Imposing a Bollywood work culture wasn't easy either.
"People are quite laid back here,'' said Gonzalves, who has made a name in Bollywood as the king of Indian hip-hop.
"In Bollywood if something has to be A, it will be A. It can't be Aaaaaaaaaa,'' he said, referring to a looser attitude here toward punctuality or following instructions.
"Back home I can scream at anybody. Here I have to restrain myself,'' Gonzalves added.
Once, while shooting, Gonzalves lost his temper and yelled at an actress who promptly burst into tears and walked off the set. It took days of cajoling to bring her back.
The sets are a mix of Malaysian and Indian faces and languages.
During one song and dance sequence, a masquerade party, an obviously frustrated Gonzalves barked commands to his Indian assistant.
"Remove that girl in the purple dress,'' he shouted in the Bombay patois, a mixture of Hindi and English. "A little to the right, yes. And that guy in the black hat, put him in the front, man!''
As the lights came on again and the sound track blared from speakers, a crane carrying Thundiyil and his camera rose smoothly over the outlandishly dressed, gyrating dancers.
"It is tiring but worth it for me,'' Natasha Hudson, a Malaysian-Australian actress who plays the struggling starlet, said after the shoot. "If I go back to doing another Malaysian movie I will probably say 'Oh Man! This is boring. No singing. No dancing.'"
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