter Sellers) plays a bugler, but continues to play after repeatedly being shot and after the director (Herb Ellis) yells "cut." Hrundi then accidentally blows up an enormous fort set rigged with explosives, ruining the film. The director fires Hrundi immediately and calls the studio head, General Fred R. Clutterbuck (J. Edward McKinley). Clutterbuck writes down Hrundi's name to blacklist him, but he inadvertently writes it on the guest list of his upcoming dinner party. Hrundi receives his invitation and drives to the party. Upon parking his car, he steps into mud. Hrundi tries to rinse the mud off his shoe in a pool that flows through the house, but he loses his shoe. After many failures, he is reunited with his shoe served to him on a silver platter by one of the waiters.