SPOOFING US

Posted on November 20, 2012 by admin

India’s first international spoof film fest is here. But how has the genre evolved through the ages? And what does it stand for in India?

Spoofhmania is India’s first international short film festival on spoofs. It’s taking place from November 20 to 25 at various venues throughout Delhi (especially in the Hauz Khas village) and Gurgaon, with the grand finale being hosted at the Siri Fort Auditorium.

The festival is the brainchild of Delhi-based Short Film Organization Filmbooth, which was founded by Gaurav Raturi, Mohak Mathur, Nagendra Singh, Ajesh Balachandran and Sumit Nanda in 2008, as a platform for short films. The team believes short films are a democratic medium and “the next big thing in the entertainment sector”. Gaurav Raturi explains that they initially conducted short film festivals for social causes such as education, the World Environment Day, the Millenium Development Goals, “and then we felt we needed to do something fun, needed to do the opposite”.

For Spoofhmania the team collaborated with Crowd Funding Platform Wishberry to raise funds. Entries have poured in over the last few months and the six day festival will screen selected spoofs in its competition section. Among the most exciting entries are Creamerica, a crime drama spoof co-directed by Subhashini Dewada, Vinimay and Varun P Anand that is a mash-up of several popular films and characters including Godfather and popular Indian TV drama CID; Lubdhanam Cora (The Greedy Thief), an animation film, written and directed by Sagar Kadam, which won the Special Jury Award in a competition organized by ASIFA (Association Internationale du Film d’Animation) India; and Casting Call by Nicholas Grasso, a spoof movie where Robert De Niro meets Johnny Depp.

Spoofs, or parodies, are a sub-genre of comedy. The team at Spoofhmania, however, doesn’t believe in an iron-clad definition for the genre. The idea, simply, is to make people laugh and take a less-serious approach to life, to bring together a crazy mix of films and people, and have some fun. Hence, the ‘h’ in the middle of the festival’s name, or a jury, who will be judging the films in the competition section, called the ‘cabinet of ministers of spoof’. The Ministers of Spoof include Rahul da Cunha, MD and Creative Director at DaCunha Communications, the company behind Amul’s legendary ad campaigns; Josy Paul, Chairman and National Creative Director at advertising firm BBDO India, and Documentary Filmmaker Nitin Sukhija.

There will also be screenings of Hindi spoof movies (Tere Bin Laden) and those from abroad (Spider-Plant Man), as well as viral videos (How It Should Have Ended). Two films to watch out for will be Sita Sings The Blues, an animated version of the Ramayana tale, through a feminist lens, that integrates blues music with mythology and Star Wreck (an obvious take on Star Trek). Besides films, the festival will showcase spoof through stand up gigs like ‘Stand up for the Spoof’ by Sanjay Rajora, Mahep Singh (winner of best comedian at the Indian Comedy festival, Delhi 2012) and Amit Tandon, art exhibitions and a ‘Spoof Parliament’ with Ministers of Spoof Josy Paul and Nitin Sukhija.

It is difficult to identify the first spoof movie. Among the earliest was the 1922 silent film Mud and Sand. The film spoofed and satirized several scenes from the succesful Blood and Sand, released in the same year which told the tragic tale of a great Spanish matador and his disastrous extramarital affair. So Matador Rudolph Valentino and his wife Carmen became ‘Rhubarb Vaselino’ and ‘Caramel’ in the spoof. A scene from the movie, lauded for its slapstick comic precision even today, is one in which Vaselino tosses the bull over the fence and it lands sitting upright in a spectator’s chair. In the 1940s and the 1950s, spoofs began to find recognition as a valid film genre. Charlie Chaplin parodied Hitler and his Nazi regime in The Great Dictator. The spoofs of William Abbott and Lou Costello centred around encounters of the comedic pair with characters from the suspense, horror and science fiction films of Universal Studios with names like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet Dr.Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man and Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.

It was in the late 1970s that the spoof movie became a widely watched genre. Filmmaker Mel Brooks made the spoof a part of mainstream Hollywood with films like Blazing Saddles and Young Frankenstein, both ranking among the biggest money-makers of their times. Blazing saddles earned Academy Award nominations for Best Film Editing, Best Actress in a Supporting Role and Best Original Song, while Young Frankenstein was nominated for Best Sound and Best Adapted Screenplay. The comedy trio of the Zucker Brothers and Jim Abrahams made Kentucky Fried Movie, crime comedies in The Naked Gun series, and the classic Airplane!— which has been on several funny movies lists, and has been ranked 10th in an American Film Institute’s list of the hundred funniest films. British comedy troupe Monty Python parodied King Arthur and his knights in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Today, in Hollywood, spoofs have grown into big franchises with spy comedies like the Austin Powers films and the Scary Movie series.

In India, however, the spoof is a genre whose true potential is yet to be realized. “There are a lot of viral videos online but we don’t have much spoof in the mainstream,” says Raturi. Films like Tere Bin Laden and the recent Supermen of Malegaon would fit the bill. A cult classic is Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro: “The scene where they use the Mahabharat— that’s the cult scene which made Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron so popular,” Raturi says. Satish Kaushik, one of the dialogue writers of the film, has said in an interview to daily.bhaskar.com how the idea of bringing all the characters of the film and the epic together, in a comic climax on a theatre stage, came to him. “I saw cheap colourful comics of Laila Majnu, Shirin-Farhad, Mughal-e-Azam,” he said. “That’s how the idea struck! In the climax, we wanted a blend of characters.” During the actual filming the actors, some of the best in the country, took to improvising the scene to make it what it is today.

Meryl Mary Sebastian

Thin Red Line

Posted on November 20, 2012 by admin

Hindi films portraying Naxalism have re-reported the headlines but missed the nuances argues Agnitra Ghosh

Naxalism is back in the metros, via Mumbai, on a big screen near you, this time with Prakash Jha’s Chakravyuh. The film is ‘inspired by’ contemporary events such as the arrest of top CPI (Maoist) leader Kobad Ghandy, the killing of 76 CRPF jawans in Dantewada, corporate land grab and the exploitation of natural resources. Chakravyuh narrates the story of two friends set against the background of the “biggest internal security threat” of the country in recent times.

For over 40 years since the emergence of the Naxalbari rebellion, cinema has drawn inspiration from the rupture caused by this iconic movement in Indian political history. The most prominent instances of the portrayal of the turbulent period of the seventies came from regional language films, especially from Bengali cinema, in the works of Mrinal Sen, Ritwik Ghatak and Buddhadev Dasgupta. It is interesting to note an almost complete absence of any direct representation of the movement in Hindi films made between the 1970s to 1990s.

In the last decade, however, Hindi cinema seems to have woken up to Naxalism, or Maoism, as it is more commonly known today. A number of films such as Lal Salaam, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi (HKA), Tango Charlie, Chamku, Summer 2007, Red Alert: The War Within, Rakht Charitra, Rakht Charitra II and Raavan have directly or loosely been based on the theme. This sudden surge of interest in the issue is mostly inexplicable. While carefully examining the oeuvre of films on Naxalism, one notices that most of them fall under the category of ‘non-mainstream cinema’— directed by the likes of Ram Gopal Varma, Sudhir Mishra, Mani Ratnam, Prakash Jha, filmmakers who have reworked the norms of commercial Hindi cinema while remaining within the system, so to speak. The constant quest for new subject matter for an evolving industry— economically and creatively, might have something to do with this interest, of course. The question that arises, however, is: do the changes taking place in the industry create a genuine space for innovation and experimentation for filmmakers or has the distinction from mainstream cinema become a mere selling strategy in a niche urban market?

Chakravyuh is a case in point. The trailer attempts to posture it as a film on a ‘serious issue’ by using lines like “In the World’s Largest Democracy” and “A War Has Begun” and a shot of a map with Maoist hit areas marked out in red. Chakravyuh’s promotion also ran into a controversy, when Jha received a legal notice from the Birla Group of companies over the controversial lyrics of the Mehangai song. However, the Supreme Court allowed the release of the song, so long as the film carries explicit written disclaimers on the screen saying it meant no offence. The controversy around the song and festival screenings, however, helped label the film as different from regular commercial cinema in mainstream media. Facebook pages on Chakravyuh (the official page and fan pages) have also emphasized the off-beat nature of the film, by putting out that it has non-mainstream actors in it, and a “social message”. Similarly, promotions of films like HKA, Red Alert… and Raavan have also showcased their screenings in national and international film festivals to maintain a distance from the mainstream.

Moving to the film itself, Chakravyuh continuously refers to real incidents. And this is not unique to this film. Red Alert… claims to be based on a “real life story, culled straight from today’s torrid headlines” and Rakht Charitra is biopic of Paritala Ravindra, an influential South Indian politician who started life as a Naxalite and later entered mainstream politics. References in Chakravyuh to real life events include: a Naxalite leader giving an interview with his face covered by a gamchha (clearly reminiscent of Maoist leader Kishenji), an MNC called Mahanta (a thinly veiled reference to Vedanta), the private armies of corporate houses (Salwa Judum) etc. Drawing from TV and newspaper reports, the film exploits the popular depictions and imageries of Naxalism. This documentation of the chaotic political condition of contemporary India, as seen through the modes of popular media, has become a trademark of new ‘non-mainstream’ Hindi cinema, as pioneered by filmmakers like Ram Gopal Varma (Sarkar) and Anurag Kashyap (Black Friday, Gangs Of Wasseypur).

The theme of Naxalism has also been used in fairly straightforward action films like Tango Charlie, Chamku, Rakht Charitra. In these films, Naxalism is reduced to a mere backdrop. For example, Tango Charlie narrates the story of the friendship of two army officers, and Naxalism is just another “problem”— like insurgency in the North East or terrorism. Rakht Charitra too exploits the iconic stature of an ex-Naxalite leader for what is but a conventional revenge drama.

Then there are films like Mani Ratnam’s Raavan, which don’t really seem to be attempting to portray Naxalism at all. Yet, there were reports in the popular media, prior to the film’s release, of protagonist Abhishek Bachchan’s character being modeled on Kobad Ghandy. Some such reports supported this claim by noting how the presence of a strong element of contemporary history (terrorism, communal riots, the North East insurgency) was a part of Ratnam’s signature style and by the fact that a team of researchers was appointed to get information about Ghandy’s life for the film. Though there was no mention of Naxalism in the film and it was hard to draw any similarities between Abhishek’s character and Ghandy, Maoism probably did contribute to Raavan‘s image of a ‘serious, issue-based film’. Using the name of Ghandy may have helped the film’s promotion machinery to connect it to the persisting media buzz around the arrest and trial of the top Maoist leader.

The ‘non-mainstream’ films on the theme of Naxalism are often marked by innovative formal strategies, but what gets overlooked, almost every time, is the politics of these films. In most of these films, Naxalism is just a background to narrate conventional stories. For example, in HKA, the Naxalbari Movement becomes only a canvas to facilitate the narration of the story of three friends during the turbulent times of seventies. Chakravyuh, though, attempts to ponder over the issue of Naxalism; yet in the end it becomes more about ethical dilemmas in the relationship between two friends. Jha views Naxalism as morally attractive, being sympathetic to the radical cause; yet the militant ideology is reduced to a tag, that might attract urban filmgoers. This is because while Chakravyuh constantly refers to real happenings—sometimes even fetishizing the ‘real’, through dialogue and the depiction of violence—it remains rooted only in the cinematic reality of mainstream Bombay cinema: revolving around the story of two friends who are almost like brothers.

Amidst all the pre-release fanfare about Chakravyuh being an issue-based political film, an online comic series, launched by Jha to promote the film, forewarned of the action-cinema stereotypes Chakravyuh had fallen prey to. The film is strewn with such stereotypes found in a conventional Hindi film— honest cop, dedicated left wing activist, quintessential middle class rolling stone who switches loyalty, corrupt politician, greedy industrialist and exoticized tribal. In using these stereotypes, without any shades of grey, the film gives up on all nuances. Chakravyuh has good people and bad people on all sides but the good people are never bad and the bad people are never good. And so, despite seeming to have the intent of acquainting the masses with more than headlines, and tell them about what is going on in the heart of their country (even quite unexpectedly citing the Arjun Sengupta Committee Report in the final voiceover), Chakravyuh remains another film on ‘Friendship’, ‘Love’, ‘Duty’ and ‘Honour’.

Eye of the Beholder: Hartosh Singh Bal

Posted on November 9, 2012 by admin

As part of this series we bring to you conversations on cinema with artists, photographers, writers, performers and journalists. The movies that have made an impact on their lives and their work. We trace the life of a movie outside of itself— on a canvas, in a novel or a sculpture. We look at a familiar film through unfamiliar eyes; eyes that reinterpret the images on the screen and give them a new form. We go into places where the lines between mediums dissolve. Where inspiration is not distinguishable from creation. Where movies are not distinct from memories.

Hartosh Singh Bal, 46, is a journalist and writer. He is the political editor of Open magazine and has co-authored A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel. He is currently working on a book on his journey along the river Narmada.

In this video he takes us through key scenes of Federico Fellini’s La Dolce Vita and tells us how the film he saw by chance while studying in New York keeps coming back to him, referencing the state of journalism today and his own personal journey as a journalist.

The Movie-Memory Beehive

Posted on November 9, 2012 by admin

My name is Swar Thounaojam. I was born in 1980 in Imphal, Manipur, near Myanmar. Various clerical jobs allow me to write plays and direct some. It is a high-functioning and catastrophic form of madness. I do theatre; I haven’t done cinema yet.

Indian Cinema, to me, is a beehive of scenes and images that broods inside my head. These scenes and images are from a distant past, from films I have forgotten I even watched. They are from regional films I watched as part of my Sunday afternoon Doordarshan ritual. Some come from Hindi films my family and neighbours would screen in the neighbourhood or take me to watch. Many of course are from the Manipuri films my parents love deeply. I can barely remember the titles and storylines of the films. I can’t even remember the actors; except for the Hindi film ones because they are ubiquitous. But disparate scenes and images have got lodged inside my skull. I keep turning them in my head to remember what they were all about. And unable to remember much, I wonder what they were and reimagine them constantly. They somehow remain inviolate inside the mind. They become a constant element of the mind, its memory and sometimes its workings. They might become epiphanies. Who knows? But they never leave.

How does this beehive work inside somebody else’s head? How does Indian Cinema reside in the mind of a person who watches it with care and wonder but hasn’t made a vocation out of it (yet)?

I pursued three actors who work in the theatre and are currently working with me on a new theatre and video project. I asked them to tell me something about their beehives, sketch something on a sheet of paper of what they remember, and I took their headshots with the help of two photographers, Amit Bansal and Tapan Pandit.

Art-work, based on their sketches, has been evolved by illustrators Sunaina Coelho and Fahad Faizal.

THE INDIAN CINEMA BEEHIVE THAT LIVES INSIDE THE HEAD OF PLAYWRIGHT, THEATRE ACTOR AND DIRECTOR, SANDEEP SHIKHAR

Sandeep Shikhar was born in 1978 in Dhanbad in Jharkhand, left his hometown in 1999 and now lives in Bangalore. He thinks Kaala Patthar was the first film he watched in a cinema hall but remembers nothing about it. He was a loyal fan of Amitabh Bachchan and used to collect fifty paisa postcards of the superstar. He had a collection of 100 such postcards. One postcard had Amitabh Bachchan holding a tokri. A friend saw it and pointed out that it was from a scene in Kaala Patthar.

He can’t remember how it all began but a regular three-day film screening happened every summer in his old Dhanbad neighbourhood. It took place in a ground which was more like a small town square ringed by everybody’s back doors. Maybe it was ticketed, he can’t remember, but one film would be screened each night. A white sheet was strung across two poles; the projector sat in the middle of the crowd and fascinated them with its muscular whirr and its big beam of light that carried and threw the film onto the screen. Neighbours who couldn’t find a seat in the ground or were too lazy to get out of their homes would watch the film from their doorsteps and windows, and a sizeable number of them would be watching it from the other side of the screen where the film moved in the opposite direction. Night breeze would gently billow the screen and depending on its direction create concave or convex bulges, producing manic distortions of the moving images. As there was no money to hire a generator, the screening would stop whenever power went off. People would wait out in the ground or go to their houses to continue or finish chores. When power came, the screening would resume. It was quite a domestic affair.

Sandeep remembers watching a film called Chala Murari Hero Banne one such night.

He asked his neighbour sitting next to him.

Who is this hero?

Maybe it is Asrani. I don’t know.

The hero had curly hair and was fair skinned. Maybe it was Asrani.

The film is again forgotten like many others but one scene remains and now lives inside the beehive.

In the scene, the hero was eating only dal and roti. The dal had grit in it. He carefully broke the roti into small pieces and dipped them into the dal. He was eating very tiny portions and it struck Sandeep as highly unnatural. How could a man eat such tiny portions? Sandeep was also intrigued by how the hero chewed and talked simultaneously. It was something he’d never done in his life or imagined doing. After watching the film, he went home and imitated the eating manner of the hero. Over a few days, it became an obsessive practice. He would break his roti into small pieces, dip into his dal, chew and try to talk simultaneously just like he’d seen in the film. However, he never managed to master the ease with which the hero of Chala Murari Hero Ban Ne ate his unnaturally tiny portions of food and talked at the same time. Sandeep remains intrigued. He replays the scene and wonders how the hero pulled off such a feat. It was banal, unnatural and captivating.

THE INDIAN CINEMA BEEHIVE THAT LIVES INSIDE THE HEAD OF THEATRE ACTOR, ANU HR

Anu HR was born in 1977 in Bangalore in Karnataka and has never lived outside of the city. The first film she watched in a cinema hall was Gandhi where both she and her brother threw a fit and cried in the hall. Her parents had to take turns to babysit them outside the auditorium and watched the film in parts. Going to the movies was a rarity. She mostly watched her films on the television. She was brought up on a regular diet of Sunday afternoon regional films on Doordarshan. However, she remembers a trip to the infamous Sangam Theatre (it was rumoured that the place screened adult movies) to watch a Hollywood thriller. Her father had taken them to the theatre and his choice of venue made them curious. Nothing X-rated happened in the film though.

What lives inside her Indian Cinema beehive?

The wide U of a girl’s gravity-defying plait framed the body of a majestic staircase with a grand landing. The girl’s hair was long, fully oiled and single plaited with a tiny bow at the end of it. The plait, instead of falling on her back like any other normal plaits, curved into a tight U and hung mid-air. Anu wanted her plait to hang mid-air in the shape of a U, just like it did in the film. She oiled her hair, plaited it tightly and tied a ribbon at the end of it. However, her plait would never hang mid-air in the shape of a U. It was a Tamil film.

A priest held a baby at a burial ground. The teenage mother died at childbirth and the young father had committed suicide before their child was born. It was a Tamil film.

Atop a green hill, two women and a man stood talking. One woman held a child— she was the wife of the man who had an affair with the second woman who was now carrying his child. It was a Tamil film.

A girl in a white and red tant saree stood alone inside a cow shed. She was deaf and mute. Anu thinks it was based on a story by Rabindranath Tagore. It was a Bengali film.

A real swimming pool on screen. Anu was surprised to see a real swimming pool in an old Kannada film because she had always found they used random water tanks to film swimming scenes.

THE INDIAN CINEMA BEEHIVE THAT LIVES INSIDE THE HEAD OF THEATRE ACTOR, ARJUN RADHAKRISHNAN

Arjun Radhakrishnan was born in 1985 in Nagercoil in Tamil Nadu but spent his first five to six years in Kerala before shifting to Pune in 1991. His first ten years consisted of watching a lot of Malayalam films. He watched his first Hindi film on Doordarshan and it was Haathi Mere Saathi. He also watched many old Amitabh Bachchan films. Both his parents work and it is difficult for them to find time to go the movies regularly. Like Anu, most of their film watching happens on the television. However, his mother makes it a point to go watch superhit films that have word-of-mouth credibility or high ratings in film reviews.

He finds it nearly impossible to watch films at multiplexes. The tickets are way too expensive for him. When multiplexes entered Pune in 2002, morning shows were available at Rs. 49. He watched those morning shows. Now the morning show option is no longer available.

The primary image brooding in his Indian Cinema beehive is the larger than life image of a hero. He aspires to it because he has moved through much his life as an underdog. The image is not benign either— there is the hero holding an iron rod, ready to whack the villains. Mohanlal in Kireedam or Amitabh Bachchan in Agneepath.

A Malayalam film. A hero in a jeep is chasing a villain down a winding road. The image of the feet pressing the accelerator has never left his mind. He’s forgotten who played the hero and the villain in this one. Who were they? Now that he’s started to seriously revisit this memory, he desperately wants to know the names. He googles. Mammootty was chasing Rahman.

While he was devising several search strings to put the right name and face to his accelerator-happy hero, he suddenly remembered his old compulsion to take pictures of people and places so that he could recall everything perfectly. This exists no more.

How did it change then?

In The Namesake, the father takes his son to the far edge of a pier, after asking him to leave his camera with his mother who is standing on the shore. The father tells the son to just absorb the image and keep it in his head. They stand together and watch the sea and the horizon beyond.

For Arjun, this scene was an epiphany.

2 Questions with Ang Lee

Posted on November 9, 2012 by admin

Academy Award winning filmmaker Ang Lee’s most famous films have been based on literary or comic book work. Lee’s first film to be shot entirely and only in English was Jane Austen’s Sense & Sensibility. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was the fourth novel in the Crane Iron series, written by wuxia (heroic Chinese martial arts fiction) novelist Wang Du Lu. Hulk was the Marvel Comics superhero created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby. Brokeback Mountain was from a short story of the same name by Annie Proulx, while Lust, Caution was based on a novella by Eileen Chang. And his latest film Life of Pi is based on the Booker Prize winning bestseller by Yann Martel. Here are two quick questions to him on adapting the same.

Yann (Martel) said that the film was pretty close to, and true to, the story of Life of Pi. How much of your own interpretation did you give to it?

I think everything’s my interpretation because if you had someone else doing the movie, it would be different. We’re filmmakers. We’re not translators from words to cinema— we don’t do that. It’s… what moves us, what inspires us, we try to spell out cinematically. I think that’s all there is. I hope the movie stands on its own, even though it took from the book. It’s the same material but it’s different media .

Did you feel you had to be loyal to the text? Did expectations from readers weigh on your mind when you made the film? The book has millions of readers— it’s a bestseller.

I try to be loyal and it’s no use to think… It’s an inspiring book, so (it has to be) inspired. What do you mean readers? Millions of readers have millions of responses to it, they all feel a certain ownership to the thing. You can’t worry about that. I’m a reader, this is my two cents, my response. And I hope people love it. So far it’s been pretty good, we don’t have a wide distribution yet but we’ve exposed it a little bit at film festivals. So far people really didn’t compare it to the book. I guess that means it’s been loyal.

Alyssa Lobo and Meryl Mary Sebastian

Cinema’s Most Iconic Fashion Moment

Posted on November 9, 2012 by admin

We ask fashion designers to share their favourite fashion moment or style statement from the movies

“My favourite style statement film is (Luchino) Visconti’s The Leopard. All through the film one is seduced by beauty… of the setting, the interiors, the vistas, the actors and the clothes. Though the film is in Italian, language does not matter at all. Style needs no language to make it understood.”

—Wendell Rodricks is one of India’s best-known fashion designers. He lives in the village of Colvale, in Goa.

TBIP Jabs & Jabber

Posted on October 26, 2012 by admin

A fun and freewheeling chat between Rahul Bose, Aseem Chhabra and TBIP editors Pragya Tiwari and Rishi Majumder on what the 14th Mumbai Film Festival got right and what it got wrong

Pragya Tiwari: Ok. Opening ceremony, since that is the one thing that we all watched, and opening film. Thoughts?

Aseem Chhabra (to Rahul): You want to start?

Rahul Bose: Well, I…. look just to have the opening ceremony at the Jamshed Bhabha (Auditorium) was something that, you know… it is a crying need for us to mount something well in the beginning. So I think that that auditorium, that entire complex being used, is a huge feather in their cap. I’m sure Mr. (Shyam) Benegal had something to do with it but I can’t swear by that.
So I thought that the venue was great, very well attended. As far as the actual Lifetime Achievement Award and things go, I think that, personally, Zhang Yimou, is somebody who in the beginning made films like Raise the Red Lantern which really, sort of, showed you a new lens. But I’m not so sure about his later work. Lifetime Achievement Awards will always remain bones of contention. I’m not… I don’t think I’m contentious about it. I think he deserves it for his earlier work and less for the big people-flying-across-the-air kind of work.

AC: People flying across the air was fine. I actually love them. I didn’t really care for his last film, The Flowers of War. It’s a very, sort of, important interesting theme but it just lacked the dramatic content. But, you know, people flying across the air with the swords, there was a lot of art in what he did.
But he evolved from those very important social themes.

PT: But when we’re talking about a Lifetime Achievement Award I also feel like we’re rewarding, or talking about a larger context in which this person worked.
They were known as the second generation?

AC: The Fourth Generation.

Rishi Majumder: The Fifth Generation, after the Cultural Revolution.

RB: I’m not even making a political comment on what he did in the Beijing closing ceremony (at the Olympics). Lets not even get into that. We’re talking about his achievement as a filmmaker. And as a filmmaker, I think there is no question that it’s a gigantic piece of work.

PT: And he’s also representative of that generation of filmmakers. The Fifth Generation that came out of the Cultural Revolution. And they were the first guys who were negotiating a new language for cinema and the new political conditions. So I think somewhere that is also a part of it. I’m not saying that’s at the centre of it, but I’m saying that it’s also a part.

AC: And also from China’s perspective, he is the first guy in the last two decades who actually brought forth Chinese cinema, it’s almost like the early (19)50s when Kurosawa brought Japanese films to world cinema. Of course, there were Japanese films being made before. And there have been many other Chinese filmmakers after him, but the scale at which he made the films, even the smaller ones, they had this appeal, they moved out of just being vis-a-vis Chinese films. They had, sort of, a universal unity. So, I don’t know why he was picked. I don’t want to be a cynic, but maybe because he was available.

(Laughter)

PT: You’re not being cynical. You know the story. You’re not being cynical…

AC: I’m a huge fan of his, so…

RB: I thought introducing the jury was a lovely idea which, maybe, happens at every festival. But somehow, here it seemed to have a ceremony that I don’t associate with other festivals. Does it happen every festival?

RM: Lighting the lamp?

RB: No, when they introduce the Jury.

AC: I don’t know. I’ve never been to Cannes, but i think they do it there.

RM: I think they introduced the Jury in other festivals as well.

AC: Berlin does that also.

RB: In that case, maybe they do it everywhere, but it’s very nice to see the faces behind who…

PT: That is wonderful. That is wonderful. I think the lamp-lighting and all of that, there was a lot of comic reverence there, including the plastic not coming off… (the lifetime achievement trophy at the time of presentation).

RB: Lamp lighting has, like many things in a secular country—where secularism means ‘being equally closed to every religion’ versus the French version of secularism which is ‘equally distant from every religion’—our country started with Mahatma Gandhi. The definition of secularism was: being very close. In a majority, in a society where the majority is Hindu, you are going to have a lot of the majoritarian cultural mores infiltrating into the so-called secular space. I have written a whole article about it. Why don’t we ever see an Islamic ritual that is permeated across the Indian spectrum of religions? Or for that matter, Zoroastrian. The answer obviously is that even in England, and most often in America, the Prime Minister goes to church. He actually goes to church every weekend or whatever. And says ‘thank you God’, and all that stuff happens, right? So there is a much greater connection between religion and state there. I’m not saying it’s great but it’s greater. Lamp-lighting is one of those things that has become ‘Ah, this is Indian’. And it seems very HIndu. And as Aseem says very rightly, it’s a Hindu tradition. You could actually just recite poetry for the opening ceremony.

RM: Which might have been preferable actually.

PT: But to be fair, there is a line, like with everything. See with lamp-lighting, for example, a lot religions in India, the way they are practiced, a lot of rituals are actually common. Like the lighting of fire is common. Parsis worship fire. I’m saying the act of lighting the lamp may not be, but Parsis worship the fire. Hindus light a lamp and most dargas have the same ritual of lighting a lamp, or lighting a dhoop (an incense stick), or whatever. So I think that in India, it’s what you are choosing. I was at the Habitat (the India Habitat Centre) for something and this was a function for street kids organized by street kids, the majority were Muslim, because they were from the slums, and the thing organized was to sing to Ganpati. So it was Jaidev Jaidev… (a Hindu hymn) and there was a Ganpati. There was an idol there, and the whole dance was organized. That I felt was perhaps…

AC: Obviously Hindu?

PT: Yes, because it doesn’t offend anyone’s sensibilities to light the lamp. I don’t think that it does.

RB: Again, its the lens you look at it from. For example, I know this lady who works for a friend of mine and she converted from Hinduism to Christianity and her name became Mary. But when it came to Diwali she asked for a Diwali holiday. So my friend said “but Mary you’re Christian”. She said: “naam badal gaya, iska matlab dharm nahi badla (just because the name has changed, it doesn’t mean thereligious duties/way of life have changed too)”.

AC: That’s a great quote.

RB: It’s a fantastic quote because there is a whole ocean of meaning beneath that. It could well be that so many idol makers are Muslim.

RM: The complexity of secularism…

RB: There are so many wonderful threads of actual secularism that takes place in this country which is not something that anybody is talking about. How does the flower get sold in a market? You see where it starts from, and you’ll see it goes through at least three different religions.

PT: As long as it’s a matter of choice, it’s perfectly fine. When it’s not then it’s a problem.

RB: I disagree. I grew up in a convent school, I said the Lord’s prayer everyday— but it’s not choice: the fact that I said the Lord’s prayer everyday and sang to Christ. I sang every single hymn to Christ.

PT: But, Rahul, I felt that too and I feel that still. But I’m saying, maybe that is our perspective as the majority. I mean, you and me are in the majority and it doesn’t threaten us in any way to go to church. But coming back to the question…

AC: I’m sorry. The point you made, the question you asked about the opening ceremony and the opening night film (Silver Linings Playbook). I want to touch upon the opening night film. I think it came from Toronto (the Toronto International Film Festival), hugely popular, won the Audience Award and I can see why. I mean, its not the greatest film ever made but I did laugh a lot. It was overstretched at times. I thought it was very romantic. But I think for the opening night of the film festival, it was the right choice actually because it’s not supposed to set the mood for the rest of the festival but it’s supposed to be a celebration of cinema and they picked, sort of a popular film… and the audience absolutely loved it. Even last year, Moneyball, which was a more… heftier film and was the right choice. Very impressive, the films they got even for the opening night.

RB: MAMI really came from being a little infant to this huge entity, I think 2 years ago. This year the selection of films was just incredible. I mean to get those films and filmmakers here is something with which India struggled. Kerala did it with a modicum of success, has been doing it. But now the festival really has done it. Suddenly, BOOM! It’s not just the infusion of money, I think it’s also got to do with taste. The kind of taste that they have shown. Today, I mean I was at the Jury at the Kerala Film festival, and I would be hard pressed to choose between the two, but the kind of quality they have actually shown… (Abbas) Kiarostami, (Mohsen) Makhmalbaf, you have everyone here and I agree with Aseem, that the opening night film at the festival was spot-on. It had big-ness, it had the crowd-pleasing-ness, yet it wasn’t Rocky 4. So it was a great choice.

PT: Yes I think it was a great choice.

RM: Actually what we’re saying about the opening night raises an interesting question which then links up to Zhang Yimou being awarded the Lifetime Achievement. It was Oliver Stone last year. One remembers 4-5 years ago it was Majid Majidi. Do you think that the focus is shifting to something which, like you said, is not Rocky, but far more mainstream, and the way the festival is projecting itself?

AC: The rest of the films are not necessarily, altogether, mainstream this year. They had some very… they had some brilliant… they finally showed Amour yesterday. Very serious, very important film…

PT: It’s how we define mainstream. I mean, I would say that (Michael) Haneke or Zhang Yimou are mainstream. Mainstream is actually a word that can be interpreted very differently.

AC: Mainstream in the art house circuits.

RM: Exactly.

PT: Yes. So he is mainstream in the art house sense.

RB: I have just watched 13 films and you don’t know any of those filmmakers.

RM: Right.

RB: It’s an extraordinary collection to have. So just because those 13 films don’t open the festival on the first night… Ultimately, as Aseem very rightly put it… Cannes (the Festival de Cannes) has had some shocking opening films. The tradition of opening films is that the selection doesn’t necessarily translate into the identity of the film. So one should be forgiving because it’s always in a big hall. Thousand people, two thousand people. There has to be an appeal to a certain broad spectrum. You know, you are not going to turn around and show some slit-your-throat Scandinavian film.

PT: Which you will be watching back to back in the next 5 days.

AC: Well I saw Holy Motors. Did you see that?

PT (laughs): Yes I saw Holy Motors. And I also know that you’re the only person on twitter…

AC: Well at least I had the courage to say: WTF (What The Fuck). What with people going ‘It’s brilliant… ‘

PT: Actually I liked it, but we’ll come to that.

RB: You like the film?

AC: It’s in my top ten list of most bizarre films I have ever seen.

PT: I find that director extremely intriguing but we will come to that for sure. Okay, the ‘sections’ and the ‘selections’. Whats the difference between the ‘sections’ and the ‘selections’ do you know? There are the competitive sections…

AC: There is the International Competition and the Indian Competition.

RB: I have no clue.

PT: There is India Gold.

RM: There is Dimensons Mumbai.

RB: Short film festival. Short film competition.

PT: Dimensions Mumbai that is the short films on Bombay by first time filmmakers.

RM: No, that’s just short films on Mumbai.

PT: Okay. Then there is the Celebrate Age which I am assuming is related to age or specific to elderly people, I’m not sure. Those are the four categories. Then you have Retrospectives, New Faces in Indian Cinema. Above the Cut which is basically films that did not make it to the International Competition and World Cinema, which I’m guessing is a catch-all category. But then there is something called the ‘selections’ which, if you go to their website, is Rendezvous with French cinema, Italian cinema, Restore Classics, India Film Worldwide, The Real Reel, The Pusan Selection, 100 years of Cinema.

AC: Afghan..

PT: …and the very unfortunately named Kabul Fresh. I’m not really sure what the difference is between the selections and the sections. Are they all different categories?

RB: I have no clue.

AC: I have no clue how all it is done but I personally feel that, as much as the programming is really really good—this is my second year here—I found the festival trying to be very ambitious. There is just way too many. I mean it’s remarkable that they have the silent films and the restored films. I think the MAMI should have those in many festivals through the year. I think the people should go see… some of the Italian films— the subtitles weren’t working, but the restored films— they were brilliant. And they are being shown only once this part of the town and they’ll never come to Mumbai. I think they are in New York. I live there so one can still see them. I think there was too much happening. One retrospective, two retrospectives is good. I don’t know. What do you think about it?

RB: I agree with you. I think it would be lovely if many of these selections/sections would be repeated. It’s like once you look at the buffet, and you’re so happy that next week there is just the rogan josh.

AC: You go to refill your plate only with two things.

PT: I completely agree there definitely should be mini festivals around the year. And you always face this. Even in (the) Jaipur (Literature Festival), it can be frustrating, there are times, when you go from one venue to other…

RM: Your three favourite authors talking at the same time.

PT: This is way too much. There is just no way.

AC: No matter which festival you go to, you never can watch all the films.

PT: But if they have such a wealth of selection then at least some of these… New cinema from Afghanistan or things they were showing from the (19)20s and the (19)30s which is priceless. I mean I have no idea of the Italian selection of films.

RB: Yes, the Italian selection was delectable. Oof!

AC: Yeah the Italian films, some of those films were pulled out, they had subtitling problems. I think what is even more important is that— last year I was at Versova Cinemax, and it’s the audience that I was seeing. Young 20-something, 30-something year old budding fiilmmakers. All of them, college students who are writing scripts, people who, like Rahul, have been in the film industry. There are so many people. But most people try and go for what is the most popular film. I mean I didn’t go for the Amour screening yesterday because I had already seen it but I think there was a huge demand for that. In the process what happens is that some of the old restored classics get neglected. Once Upon A Time In America was shown and I was dying to see it and I didn’t end up seeing it. I have seen it twice before. But there was another new film. Even I went for the new film. I think specially the restored classics should be shown in a space where people can only focus on that. People will (also) run to see the latest film from Cannes because that will never come here in any case. So some spacing needs to be done organizationally.

PT: It’s not just the fact that the film won’t come here. I think also the lure of the new films, or the foreign films, is also because of censorship. Because you know a lot of films are not going to… for example the reason I was really upset when I met you that day, when I couldn’t watch Miss Lovely, was because I had no idea what form it would finally take, when it is released. How much of it is going to be cut.

RM: Or Shahid.

PT: Shahid I don’t know. I think Shahid should get away.

AC: There may be some language issues but there is no sex in it.

RM: Before watching it we were scared— what if it doesn’t release or they cut certain parts of it…

PT: Also, because I’m not sure the case (with Shahid) is subjudice in that extreme way, so it should be fine. So I think that also becomes a big concern. These are films we are not going to be able to see on the big screen because they are going to be, if they are ever going to be released, there are going to be with so many cuts that, you know…

AC: All people who are aiming to be filmmakers should see (Luchino) Visconti’s The Leopard. The three hour version of it.

PT: Of course. Of course. Anybody should be able to see it.

AC: I don’t know how many went to see it. Film festivals are also part of educating…

PT: Or Kalpana…

AC: Kalpana. I don’t know how many people went to see them.

PT: So what could be done differently? What do we think could be done differently?

AC: I have a few things but Rahul can talk first.

RB: No, no. You are a programmer, you have a clearer perspective.

AC: I think that the programming was very very strong, the selection was very strong this year and even last year. I think organizationally there are some major issues and I’ll say so openly. Practically everyday screenings were being cancelled. I went the first day, the first day was last Friday. The first film I went to see was an Iranian film. Nira Benegal was with me and we were very excited to see that. Ten minutes into the film and: no subtitle. The subtitles would not come. And yesterday it happened with another French film and I have heard many people complain about the aspect ratios of the subtitles. You know, it’s very important that every print should be tested. You should get the prints in advance and, you know, these multiplexes can show Hollywood films and Bollywood films but they also need to be trained to show other foreign language films with subtitles. Very important. All of that requires a different kind of skill set than just selection and I think, from the organizational point of view, this festival needs to grow up more. I know it will because it’s a very ambitious festival.

PT: Specifically, in relation to technical glitches, the technical side needs to, sort of…

AC: The many many technical glitches or prints arrived that didn’t have subtitles, when they should have arrived 2 weeks ago, 3 weeks ago, so you should have been able to see them.

PT: Also Taste of Money, just right before the climax the film went off.

AC: Right, and people left. And I actually came back and realized the film was still going on.

PT: Yeah, actually, a lot of people thought the film was over. Then they came back.

RM: Also in Girish Kasaravalli’s film (Kurmavatara) some of the actors’ heads got sort of chopped of, a bit…

PT: Yeah stuff like that.

RM: Thats something, you know, when you have a festival that is so ambitious and you have fabulous films then I feel it’s the finishing touch, it’s about the last mile…

RB: Look it’s the little things that can happen and you can’t predict it. I mean, in my debut film, its a film called Everyone Says I’m Fine, and my debut screening was in Toronto, at TIFF (the Toronto International Film Festival). And the sound went off. Its a 6.1 mixed film and the entire sound collapsed and they refused to acknowledge (it). I went to them and I said: you’re actually playing it from the front two speakers, mono style, literally from the 1920s. I said people couldn’t hear anything because it was mixed. There was the sound of salon machines going on, there was music in the salon, the sound of the person talking, the sound of traffic outside as the door opens and shuts. So there were four levels of sound that were all mixed up and presented in the front two speakers. And the projectionists, they refused to… they said “it cannot happen, our system cannot collapse” and I told them “it definitely has, what are you going to do about it” and they said “there is nothing we can do about it”. The whole film, completely, I mean, there is no defence. We got distribution, we got some wonderful reviews, and some not good reveiws, forget all that. The point is that it happened in Toronto. It slaughtered a guy’s opening film on the opening night. Do I hold it against them? Of course not. It’s a technical issue. The next day they came and said the whole box had burnt down. It’s never happened in their history. So I said… what can you do? So those little issues of heads being cut off and stuff, I think we can be forgiving about. Aseem makes the larger issues. Subtitling the film, you obviously expect, because you want people to see and understand the movie. It’s as simple as that. The only aspect I can speak of about the festival is as the member of the Jury and how that whole thing has been handled. It’s been flawless, really flawless. Its unbelievable how well planned they are.. they are juggling four juries going to four venues, watching approximately 70-80 films.

AC: Have you seen the films in the hotels or in the theatres?

RB: In the theatres. All in the theatres.

AC: Oh with the audience.

RB: No separate jury screenings at mini-theatres across the city, South Bombay. So, for them to juggle—and we keep bumping into other juries—it must have been a logistical nightmare in itself, this little thing. But exquisitely organized without the shadow of a single glitch. Everything happened on time, everybody is waiting and at all the venues the screenings have been going really well. So if I was to look at it, because I haven’t been anywhere else, I haven’t had a moment to breathe, I would say that these guys really know their stuff on this side. Of course, I’m aware…

PT: Which is absolutely great to hear. But coming back to subtitling for a minute, I was wondering what the subtitling policy is. Because I know the Hindi films are subtitled, the regional films are subtitled, the foreign films are subtitled but the English films are not subtitled which I’m not sure…

RB: Where are they subtitled anywhere in the world?

AC: No, in India, now, Hollywood films are being subtitled in India.

PT: If you want to watch The Dark Knight Rises in Delhi or Bombay, there’ll be ‘n’ number of screens..

RB: My question is where else in the world? I have never seen English films be subtitled anywhere else in the English speaking world…

AC: Except in India and what’s happened in India is that, I guess the studios have realized…

RB: You can’t understand the American accent.

AC: Well, yeah and you can really access a larger audience, people who think they understand English and if you give them the chance… Hey I like subtitles also. If you show me an Irish film, I want subtitles although they speak in English.

PT: I like subtitles. Even when I get it. I think I don’t like missing dialogues. But that apart, I’m wondering… if we’re subtitling Hindi films, we’re subtitling Shahid and showing it at MAMI, I’m not sure why On The Road was not subtitled or Silver Linings Playbook. English films are the only films which I have seen that have not been subtitled in the festival, which is obviously making the assumption that anyone coming to the festival understands English as a common language. Every other language, including Hindi, is not common to everybody else. I was actually afraid the Hindi films would not be subtitled which, fortunately they were, but that is a very strange decision.

AC: I don’t think that it’s a strange decision because that’s what’s happening in the commercial market in India. As Rahul said, where else are English films…

RB: They assume that if you can read English, you can understand English also. Why are you making a distinction? I’m saying they assume that if giving subtitles helps you— if you can read the damn thing, you can definitely understand the damn thing. The people who can understand spoken English are far greater than the people who can read English.

AC: Well, the other thing is…..

PT: But I’m saying there are so many filmmakers who cannot speak English very well.

AC: There are a few, well like Zhang Yimou, who probably cannot speak it very well. Is he still around? Has he left?

PT: No, but I’m saying, I’m just wondering if it makes sense because you are subtitling everything. How can you not subtitle that as well? Because you’re subtitling everything else in English…

RB: And I can counter argue that I hate subtitles because it makes me look here when the filmmaker wants me to look there. So, if it’s a language I understand, take them off. Let me see the cinema. I might miss a word or two. But, you know, I actually try my best to watch a film without subtitles because which filmmaker wants a guy to spend half his time looking at the words.

AC: I have seen, in Puerto Rico (The Puerto Rico International Film Festival), films—some Hollywood… some Tom Cruise film, I forget, and there subtitles were in Spanish and I don’t read Spanish, I don’t understand Spanish but I’m also trying to read that than listening to the film.

PT (laughs): That is way more distracting…

AC: Can I make one more point about the operational point? I think, one of the things that the festival needs to do is that, at the festival there were many glitches—I keep hearing from people—they were often because of the poor manager at INOX who is clueless about what is happening, and people want to know, to talk to the people who are running the operations. I think the festival needs to have more responsible people who actually can make decisions and are there and can handle technical issues and can give answers to the audience. Because the audience is very confused about what is happening. Why are the screenings being cancelled again and again? The Conformist screening was cancelled.

PT: The Miss Lovely screening was cancelled at Versova.

RB: Oh really?

AC: Yeah

RB: Why was that?

PT: Well the festival issued a statement saying that Ashim (Ahluwalia) did not want to show it again.

RB: Then how come they programmed it?

AC: Well, they programmed it. I don’t know…

PT: It eventually went on. Somebody said that Ashim wasn’t happy with the slot. Nobody really knows, but that’s what the festival said. Yeah, lots of cancellations but its always nice to know why. I’d gone there at 10, in the morning, woken up at 7 in the morning, stood in line, only to find that…

RB: Which were the cinema halls in the North in the festival?

PT: It was Cinemax Versova, Cinemax in Sion. INOX in town. Liberty… and Liberty lot of the screenings were cancelled because of technical issues.

RM: One whole day at Liberty.

AC: It’s been pretty odd how many cancellations have been happening. Everyday, practically. And yet, people are still patient, people are still lining up. It’s just such a rare opportunity to see these films.

RM: And the spread (of films).

AC: That’s why I was saying, that if there was any way to get across to the audience and explain to them what is going wrong, I think people would be a little bit calmer.

PT: Yeah, of course. It’s always better, which I think they were trying to do it on Twitter, on Facebook— they had a note by the festival Director saying what went wrong where, which is, I think, very graceful. But one issue that, if I had an issue with the festival, would not be the with festival itself. I feel like there was room to have more interactions, you know. I wish there were more interactions, more seminars, more talks because you have a lot of people coming down and I would also like hear them. I would also like to hear panel discussions. So if things like that could go on in the side, or if there was more scope to perhaps meet them formally and informally. I mean, festivals like Cannes have a lot of parties that are organized by corporates, so there is a lot of scope to network as well. That’s also an important aspect of festivals, The business part of it, to be able to sell your film. I mean, there is the Film Mart, the one formal space. But I think that is one thing. Because there was a whole bunch of people here, and a lot of people were like “oh this one is here as well. I couldn’t meet them”. So I think that would also be a…..

AC: There has to be space where you can have that. It doesn’t have to be parties or things like that. It could be this concept of an open bar— which we have in America, where in the little festival I organized (the New York Indian Film Festival) and Rahul has been there and we do it at the Tribeca cinemas— where there is a bar at the back and some nights, events are sponsored by restaurants, there is some food, there is some beer, other than it’s just an open bar. And people just want to be able to mingle.

RB: It’s not a little festival, it’s a wonderful festival.

AC: Thank you. But there, if you look at the Bhabha theatre (the Jamshed Bhabha Theatre, at the NCPA), there people are mingling in the lobby right there and I actually ended up….

RB: I think that what Aseem does very successfully at NYIFF is what the really big film festivals have already done for years, every morning in Toronto we used to walk into the Festival badge holder’s lounge, before you went to all your screenings, you have your festival brochure with you, everybody would come, get a cup of coffee, get a croissant or something. And there was food, like 18 hours a day, in that place. So you’ve met, touched base: ‘Kya dekh rahe ho (what are you watching)? Where are you going? Okay fine, lets meet up.’ So there was a place to touch base and then you again touched base in the evening at a party.

PT: Which is what Osian’s (The Osian’s Cinefan Film Festival) also does.

RB: It’s really simple for them to do. And, god knows, MAMI is so well-funded, they just need to have that space where everyone who is an accredited festival goer can walk in and walk out of. There is a… what do you call them… the ones who have a delegate pass, and an industry pass. So you have two— where the business of cinema is conducted, that’s a lounge, and there are two lounges. And you just go there every morning, yawn wake up there and then take off.

PT: Because that’s what’s so great about Jaipur (The Jaipur Literature Festival), right? That you can actually ….. the literature festival.

RB: Is there a lounge there?

PT: Well, there isn’t a (special lounge)… they keep it extremely egalitarian. So they don’t reserve spaces

RB: One of the amazing things about book festivals is that you can have it in little rooms all over the place.

PT: Yes

RB: Here, in cinema, you have to travel to cinema houses. That’s where the great need for a place arises where everybody can come in the morning, start, eat a little…

PT: But Jaipur had that Flow, that part, that café, you know right at the back where…

RB: I know. Pragya I don’t think that you can compare a book festival with a film festival.

PT: No, I’m just talking about the fact that there’s this space to mingle and talk and interact and that adds so much.

RB: Jaipur’s Flow is, you pay at the restaurant. I’m making a different point. I’m saying here is a place where you walk in for free, you’re there because you’re a delegate either with the artistic side of cinema or the business side. You walk in everyday, there’s always coffee and tea, and beer, in fact, sponsored by whoever it maybe. So even between screenings when you go in there just to go to the restroom, come out, stuff like that, it’s always central. I would position this one at NCPA.

AC: And that’s why NCPA has been… and you know what I find very important for me, for instance in those kind of settings, is that you talk to somebody… Anurag Kashyap for instance, has influenced me so many times, to change what film I’m going to see. He said “Horror film dekni hai” and you go to see the horror film or something like that. Last minute, you know, your plans change because somebody else recommends something and you’re like, okay, maybe I should go check that out.

RB: And you know a lot of business is done there, because in this business it’s about relationships. It’s about…

RM: Keeping it very free flowing…

RB: If a director likes an actor, he will repeat that actor in three or four films despite that actor not being the best person for that role. A producer works with a director although the director’s new film is of a genre the producer’s never touched— because there’s a relationship. He (Aseem) will program, and I’m not saying this is partiality, it happens, he will look forward to programming X filmmaker’s work because he loved the previous piece of work and they had a coffee together and they walked and saw a horror film together. You know, this is how it works, but it’s splendid. These are the little tendrils that happen. The industry has always worked on this. You turn around and say my film didn’t turn out well— Aseem, you gave me 10 crores to make my film, I can give you 5 back now. On the next film, which you would have paid 10 crores for, only pay me 5.

AC: Right.

RB: But that only happens when you have an actual one to one relationship.

PT: Absolutely.

RB: Festivals are… I know Andre Turpin, the French-Canadian, from Montreal, because we drank all night one weekend. That is where the actual sense of community and business and exciting collaborations happen. So I really think that that’s one thing that needs to be done.

PT: And can be easily done.

AC: Then there were quite a few panels, I think one or two may have gotten cancelled because of Yash Chopra’s death. So there was that, and I actually went for half an hour for a panel on film restoration.

RM: Which was actually very good I heard.

AC: Which I found very interesting. I had to leave early because in between films I had lunch. And it was very interesting to hear different perspectives from people from outside India. There were quite a few filmmakers. I mean, it would have been great… I don’t know, did they have just one on one conversations?

PT: They had something called the Masterclasses, which were also with Indian filmmakers or Indian film personalities— Jaya (Bachchan) for instance.

AC: Yeah Jaya Bachchan and Geoffrey Gilmore.

PT: And just, not really, not any panel discussions or any…

AC: The director of Taste Of Money was here, he was on the jury also.

RB: Im Sang-soo. Declan Quinn is here. He’s a fantastic resource.

AC: He’s worked in Indian cinema, he’s done lots of Indian films.

RB: Mira’s (Nair) films

PT: Imagine all the young filmmakers who’d absolutely love to come and listen to him talk and just listen to him, and what he has to say and even if he was on a panel, if there was an open interview format with Declan talking to somebody about his work and about what he thinks about stuff. I think I would…

AC: Geoff Gilmore who really built Sundance to where it is today and is heading Tribeca, again he is busy with his jury duty. But it would have been fantastic.

RB: We finish our duties by 6. So an evening session…

AC: It would be fantastic if he had just just talked about film festivals, what they do to cinema, independent cinema movements, it would be fantastic.

PT: I would have attended those over the films because I can still watch…

RM: You can catch the films (later) possibly. I think the film restoration session is a case in point something very interesting happened there, which I heard about—I didn’t attend the session—which is that Dev Benegal stood up from the audience and shared his own story and spoke about…

AC: There’s a film called English August, with this gentleman also (Rahul Bose), which Dev is desperately trying to restore.

RB: Oh is he?

AC: Yeah the print is in a bad state

RM: …so he spoke about a Satyajit Ray film which he found just lying under some producer’s bed in a very bad state. But the point being that it’s that kind of interaction that really makes a festive space come alive. To have an interaction there, that has people reacting from the audience. It sort of creates that atmosphere.

PT: That’s what gives you stories, you know…

RM: …to tell, and that’s what makes you remember festivals.

PT: One thing that I found curious, and this is not a good or a bad thing, this not a criticism, is that given that this festival is in Bombay, which is the capital of film glamour in India, when you compare it to a glamourous festival like Cannes, glamour is not something you associate with this festival and I found that very, very curious

AC: We had Sridevi the first day and that is quite glamourous.

RM: And there was a red carpet.

PT: That’s because we love Sridevi.

AC: Are you trying to say that there’s no Shah Rukh Khans and Aamir Khans is that what you’re saying?

PT: I don’t think I’m trying to say that the presence of X star or Y star… I’m talking about glamour on the whole, stars, of course, are a part of that.

RB: It’s to MAMIs’ credit that it’s never needed glamour to be a powerful festival and it continues to be to its credit. Glamour can only add. But at a certain point it can even detract. And you might have asked another question, like: Weren’t there just too many Bollywood film stars at this festival? Hasn’t it skewed the whole seriousness? Look how it was in 2012. So I’m saying at this point in time I think they’ve got it just right. It’s about the cinema. It’s about the films, it’s about the films, it’s about the films. All we do is we talk, if you read or hear anything about MAMI it’s about the films, about the conversations…

PT: It’s open to all. I mean if there were actors, stars whoever, if they were interested in watching films they can come and check it out.

AC: You know Pragya, sorry for cutting you but when you talk about glamour, you know to me… I guess the presence of star makes a difference but the opening night, there was a point where I had stepped out and some friends were smoking, I don’t smoke, because smoking kills.

(laughter)

PT: Well done

AC: And within minutes, there were Shridhar Raghavan, there was Sriram Raghavan, there was Sudhir Mishra, there was Vikramaditya Motwane, there was Rahul Bose. There was a lot of star power, in that sense there. That’s what makes the festival interesting, we don’t need to do… you can have… and all these people are accessible, people were walking up and talking to them. I was talking to Ranvir Shorey the other day and people kept walking up and asking to take pictures with him. That’s what makes glamour also.

PT: Of course it does.

RB: I would fundamentally disagree with you, because I don’t think any of us, any of the names you mentioned, are remotely glamourous.

AC: But that’s what makes it so glamourous, that you guys are there to be able to talk…

RB: We’re different kind of guys and this question comes from the obvious, like look: is it a good thing, is it a bad thing? I think neither. It’s a thing. And Cannes went one way and Toronto made a very conscious decision to go that way. About a decade ago, before that when I first went in 1995, it was a different feel when David Overby and all were running it. These are decisions that you take.

PT: It’s about the focus, you know Aseem I’d like to reiterate that it’s not about… there could have been a Shah Rukh Khan watching a film, it’s not a Shah Rukh Khan’s presence, it’s not about lesser rated star, it’s about the emphasis. Cannes has that whole thing where there will be a whole section of people, who wore what, the red carpet, you know all of that, which is a huge draw at a festival.

RB: Don’t we have enough of it in this city?

PT: Exactly. I’m not saying it’s a good or bad thing. It’s just interesting to me that it’s not a part of MAMI.

AC: I went to FICCI FRAMES last year, 2011. And some of it was very good, some of it was whatever. There was a panel which Karan Johar moderated with the young actors and there was a presence and that was the first time I met Vikram Motwane for instance. Closing night, Shah Rukh Khan turns up and it’s hysteria. Journalists were clamoring to be in the first row, everybody wanted to dance with Shah Rukh, I mean what happens is that that’s the other part of it. If you bring these stars it takes the total attention away from what this event is because we have… I also wanted to sit close to watch Shah Rukh dance… and I’m not saying that it was just other journalists. It sort of also takes the mood away from what we are here for, if you bring them.

PT: I agree, because there’s no such thing as controlled hysteria in India. Perhaps there is a degree of control to hysteria or star hysteria when we go to Cannes.

RB: It can happen but in Bombay, you have massive glamourous occasions. The Filmfare Awards, for instance. So you get… we get our dose of glamour. I don’t think we’re lacking it.

PT: My question was more about the emphasis. The same actress, one actress who attended Toronto and who was also watching all the films at MAMI was obsessing for 2 months before Toronto about what she’s going to wear every morning, every evening and she was here in jeans, in a T-shirt, for every screening.

RB: Fantastic, fantastic…

PT: And this is the same actress, who’d just come from Toronto. So I’m saying that is the difference. It’s not about the presence of that actress, it’s about how she…

RB: Lovely, that’s a compliment to MAMI.

AC: To me the greatest thing that I noticed this year and last year when you see the faces of people standing in the lines, and they’re young students, college students. This festival is 8 days long. So thousand plus rupees for 8 days of— you can see 5 times 8, that’s 40 films you can possibly see. It is remarkable how egalitarian this festival is. I mean I know other film festivals abroad also, when you talk about Cannes— those are expensive tickets…

PT: That’s very important… I think it’s a very well priced festival.

AC: And the films are reaching people who should be seeing them.

PT: Absolutely. I think that’s a very good point. That for 1200 rupees you could buy a season pass and you can actually watch (out of) 100 movies if you like, I think that’s fantastic.

AC: That’s really great, I mean obviously (that) Reliance is (behind this is) very well, the festival is very well funded. But it’s good that they’re making it available to everybody. Because film festivals can be very elitist also.

PT: I wanted to talk a little bit about the standing of this festival internationally, which you guys are in a much better position to talk on. So there’s not much, I think we can add. But my question really is about how it compares with festivals abroad, but more than that is it on it’s way to, and on the right way perhaps, to make its… to position itself as one of the big international festivals worldwide? Because it really matters if people also want to start saying alongside selection at Cannes, selection at Sundance, they also want to say film selection at MAMI and not just Indian films but films abroad as well. That is what will…

RM: To market them…

PT: To market them, because that is what will give it that standing.

RB: Look, one would like to believe that the heart of a great festival is great programming. But the heft of the festival, as opposed to the heart of the festival, is in the business. So people will come here saying this is a place to do business in. If you don’t have that, it’s never going to be one of the top festivals of the world. Be very certain about that. Because everybody including the stars now, will go into a place because they know that once they’re there, there’s going to be enormous business being interacted for that film. The business end of festivals, I think Indian festivals in general have not laid emphasis on this much. I was discussing this with the jury in fact yesterday, quite informally, and the first thing to get right is the heart of the festival: you have Amour, you have Makhmalbaf, you have Zhang Yimou, whoever it might be, right? You have these people, you have their films, so when somebody looks at the brochure and says ‘Huh, this is a pretty decent festival’. But what about the guy who’s doing business? Then you start working on the business side. It takes time for festivals. It took time for Toronto also. How do we organize it in a way that people can come in here and do business? Where is the lounge? Where is the place where they meet? Where are the industry screenings? Where are the industry panels? Where are the industry conversations? Where can those money boys, the suits, sit and crack deals? How do we make it attractive for the suits to come here? It could not just be your film— we can programme your film at MAMI. It has to be something else. What it is— I don’t know. Some people throw in free trips, some people throw in this and that. But you have to make it attractive because they’re always going to say: I’ll come if he comes, he’ll come if she comes, she comes if he comes and then they make a decision, they talk to each other. These guys will talk and say: “Are you going to be at Cannes? I’m gonna see you at Cannes, I’m gonna give Venice a skip.” This is how they talk. Aseem knows about this from the inside. That part of it, the heft of the festival, is defined by the business it does. It is never defined by the films that it gets. The heart is there. It’s very important to have that first. MAMI has the first part, is well on it’s way to doing the first part. The second part is where now, it’s tough work, it’s really hard work and it requires a different kind of noose.

AC: What I’m finding very interesting is, as the Indian market is becoming more and more important. I mean Tom Cruise did come here to promote his Mission Impossible 4, I believe Ang Lee is supposed to come here later this week or early next week to promote Life of Pi. Ang Lee doesn’t need to come here to promote Life of Pi but he’s still coming here, thinking the Indian market is important enough. If that is so, that could certainly translate eventually into a film festival of this size to be able to have more presence of industry and, as Rahul was saying, people who may not even have films showing here.

RB: No Aseem, it’s different. San Sebastian (where the San Sebastian Film Festival is held) is not a market for films. Ang Lee doesn’t go to San Sebastian because the Mexicans or the Spanish want to see it. My point is, even if Bombay was in the middle of nowhere, it was in the middle of the Indian ocean, it could be a great place to do great business. It’s not about the box office of India, it’s a different dynamic that is a separate creature unto itself, which the artistic director of the festival, like Aseem, might not have the nose to understand how to do that. It’s a different animal. And I’ve seen those guys, I mean look at Piers (Handling— the Director & CEO of TIFF) and the work that these guys have done in Toronto. It’s a totally different strategy.

AC: That day will come when you open the Silver Linings Playbook and Bradley Cooper and David O’ Russel and the entire cast, also comes for the screening.

PT: And they want to come to the screening because they’ve seen the audience react.

AC: Because they’re saying after Toronto we’re going to show our film in India.

RB: And you have distributors from all over the world coming to see— we wanna pick up that, we want that. We’re gonna meet Ang Lee here, we’re gonna meet this producer here, Harvey and Bob (Weinstein) are going to be here, that’s the thing you want.

RM: That’s where all the deals will be struck.

RB: Correct.

AC: So this is the very early stages, baby steps have been taken— the fact that they’ve got Geoff Gilmore to be on the jury and some of the other prominent film personalities. So they’re starting to invite people, people are coming and that’s what happens. People are going to go back and talk more about…

RB: Right now it will be a respected artistic festival, but as he said for them to go back and start talking about this they have to be assured that business will be conducted here. It also depends on the appetite of the festival organizers— one wonders which way they want it to go, who knows?

AC: I go to Telluride (the Telluride Film Festival) every year, and there’s no market at Telluride, but all the directors and all the stars still come from around the world because they just want to be there for 4-5 days and talk about cinema. So there’s that kind of a thing and Mumbai can be a nice place to talk about cinema, if it wasn’t so muggy here.

RB: Is Telluride a better place to go and hang out in terms of weather?

AC: It’s in the middle of the mountains.

RB: I guess that also helps interaction. It’s like having a festival in Kasauli. We had it last month and everyone came, 700 people were there. And I was like, this is going to be massive in the future because just to come to Kasauli… Aseem come to Kasauli for 3 days, stay at the quaint Kassauli club, overlooking the valley and just…

AC: I’m going to spend the whole year in India, the Delhi book festival, Mumbai film festival…

PT: I can draw up an itinerary for you right now.

RB: I think that Bombay is ready for a festival with industry heft. Seriously.

PT: I hope it happens.

RB: It is where every other kind of business is conducted.

AC: Can I say one more thing, I’m sorry? But one of the more remarkable things about this festival is that since there’s no government involvement, there’s no babugiri (bureaucracy) in this festival. When I was growing up in Delhi in the 70s, you know we started the International Film festival in Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi and in old Goa. And when I was talking to Namit Khanna, ’cause he also remembers those days where within 5 minutes all the tickets would be sold out because all the babus (bureaucrats), they were so much obsessed with seeing all these, sort of slight nude scenes etc. And it became a festival just for that. Every minister had to come to make speeches. It was so good that there wasn’t any minister who made any speech. There was no minister there right?

RM: No, not at all.

RB: I remember wintry evenings in Siri Fort, watching films and coming out and it was great fun.

AC: That’s a big part of it, because as students we were…

RB: Because also it was a nice, well not Telluride, but it was nice, the winter in Delhi, when you go out…

PT: And again I come back to Jaipur, and that’s what works for Jaipur, that sunlight, you just want to be there…

RB: And wherever you go you stumble into some palace in some state of disrepair or repair so you are always enthralled.

PT: William (Dalrymple— one of the directors of the Jaipur Literature Festival) keeps saying that in fact. That he doesn’t have to really work hard. Everyone asks him how do you get this guy and how do you get that, and he says: the big turks? They’re ready, they’re like I’ll come. I don’t care who you have, who you don’t have. Of course he’s being humble, he’s being William but it’s a big part of any festival. You know, I’m going to come to the films we watched finally. How many films did we all end up watching? You of course, had to watch 13 films.

RB: 13 films

AC: I guess I’ve only seen about 10-12 films, about 2 or 3 a day. Many of the films showing I had already seen because living in New York itself you get to see them. But there are some really wonderful discoveries. There’s a film that I missed, it’s been running in New York for a while, it’s a documentary on Aie Weiwei: Never Sorry. I had heard it was good. It was absolutely stunningly brilliant, it’s an amazing, amazing documentary about this man and his spirit and his art itself is remarkable… challenging the Chinese authorities where you can be banned and everything else. It’s a terrific, terrific film. There’s some really wonderful discoveries. I saw a Korean film called Architecture 101. It was such a sweet romantic film, I had no idea what to expect and it was just lovely. It was a great way to start, a film at 10 in the morning.

RB: Our jury films have been pre-selected. There was a huge number of films and they send up 13 films for this jury and 20 films for that jury. Obviously there were two groups of people who were selecting for our… And we’ve seen some absolute… just enthralling films. One or two have been very, very strange and puzzling but that’s what a film festival is about. You can turn around and say confidently that 11 of these 13 films will have five people sitting in the theatre whether they’re enthralling, good and whichever way it is. Only one of them was a true… you can say this is a box office success and well that’s fine but that in itself, it showed us who the people behind this festival are, you know, it shows your taste. So it shows the taste of the festival. We were very satisfied.

PT: I’m sure you can’t talk about it.

RB: Yes, we had to give seven prizes so we were sitting yesterday and we’ll probably sit again today but…

PT: But you can’t talk about some of your favourite films?

RB: No absolutely not.

AC: There was this film… it’s in competition is it, Valley of Saints?

RB: It is…

AC: And Ship of Theseus is also in competition?

RB: Yes…

AC: Both are absolutely stunning films. Valley of Saints, I’ve known the film for more than a year because of the New York film festival. Such a quiet amazing story about Kashmir, and you see the conflict on the side and you see the impact of the conflict… But it’s just the lives of these ordinary people. How they manage to survive and live and love and they smile and they sing and they go into a love triangle. Beautifully done. Ship of Theseus is just unbelievably amazing when I saw it in Toronto, I walked out and the director is standing there and usually you go and say hello, it’s very good and all. I couldn’t talk because I thought I would start to cry. There was something in that film which just triggered something in me, which really touched me. There’s a lovely film that I saw that’s called Kauwboy.

RB: Which is also in our selection

AC: It’s in selection? And I’m so glad I saw it although against that was a 4 hour long Once Upon a Time in America. What a simple little story about a boy growing up without his mother, and done in such a genuine artistic style. People stood up and they were clapping. It touched a lot of the people in the audience. So there’s some very good stuff.

PT: I mean for me Valley of Saints and Shahid, watching both these films was again finding… again, both are nuanced, talking about Indian politics in a nuanced way and political events— more so in a nuanced way, which was very very heartening because when we talk about political films in India, it’s usually the Rajneetis that we’re talking about, so we’re not really talking about… you know, there’s this massive gap. In the first issue of The Big Indian Picture, I don’t know if you guys have had a chance to see it but Mahmood Farooqui wrote a piece on the complete absence, again, he argued that Kaala Pathar was a lot more political than the self conscious political cinema that we’re trying to make…

AC: The Chakravyuhs of the world.

PT: The Chakravyuhs of the world. But coming back to… lovely, for me, Shahid.

AC: I like Shahid a lot.

PT: As a journalist, for us to see a film that did justice to his story was fantastic.

RM: I think it meant a lot for that story to be told and that counterpoint, and a current counterpoint, to be raised. I remember when Shanghai was out and everyone was talking about why can’t we have our Z. I’m not saying this is our Z. But it’s great to have a political story that belongs to your present.

RB: You made a very good point and I kept saying this in the screenings: I kept saying how amazing that this guy got funding for this film. How incredible that this lady got funding for this film. She had just gone there and said this is a story about a flower that grows and a little child who’s fascinated by it. Really you want a million dollars for this? You know, like screw off. Whether it’s Shahid, I’m wondering who funded Shahid because the way you guys are talking about it…

AC: Well it’s Anurag’s (Kashyap) production.

PT: Anurag and Sunil Bohra.

RB: Yeah so I mean, it’s fantastic in this festival to see that there are still people out there, in what is known as dark times for art house cinema, who are funding movies that are so incredibly out there and wow! And you look and see 1.3 million dollars. They actually got 1.3 million dollars for this film.

PT (to Rishi): You know you and me were talking about the milieu of Shahid and how well it was detailed and it was little things. When Shahid is studying for his law exams he’s studying, he’s not studying from a thick text book he’s studying from Pathan (a tutorial law notebook). You know we’ve all studied law so…

RM: Tutorial law notes.

PT: So the level of detailing, which is something that you miss. I don’t know who it is for but it’s there, and the courtroom scenes, the way… every single thing and it’s nuanced. That’s a very important factor.

RB: I’ve spent 6 years trying to raise money for Moth Smoke. And now Anurag and Guneet have come on board. So… one Anurag can spawn a summer of Anurags, you know, but it has to start somewhere…

PT: You know it’s about what we were talking about earlier. Whether Easy Rider gives birth to a Weinstein or whether a Weinstein…

RM: Do you need a producer to back a movie or… (a great movie to get that producer)

PT: We’re very glad that we can do that now. You remember when I was talking to you (to Aseem), I was writing an opinion piece on Chittagong and I was telling you about how…

RB: How is that?

AC: I liked Chittagong

PT: It’s a lovely film but…

AC: It’s a very lovely story

PT: There were a couple of questions that come from there, which is about how we look at our history and how we look at our political present and the distinct contrast between that…

RB: You know I’ve actually been there. Do you know that Bangladesh denies it completely?

AC: Really?

RB: Do you know there’s no monument, there’s nothing.

AC: They claim their history started in 1971 or in…?

RB: Yeah. From (19)50, whatever, from the first uprising. Do you know that for Bangladesh as a country their history starts in the (19)’50s but actually picks up in (19)’71. And I got to know why. I went to Bangladesh and I spent three days and I said hey Chittagong massacre, it’s film is coming out Jee Jaan Sey Khelein Hum, I think at that time, whatever it is… And they said I don’t know where it is. I said you really don’t know where this place is, where this professor and all this… They said no. Till finally I spoke to somebody who’s in the police and he said of course I know where it is, but we don’t really talk about it. I said, why? He said because all those boys were Hindus. And the Muslims were oppressed by the Hindus at the time. So there is one round thing with white writing on the thing, at the armory. There’s an office inside, you don’t get to see the armory. I went there, I even took a photograph, I tweeted about it. It’s not that it’s a shameful blot, it’s just that if it’s not Muslim it doesn’t exist.

AC: The Hindu-Muslim issue can be a very complicated but it’s…

RB: It’s nationalism.

AC: It’s a state… it’s like in Pakistan for instance, there’s no history, those kids are not taught about Ashoka and the Maurya period.

RB: In Maharashtra they almost wiped out the Mughal empire, which for us is a text book in itself. There was the English but the Mughal empire was reduced to a footnote. All 5 emperors were cut-cut-cut. One, one paragraph on Aurangzeb, phat phat phat.

AC: For instance, there are all these Buddha sculptures which are just being smuggled out because people just don’t seem to have the value for that.

RB: This is the thing, the history, historiography of things, global warming in Canadian textbooks is cyclical. I actually read that, I went to Canada to campaign against climate change and it’s like, they say that it comes and goes, it comes and goes. So you never know what our kids are taught. I know I’ve just taken off somewhere else…

PT: No but that links up, that’s what we were talking about how—and this is not to make a very simple comparison—but when we were talking about Surjo Sen, we were talking about Surjo Sen being a hero. We’re not talking about Surjo Sen as a grey figure. Some of these kids were 13 year olds. They were thrust into a war they were not likely to win. And yet not even the most left liberal commentator today is going to look at the Maoist uprising in the same way, even though their leader, commander in chief Ganapathi used to be a school teacher, is an ideologue—very similar to Surjo Sen’s trajectory—claims to be fighting a just war against imperialistic attitudes. But, there’s no way we’re talking about the kids in Kashmir who were pelting stones in the same way in 2010— not even the most left leaning political commentators. But we’re all looking at Surjo Sen in a particular way where there’s no question raised. And I’m all for that. I still think that Chittagong is still a beautiful film. However I think that there’s—and this is what I wrote in this piece—when I was talking about how, maybe, it’s just the fact that how we were all Jhunkus back
then and today, at least some of us are Wilkinsons or his dissenting powerless wife. But the other thing is that his aide, one of Surjo’s main aides, Ananta Singh, lived on. He was jailed, he was in Kala Pani for many, many years. He lived on post independence. Most of the guys who participated, the leaders of the uprising, who were not martyred, went on to become CPI members, MLAs, join the government. Ananta Singh went on to form an extremist Communist Party and was jailed by the Indian government as a traitor post independence. So I feel that Ananta’s story would be a lot more difficult to tell than Surjo Sen’s story, who fought against the British, fought the ‘good war’.

RB: I also thought about why Bangladesh had done what it has done. I said every nation does it, in the beginning…

PT: We’re doing it.

RB: In the beginning, being teenagers, you don’t want to be anything but what you want to be perceived as: I’m the rebel in the school, I’m the one with the black nail polish and the tattoo, I’m the one who’s the good girl. You know, you’re so obsessed that you’re making sure that everyone gets your image right and young nations do that and initially there’s an immaturity and an over enthusiasm to be perceived as one thing and then later on they chill out and open out. So it’s a process.

PT: But it’s also us, we love the stories that make us feel good, we always do. It doesn’t depend on which way we lean politically. We all love the stories that make us feel good which is why Stories We Tell was such a beautiful film…

AC: I loved Stories We Tell.

PT: Two lovely documentaries in this festival which were great to watch.

AC (to Rahul): It’s Sarah Polley’s documentary about her own life, discovering that her father was not her biological father, it’s a lovely film.

RB: Oh lovely.

PT: It always intrigues me about how we get material like that. I remember watching an Egyptian documentary called Salata Baladi. Again, I don’t know how you put cameras in the face of your father and you talk about things like this, you conduct interviews, you always have a camera. I don’t know how you do it, but the outcome is absolutely fantastic. Even if you feel like a voyeur, it’s beautifully done. So recommendations, finally, your film recommendation from the festival would be?

AC: I have a list of my 10 favourite films.

PT (to Rishi): Your one recommendation

RM: It would be Shahid probably

PT: For personal reasons?

RM: For personal reasons as well as it’s an Indian film, that’s just come out…

PT: Mine would not be On the Road. If I had to ‘not recommend’. Very extremely, extremely betrayed personally about what’s been done with the film. Really disappointed in that film…

AC: I made that list, a separate article that I had to write. Did you guys see Beasts of the Southern Wild?

PT: Yes, of course.

AC: Is that in competition also?

RB: Yes

AC: All the great films are in competition. Rahul can’t comment on them but obviously he’s seen some of them. I haven’t seen the film here…

RB: It won the Camera d’Or in Cannes

AC: And it won the Grand Jury Award at Sundance

PT: Sorry to cut you, but are the marks revealed? Is it made public as to who voted and what marks (were given)?

AC: By the Jury?

PT: Yeah and how voting was done or which film got the lowest points or which…

RB: Nothing, no.

PT: Because for Cannes, I was reading an article about how Taste of Money got the lowest points.

AC: Those things are revealed? Or somebody just leaks them out…

PT: It’s been leaked, it’s not officially…

AC: I was surprised. I wish I had known that before… But Beasts of the Southern Wild was such an imaginative, amazing story about this child who’s trying to survive in a world which will probably… her father won’t be there. As it is it’s about how these people are living on the extreme edge of society, trying to survive also but she brings up all these thoughts and ideas in our minds and the beasts keep following her and she finally stops them and… how remarkable it was.

RB: Did you see it?

PT: Yes. I have the soundtrack. It is stunning.

AC: You’ve got the soundtrack? I’ve got to figure how you got that…

PT: I’m not going to tell you on record but I’ll tell you off it…

Karan Johar – TBIP Tête-à-Tête

Posted on October 26, 2012 by admin

TBIP Tête-à-Tête is a series of in-depth and intimate interviews with film personalities who are critical to this era of filmmaking. It is an attempt to understand their body of work. And their minds. Because who they are intrigues us just as much as what they do. Because what they do is because of who they are. In certain cases, despite who they are. Because integral to the love of cinema is the love of cinema’s idols— the chosen few whose mystique remains intact despite the tabloids’ obsession with their lives.

Karan Johar epitomizes re-invention. The sheltered, snooty South Bombay kid who is now at home in the filmy suburbs. The overweight, awkward introvert who is now one of the most photographed people in the country. The shabbily dressed sidekick in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge who is now a fashion icon. The new kid on the block who now runs a production house that sets up young directors. The doe-eyed boy with a faraway look who now has a trademark hard, slit-eyed stare.

The first challenge Johar set himself after the runaway success of his bubblegum love story, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, was to make a magnum opus. The canvas of his next, Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Ghum was gigantic in every way conceivable. For his third film, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, the advocate of traditional family values and true love as a once-in-a-lifetime phenomena threw self-righteousness out of the window and gave us the story of an adulterous love affair. When his detractors were wondering what to make of this sudden push of the envelope, he announced My Name Is Khan, a political film that spoke against religious profiling of Muslims with a central character who was autistic. It would have been real tough for any pundit to predict at the time that for his next, Johar would sign absolute newcomers and go back to school to tell a preppy and lighthearted tale, Student Of The Year.

The constantly shifting goal-post also features in Johar’s life outside of the director’s chair. Not content with his transformation into a fashion icon, he took up styling and then launched his own fashion label. Johar was the first director from his generation to become a celebrity in his own right. He hosted chat shows, conducted interviews and launched products. And he made friends. A lot of friends – all of them rich and famous and glamorous. His 40th birthday party in May this year was testimony to his stupendous clout. He called it his “biggest hit so far”. That might well be true. But his biggest success so far lies in the clinical clarity and precision with which he knows both his mind and his milieu; the dexterity with which he is master of both his image and his destiny; and the caution with which he draws a line between the two. It is perhaps this degree of control that sets him free. In this interview, that dissects his life and work since he became a filmmaker, he talks with enviable candor— criticizing his own work fiercely, defining his fears, brandishing his cynicism and letting his vulnerability show from time to time. But not once does he apologise for being who he is. It is this flair for a life larger than most that makes him a natural fit for the movies.

Watch the full interview, or shorter segments

The full interview .
Dissecting his films .
On love stories .
On his boundaries as a filmmaker .
On what defines a ‘Karan Johar film’ .
On writing men versus writing women .
On his philosophy as a producer .
On homosexuality in cinema .
On interviewing .
On this era of filmmaking .
On being ‘The insider’ .
On Brand Bollywood .
On Aditya Chopra .
On his favourite directors .
On making friends and keeping friends .
On making moulds and breaking moulds .
On fashion .
On lessons he has learnt at 40 .

Or read the transcript

Dissecting his films

Pragya Tiwari: In Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, you explored love as a self indulgent idea, love for the sake of love, there was lust versus a deeper bond thing. In Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, it was a love which is more a promise, a commitment weighed down by domesticity. A dharam sankat even. Kabhi Alvida (Naa Kehna), it was a shifting reality, outside of socio-familial structure. And in My Name Is Khan it was a mere catalyst. It was completely incidental. How has what interests you about love changed in these ten, twelve years you’ve been making films?

Karan Johar: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, is a result of the cinema I saw right before, and the concept of Kuch Kuch Hota Hai as love is really warped if you ask me, it’s ridiculously wrong. I think a lot of the conviction pulled off that film and I think there is a feeling of genuineness in the performances of the protagonists that really pull off that film, otherwise it’s ridiculously idiotic.

PT: And why do you say that?

KJ: That, oh, they are best friends and she’s kind of dumpy and frumpy and he doesn’t look at her, and then the hot girl comes and which he kind of thinks is love, he mistakes for love, and then the second half this girl comes looking all pretty and, you know, wearing beautiful clothes and has long hair and suddenly he’s back in love with her. So I don’t get what that is. I don’t think I would go through that character graph again the love I think was purely pulled off because Shah Rukh and Kajol are magical. But I think I made no sense, the film makes no sense. Now when I look back I feel like those eight letters is ridiculously idiotic.

PT: Yeah, that’s a device, fine, you know…

KJ: Okay, so there was conviction, there was first timeness, so that’s why Kuch Kuch Hota Hai is about… like the only thing I think I got right in that film is, because I think I had felt it myself, was the heartbreak part. When Shah Rukh and Kajol, when he literally breaks her heart and that unrequited-ness, that feeling of one-sided love and loving your best friend and not being able to have him which is such an identifiable emotion to the younger kids, or people who are in their twenties. I think that’s what really worked, that scene because that worked I think the rest of the film did. Cause it kind of was carried on the shoulders of that moment. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is reverence to your parents, we live in a traditional society. Parents mean, at least to me… I’m the only child. So it was my way of thanking them, of course in a very melodramatic, over the top way. But it was my ode to them. So it was about parental love, really.

PT: No, but even Shah Rukh and Kajol, in Kabhi Khushi… , there was that whole thing of you made a promise, you need to stand by it, it’s domesticity…

KJ: Yeah, yeah that’s more what I call filmi, I don’t think it’s really identifiable, it’s a filmi situation. You know, she’s lost without her father, she has nobody to look up to and he goes and becomes a protective lover. Very filmi, very Hindi film, that whole film is very Hindi film. The only thing emotional about it is what I wanted to do vis-a-vis my parents, like make a film, like to express my gratitude to them for being the man they raised. Cynicism definitely crept in. Post that I made Kal Ho Na Ho, I lost my father, there were events that changed my life, you become a lot more mature with the passing of time. And Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna is my take on modern relationships, because I believe there isn’t a happy one. And I believe that there is no man who can be faithful and I believe there are women who want to be unfaithful, but because society, the norms, kind of hold them back and so it was a cynical approach to love, definitely, it’s a cryptic approach to love. Kabhi Alvida… is really a result of the initial bursts of my cynicism, if I had to say. And then of course cinema kind of absorbs you and you want to say it, so I wanted to tell a totally different story, so My Name is Khan is really a political commentary, a social commentary, love is incidental as you said. But it’s kind of, is about like the love story somewhere, but it’s also making a social and political comment. So if I had to answer your question and sum it up I would say it started from vulnerability and innocence, went into understanding where I stand vis-a-vis love and finally going into deep levels of cynicism about love and relationships. Where I’m at today, I don’t know, I don’t think I can write a love story, I don’t think I feel it anymore.

PT: The other contrast between Kabhi Alvida… and between Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, was Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham, you were talking about, you were really promoting the whole family structure, family values and then you were standing up for individual freedom, even if it’s at the cost of a family. Do you feel both parallel-y or was there a distinct shift of personal philosophy between these two films?

KJ: No, no, totally, there definitely was a shift. I think Kabhi Alvida… is more who I am today. Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham is, was what I was trying to do as an ode to cinema with largeness and all, but I don’t think I’m that person anymore. I can’t write those scenes anymore. When I see that film on satellite sometimes, I’m like who made this film. It wasn’t me. I don’t feel like that man anymore at all. I feel totally different in my head and heart. So I think Kabhi Alvida is closer to who I am. If I had to make a film on modern relationships again or relationships in general, I would just make it very differently. I don’t think you can feel black and white about any emotion anymore. I think I’m living in the grey myself and that’s what I would project on celluloid. And I think the grey is tough to project to an Indian audience if you want to make it commercially viable. So don’t make it, then make something else till you know you can pull off grey in a smaller contained way, but the larger you go as a brand the more the expectation of scale, so you’re in a Catch 22 always.

PT: We’ll come to that, but staying with Kabhi Alvida for a minute, you really stuck your neck out in that one, you know, you spoke of Before Sunset being a point of inspiration, but in Silsila, and in Before Sunset, both the protagonists, there’s sort of excuses made for them, that they were in love, they were separated by circumstances and therefore they are falling in love again out of their marriage bonds, you didn’t do any of that. You said here are two characters, they’re married and they’re falling in love with each other and there’s no justification.

KJ: I don’t know, like so many millions of people came up to me and said why doesn’t Rani (Mukerji’s character) love Abhishek (Bachchan’s character)? There’s nothing wrong with him. He’s a great guy, he’s good to her, he’s not cheating on her, he’s faithful, he’s loyal.

PT: But that’s probably people feeling really bad that Abhishek Bachchan was jilted.

KJ: No, it’s not that, I just think people don’t get, like, that you cannot. You may have the best husband at home, but you may not want to have sex with him.

PT: Of course.

KJ: You may not want to feel passionate, you don’t feel the passion, you don’t feel the mojos, not in the love anymore. And you feel attracted to this cynical, bitter, unhappy man, because he turns you on, probably. And how do you explain that to this society who are themselves victims of this situation, but don’t want to admit to it.

PT: But Karan wouldn’t it have been easier perhaps, if you didn’t have the stars. I’m saying that because these people have so much baggage…

KJ: Probably.

PT: …of their own image…

KJ: No, also, I think the movie needed to be made in a far tinier scale, it didn’t need those item songs, it needed to be toned down, I think that’s the mistake I made with that film. I think my intention was to make a film about two relationships and that kind of broke each other up, because of what happened and I just went and became suddenly like this big filmmaker trying to do everything with it. I think that’s where I messed up and if I had to, I think that’s the film I would like to make again. Because what reads on paper is actually way superior to what’s on screen. I think that my intention was to really talk about two relationships, really, and the fact that you can be attracted to somebody else even if you have a great spouse at home, it can happen because you have no control over your heart. Sometimes you marry somebody for all the wrong reasons— that’s why I say, you know, marry for intense love and sometimes intense love can even break you up, you know, so there’s absolutely no conclusion to your emotions. But Kabhi Alvida was really about that, it was about a woman who just didn’t love her husband and found attraction with the other man and of course I think what happens, I directed Rani too guilty. And I think sometimes that extra guilt made it seem wrong even to an audience. I also saw, it was initially Kajol who was meant to be in the film, so it was meant to be an older woman to Abhishek. And you know when Kajol couldn’t do it for various reasons, and Rani came in, she was too much of a match for Abhishek. They were too much Bunty-Babli with each other. So you didn’t feel right, ’cause they seemed so right. So there were some things that, sometimes casting can go against the core of a film. Yeah, and if I took four completely rank, interesting, new faces you wouldn’t have any preconceived baggage about them. Also Shah Rukh Khan cheating on his wife, you know, it’s just that we live in a society which actually puts him up on a pedestal as a father, as a husband, you know.

PT: Being this married father, yeah.

KJ: And then him cheating on his wife, checking into a hotel room, having extra marital sex…

PT: Having his ring show when he’s making out with…

KJ: Yeah, yeah, so all that which I wanted, I wanted to go back to the fact that they were married, I needed that sense of drama, but I still remember watching that film in an audience the very first time and the first time Shah Rukh and Rani checked into the hotel room and there was a very traditional couple sitting ahead of me and I was observing them, ’cause they got a little awkward and she turned around and he looked at her and said it’s a dream sequence. And when he realized it wasn’t a dream sequence five minutes later, that it was what really happened, that they had sex in a hotel room, they walked out. They walked right out. And that to me…

PT: This is in Bombay?

KJ: Yes, in Bombay and in a urban multiplex. And I was like this is the truth of the matter, this is the dichotomy of our society. This is the double standard. Probably each one of them have children at home who are probably screwing around all over the place, but still when it comes to brass tacks, I remember I walked out of that screening and a lady came up to me with a weeping daughter and she came up with a really nasty tone and she said I brought my daughter to see a Karan Johar film, so that she could feel happy, she’s just broken up with her husband, and this is what you’ve made. And I was like look I’m really sorry, but I wasn’t making it for your daughter, I was making it for myself. But this is the preconceived notion people have, when they want everything rose tinted. Everything has to be glossed over. No, Shah Rukh Khan cannot cheat on his wife in film, no, he cannot. Rani Mukerji cannot cheat on Abhishek Bachchan, you know.

PT: Yeah, I’m sure that went against it. Karan Johar, Shah Rukh Khan…

KJ: And then you make a film… from loving your parents to leaving your wife was like a drastic turn around which just didn’t work. The film did really well overseas and I realized why later. Overseas it went on to becoming one of my biggest hits, because I felt that overseas there’s a culture of seeing films alone. So husbands and wives were watching this film alone. They weren’t going together. ‘Cause I remember a couple came up to me and said like how do you watch this film with your spouse, what do you say if you liked it, they’ll turn around and say what do you like about it? So you have a fight back at home, who wants to have that fight, so it’s easier to say I didn’t like it. Because everything is right, you’re morally right, and you didn’t like this film, you didn’t agree with the moral ground of the film. So I heard so many different kinds of opinions post that film, it was almost interesting as a filmmaker that I managed for myself to stir things up. Then in America I met people who said I didn’t go with my wife, you know, I went off one afternoon and saw it. Some other wife telling me, oh, I saw it like with my girls. You don’t need to go with your husband. But here, in India, it’s a family viewing. You go with your chacha-chachi, mama-mami, the whole family goes together, husband, wife, kids, everyone goes together. But Kabhi Alvida… is really a film that can embarrass you if you’re in that situation.

PT: What is the first impetus to make My Name is Khan? Was it to make a film which is different, which has a larger socio-political canvas than you’re used to, or was it to use the medium to talk about something that was bothering you personally?.

KJ: I actually am very affected and I get personally very bothered about the religious bias there is to an entire religion. I’ve grown up with my father who lived in Pakistan for ten years, has many friends, spoke about partition to me extensively, spoke about his Muslim friends that he had across the border, spoke about how sad he felt that he had lost touch with all of them.

PT: Ten years before partition or…?

KJ: During partition…

PT: During partition, okay.

KJ: And before, and how he was very actively a part of the struggle, so I heard so many stories. I’ve always felt very strongly that, you know, there is this bias. I’ve lived through the riots in Bombay, and it’s just always bothered me. And then once I was in New York, right after I made Kabhi Alvida… , I had gone on a three month trip away, and I was with friends who I connected with after a really long time, and we were at dinner and there was this whole conversation about like one of them hiring a Muslim gentleman and how the organization felt very strongly against it, and how he was actually supportive, because he made very drastic comments which I don’t even want to say, because I don’t even want to… even go down that path. And I remember eating a dinner with friends I hadn’t really met in a long time and being so angry, and I started voicing my anger and I said I think it’s ridiculous. I said are you trying to say you’ve had all honest Hindu employees all your life and that none of them have cheated you or made money off you and all that nonsense. So he just made very strong comments and it got so upsetting that dinner became so awkward that we ended it really like awkwardly, and I went back and I remember, I have a note pad that I scribble in and I started like the first line and I remember saying it in a burst of anger, just because he’s a Khan doesn’t make him a terrorist, you know. And I went back and I wrote, the first time, I wrote My Name is Khan and I’m not a terrorist, and those were the first lines I wrote and I went off to sleep. And the next morning I just kept thinking about this and that’s how somewhere the germ of that idea came. Then I went back and did some research in LA because the whole bias is so much more and strong in America as a result of what happened. And then I contacted my writer, and that dinner I don’t think I’ll ever forget, because I’m not in touch with those people, I don’t like them anymore. ‘Cause I just felt it was so ridiculous, living in America, investment bankers in really credible jobs and this is how they think then, you know, what’s the point of education, what’s the point of world information? I feel we’re regressing in time. I feel like the sixties and seventies, and fifties, were far more progressive, even cinematically. ‘Cause we’re talking cinema, some of the most bold subjects were made in the forties and the fifties and the sixties.

PT: Without much brouhaha.

KJ: Nothing, there’s a film called Sharada, which is Raj Kapoor and Meena Kumari, and I have to tell you it’s the most progressive film. It’s about them being in love, but circumstances don’t bring them together, and Meena Kumari actually marries Raj Kapoor’s father instead, and he has to walk into the house and his father says touch your mother’s feet. So he has to touch the feet of his lover actually, whom he’s had an intense love relationship with. And that film went on to becoming a huge hit. Try doing that today. You know… many years later a Lamhe fails. And today— worse. We’re going ahead in time only when it comes to 2G, 3G, 4G and 5G and all those Gs will keep increasing, technology will be enhanced, emotionally we’re totally regressing in every which way.

PT: But, you know, you pulled My Name is Khan off. Two very sensitive things: autism and religious profiling. A single mother, no song and dance, unusual story, cultural references that may be alien to India, because of the whole Katrina (Hurricane Katrina) thing and, you know. Give me five reasons you pulled it off.

KJ: I don’t know, I think it was largely because I believed in it and I think conviction is paramount. You have to believe in the story you’re telling. Also I think the lead protagonists again have a certain strong connection with an audience base. Shah Rukh and Kajol. And I think their trauma is always felt. I think there’s something you can feel and touch about them as a pair. Something about them as a lead couple, I think no one can pinpoint why, but there’s some kind of an audience karma that goes with them, there’s a connection. I think thirdly the fact that it was made so strongly pro the religion and I know that that community reacted to it worldwide. And, nobody had made a film on that scale that was kind of, not elevating or escalating, but giving a perspective and point of view in its own way. And I think that’s what really did it. I think in the western world specially. I think the fact that it was true and honest to its theme and never digressed, like Shah Rukh didn’t suddenly break into a dance or sing a lip sync song, much as we all wanted him to sing Sajda, because I love that song, but we knew it worked against the character. And also the research that Shivani Bhatija, the writer, did. I think are the last two reasons I would say that it worked— because we really researched the autism aspect and gave it our own slant of course, but we went down to the Asperger’s root, which is the disorder he has. Shah Rukh met people for a whole year, I read every book on Asperger’s syndrome there is. We saw all the movies made on that, we met people. In fact Shah Rukh is based on a gentleman called Chris, who actually lives in London, and he spent like a week with him, mannerisms, gestures, eye contact etc. So I think research, conviction and I think the lead pairing, definitely, are the reasons why that film got pulled off.

PT: Karan, why post 9/11? Why not, say, post the Godhra riots, why not post Bombay (the Bombay Riots)?

KJ: What happens with 9/11 is it touches a cord with the generation we live in. And that’s where you really kind of suss out somebody’s immediate character. In this I wanted to definitely talk to the people my age or younger and I know so many feel it in contemporary India. And there’s such a big deal made about modern times and India being shining and the world reaching the pinnacle of evolution etc. but like I said to you earlier, the emotional evolution is zilch. So I didn’t want to address it with any other political atmosphere, I wanted to keep it modern and I know 9/11 was definitely a more modern trigger to tell the story.

PT: Yeah, and more international. I mean, that’s something all of us have lived through.

KJ: And I knew that I was not talking to the Muslim population just living in India I was addressing the community worldwide. Which is why it’s the only film in which I ever collaborated largely with an international studio, it’s 20th Century Fox… was only because I knew that they could make the film release in Jordan, in Syria, in Egypt have large releases like in the Middle East, in Riyadh, in parts of the world that don’t normally get access to Hindi cinema. I wanted that whole community everywhere, living anywhere in the world to at least know that there’s such a film that exists, called My Name is Khan, and it speaks about them.

PT: You know it’s very interesting you use autism as a brilliant device to counter what is going on in the world. With a world view which would have been thought of as simplistic, except because it’s coming from Rizwan, is pure and it’s believable.

KJ: But it’s not true otherwise, you cannot pull it off otherwise.

PT: Absolutely.

KJ: You and I can’t pull off that with conviction, say I want to go meet the President and take off. It’s ridiculous. Because no one would.

PT: But what struck me was that, you know, the necessity that prompted that invention, a larger necessity in Hindi cinema, we were touching on this a little earlier. Can we make films which deal with complicated situations in a more complex way. I mean what if a story didn’t have just two sides, it had nine sides instead. Do you feel that that’s something that we’re ready for, have we found the language for it, is that something you would be comfortable doing?

KJ: Yeah, I’m sure. I don’t know what to say, I really feel we have such a schizophrenic audience that you don’t know anymore what really works for them. They accept like an unusual film, you know, with layers and shades and, you know, almost like lead movie stars playing characters like this simultaneously, and then you suddenly see one brain dead entertainer making 200 crores, so I mean you don’t know what’s happening out there, you just have to kind of tell your story and make it, like My Name is Khan it’s easy for people to say oh my God, like it’s worked overseas, it worked in India, it worked overseas and look at the obstacles it had in its commercial path. It had a lead actor and actress who only made legendary love stories. Can we deconstruct that? And then if your lead protagonist has a form of autism then you’re talking so largely about the western world. The reason I didn’t connect it to India, now that we have to be very honest and say this, is that who wants any political party sitting on my head. I already went through that… and nothing to do with my film. Content didn’t create the confusion that happened at the release weekend. It’s so tough, you have to combat so many authorities to tell a really honest story here. If you make a film on that large scale, I want the film to have a release. I mean that’s why I made this film.

PT: And you’re saying the same thing so it doesn’t matter.

KJ: And I’m not a politician. I’m not here to wage a war with any political party. I’m sorry, I’m a filmmaker. Let me make my film and really let me exercise my democratic status as a citizen of this country. But no— democracy is the biggest hypocrisy there is in this country. It’s really just in the memorandum and in the articles of association, it’s nowhere else.

PT: Listen, in November 2009 you gave an interview saying that you don’t want to work with newcomers and until you’re 50 and nobody wants to work with you. Yet here you are, one decade too early, peak of your career, you’re working with new comers. That seemed really emphatic a statement. What gave?

KJ: It was and I can’t believe I made that statement. I can’t believe what eventually happened. That’s why I say never say never, that’s the one thing that I’ve learnt. But it just so happened that this film just happened, because I felt after My Name is Khan, it just seemed very easy for me to make a film with a movie star and make a, like a commercial enterprise and I would tell another story with two stars, three stars and, you know, I wasn’t challenged. I just felt like I needed to do something to challenge me individually. I did it content-wise in My Name is Khan, I needed to do it as a filmmaker. ‘Cause I feel what instruction can I give the best talent in this country, they’re so great. That we just meet, we discuss the character, and, you know, they’ll still be great, because they’re great. How do I become greater. You know, what do I do to make myself feel like I’m more challenged as a director and I’m not here to make the money, I’m not here to kind of build like empires, I’m here to satisfy the creative urge I have in me. And that was to suddenly play tutor and teacher. And the only way to do that was to actually launch new kids. And simultaneously I also thought it was a great idea for the company so we could leverage from them in the future if we set them up. So take rank newcomers, make a film that is really about positioning new talent… and giving them a platform that was large enough for the world to notice. And suddenly I felt that why am I waiting till I’m 50 and no one wants to work with me. I don’t want to work with half the people anyways, because it’s not challenging to me anymore. And after this now I feel I have done my bit, yes maybe I can make a star vehicle film now. Because I enjoyed this so much, it was just not being director, it was playing tutor, it was playing guide, it was being philosopher, it was being therapist, it was being everything, it was being mother, father everything. Like the three of them were so, and not only three of them, we’ve launched four other kids who are in the supporting cast. So I felt like I was the dean of this college and just completely enjoying the experience, and I became like as vulnerable and as first time as them, because I had never done this before. So while they had never faced the camera, I had never instructed, to this extent, for any actor…

PT: Rank newcomers. You know, you’ve cast three people who are the next generation of key players in the industry, people who have been a part of the industry.

KJ: Right.

PT: Is it going to irritate you if you’re asked to defend that choice?

KJ: No, because how can you?

PT: You know you’re going to be that you’re from a film family, you’re casting people from the film family, well, you know, the media…

KJ: No, there’s always somebody related, firstly it’s so sad to kind of club these kids and say just they’re film family. Like each one of them… Varun Dhawan is David Dhawan’s son, came to me as an AD (Assistant Director), he was an intern and then he became an AD on My Name is Khan. He was not offered like the earth and the moon. I mean eventually his father would have given him a platform, but it would not have been that extravagant and at the end of the day he had to go through his own struggle, that he was at business school, came back here, decided to be an actor, trained himself, did all kinds of training, worked for three years on his acting skills and became an AD to learn the craft, went through his own struggle. Alia is all of 17 years old, out of high school, 20 kilos chubbier than she is today, okay, and nobody knew that Mahesh Bhatt and Soni had this daughter called Alia. I heard through a friend of mine who’s close to the family who told me this girl acts in front of the mirror every day, ’cause she’s obsessed by Kareena Kapoor and wants to be a movie star. And I called her and I said she’s a fat girl, but yet something about her energy level made me want to do a test. She did a test and she was really fantastic in that test, and then I said, okay, lose that weight and then we’ll talk. Three months later she was back in my office, 17 kilos lighter, and I know weight is all to do with cosmetic, but that’s the way it is. You’re a movie star, you have to look good.

PT: Yes, of course.

KJ: Let’s not apologize about that, you know, that’s the way it is. And I took a test with her again, she was great, so it was her own struggle. I don’t think Mahesh Bhatt’s daughter would be like… there were 3000 people waiting in line to sign her for anything. At the end of the day she went through her own struggle. And then there was Siddharth Malhotra, a Delhi model, who gave it all up to be an intern as an AD. And wanted to assist, and his father’s in the merchant navy, from a total non–filmi background, so I would not get upset, but I would be like how ignorant it is for people to think it’s easy just because you’re a filmmaker’s child…none of them are Shah Rukh Khan’s son or Amitabh Bachchan’s son or anyone’s son. They are not. They are filmmaker’s children who possibly might have had it so tough tomorrow, like Arjun Kapoor, he’s Boney Kapoor’s son, but was given a break by Yash Raj, and he went to the grind on the screen test level till he got that role. Yes, the only thing you’ll question is, would you have heard of them if they were not David Dhawan and Mahesh Bhatt’s children. Yes, that’s the only advantage, the information that we have about them is easier to get to.

PT: But then that’s true of everybody all of us urban kids, we’re all connected in some way I mean then the privilege doesn’t, is not…

KJ: I mean I speak for myself when I tell you I’m a flop producer’s son. My father made five flop films back-to-back. And it’s only because I was an AD on Dilwale (Dulhania Le Jayenge) and I met Shah Rukh and Aditya Chopra had some faith in me, that I was positioned and like my father was given the chance that he could launch his son as a filmmaker. So that doesn’t make my struggle any less. It’s just ridiculous that everybody has this underdog story to sell. And they say, oh, poor thing, that boy in Ranchi, or that poor girl in Chandigarh, doesn’t have a break. Listen, let me tell you, and I say this with assurance, if you are good in any corner of this world and you will come to this city, and you will immediately get a platform. People are all jumping on new, beautiful faces. And the truth of the matter is if you don’t have the chips then you’re not going to make it. Whether you live in Ranchi or Chandigarh, if you have a way out you can come in and make it happen. If you don’t have it, you’re not going to. I see some of them, the people who come to offices with their photographs, I mean I want to go personally to tell them please, don’t try it, won’t happen for you, I swear it won’t.

PT: I wish you would.

KJ: And if you’re a great actor Anurag Kashyap will find you. I mean, you know, because he’s fathered… there are so many filmmakers who are taking new… look at Nawazuddin Siddiqui, he’s fantastic, he’s genius, he’s getting so many opportunities, so he can’t resent a better looking man. Because he’s got his own space, and a better looking man will have his own space. And they’ll both be creatively satisfied somewhere.

On love stories

PT: Romance as a genre, do you think it’s getting tougher and tougher to crack in the times we live in, I mean the demand for it doesn’t end, but…

KJ: No, it’s actually ended.

PT: Really?

KJ: The best love story in the 2000s has been Jab We Met, it’s the only love story that made a mark. If you think about it, the great movies in the 2000s have been Lagaan, Taare Zameen Par, Chak De India, Rang De Basanti, Munnabhai, none of these are love stories.

PT: Yeah, but why do you think we don’t make love stories like we used to?

KJ: I think everything to do with love has been done in Hindi cinema, and if you really start talking about love with its true edginess, then you won’t make a very palatable, commercial film. So a film… like you have a modern take to love in a Dev D, or you have a slightly threesome kind of feeling in a Cocktail, which still doesn’t really tear the envelope, because you’re actually talking about like three people in a situation. So everything to do with love today would have to kind of, it’s no longer like parents are objecting, (or) situations are such like that will come in the path of love. Love, the traumas of real, true, love today in urban India are far more internal. They’re about like infidelity, they’re about, like, compatibility issues, you know, to do with commitment issues. They’re to do, like, with probably inherent emotional violence in a relationship. Now who’s going to touch upon those? You can’t be rose tinted about love anymore, ’cause that’s not the way love is today.

PT: So you’re saying we’re not making real love stories anymore, because you require a certain degree of rose tinted-ness which is not…

KJ: Which is not, and also communication and technology have also killed romance to a large extent. Everyone is in everyone’s face all the time. How many great love stories are there, when I see a man gushing about his wife so much I know he’s having an affair. When I know lovers who are constantly showing their display of affection with each other in public you know something’s drastically wrong. So you know maybe we are just becoming too cynical, I don’t know, but that’s why nobody can tell a quintessential, beautiful, rose tinted love story anymore, because I don’t think anyone’s feeling it.

PT: What are your favorite love stories in cinema?

KJ: In cinema, well, my first memories of a love story is Roman Holiday, that’s the film I saw first, so I love that. I was a kid. I enjoyed the experience. I absolutely love Kabhi Kabhie, I love the romance between Amitabh Bachchan and Rakhee in that. I love Kaagaz Ke Phool, I love the madness of love between Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rehman. I feel that love. I can watch it even now and weep, because I somehow feel his pain. Modern, recently if I had to see, I know it sounds cheesy, but I wept right through the Titanic, so I mean it’s probably me. Recently I loved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I think that’s really a fantastic love story that I loved watching… today. I even loved a film called, I’m blank about the name, Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams, what is the film?

PT: Blue Valentine?

KJ: Blue Valentine. I loved Blue Valentine.

PT: It was heartbreaking, but it was really, really nice.

KJ: It was. Yeah, those are pretty much the love stories that come into my mind.

On his boundaries as a filmmaker

PT: You know again back in 2009 there were a lot of other boundaries that you spoke of. That you weren’t comfortable making a smaller film, perhaps. But in all the films you said that, maybe, you know, maybe I won’t be able to relate to this (later), are you questioning all of those boundaries as well now?

KJ: No small films I will produce, I can’t direct them.

PT: No, direct.

KJ: No, no, I can’t. You give me a budget, I can’t do it. I don’t know what to do.

PT: Maybe two years later…

KJ: I don’t know. I can’t do it.

PT: …you’ll be doing another interview, you’ll be like…

KJ: Possibly, but right now I can’t, I can’t think. With newcomers I didn’t…

PT: What kind of boundaries do you feel you have?

KJ: I don’t think I have any boundaries anymore, I think I’ll do anything…

PT: Other than small films.

KJ: I won’t make a horror film, I don’t like the genre. I made a really bad one and produced a film called Kaal, that scared me when I saw it. It was that bad. Yeah, some things like that. But there’s no film that I don’t think I want to make. But the scale for me personally as a director, I can’t do it. I’ve tried very hard. Like I’m doing a short film now which Anurag (Kashyap) and Dibakar (Banerjee) and Zoya (Akhtar) are doing for a 100 years of cinema. I’m doing the fourth film, and they’ve given us all a budget of one and a half crores, I don’t think I meant to talk about this, but anyway it’s okay. One and a half crores has been given to each one of us and I’m like that’s not even the costume budget of the film, how am I going to do this, what am I going to do. So I’ll just have to beg and plead people to do things free for me. I’ll beg for favors, that’s the only way I’m going to pull that one and a half crore, and Zoya called me, and we’re childhood friends, and she was like you can’t cheat, you can’t spend more money. You can’t, like, dish into your own bank balance and, you know, make a bigger film.

PT: Yeah, I’d love to watch.

KJ: So that’s the one, if you’re trying to ask that’s… I’m doing it, that’s because I’m forced, for the name and sake of a 100 years of cinema and Viacom is funding it. I’d really like to see my own one and a half crore film.

On what defines a ‘Karan Johar film’

PT: Okay, I want your take on this, the other day someone was tweeting about Bol Bachchan, and they said I’m so tired of seeing Amitabh Bachchan, in these Karan Johar-type sherwanis, and, you know, it struck me, the number of times I’ve heard the phrase Karan Johar type film is completely at odds with the fact that you’re actually just four films old. What sense do you make of this?

KJ: I don’t know, I hear— family films, you make family films, I made one, oh, you make love stories, I’ve made one, oh, you make popcorn, bubblegum films, I mean like what is bloody popcorn and bubblegum at the end of the day. But I suppose only when you get that famous do you get stereotyped, so I have to take it as a compliment. And Karan Johar sherwani, for heaven’s sake, I mean really, he wore them in Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham, he was the patriarch of that family and the whole syntax from that is a bit OTT. I’ve gone through a gamut of three emotions I have to say, from annoyance to indifference and to now amusement, and I’m at amusement right now.

PT: Is there something stylistically that you’ve carried through four films or you’ve discovered has become your style?

KJ: Pure aesthetic, my dear, that’s it. Just the setting, 80 per cent of the country doesn’t have it, in the film industry, and we do. So whether it’s Sanjay Bhansali, who does it with candles and chandeliers or I do it with Prada and Gucci, it’s the same thing, it’s aesthetic. It’s a sensibility you have, you’re born with it, I’m born with it, others don’t, and I have it, I will exercise it, that’s the right I have as a filmmaker. But this doesn’t mean that my films are just purely designer even in terms of soul and content, no, there wouldn’t be an audience connecting to these stories if people just wore a Burberry jacket and posed in it. At the end of the day there is a story, there is a kind of content that you’re trying to tell and so if you have the aesthetic, and that’s the one, as you said, stylistic stamp, that my films have had, and they have a certain modern, western aesthetic. But now I’m born with it, why should I kill that instinct and start making people look tacky. I can’t do it. That’s the one thing I have.

PT: Don’t you have a problem if there was a more than an aesthetic style that became your style, I mean, the great filmmakers like (Pedro) Almodovar, who all his films look the same, feel the same, but each one of them is brilliant, if you like him.

KJ: I love him.

PT: Yeah, I love him too. And I’m trying to understand is that something to fight off I mean, what if every film of yours looked the same?

KJ: You know, I’ve realized I can’t wage a war with anyone anymore. I’m bogged by my own branding, like I feel like if My Name is Khan was directed by some Karan Chaudhary, the film would be better received. It’s because I made it then they strive very hard to kind of find something wrong, because oh, he can’t make a sensible film that is actually catering to an intellectual audience, there’s definitely some NRI… oh, so he’s catering to the Muslim NRIs now. So there is that kind of cynicism that creeps in too.

On writing men versus writing women

PT: Kuch Kuch Hota Hai was Kajol’s film, I remember Shah Rukh giving an interview saying I’m just a foil to her in the film as she was to me in DDLJ, again Kabhi Khushi… , her character was etched out way more than you needed just to push the story ahead. All three women were very strong, very definitive, but she was the most detailed of all characters. Kabhi Alvida… , both your women were sketchier than that. And in My Name is Khan, in the second half especially, I wasn’t entirely sure what Kajol’s character was. Shah Rukh on the other hand was absolutely brilliantly written in that film. Have you become better at writing men or become worse at writing women or is that….

KJ: Yeah. I think I’m better at understanding the mind of a man. I definitely think that’s also true with my own evolution. That I became more man myself, like when I lost my dad when I was 32, I think that I grew up almost in those days that I lost him. And I understood what my responsibilities to my company, to my mother, to my life, are. And I think that’s what changed my entire take. Like I was a lot more, you know, when you’re a mother’s boy and you understand a woman much better, because your connection with your mother is so strong so my understanding of women came from my closeness to my mother which is still there today, but today I’m not her son, I’m like her father. You know, so I think when I assumed control over my life, my family, my being, I understood being a man much more.

PT: So basically you’re saying that it reflects actually your coming more in touch with yourself.

KJ: Oh, it does. In fact anything you see now will be so much more driven by my male protagonist, whereas I was far more driven by the women end of things in my previous pieces of work.

On his philosophy as a producer

PT: Okay. What is your ambition as a producer, other than of course making commercially viable films?

KJ: To make interesting content, to work with first time filmmakers all the time. Like, I believe in the creation of a filmmaker, I believe in empowering directorial talent. Making all kinds of film, every genre, a small budget, medium budget, high budget, different themes, commercial, non-commercial, artistic, what-have-you, everything that is viable eventually, of course, because I’m also a producer.

PT: Also maybe to create an ecosystem where everything becomes viable, because what interests me… I was reading another interview of yours where you said that obviously you’d be interested in a movie that lasts a 100 years over, a movie that makes a 100 crore, but you’re also excited about working with someone like Rohit Shetty, whose films, good as they may be, are unlikely to last a 100 years so.

KJ: That’s a completely commercial decision, it’s because I have overheads. I have a big company, I have people working for me, I need to roll out all kind of content.

PT: And it’s important to balance…

KJ: It’s like a boutique studio. So while Rohit Shetty is like the untouchable, invincible 100 crore man, I would love for his support, I need him more than he needs me. And so my brand, my company will only be enhanced by the commercial outcome of what he does for us. And he’s great, you can’t question his connect to the audience. And I think he’s in fact, the most viable filmmaker there is in the country today. And we being a production house on the rise, the combination of the two aspects would be great to come together. And I really like him personally. Like, I love the fact that he gives a flying you-know-what for anyone’s opinions, he makes films that he believes in. And I think that conviction totally pays off and I’m all about that conviction.

On homosexuality in cinema

PT: As a producer when you made Dostana, and that little gay skit in Kal Ho Naa Ho, do you feel like, I mean not feel, like, you know, did you guys manage to push the envelope for acceptance of homosexuals a little?

KJ: Yes, I totally believe that there was initially some criticism or stereotyping when it came to Dostana, but my whole idea is like nobody had made a full length two and a half hour film with a topic as risky as this, where actually they’re playing gay and you were finally shown the traditional Punjabi mother accepts it, which she does in a very serious, emotional scene, where she says she accepts it, there’s a whole scene between her and Priyanka (Chopra) on the bed and Priyanka manages to convince her and she gets convinced and she accepts John (Abraham) as her son-in-law. And I think that that was progressive and at least we brought gay into dining tables and discussions in this country. It’s such a taboo topic.

PT: And if John Abraham and Abhishek Bachchan are playing, even faking being gay, how bad can it be?

KJ: No, that’s fine and also the mother doesn’t know they’re faking it. She accepts them being gay. And she’s like it’s fine, you love him and I accept that. I think that, to me, was the most progressive scene of Dostana.

PT: Was it intentional? I mean when you guys were talking about the film, let’s try and do this?

KJ: Yes, totally. We did. We said that the only way to get out the concept of homosexuality in this country, and not keep it festival friendly, is to actually lace it with humor that’s somewhere aesthetic. There was no kind of pink pants we gave anybody, we did it a little bit here and there, and barring one little love story bit which was just for humor, otherwise we played John Abraham totally straight.

PT: And it’s fine, I mean, you know, everyone can laugh at themselves, gay people can laugh at themselves…

KJ: Yeah, that’s fine, and they should. And I can’t tell you the feedback we got from the homosexual community about like how great the film has been, how everyone loves it, you know, how everyone took their mothers and their fathers and you’ll be surprised how many old people really lapped it up, they loved it. So I feel it’s out there, you know, like being gay is cool as well, so it’s fine. It’s part of your orientation and that’s who you are. So if you’re gay, or you’re straight, it’s no big deal.

PT: Yeah, and possibly like you said this was the only way to do it with mainstream Hindi cinema.

KJ: Yeah, otherwise we’d be sitting in a festival and talking to like an arty crowd.

PT: Preaching to the converted.

KJ: They’re all a pretentious crowd, like, you know, trying to talk to them about how…

PT: Who are anyway not the people with the hang ups.

KJ: Otherwise 80 per cent of the films made in India about homosexuality are always sad. They’re all sad. They’re about taboos in society, about, like, fathers slapping their sons, about police arresting them and I’m like, I want to make a happy gay film literally.

On interviewing

PT: You’re a brilliant interviewer, what is your process?

KJ: To hear, to not go back to your sheet, which is pretty much what you have done, which is great. To not sit with an agenda, to not have literally 20 questions— that you need to ask those 20, because sometimes the one answer leads to various others, so I think that’s what I do, I try and make it like a conversation. Because I’m a people’s person, that comes easily to me and because I know some of the celebrities really well it’s also easy. But it’s also tough because you know them so well that to kind of swing on this interviewer aspect in you and bring that part of your personality out is really difficult. But I don’t know, I’ve never had a problem. I don’t know, I don’t think of what the process is, I’ve never been trained in the field. I have no idea, but I know the one thing you have to do is make it like a conversation. Look into the eyes when they’re speaking and really understand where they’re coming from and take it to another question right after that. I’ve never gone through a list of questions. There’s a research team that gives me these questions all the time. Some people I don’t know I do a little bit of research. But eventually I am such an inquisitive, curious person myself that that also helps.

On this era of filmmaking

PT: You know, very few filmmakers who started in the nineties like you remain relevant today. What are the key changes that you have seen?

KJ: In the industry?

PT: In the industry.

KJ: Well we’ve been through a sea change, I mean everything has changed, the whole platforming has changed, everything, the way we market, project, make our movies, the way we schedule them, the way we budget them, I’ve been through the interim zone, where I came in ‘98 with my first film and I was an AD in ’95, what those days were and what today is, there’s no comparison, it’s. like, far more organized in that respect. Of course the people are equally messed up and the world is that much more idiotic, but at the end of the day the cinema process is much more modern, more exciting, more evolved. We’re still dealing with the same things emotionally, we still have fragile egos, we still have deep levels of insecurities we still have complexities that some of the actors, actresses, technicians bring to the table. Handling that is a big part of my job, that hasn’t changed, that never will. An actor will be always as insecure, complexed and messed up as he or she was in the seventies, eighties, nineties. That does not change. The process, the external aspects, all have.

PT: Give me a couple of words and phrases that come to your mind which define this era of filmmaking, fortunately or unfortunately…

KJ: Definitely, as I said, a schizophrenic audience, uninformed corporates, deluded actors, and confused filmmakers.

PT: Fantastic. Why was the golden era which is the late forties to sixty, which is what the historians call it, why was it the golden era according to you, other than nostalgia of course?

KJ: Pure passion. A dying phenomenon today, pure passion, filmmakers whether K. Asif, Guru Dutt, Bimal Roy made films…

PT: Even Raj Kapoor…

KJ: …vintage Raj Kapoor, outstanding of course, how can I forget, made films for films and films alone, not for any other reason.

PT: And they were obsessed beyond…

KJ: It was like an artist putting—if you go back to the fifties—like an artist putting brush to palette. Didn’t know where he was going, was just passionate about the outcome, that’s the way all these filmmakers… they painted palettes with conviction, passion and love. All that is diminished and depleted today, all that is just like box office weekend, 100 crore turnover, actor fees, what comes after all that, it’s no longer about that light in the frame, that performer, the glint in the eye, that beat of sound in the music, that expression of love and intensity, that hold of the man and woman, it’s all out of the window, it’s not there anymore.

On being ‘The insider’

PT: How much of an insider are you, I mean people see you as an ultimate Bollywood insider, how much of an insider really are you, do you really know everything that’s going on news, gossip, figures? Does it get exhausting or… ?

KJ: Totally. I think I’m reaching a phase of completely, of emotional exhaustion and information exhaustion right now. I don’t want to know half the time. I used to be much more of an insider than I am today. I’m trying to kind of develop what spiritual people call detachment, which gurus are, I’m trying to do it myself.

PT: I would imagine knowing everything that’s going on in Bollywood would lead to detachment eventually.

KJ: Eventually it does, it leads to exhaustion and therefore detachment. And I think that’s the phase I’m in, I’m in the exhaustion mode right now.

On Brand Bollywood

PT: Has Bollywood becoming a brand—which has also coincided with your becoming a filmmaker—(has it) become a much bigger brand internationally than it used to be, has this come with its own baggage?

KJ: I think that baggage we’ve let go of. I think there was a kind of stereotyping attached to Bollywood earlier, oh, we were a song and dance filmmaking nation and we make love stories and it’s all kitsch and garish and red, blue, and green and yellow in every frame. I think that’s kind of gone now. And festivals, people in the world, have understood that our bar has been raised definitely, though sporadically and few and far between, but definitely we have stories to tell and we have a certain craft in, and the great thing about Indian cinema is that we’re really hugely self sufficient, which is something the foreign studios haven’t been able to get their hands around. They’ve taken over almost every country and they haven’t managed India at all. In fact I have conversations— I’m like you’re nobody here unfortunately. We always make films on our own terms, we’ve always made it, we have such a large domestic audience that we’ve never needed to reach out. I mean I have no interest in whether my film releases anywhere else in the world, but India. The diaspora for sure, I’d love every Asian Indian who understands the language to see my cinema, but I don’t want to work with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise and Will Smith. I don’t want them in my movies. I don’t want to make an English language film. I have no interest in going down and sitting in an office in LA and waiting two years, so that an actor hears my script. I have no interest, I don’t want to walk, if they give me an Oscar in my life I would gladly accept it as gladly as I would accept a national award with the President and it would probably mean more to me. So, I mean, I like to wear my black tie and go because it’s a great event. I love it. I watch it every year. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to take five years of my life just to earn it, earn that international acclaim. It’s great, I see the award ceremonies. I feel so much dignity, grace, even if it’s fake and put up. I love it, and I wish we had the same. That’s the only thing I watch it for to see how terrible and idiotic we behave at our award ceremonies. But other than that I love the movies I make, I love the world I live in and I love the fact that Hindi cinema is a part of my life. Like I feel I’m blessed that I’m in this profession and I don’t feel the need to kind of… this brand Bollywood that is there, I hope we are enhancing it as we speak as a community of filmmakers. And we never need to reach out to any other country to support our creative urge at all, and I’m glad we haven’t as yet.

On Aditya Chopra

PT: You started your journey with, and because of, Aditya Chopra. That’s what you’ve said a number of times. How do you guys see your respective journeys now. He was also on his first film then when you assisted him…

KJ: It’s probably the most challenged friendship this industry’s had of two people who are kind of like, you know, self sufficient, are doing their own thing and yet best friends. We’re great with each other, I think I have learnt everything I know about cinema from him. He’s been my guide, he’s been my tutor, he’s also been the reason why I am a filmmaker, so I am internally and all my life I will be grateful to how he has contributed to me as a man, as a human being, as a filmmaker. And I am just amazed at what he created himself, and he always wanted to. He is really one person who has lived his dream in every which way. He wanted to create a studio, he was the first studio we know that came out of an organic production house in India and is really the only quintessential studio that operates like one, where there’s creative and balance and, you know, everyone else is grappling, trying to get their act together, and they have it, and Yash Raj is a humungous powerhouse in the movie industry. He’s also very proud of my achievement, that I’ve done it in my own way, alongside, and what’s great is we co-exist without any sense of envy and jealousy and there’s a lot of mutual love and there’s a lot of mutual affection and yet we keep our work completely separate from each other.

PT: Do you take feedback from each other often?

KJ: Very rarely, when I’m really stuck against the wall, and I really need that voice of validation that would really matter, then I’d go to him with something and he does the same. Suddenly, sporadically, he’ll, say, react to this title or react to this song or react to this screenplay. And I would do the same. But we try not to, kind of, keep our journeys… we don’t mix them up because I feel that’s where the confusion would start in a friendship that is this deep and close. He’s happy for me, I’m happy for him, but we don’t try and collide our work atmospheres at all.

On his favourite directors

PT: Favorite directors India, Hollywood, world?

KJ: Pedro Almodovar, Woody Allen, Christopher Nolan, Guru Dutt, Yash Chopra, vintage Raj Kapoor, loved him, Raju Hirani, contemporary, Dibakar, Zoya, I love Zoya.

On making friends and keeping friends

PT: You said, I’m assuming mock seriously, that you’ve made a career out of the kind of friends you made. Now that sounds deceptively easy, because making friends might be well, but keeping friends in an industry this incestuous and insecure cannot have been easy, so how do you manage that and does it take its toll?

KJ: Of course it has. Maintaining friendships is always difficult, keeping in touch with this busy life of ours is not easy, but it takes two to tango and I think I’m going to stop tangoing now, ’cause I think I’ve given up on just maintaining these bonds and equations, so some of them have to just self maintain, if at all. Or then diminish if they need to be, ’cause I don’t feel the need and urge to kind of hang on to something that only I’m hanging on to. So lots of these friendships are great and, while they’re solid, I feel the need to kind of back off in general, so that I can lead my own life and not have any kind of baggage in my head emotionally about trying to, kind of, feel any concern for any other human being in this profession, but myself. ‘Cause that’s what normally comes with the zone of friendship in this job, that you’re always bothered about what will he think, what will she think. I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want the baggage of that. I just want to feel like I’m a great friend to have and if someone has to respect it they must and if someone has to need me I will always be there, but I’m tired of being the only one, because normally that happens when you’re the only child. You are the only investor in a relationship, you know, you’re the one keeping in touch, you’re the one making the calls, you’re the one landing up at the right time at the right place. As I said when I turned 40 a lot changed for me physically like I feel like I need glasses now. And also a lot changed emotionally. I just finally don’t feel the need to be there for everyone all the time. I feel now people better start feeling the need to be there for me, if required, and if not then I’m very happy on my own.

On making moulds and breaking moulds

PT: You know one of the big reasons you’re emblematic of our generation is because of the out of the box way in which you conceived your life, you know, you weren’t just a director and a producer, you wanted to make clothes, you went ahead and made clothes, you anchored shows, you made no bones about the fact that you want to look good and wear good clothes, what I’m trying to understand is that you’ve often spoken about the fact that you were an under confident kid, you were growing up in a fairly unimaginative terrain in south Bombay, where did you find the imagination and the confidence to go out and live that many lives?

KJ: I don’t know.

PT: You don’t know.

KJ: I don’t have an answer to that question.

PT: Do you have any role models?

KJ: No, I was born with an instinct that I would be famous.

PT: But, you know, Karan, you didn’t stop there, right, that’s the reason…

KJ: I was born with a desire to be in the limelight. I loved fashion as a child, clothes that didn’t fit me, of course, you know, were things that I looked at a lot, loved cinema, I watched a film every day, I never thought I would be a filmmaker though. I just love the world, the drama in the entertainment world and I wanted to so be a part of it. In school I showed signs of being good at elocutions, drama, duets, etc., but I never thought that that would be my calling eventually. I don’t know where it shifted and so it makes my strength and belief in destiny much stronger that some things just had to come to me and they did. And when they did, I feel that when things come to you, you just have to love what you do. I love what I do. And I was one of the first few filmmakers who went out there and said, you know, put your face out there, you know, why not, I love a live audience. I have no problem in facing the paparazzi. I have no problem in facing the flashbulbs on a red carpet, I love it. It’s what I live for, it’s what I do, I could speak to a crowd of a 1000 people and feel very satisfied at the end of it. I like applause. It’s all the things I like, so why run away from these things if you really like it, who are we trying to fool and who are we trying to lie to. So my decision to do Koffee with Karan, I still remember conversations with three or four filmmakers, who all told me don’t take away the mystique of a filmmaker. I said mystique for who, in this world where is the mystique and mystery for anything. You know, I love it, I want to do it. It was great and those very four people, out of them I think three of them were on television right after, so.

PT: Yeah, you started it all.

KJ: So why should you run away from the fact and why be embarrassed, if you like the limelight say it: that’s why we’re here, it’s show business. Who doesn’t like to kind of enjoy the attention, and there are people who genuinely… like Aditya Chopra, genuinely doesn’t like it, he hates it.

PT: Sure, fair enough.

KJ: And God bless him and that’s his theory on life and that’s how he’s lived it consistently and I respect that. But 85 or 90 per cent of the people are not, they’re in denial, they’re lying, they pretend like they don’t want to be in the news and they all have hired publicists. So it’s completely double standards to another level altogether. If you don’t like being in the papers why do you have a publicist? I have somebody who does my… we all need communication. I have a publicist, I have an infrastructure that does it, when I want to be in the papers I will, when I don’t want to be— that also is a strategy, because I have a release coming up and I don’t want to be in the papers. So it’s all thought over, and that’s the job, that’s our life, that’s what we do, that’s part of your job. When will people start understanding it comes with the territory.

On fashion

PT: What is your relationship with fashion, other than the fact that you are associated with a label, personally what is it like, do you follow it?

KJ: It’s of a consumer.

PT: It’s of a consumer in the sense that you’re only concerned with what you need to buy or do you follow fashion as well?

KJ: I do, I read everything, fortunately because I travel so much my flight reading is all catching up on fashion. So the Vogue is always with me or the GQ is. Every bit of fashion, I shop so much and I’m staring at… I even go to the women’s section at times and just see what’s in and out. It helps me in the job I do. I know exactly how the new season of Stella McCartney is…

PT: Do you see it as haute?

KJ: I do and sometimes I know when Chanel is having a change of designer and I know these things and I know exactly…

PT: Oh, it’s great fun, yeah.

KJ: …like the fall collections are better this time, you know? I know the new upcoming designers in New York. I just know it all. And I know when I stare at somebody as to what they’re wearing. It’s embarrassing sometimes to point out a handbag to a lady and say, oh, so you’re wearing the (Alexander) McQueen clutch today. I have absolutely no problem knowing this information, it’s great, I feel very happy and satisfied, I love it.

PT: What about your fashion label? You’ve started designing. How involved are you?

KJ: Well, not really in the last year, but I’m going to get far more proactive next year. Varun and I had a large chat and said we really want to do this. I’ve had a really busy year and a half, I haven’t managed to pull off a lot that I planned, but next year we’ll be far more proactive, we’ll be starting by opening a store in Bombay.

PT: Okay, what is your design philosophy, and how involved are you, do you sketch or is it just conceptual?

KJ: No, I don’t sketch, but it’s always references like it’s always things I do, I click photographs on my phone about little details I like, I email them in to Varun, or like images that I like, even street fashion, I move around with the camera a lot of time that I travel, I love street fashion, it’s taught me everything I know. I love staring at what people wear. Sometimes very slyly I click photographs of things, of combinations of colors I like. Because I think street fashion teaches you a lot, for them it’s trial and error they don’t care, but for you it’s actually, oh, my God pink, green and black all look good together, you know if you kind of put it together interestingly. So that’s like a lot of observations I make. Be it people, relationships, their mannerisms or what they wear, that’s pretty much what drives me, I don’t watch a lot of movies any more, I don’t read a lot of books and I certainly don’t listen to music, so I’m the strangest creative person you’ll find, but I think observations have made me who I am.

On lessons he has learnt at 40

PT: Okay, 40, you’ve been asked this every single interview you’ve done since, five things you’ve learnt about life, top of the hat?

KJ: Five things I’ve learnt about life, is if you can— try and avoid your level of expectation from the human race, because disappointment is an eventuality. I’ve learnt that to really love what you do and enjoy that in the moment is very critical, you feel excited about something, to express it, show it, and to reduce your level of nerves really, because I feel that the nervousness that we feel on a daily basis about things eats into the excitement level that we really should feel for the work we’ve done. So I want to enjoy the process a lot more. I want to feel that level of happiness which I don’t do, and I haven’t done. I’ve learnt if you can have like a couple of friends you should nurture just those, and there’s no directory required in life. If you have those two or three, invest in those, it’s like putting money into a bank. In those two or three that you really feel will be with you for life and care for you no matter what. Sometimes you know the level of positivity and negativity even people close around you have, you know. Sometimes the most amount of negative energy can come to you from a close friend. And you know those people. So the ones, keeping those aside, the two or three people that you know will love you no matter what, invest in those, like make it like a life job, like a profession, that’s the one thing I definitely have learnt. Fourthly, I think I’ve become less religious and I’ve started believing in the power of the universe much more, and I believe that my prayers which used to go to idols, I’ve stopped doing, and I believe very strongly that my religion is my inherent sense of correctness and goodness. Or goodness is too of course, too generic a term. But if I say correctness, like, be correct, be right, be as true to humanity as you can be and that in itself is a religion. That’s what I’ve really learnt over the years. So going to monuments and idols and temples, performing rituals no longer motivate or move me anymore. And I believe they shouldn’t. I believe that we’re all a creation of a certain kind of energy and that energy comes from within and if you can exercise that and put it out there in terms of doing the correct thing, then you are closer to what we call god.

PT: Yeah, that’s the point when you separate superstition from spirituality…

KJ: Correct. Lastly I think I’ve learnt that I need to definitely work on my personal life a lot more than my professional existence. I’ve learnt that now is the time that I have to focus on definitely having a very strong personal life, which I’ve denied myself, because I absorbed myself in too much work, I think I need to take it a little easy if I need to kind of venture into me, much more than myself as a company, but me as a person.

PT: Yeah, are you less afraid to fail now?

KJ: Yeah, hurt comes as part of the territory of love and feeling, but there’s a certain magic to that as well. And I think hurt is very therapeutic. It’s like self pity, it does so much for your soul.

PT: Do you have any irrational fears?

KJ: Yeah.

PT: Name one.

KJ: I think death is the most irrational fear, I fear it.

PT: It’s a rational fear.

KJ: No, really, it’s an eventuality, how can it be rational. I fear it all the time.

PT: What do you fear when you fear death?

KJ: The end of a journey, I don’t want this to end. And if it ends and I want to know what’s still happening.

PT: Then you’re saying the loss of consciousness, the end of consciousness.

KJ: Yeah, consciousness, if someone can guarantee I’ll be around at my funeral, I’ll be really happy, I won’t mind dying. But I don’t think that will happen, so.

PT: Or it could, you don’t know.

KJ: Irrational fears are also, no, I don’t think I have any irrational fears. I fear failure, but that’s a rational fear. I fear… I don’t know actually, I can’t think of one…

PT: What keeps you sane, first thing that comes to your mind?

KJ: My mother— she’s such a downer that she keeps me sane. She doesn’t like anything I do, she’s always like, oh, God, someone else has made a better film than you or somebody else is writing a better theme than you or why are they honoring you? What have you done? I think she does that purposely and I think that has kept me on my toes. She really is my big ticket to sanity.

PT: Give me the image that comes to your head when I say glamour, one or two images.

KJ: Rekha, I don’t know, I just thought of her, I don’t know why.

PT: Wow. Wow.

KJ: I don’t know, I just thought of her suddenly. I got a flash of her with her lips.

PT: And her golden kanjeevaram.

KJ: Yeah, with everything, glamour, yeah. I think I grew up thinking that was glamorous, so maybe that’s why.

PT: She was, right…

KJ: Yeah, today I would think it is over the top, but then I grew up thinking that that was glamour.

PT: Okay. Would you like to retire?

KJ: No, never, never.

PT: Do you want another life?

KJ: Yes.

PT: Completely separate from all of this?

KJ: No, I want another chance.

PT: You want another chance at this?

KJ: Yeah, a different past maybe.

PT: But you would never imagine a completely different life?

KJ: No, love this too much. No, I feel bad for people who don’t do what I do. I don’t want to be anything else, no.

PT: Not a maharaja of an estate?

KJ: No, this is definitely another life and I was definitely some kind of an aspirational human being in my last life for me to have got what I did in this life. No I can’t imagine doing anything else.

PT: So what would retirement look like?

KJ: My God, it’s the most depressing thought on the face of this earth, I never want to retire, I’d rather die. I mean, if that were the option I don’t want to retire. I don’t want to stop and watch other people do things that I’m not doing. It would kill me. I have no interest in going and watching movies and seeing other people kind of in the thick of things and I’m so not. I won’t be able to take that.

Proud Men

Posted on October 26, 2012 by admin

A story of one of Indian cinema’s most compelling institutions, that will soon be extinct

The man sitting in front of me was a producer, distributor, director and an actor. He didn’t look all of these things. In fact, he didn’t look any of them. Prakash Ahlawadi wore a faded grey shirt, a pair of brown trousers that seemed to be too short for him and a pair of sandals, one of which was torn. He was dark and had a mustache, and a face whose features you wouldn’t care to remember if you saw them on the road. Or in a film. He agreed to talk to me after I offered to treat him to tea. He is the only man I know who has spoken to me seriously about porn.

We were at a canteen, adjacent to an old movie theatre, with chipped, swinging saloon doors, more suited to a seedy bar from the sixties. So was this man. Around us were more, like him, dressed like him, who validated his claim of being a producer, distributor… whatever. They claimed to be so too. And joined us in speaking about porn. Then they spoke about the movie business and how the Hindi film had lost its family values and become a more individual affair over the years. The canteen had flimsy metal tables and old wooden chairs. It was a smallish, plain looking 10 by 12 feet space.

Outside, there were enormous film posters and hoardings. Hollywood blockbusters made to sound more garish than their creators would have ever intended them to, by dubbing and titling them in Hindi. Samundar Ke Lootere for Pirates Of The Carribean. Naga for Anaconda. And Husn. The last was the title of a “sexy film”. That’s what they called soft porn. It had just released and been washed out. “You have to know where to put a sexy film,” said Ahlawadi, with a grave face. “It won’t work everywhere”.

***

This was six years ago. Now the canteen, and the theatre, is shut. You have to stand back considerably to be able to see the mammoth structure in its entirety. In all its decrepitude. A vast art deco style theatre, built in 1952, it looks just about ready to collapse under the weight of history. Adjoining it is a building seven stories high, called a sky scraper in the era when it was made, a few years after the theatre. When Bombay didn’t have nearly as many tall buildings as it does now.

Both of these structures are shorn of paint, mostly, and they reveal, brazenly, the bare concrete that they are made of. Standing out on the edifice are four big bold letters that retain only a hint of the red they once were: N-A-A-Z. Meaning pride. Naaz Theatre. Naaz Building. Or just Naaz.

This immense whirlpool of decay, just off Mumbai’s Lamington Road, was once the epicentre of the Hindi film business. Its stock market. Every producer, distributor and exhibitor worth his salt would have an office in it. Mid-week the murmurs would start, the bargaining would begin, and by Friday films would be bought and sold. An Irani cafe nearby, now shut, would host a bunch of producers and distributors who had watched the trials of these films and who would talk about what would work and what wouldn’t. Which hero would be the next star. The next big director on the block. The money-spinners and the dabbas (literally meaning ‘boxes’— slang for flops in these parts). Among the people visiting this cafe would be giants like Producer-Distributor Gulshan Rai and Producer-Directors B. R. Chopra, Yash Chopra, G. P. Sippy, Nasir Hussain and Shakti Samanta. Legends like film stars Raj Kapoor and Dilip Kumar. And Amitabh Bachchan, when he wasn’t Amitabh Bachchan. When he was one of many actors who would visit the Irani cafe for a break. When the men at Naaz were still debating whether this tall fellow with a hoarse voice would last in the movies, and what on earth he was doing with that short actress Jaya Bhaduri at the premiere of Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna?

This was a time when the success of a Hindi film didn’t rely on a single week’s collection at urban multiplexes, but at least a few months’ draw at single screens throughout India— including small towns and villages. These proud men of Naaz were said to have a finger on their country’s pulse more than its politicians did.

One of the earliest trade reports also emerged from the Irani cafe close to Naaz. The latest gossip from its addas (a colloquial term for free-wheeling discussions) would be culled into cyclostyled sheets of paper called the K. T. (Knowledge Transfer) report. Then, one of the film producers who was a regular at the adda—B. K. Adarsh—began the country’s first trade magazine: Trade Guide. Its USP was a column called Naaz Samachar (Naaz News). Here are more recent snippets:

“NAAZ SAMACHAR

April 13, 1996

by K Z Fernandes

It seems to be a revival season for black and white movies. After the revival of Woh Kaun Thi? On 29th March at Maratha Mandir (mat.), as many as three films–DOSTI, PARASMANI and MADHUMATI–coincidentally, all jubilee hits in their first-run, were released at Minerva (mat.), Shalimar and Nandi, respectively last week. What’s more, another B/W fare, the Sohrab Modi-Dilip Kumar-Meena Kumari starter YAHUDI will be released in the near-future by none other than Shringar Films. To promote the film, Shringar Films have displayed an eye-catching hoarding in the vicinity of Naaz. The hoarding is beautifully painted and every passerby spares a few minutes to have a look at it, while some even murmur the famous lines from this film— ‘Yeh Mera Deewanapan Hai.’

“April 20

The management of Usha, Kolhapur has devised a unique scheme for audiences watching DILWALE DULHANIYA LE JAYENGE. The prizes distributed in the 6 p.m. show include audio cassettes of D.D.L.J. (for those in lower stalls), caps and T-shirts carrying the logo of the film (for viewers in Upper Stalls) and attractive wall-clocks (for the Balcony class). That’s a good scheme.

Publicist Mukesh G Vasani (of New Ravi Arts) has installed a lamination machine in his office at Jyoti Studio Compound, Kennedy Bridge, Mumbai.”

And that was news too. The installation of a lamination machine at a publicist’s office. Because the proud men of Naaz were an incestuous lot. And yet they were visionaries of sorts. The curve of Naaz’s trajectory of success rides on the great wave of India’s Golden Age of filmmaking (from the 1940s to the end of the 1960s)— and outlasts it until the end of the flashy eighties.

***

Now it’s over. I’m back at the Naaz Theatre after six years and I can see stray dogs wandering about its grand insides. At the lobby, in between two sofas, stands a pristine white statue of one of the Gemini twins (emblems of the erstwhile Gemini Studios— that used to make the biggest Tamil movies at one time) blowing his bugle to the sky. Flanking him are two cherubic figures, one holding a fox, the other a basket of fruits. “Wahaan hai, do shaitan (There they are, the two scoundrels)!” whispers R P Anand from behind me. R P Anand, the owner of Naaz, the last proud man standing, looks like he has walked out of a stylish postcard from the 1950s. His suit seems to be cut perfectly, but from a different era. His smart tie, sharp features, fair taut skin and slight rotundness make him look like a pinched, slimmer, Alfred Hitchcock. This gets accentuated when he tells you stories— he smiles, his eyes grow wide and shine, his eyebrows rise, he comes alive.

But, unlike Hitchcock, Anand was never tempted to make his own films. He states proudly that he has always been only an exhibitor, “not in the film business”. “Exhibitors were the most respected people in the city,” he says. Unlike film people, who were looked upon with a degree of scorn in the fifties and sixties because they worked with Jewish actresses and tawaifs, and whose business was so uncertain that a change in public appetite for a kind of movie could ruin them; the exhibitor, like an urban zamindar hosting nautch girl sessions, would merely be the man who presented the entertainment.

“VIPs would always approach me for prime seats to the movies,” Anand remembers. Ministers, policemen, income tax officials…

Anand was in his twenties when he was sent to look at this 900 seater theatre, then called West End, and the building adjoining it, and see whether they made for a good business deal for his family. They acquired both in 1963 from Keki Modi (brother of famous filmmaker Sohrab Modi). Before West End the spot had a different theatre that would show Marathi and silent films— which was demolished to build the new one that still stands. After the Anands bought it, after it became their Naaz, they showed only Hindi movies.

Devendra Shah, one of the older distributors at Naaz, is by everyone’s vote (including Anand’s) the best raconteur of its stories. The portly man is dressed in a shirt, trousers, and a pair of sports shoes when I meet him. “When I was twenty I would hang out with fifty year olds regularly,” says Shah. “I would love to listen to what they had to say, because history is history.” Shah explains the reason the Naaz building became such a hub was because: “The big studios in the fifties, like Jyoti, Rooptara and Ranjit, were located around it, so it made sense for everyone to set up office here to sell their movies.” The fifties saw many filmwallahs come into Mumbai from Pakistan after the Partition, he says, and the hub grew.

Anand’s family came from Pakistan too, from Punjab where they had swathes of land and extremely profitable businesses. “We had to leave everything behind,” he remembers bitterly. But they rebuilt themselves. They established themselves as contractors and financiers in Delhi, then ventured into other businesses. Anand moved to Bombay to develop the family’s interests here. Between three and five pm everyday, he still attends office at Naaz theatre.

Behind the statues in the lobby is a tall gold and silver glass panel that some say is from the sets of Mughal-e-Azam, one of India’s biggest period epics. Fancy iron grids, that once held chandeliers, remain fixed on the ceiling. Along the corridors of the theatre are round glass mirrors, mostly cracked, embellished on their fringes with stained glass work. Peer into one and, reflected in a cracked spider-web of history, you will see a vintage popcorn machine.

“I remember when the popcorn machine came in,” says Twinkle, Anand’s son who is thrice his size, chortling with glee. “People would just crowd around it to look, with their children, even those who couldn’t afford it would watch the corn go ‘pop’.” We’re in Shah’s cabin at his office on the first floor at Naaz. Behind him is a large image of the Hindu deity Mahalakshmi: the goddess of great wealth. Shah was talking about the days when Naaz represented great wealth to so many. Then Twinkle, who was passing by, decided to sit in on the conversation. Shortly, we were joined by the owner of another of the city’s stately old theatres called Capitol, located right outside Chhatrapati Shivaji Station. He didn’t want to be named in the article, but couldn’t resist being a part of the discussion. Then another distributor, who also wishes to stay unnamed, joined in. It’s been hours since we began speaking and this has become a Naaz adda without us knowing it. We’ve dissected the business, and moved on to general topics of interest: trends in Indian economics, politics and public psyche over the past four to five decades. It’s pretty surreal because Shah has a tea boy called Aatma Ram (aatma, in Hindi, means spirit or ghost) and every now and then in the middle of us chatting he screams: “Aatma Ram, chai lao (get the tea)!”

“Naaz, one of 16 theatres in Bombay, was considered lucky for producers to premiere their films in,” Shah tells me. Most films launched here would go on to run for a ‘silver jubilee’ (what men in the trade use to refer to a film running for 25 weeks). Some would make it to a golden jubilee (50 weeks). And some the diamond jubilee (60 weeks). Trophies for such jubilees would be given to the exhibitor and Anand’s office is so crowded with them you feel they’re closing in on you. Junglee, Waqt, Pakeezah, Teesri Manzil, Yaadon Ki Baraat… some of Hindi cinema’s most famous films have been premiered at Naaz. The trophies are everywhere— on shelves just outside the office, occupying more than half of Anand’s desk, on every available mantel or on a closet top. The accomplishments of half a century in Hindi cinema, measured not by how much a film collected but by how long it stayed.

“Not anymore,” says Twinkle. Films don’t stay this long anymore. They are shunted out.

“Now if a film finishes three days the exhibitors say to it: Dhut!” He barks at me, as if I were the unfortunate movie of today, being shooed away.

“Dhut!” Shah seconds him.

“Dhut.” repeats the unnamed owner of Capitol, a silent handsome old man with a gentle smile, quietly transforming this expression of put-down into a philosophical sigh.

“Godown mein jaao (Get into the godown)!!!” continues Twinkle, still talking to the make-believe film of today whose success is measured only by its box office collection. This is Twinkle’s crescendo, delivered like a sentence of banishment from an emperor in a period drama. He sweeps a large arm majestically, pointing to the door. Back in the days of the jubilees, when a film was let go of at a theatre, its reels would be stored in godowns. Today, with most theaters having gone digital, such film reels aren’t really used in the first place. But Twinkle, swept up in his act, has chosen to ignore this.

Shah says his tryst with the movies began with going to watch films like Dev Anand’s Munimji seven times. Twinkle remembers a man who watched Hum Kisise Kum Naheen 37 times (he had asked him curiously whether he was having trouble “getting the plot”). But their larger point is that a film was given time to pick up collections, time for word-of-mouth to spread. If it was good, it was given the honor of being re-watched. Shah remembers a black marketeer, with an office in the Bombay suburbs that had a Naaz signboard, who would hoard and sell tickets for Naaz shows at exorbitant prices. Sometimes, if a film didn’t work, it would be shot again and re-released (Jwalamukhi, starring Waheeda Rehman, was one such film).

Things changed with the corporates and the multiplexes coming in, in the noughties. With the Hindi film business being granted industry status by the government in 2000, loans could be secured for the movies from banks and finance companies. This brought in local companies like Shree Ashtavinayak Cine Vision Ltd. and Reliance Entertainment and multinationals like Disney and Viacom. To buy their way in, they offered far more than current rates to make a film, and production costs and star actor fees got hiked to more than thrice the amount suddenly.

Meanwhile the multiplex chains boomed, charging six times as much on tickets. The new producers could now make up more money on a week’s earning than they had earlier been able to make in months. There was consequentially a lot more money, and many more films. But the Naaz distributor lost his place of pride.

“There is no way we can afford to buy a film now,” says Shah. Shah, who began his career as a distributor by buying Jaya Bachchan’s (then Jaya Bhaduri) 1974 hit Kora Kagaz, took over this office from Standard TV, one of India’s first TV importers. Twinkle recalls that the first VCR to have been imported into India was bought by his brother. But these devices hardly made a dent on the pre-existing model of the film business. The multiplexes and the corporates did. Most distributors who ran their own enterprise from Naaz once now work for the corporates. “It’s the same thing in a way,” says Shah. “Because the corporates don’t really understand the business of film (where to sell, where to buy, how to break up the distribution of a film into territories). We do. It’s just that we don’t own the films we deal in now.” Instead, they’re “agents”. They earn commission or salaries for films they sell— unlike earlier where they would get all the profits on films they owned.

More significantly, they no longer control the fate of Hindi cinema. There was a time when Bollywood was them. Bollywood would come to them. The advances they paid a producer on a film would finance the movie. If it didn’t make money, the next film by the same producer would be pre-sold to the proud men of Naaz at a discount. Now they go to Bollywood. They barely control their own fates.

***

Save for some. Anil Thadani is one of the few independent distributors in the business who’s still making money. Big money. He bought the rights for Dirty Picture, last year’s Vidya Balan starring blockbuster. This year, he bought Agneepath, the wildly successful remake of a 1990 classic. Word around Naaz is that Thadani manages to buy these films because he collaborates with big producers like Karan Johar and Ritesh Sidhwani who’re willing to partner with him. They’re willing to partner, because he rarely goes wrong in his choice of movies to buy, or theatres to distribute them in.

Thadani meets me by the pool at the Otter’s Club, a posh member’s only club by the sea in the suburb of Bandra. He is slim, chiseled and sure of himself. He points out that the corporates coming in means more money for the industry, even if “distributors aren’t getting as much of a share in the pie as they used to.” He believes the corporates are here to stay. “You have to move with the times or you get left behind,” he believes. He’s planning on moving out of his fourth floor office at Naaz soon, to a more convenient location in Bandra. “Now with communications having gotten so much better, you don’t really have to have all the stakeholders in one place for the business to work,” he says.

***

The men who will stay back at Naaz are less comfortable with the pace at which India is changing. “Do we even have a government today?” asks Twinkle, his eyes ablaze at our Naaz adda in Shah’s office. “The corporates are a passing fad,” Shah argues. “There was a time, smugglers used to finance films— the underworld. They didn’t last. The corporates are like that. They will come and go.” But the corporates aren’t just Indian companies, I point out. They’re big multinationals. “Like China,” says the unnamed distributor, who was silent so far, bringing the discussion back to where it had started. We were talking about how Chinese goods are flooding the markets everywhere and the Indian government isn’t doing anything. That’s when Twinkle asked whether India even has a government today. “Jiski laathi hai na,” he says. “Usi ki government hai is desh main (the government in this country serves only those who wield power).”

A high-rise stands tall behind Naaz, many times its size, whose height can be estimated only if you crane your neck out of this building’s windows. Traffic noises from the main road creep into the sudden hush that has filled the room. “Today, to do anything,” says the quiet gentlemanly owner of Capitol. “You have to have your own private army.”

***

“If things turn back, I’ll make it even more beautiful than before.”

Anand stood in front of a cry box, six years ago, when he said this to me. The theatre was empty and still and dark, but I thought I could see his eyes well up. There was a lump in his throat as he spoke. Cry boxes were glass enclosed sound-proofed cubicles at the far end of the theatre’s ground floor, where families could watch films with bawling infants, without disturbing the other viewers. Families would come in hordes. Families of eight, or fifteen, or more. Joint families mostly. And not just for occasions like birthdays, festivals and weddings, as Twinkle says: “film watching was a family affair”. The first three weeks of a film would almost always be booked by families and the college going youngsters.

The latter would fashion their clothes after their favorite stars. “This trend was given a fillip when the colour movies came in,” says Shah. That’s when the distributors made the most money. It’s when their “Silver Jubilee Era” began. Shah remembers, particularly, Shammi Kapoor’s Junglee— one of the earlier colour hits. He and Twinkle and the unnamed Capitol owner and unnamed distributor recall how strictly stereotypes applied to each star. Shammi Kapoor, the rebel star. Dilip Kumar, the tragedy king. Dev Anand, the romantic hero. Rajesh Khanna, the new romantic hero. Rishi Kapoor, the lover boy.

Shah remembers buying Rishi Kapoor’s second film after his first—Bobby—completed its Silver Jubilee. Called Zehreela Insaan, it was the remake of a Kannada film Naagarahaavu, by the same director, that had Kapoor in the role of an angry protagonist, brimming over with angst— a 180 degree departure from the infatuated college kid in Bobby. “Naagarahavu had broken all box office records,” says Shah. “And Zehreela Insaan had excellent music by R D Burman (the famous O Hansini was one of its songs).” But the film didn’t work. The public refused to see Rishi Kapoor in this mould. He had to go back to playing lover boy in movies like Rafoo Chakkar and Laila Majnu to get the crowds back in.

Distributors would send their men to theatres to mingle with the audiences and determine whether a hero or heroine was working in his or her current avatar. Often the stars would try and observe the audiences, while remaining unseen themselves. “Manoj Kumar would be at Opera House, because that’s where his movies were run mostly,” says Shah. “Biswajit would slip into the cry box at Naaz.” Dev Anand would be at Naaz too.

The glass fronts of the cry boxes shattered long ago and were removed. In them lie chairs, tossed over one another. And cobwebs.

A story goes that Dev Anand had entered the cry box to watch his audience watch him in November 1976, when Jewel Thief was released. Here’s what I’ve pieced together from various accounts of what happened that day.

He was observing them closely to see where they cheered and whistled, and where they yawned. In the interval, he was preparing to leave when, suddenly, he heard an uproar. “A crowd has gathered because word has gotten around that Dev Anand is here,” he heard people say. This flummoxed him, for he had taken great care not to be seen when he entered. How did they find out? Or, more importantly, how would he leave without being mobbed?

The mystery revealed itself soon after. Outside Naaz stood Sev Anand—Dev Anand’s lookalike who had re-christened himself with a similar sounding name—leaning against a cigarette counter. He wore the same checkered golf cap and corduroy jacket Dev Anand had on as the Jewel Thief. He tilted his head to one side in the same manner, and spoke like Dev Anand, uttering five sentences in one breath, emphasizing the last, nodding for emphasis. The crowd cheered. Then, when they realized this wasn’t Dev Anand, they laughed and cheered again, not knowing that the real star was well within ear-shot. Ironically, in Jewel Thief, Dev Anand’s character had worn the same outfit to try and look like another character who was a mirror image of his. And here he was, trapped in a glass box, waiting for the Sev Anand show to end.

Naaz is full of such stories and such images. The building seems to have sunk into the ground somewhat, and when you walk along its corridors you notice that the levels on each floor slope slightly into one another, lending it an Escheresque feel. Yet for all the surrealism you know “things will not turn back”.

Bombay, now Mumbai, the linear city, doesn’t always allow for a U-turn. Amitabh Bachchan made a U-turn. Dev Anand couldn’t. The most durable leading man in Hindi film history delivered 84 hits in a career spanning 115 films. But his last 10 films, released over the last two decades, were critical and commercial failures. One of these, incidentally, was Return of Jewel Thief. His last film, released in 2011, was Chargesheet. It stars an 88 year old Dev Anand, in the bright scarves and suede waist coats of his youth, next to debutant actress Devshi Khanduri, who plays a wannabe siren, with a Gibson guitar she pretends to strum, and an irrepressible desire to writhe. But for its star cast—which also includes veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah and another, younger, yesteryear star Jackie Shroff—it has all the makings of a ghastly B movie. A few months after it was released Dev Anand passed away on the 3rd of December at London’s Washington Mayfair Hotel.

Sev Anand, who came to Mumbai from a village in UP, tried at first to sell himself to producers at Naaz as a cheaper Dev Anand. They refused. He did, however, bag a tiny role in a lesser known film called Akalmand where he played I S Johar, wearing a Dev Anand mask, during a jewelry heist. Then he invested all he had into a film called Taqdeer Ki Baazi (a take on Dev Anand’s Baazi), which, appropriately, translates into ‘gamble of fate’. He enlisted the services of an actress he named Kalpana Karnik (Dev Anand’s wife was Kalpana Kartik) and a music director called S. D. Surman (inspired from the legendary S. D. Burman). After ten reels he had to shelve the film. Funds had dried up. Shah, who had once gifted Sev Anand a Jewel Thief cap, says Dev Anand “paid for his upkeep” after this. Then, in 2005, a newspaper report said Sev Anand had committed suicide. Perhaps because he was no longer needed. Dev Anand had taken to parodying himself.

Just like that, proud men go. R. P. Anand and Twinkle are planning on selling Naaz so that the land can be used to build a modern mall and banquet centre. “Please don’t ask that this be declared a heritage property,” Anand tells me. “I wouldn’t want that.”

And perhaps he is right in this. For Naaz—the pride of Hindi cinema’s glory years—to be refurbished into some sort of half-hearted tribute to itself wouldn’t do it justice at all.

Sun lo magar ye kisise naa kehnaa (Listen, but don’t say this to anyone)

Tinke ka leke sahaara na behana (Don’t grasp at straws)

Bin mausam malhaar na gaana (Don’t sing the Raag Malhar, when it isn’t the season for it)

Aadhi raat ko mat chillana (Don’t scream in the middle of the night)

These are the lyrics of an old Raj Kapoor song from Shree 420. The film wasn’t released at Naaz, but it may have been bought and sold here. The words hold. Naaz is mean’t to go. As its proud men were. Like Gemini Studios, in Madras—which was razed to the ground to make place for a five star hotel called The Park—with bits and pieces of it, like the statue at Naaz, scattered around the country.

Because that is the way of legends. To live on in other things long after they are dead. To keep coming back as unlikely fragments of the past. “Ab to sirf film ka tukda khareed saktay hain (Now all we can buy is a fragment of a film),” says a man who was once a distributor at Naaz, about how he can’t possibly afford to pay for the rights of a film for an entire territory anymore. He is telling me why he shut shop. He is one of many who did not go to work for the corporates. For pride can be broken, sure. Never bent.

Can Coolies

Posted on October 26, 2012 by admin

As part of his project Dress Circle, between 2003-2005 Shahid Datawala began exploring the business of B and C grade films in the Chandni Chowk area of Old Delhi where most of the small time distributors had their offices. They worked within the area— transporting film from Chandni Chowk to Paharganj and Dai Wara and other surrounding neighborhoods. Films were transported in cans by coolies from one distributor’s office to another or to the theatres.

He began photographing this peculiar mode of film distribution.

He was intrigued by how a movie in its physical state was dealt with. He cringed when he saw how the cans were strewn on the streets or used as makeshift stools as these men went about their work. “They were opening the cans to check the film,” he says. “They were manhandling it. It wasn’t like: we have to wear gloves, make sure there’s no oil on our hands, that the film isn’t scratched. That’s why you see so many scratches on screen sometimes.” There was no respect in the way they handled it. It was like: “Film Ko Nikalo, Usko Ghumao Daalo, Andar Can Mein Fit Karo, Jaakey Deo (Take the film out, turn it around, fit it in the can, and deliver it).”

Datawala believes in keeping a distance from his subjects which limits his interaction with them. He believes in experiencing the equation with his subjects on his own terms, and not getting manipulated by inputs the subjects would provide him, or not. He even eschews the term ‘photographer’ with its documentary connotations and prefers to call himself a ‘lens-based artist’ instead. He was not out to document the Can Coolies, he says. His interest in their work was purely visual and aesthetic. As a result he can only speculate that they were paid about Rs 80, 100 or 150 on a daily basis, depending on how much film was to be carried. And that they possibly got a little extra if they had to hire a rickshaw. He doesn’t know where they are from or what they make of their job.

The coolies themselves found Datawala’s interest in them strange. The soft porn distributors were suspicious too. “They probably thought I was taking pictures of the area to gather evidence for the police, or maybe they thought I was a terrorist.” He recalls a visit to one of their offices. “They were Punjabi men, sitting at desks with posters of nude, semi-nude women on the walls next to pictures of deities”, he says. “I had a tough time trying to convince them that I wasn’t going to blow the place up.”

Datawala sees his work on the ‘Can Coolies’, as he calls them, as an extension of his work on old cinema halls in Delhi. Once upon a time these halls had been majestic in their glory but fell into disuse over time, and now screen B grade movies to survive. The damage and degeneration of the film during its transportation by the coolies mirrored the degeneration of the cinema halls Datawala was photographing. Both were symbols of the passing of an era. He mourns the loss of these places but accepts it as an inevitable rite of the passage of time.

His own affinity to the past, however, is evident in more than his choice of subjects. Datawala has shot the Can Coolies on a film camera. Despite digital cameras nearly obliterating film, Datawala has only taken to shooting digital in the last five years. He still prefers film, for technical and aesthetic reasons. “Film has more soul”, he says.

Text by Alyssa Lobo