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.

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.

For Real

Posted on October 26, 2012 by admin

TBIP’s documentary film recommendation

Most films about folk traditions carry a handloomy sense of worthiness, the smell of middle class stodginess desperately trying to gain some cool by association, some elite status by the recognition of artistic traditions which are both austere and lush in their commitment. While the folk traditions themselves could set our souls free, the same cannot usually be said of the solemn films made about these traditions.

If you hate that kind of film then you need to have your faith reaffirmed by watching Ruchir Joshi’s 1992 documentary 11 Miles: A Diary of Journeys. This film about the Bauls is made with great artistic exuberance, a visual sureness, an energetic beauty and a questing heart. A fabulous opening sequence sets the tone of the film— a minstrel sings through the Calcutta streets, before walls plastered with film posters, over pylons and half built flyovers, his song coming in and out of the traffic, the night a geometric pattern of dark and sulphur yellow lights, flagging off a journey of stories, songs and conversations with Bauls. The first person voice-over meditates on their ideas of samadhi and desire, walls and lines, freedom, art, life and the need to disturb those who are too much at ease with their own ideas, free associating with thoughts about Ghatak, Dylan, Machado and observations about shots the filmmaker ‘sees’ . Perhaps the most marvelous thing about this film is the way its form makes the tradition present, films it with a personal eye, not a formulaic one so that the baul who blow dries his hair lives in the same film as the baul in the manicoloured robes with the pahuncha hua demeanour and one landscape holds deep blue ponds and zigzags on asphalt, arid expanses and TV towers.

11 Miles… is a mast, must-see documentary, whose essay style, unburdened by pedantic definitions of high and low art, popular and folk, anthropological and experimental, expresses itself with an intellectual independence and clarity that the documentary form at its best is capable of. At two and a half hours some may consider it a bit self-indulgent, but I’ll take that over self-aggrandizing any day.

Short, selected clips from the documentary are available to view online on the website of The Travelling Archive project http://thetravellingarchive.org/related_research_ruchir.php

The Mirror Has Two Faces

Posted on October 25, 2012 by admin

Mira Hashmi on Pakistan’s paradoxical and puzzling relationship with Hindi cinema

Her name was Sardar Bibi on her identity card but, in the great Punjabi tradition of conjugating proper nouns, everyone called her Sardaran. She was a widow in her sixties and her daughter Meena was my nanny. Sardaran did odd-jobs around the house, cooked the chapatis, and at night taught me old Punjabi folk songs and narrated fables about wayward monkeys and ticks that exploded in rivers of blood after having a tad too much to drink. This was the early 1980s and the VCR had only just entered our collective consciousness, and with Indian films banned from Pakistani cinemas since 1965, pirated videos of Bollywood fare, though not available in great abundance, were the newest guilty pleasure, one more in a long line of declared cultural taboos in the wake of General Zia’s bid for ‘Islamization’. (This split between official line and ground reality often gave rise to absurdities of farcical proportions, such as the state television channel being instructed to never mention India by name, resulting in Dilip Kumar’s return to Mumbai after a trip to Lahore, in 1988, being covered in news bulletins with the sentence ‘Humsaya mulk ke adaakar, jo humsaya mulk se chand roz ke dauray par aaye the, aaj shaam waapis humsaya mulk ke liye ravaana ho gaye.’ And I shall also never forget the night I heard the moulvi at our neighbourhood mosque reciting a naat—devotional verses—set to the tune of Roop suhana lagta hai, chaand purana lagta hai.)

When word got around that the Hashmi household had acquired a National VCR (but nothing to watch on it), a kind family friend lent us two films from his Dubai shopping: Naseeb and Suhaag – both Amitabh Bachchan starrers. For about a month, all the kids plus the household help would sit huddled together in front of the TV after lunch and religiously watch either of the two films every single day. It was sometime during this ongoing exercise that Sardaran declared that Bachchan was her long-lost son. Our kitchen, which was her domain, became a shrine to the star, with posters and pictures adorning all the cupboards. Over the next few years, she only managed to see one or two more of The Angry Young Man’s films, but her mantra remained unchanged, unshakeable: Bachchan was her son. She managed to convince the local electrician of the veracity of her claim but the rest of us would only giggle and smirk in response and treat it as the joke that we felt it was. It was only many years later, after she had passed away, that we learned from her family that as a young woman during the upheaval of Partition, Sardaran had been separated from her infant son, whom she never saw again. She prayed that the lost child had been found by a good family who raised him as their own and, somewhere in her heart, she hoped that he had grown up to be a handsome, successful, famous and adored man— someone exactly like Mr. Bachchan.

On a warm, humid Lahore evening, three days after Rajesh Khanna’s death on July 18, a group of friends and I sat together in his memory, singing Bheegi bheegi raaton mein and watching him woo Zeenat Aman on the projector in my cozy living room. We were plunged into darkness every now and then with the constant power ‘load-shedding’ that has been a staple of our daily lives for the past five years, but our spirits were not to be dampened. With strings of motia wrapped around our wrists, we munched on pita bread and hummus and sang and reminisced about our movie memories of Kakaji, and amidst this I was suddenly reminded of Sardaran, and the deep, almost inexplicable connection that innumerable Pakistanis have with Hindi cinema. After all, politically, we have always been ‘enemy countries’, having fought three official wars and countless unofficial ones, and with much suspicion of the other to be had on either side of the divide. There is intelligence surveillance, political one-upmanship, media tu-tu-main-main, police-reporting visas, and visa application processes that’ll make you wish you’d never been born— and yet, there is also a strange kind of affinity, an underlying, seductive fascination that at once repels and attracts us to the Other— sort of like the Hollywood films in the 80s where both the villain and the love interest would be those darned Russkies. In official forums, there is resistance and denial (even as Hindi films were allowed back onto Pakistani screens some five years ago), but on the ground, the unembellished reality is that today Bollywood informs our cultural landscape more than our own local cinema. Lollywood, as our film industry, based primarily in Lahore, is referred to, was supposed to benefit from the ban on Hindi films because it would, in theory at least, allow home-grown cinema to flourish unhindered by rival product. That theory was, of course, inherently flawed and in the face of zero competition, not to mention Zia’s destructive cultural policies, Lollywood eventually (and inevitably) floundered. Today, there is reverence and nostalgia for our legends, like Madam Noorjehan, Santosh Kumar, and Waheed Murad, but Lollywood, for all effects and purposes, and due to our own acute myopia, has become irrelevant to the larger picture. Our radio stations now play Indian filmi sangeet, our up-market movie houses show The Dirty Picture and Ra.One, our weddings see the young ‘uns performing choreographed dances to Oo la la and Chammak challo, we cry with Aamir Khan during every episode of Satyamev Jayate, we know the inner and outer worlds of Shahrukh Khan inside and out, Katrina Kaif and Shilpa Shetty smile benignly at us from billboards, and we hang on to every bit of Bollywood gossip about Saifeena that floods the internet. (We also laugh ourselves silly when Hindi TV channels spell it ‘Abhi na jao chod kar ke dil abhi bhara nahi’, but I’ll save that for another day).

The internet has obviously made it that much easier to have the world, including that of Hindi ‘fillums’, at our fingertips, but even in the years way back when Gates and Jobs were just pimply-faced geeks getting copies of Asimov kicked in their faces at the beach, Hindi cinema managed to very much be a part of our lives in an oddly organic fashion. Apart from the trickle-turned-surge of Hindi movies on VHS that led to a mushrooming of video rental outfits all over the country, local book stores started stocking smuggled issues of Filmfare, Stardust and (now long defunct) Star & Style. Only a few precious (and terribly expensive) copies of each would make it across and then would be passed from fan to rabid fan, dog-eared and creased, each article and interview and photograph pored over and dissected and discussed incessantly. It was through this network that we came to keep ourselves updated with Amitabh Bachchan’s recovery after his infamous accident on the set of Coolie. (My cousins had made a pact that they would watch the new VHS of Laawaris only if/when the star succumbed to his injury; I arrived home from school one day to, horror of horrors, see them viewing the film. “Is he…?” I asked in a trembling voice. “Nah, we just got tired of waiting and thought, what the hell?”). This was also how it got around like wildfire among Pakistan’s female population that the frizzy-haired girl in red in the song Papa kehte hain from Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak was hero Aamir Khan’s wife, thereby shattering a million teenage dreams, in unison with those in India I imagine.

And then there was, of course, Chitrahaar! It is nigh impossible to explain to the YouTube generation just what an esteemed place this film song show held in our hearts. Twice a week, we would await it eagerly, singing along to the ads for Nirma Washing Powder and Vicco Turmeric Ayuvedic Cream that signaled the imminent arrival of Chitrahaar, our beloved window into Bollywood’s past, present and future. Perhaps it’s nostalgia speaking, but the instant gratification that the 24-hour Bollywood content TV channels offer today, simply doesn’t compare to the sense of heightened anticipation that Doordarshan used to elicit back in the day with their banner programme.

There are hazy memories of a screening of the 1967 Meena Kumari starrer Noor Jehan, which, for reasons now consigned to the planes of bureaucratic amnesia, was allowed to have a limited release in Pakistan sometime in the late seventies, but I remember very clearly the thrill of watching a Hindi film in the cinema for what I consider the first ‘real’ time, when I visited Delhi and was whisked off to see Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, in 1984. Many years after that, I was in Mumbai making a documentary on Madam Noorjehan and got to meet my cinematic idols, Gulzar, Dilip Kumar, Dev Anand among them, and though I tried to appear unfazed, the truth is that I could barely contain myself. The monumental sense of awe I had felt in the presence of the subject of the film I was working on, was duplicated during interviews with Lata Mangeshkar and Naushad, and I was acutely aware of my ridiculously good fortune. Perhaps dearest to my heart was the meeting with the late Manorama, who spoke with great fondness of her old friend ‘Noori’, whom she hadn’t met since the latter left Mumbai after Partition. At the end of our chat, she couldn’t hold back the tears and neither could I. It was my first conscious and overwhelming realization of the one peoples we once were, and also of what a strong emotional presence Indian cinema had had in my life, as well as in those of many other Pakistanis.

The question though, that I certainly had never really asked myself, or anyone else for that matter, was why. Why do we have this deep and abiding love for Hindi cinema? “’Why ever not?’ is my answer,” says Faiza Sultan Khan, editor of The Life’s Too Short Literary Review and fellow Bollywood enthusiast. “When I was living in England no one asked, why do you watch American films? It was just the dominant cultural presence, as Hindi cinema is in the sub-continent.” So, because, like Everest, it is there?

“Well yes, but it’s also about the music,” posits Ali Dayan Hasan, human rights activist and HRW’s (Human Rights Watch) envoy to Pakistan. “We were hearing this music in our homes from the day we were born really. It was only natural that the connection extended to the films themselves as we grew older. I saw Roti, Kapada Aur Makaan when I was about five, which really my parents ought not to have let me see at that age! But I remember hearing the songs and thinking, hang on, I know this music. So yes, the music aspect is a very strong one, it’s in our genes, practically!”

The three of us, along with Samar Ata-Ullah—television producer—and Yasser Hashmi—psychology professor—are, as it happens, listening to some filmi music yet again a few days after our Rajesh Khanna memorial evening, and trying, for a lark, to place our collective fandom in some sort of context. Among the first things we figure is that from the vast history of Hindi film music, it is the music of R. D. Burman that, like I’m certain is the case across the border, elicits the strongest devotion.

“My parents were not actually into film music at all,” Faiza clarifies. “Their tastes were the kind of high-brow that, let’s be honest, aren’t that appealing to a six year-old— qawwali and non-vocal classical. So when one heard Mera naam hai Shabnam (from Kati Patang) for the first time, well, let’s say life picked up considerably!” Indeed, the Pancham appreciation society in Pakistan is as vibrant and maniacal as anywhere else and it recruits younger and younger people everyday. Among them is Ali Aftab Saeed, a twenty something musician who gained notoriety as well as tremendous following and critical acclaim last year when he and his band, Beygairat Brigade, released the politically charged song Aaloo Anday. Saeed is a die-hard Burman fanatic and I asked him recently what the legendary composer’s work means to him. “Speaking for myself, I simply cannot think beyond R.D.,” he gushes unabashedly. “What’s interesting though is that an overwhelming majority of Pakistani musicians today are exhibiting the R.D. influence on their music; and the virus, so to speak, is spreading wider yet. This is true regardless of the inclination of the musician, be it eastern or western. Even those who officially despise Indian music and claim they have absolutely nothing to do with it, have in their commercially successful work the sensibility of music that R.D. introduced. It could be unconscious in some cases but it is unmistakable all the same. Just as the west is considered to have set the standard of cinematic aesthetics and consequently filmmakers all over the world are following more or less the same principles; it seems that Pancham has done the same to music of the subcontinent. It would be interesting to study R.D.’s influence on Pakistani musicians, and if I can get some funding, I would love to make a documentary on the subject.”

Apart from the music, Ali has another theory on Pakistan’s love affair with Bollywood: “The Hindi film is actually in our language, the language of the Pakistanis; the language of Bollywood for the longest time was just Urdu. More importantly, the sensibility has been an Urdu-speaking, North Indian, Hindustani Muslim sensibility. Therefore, in reality, these films are for us, they are ‘ours’. They made them for us!” Amidst our giggles and smirks, Faiza concurs. “The dialogue and more to the point, the poetry, the lyrics were pre-dominantly in Urdu, the language of poetry and symbol of sophistication, prestige, romance. I mean I think back to the picturization of Kahin door jab din dhal jaaye, when Anand (Rajesh Khanna) looks down at the book in his hand which has a rose pressed in it, and it’s a book of Urdu poetry. It’s a lovely moment, and also poignant because that flower pressed in it has a million other meanings to it now.” Yasser adds another angle to this admittedly under-considered aspect: “Interestingly enough, that’s the point on which the Punjabi film industry in Lahore was opposed to the local Urdu films; they said, ‘we are making ‘Pakistani films, this Urdu cinema is actually Indian’.” He also points out that preceding generations of Pakistanis, like many of their Indian counterparts, had a melancholic, romantic longing to revisit the shared past of the two countries, “like the scores of people who still come and go across to seek out ancestral homes. I remember from my childhood that the shopkeeper in the market near our house always used to have Gurdaspur Radio playing, because that’s where he and his family had migrated from, and you’d often hear him declare, ‘Gurdaspur zindabad!’”

Perhaps fittingly then, the new Indian cinema that has started to evolve in the last decade or so doesn’t appear to hold the same kind of appeal that old Bollywood does. Says Faiza, “I don’t know how much longer I’ll be watching Hindi films because now the new ones are very much the Indian urban experience, and they’re now very specific to the location where they’re set or made. The older films always worked with a particular set of symbols and you as a viewer knew what you were negotiating. Now it’s become very insular and self-indulgent; it has ceased to be a universal experience, and truthfully it doesn’t resonate with me like it used to.”

“It’s become like one big in-joke,” agrees Samar. “For example, even in something like Delhi Belly, there were all these references which probably only Delhi walas would really get. I have cousins who live in Delhi, so for instance they told me about the ‘Nakad waale disco, udhaar waale khisko’ reference, which is apparently written at every paan shop. We can of course still enjoy the film on a very basic level, if it’s a well-made film, but that richness, that density of subtext gets lost in translation, which was not the case before.”

It would be convenient to pretend here that there are no anti-Bollywood segments in Pakistani society but that would not be true— of course there are, and they are roughly of two kinds: those who are indifferent towards cinema in general and/or snobbish about indigenous cinema in particular, and there are those who are generally anti-everything Indian, well and truly indoctrinated in the ‘nationalistic’ belief system espoused on official levels through school textbooks and other propagandist avenues, and handed down from one generation to the next (sound familiar?). As a teacher of Film Studies, I do a lecture on song picturization in Hindi cinema and I remember this one time when after the class was over, a student came to me and apologized. When I asked him what he was apologizing for, he said that he had kept his eyes averted from the screen throughout the class because in his household, India, in all and any of its manifestations, is the enemy, and that notion extends to the country’s movies. We proceeded to have an intriguing discussion on the matter with me giving him the usual spiel about art being beyond boundaries etc., and which concluded with him ceding that he’d “think about it”. But the kind of reasoning I was employing to try to give him another perspective on the issue becomes harder to propound when Bollywood sometimes seems to lose the plot and produces neighbour-bashing fare like Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, or does it?”

I put the question before my gathering: do ‘anti-Pakistan’ films like Gadar etc. have any complex implications for us as ‘patriotic’ Pakistanis? “No, don’t be absurd!” Ali guffaws. “It’s just a movie, made expressly to make a quick buck by exploiting niche jingoistic sentiments, and I think most people are smart enough to know the difference, to know that art is above this kind of nationalist baiting, that it’s separate from traditional modes of animosity, and so no, we don’t really care. We choose not to watch it, or even if we do, we kind of just make fun of the whole exercise. All national cinemas resort to this sort of nonsense at one time or another.”

“My reaction is one of amusement, largely,” adds Faiza. “Which is what it ought to be in the face of simple-minded propaganda.” Samar brings up a related point which I too had written about earlier on my blog. “What I find far more annoying are the Indo-Pak love fests like Veer-Zara,” she says. “Which actually are only interested in reinforcing the stereotypes that most Indians who have no exposure to Pakistan tend to believe about us, the same ones that were employed by the ‘Muslim Social’ genre earlier. In that film, which did really well in India but was pretty much laughed at here, they wanted it to be about the Other, so it could not look the same, it could not look ‘Indian’. So they resorted to clichés about the Other, which from the Indian perspective is chiefly that these people are ‘Musalman’ with a capital ‘M’, which actually doesn’t say anything about how an upper-middle-class girl in Lahore lives. They did a lot of research but in the end they couldn’t resist the clichés when it came to characterization, ergo the ridiculous sight of everyone wearing achkans and doing aadab; they had to be conspicuously different from the Indians. But I guess the kind of film it was and the audience that it was aimed at, the makers of Veer-Zara decided that they didn’t require any kind of nuance or sophistication. Without that pronounced Otherness, it would’ve been just a girl and a boy who are pretty much the same and just happen to belong to two different but basically very similar countries. That is, of course, ironically enough, the mundane reality.”

That gap of Otherness may finally start to narrow with Pakistani artists like Ali Zafar making inroads into Mumbai. Unlike some other false starts like that of Meera, Zafar seems set (and determined) for a pretty steady career over yonder, and there is an unspoken sense of hope that his brand of cool, urban ‘modernity’ will help to lift the veil off of the decidedly outdated notions of ‘Pakistaniyat’ that a lot of Indians still believe in despite increased people-to-people contact through social media.

As a parting shot, Faiza has a great suggestion for how Bollywood can reciprocate our continued loyalty and affection: “Bollywood’s biggest treasure to date have been the great Peshawaris, the Kapoors, and for Pakistani women of all ages, whether yesterday or today, Rishi Kapoor has been the Kapoor of our dreams and fantasies. So I believe the way to halt all extremism in Pakistan is for him to be sent over by Bollywood, to come back and sing Parda nasheen ko be-parda na kar doon, because I think that would do it, and all of Peshawar would resonate with the sound of burqas ripping spontaneously!”

Indeed. And as Rafi saaheb once sang:

Jaan pehchaan ho

Jeena aasan ho!

History Does Not Repeat Itself

Posted on October 21, 2012 by admin

Chittagong etches the divide between how we see our politics and how we see our history

Bedabrata Pain’s Chittagong feels uncannily like a Gangs Of Wasseypur reunion. What with Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Manoj Bajpai and Jaideep Ahlawat back in the trenches for another period film. There is, however, one crucial difference. Chittagong, unlike GOW, is not about these stupendous actors. Nor is it about cinematic craft. Pain’s film is as honest as any film can be to its story— it is well and truly only about Surjo Sen, a schoolmaster and revolutionary and his unlikely army of young men who fought the British with nothing but gumption in what turned out to be a giant leap towards India’s eventual tryst with destiny.

The film is told from the point of view of Subodh Roy (aka Jhunku), a 13 year old boy who joined the struggle against the occupying British establishment led by District Magistrate H. R. Wilkinson— portrayed in the film as a cruel administrator who disregards his wife’s opinions and his own conscience in order to further his career. Pain and his team interviewed Jhunku before he died in Kolkata, weaving personal and political history seamlessly in the script.

Chittagong is quiet even if, like many period films, mildly theatrical in its stylization. But the background score ensures that its heart is firmly on its sleeves. You can either give in to the overwhelming emotion of patriotism, idealism, sacrifice, faith and team spirit (controlled catharsis has much going for it) or filter the inherent sentimentality of the film through a skeptic’s glasses; make mental notes of when the narrative drags, where the production design is not up to the mark etc. How you choose to view the film will not, however, change your perspective on the story you are being told. Because the story you are being told does not allow for another perspective. It has no shades of grey. Surjo Sen was an upright, righteous, self-sacrificing leader who taught his young students self-belief and moral courage, led them to fight the good war against the unmitigated evil of the British and their empire. They gave up their future, their lives, their families, for the greater good of all Indians. The British call them terrorists but they are wrong. No room for argument there. Before he is led to the gallows, Surjo Sen wonders aloud if the future generations will judge him for thrusting young children into a losing battle. But the film is certainly not judging him. If anything that moment only further glorifies the hero for his introspection and humility. And perhaps rightly so, for history has never called Sen to trial.

One might grumble that the Chittagong Uprising, which began on April 18, 1930, has not been given its rightful due by history as it is taught in India. It is not as widely known as say the 1857 Mutiny or the Quit India movement. But there is an upside to that too. Surjo Sen has been spared the kind of scrutiny that Gandhi could not escape. Even though he is ‘father of the nation’. Because he is ‘father of the nation’. I say upside because I have nothing against the past being viewed as a simple place with a simple story. But I do have a few questions. Would Surjo Sen have exonerated the future generations like they have him? More importantly would he have exonerated himself? If he could see into the future, would he have wondered whether the freedom they were fighting for was worth their lives after all?

It is hard to say. We are in no position to look at ourselves as simplistically as we look at our collective past. The children who were pelting stones in Kashmir in 2010 also claimed to be defying death to fight the oppression of an occupying state. But even the most liberal of us are not likely to buy that narrative without raising a few critical questions. The Maoists of India’s Red Corridor also claim to be part of a movement that is out to fight the imperialistic attitude of the Indian state against poor tribals and farmers. We are not buying that narrative without raucous debate either. Nor are we exonerating Ganapathi, the Supreme Commander of CPI (Maoist), as we did Surjo Sen. Even though he is an ideologue who used to be a teacher.

The Maoist movement has its roots in the Naxalite Movement of 1967, which in turn drew inspiration from the Tebhaga Uprising of 1946, which in many ways followed from the Chittagong Uprising. What changed along the way for Revolution? Why is the Maoist struggle not as simple a story as the Chittagong Uprising? Because no one is capable of fighting a good war anymore? Was there ever such a thing as a good war? Or are there only good intentions? How do we know intentions? Or must we balance our cynicism for our present with our romanticization of our past? Or is it simply a question of favouring your own side? Back then we were all Jhunku. Today most of us are Wilkinsons. Or, at best, his dissenting, powerless wife.

One of Surjo’s key aides was a man named Ananta Singh, who was jailed at Kala Pani (the dreaded Cellular Jail at Port Blair) for his role in the Chittagong Uprising. Post independence, those who died with Surjo were declared martyrs. Some of those who survived became a part of the government of free India. Ananta Singh went on to form a radical communist organization—the Revolutionary Communist Council of India—to fight against the injustice of the Indian government. He was jailed again, in the late 1960s, for about eight years. This time by his own people’s government. Good for history that Surjo is its hero then. Ananta would have been a lot harder to fit into a box.

A Moment In The Conscience Of Man

Posted on October 16, 2012 by admin

Every once in a while we like to flip a few pages and go back to a place in history which gives us a unique vantage point to reevaluate our shared perspective of us and our movies. Here is one such page from modern history.

Utpal Dutt, actor-director-playwright, was as committed to fusing his art with his politics as he was to his enviable zest for life. This is the text of a fiery address he delivered in a seminar on Satyajit Ray organised by Sahitya Akademi, Sangeet Natak Akademi and Lalit Kala Akademi in Delhi on May 15, 1992, three weeks after Ray passed away at the age of 70. The Ram Janmabhoomi movement to build a temple to Lord Rama in Ayodhya, to which he refers in the first paragraph, culminated seven months later, on the 6th of December 1992, with the destruction of the medieval Babri mosque by mobs backed by right-wing political parties. On August 19, 1993, Utpal Dutt passed away, aged 64.

RAY, RENAISSANCE MAN?

The latest labels they have found for Satyajit Ray are the Bharat Ratna and Renaissance Man. The paper distributed for this seminar also describes Ray as a product of the Indian Renaissance. While his body was lying in state in Calcutta, the Doordarshan commentator repeatedly spoke about Ray being a representative of the Indian Renaissance. What, pray, is the Indian Renaissance? History is quite silent about it. We once heard historians talk of the Bengal Renaissance, but an Indian Renaissance is a recent invention of the government in New Delhi. When did this mythical Indian Renaissance begin? And when did it end? Or perhaps it is continuing at this moment, secretly, within the movement for smashing the Babri Masjid and building a Ram temple in its place? Perhaps the Indian Renaissance is to be discovered in the recent widow-burning in Rajasthan or in the great Indian sport of burning brides for dowry? Or perhaps the mass poverty and illiteracy of India are the hallmarks of the great Indian Renaissance? Claiming Ray’s genius for something that is essentially Indian is a shameless bluff, and merely reminds one of how every Greek city claimed Homer after his death. The Government of India, as usual, woke up later, after a night of revelry, discovered a genius in Calcutta and hastened to confer something called the Bharat Ratna upon him– only because the Americans gave him the Oscar. Of course, Ray had previously won every prize the film world has to offer—at Cannes, at Venice, at Berlin—but they are merely European prizes and don’t count! Oxford University conferred a doctorate on him, but, of course, you have to be somewhat learned to realize its importance. The President of the Republic of France flew to Calcutta to pin the Legion of Honour on Ray’s jacket, but then France has no Seventh Fleet to prowl the Indian Ocean and we are not holding a joint naval exercise with her. But an American award is a different thing altogether. So the game of sharing in Ray’s glory began in great haste in New Delhi, and, since the man was already in a coma, it was safe to heap the Bharat Ratna on him. Men in coma cannot refuse awards.

The invention of this myth of the Indian Renaissance and making Ray its representative is similar to this late attempt to claim a share in all the honours the world has showered on him for so long. It is ironical that USA is the only country that has not yet shown any of Ray’s important films commercially. In fact, the American people remain ignorant of what his films mean. The Oscar comes from a small group of film specialists. The game is clear: we honour you, we worship you, but your creations are not wanted here. Our audiences will be fed on American trash, and trash only; we do not want a trade-rival in this country.

The Indian government’s hypocrisy is equally brazen. It is shameful that, while conferring its highest award on Ray, it has kept Ray’s film on Sikkim under a ban. We know only too well the antics of the corrupt coterie that controls Indian TV; they have suddenly woken up to their bosses’ belated appreciation of the ‘last representative of the Indian Renaissance’, and showed some of his films after his death— but after making arbitrary cuts and censoring bits of dialogue. Their miraculous intervention changed Ray’s Teen Kanya (Three Daughters, 1961) into Two Daughters, one story having been totally left out. They cut line after line of dialogue in Ghare Baire (The Home and the World, 1984), and wanted to stop Sadgati (The Deliverance, 1981) because the word chamar had been used repeatedly in the film. Please note: Sadgati is a film made specifically for the TV, and challenging its dialogue constitutes an attack jointly on Ray and Munshi Premchand, the writer– pretty bold of TV, one would think. No respect for persons.

Thus the Government of India has substantially the same attitude to cinema as the US Academy: personal adulation for the filmmaker but neglect for, even opposition to, his films. Ray’s films—as well as films by various young experimenters in the medium—need protection from the film-mafia of big tycoons who control distribution, production and every other aspect of filmmaking. The Government of India considers the film industry only a source of endless taxation, and believes a golden handshake with the dying Ray will exonerate it of all its sins. The Government of India appears to be a local branch of the IMF (International Monetary Fund) as far as India’s cultural world is concerned. It is at this moment inspired by ideas of a market economy, of free capitalist growth— in other words, surrendering the young filmmaker to the mercy of the big capitalists of cinema. It approves heartily when the young filmmakers are denied channels of release and driven away from the field. Free competition is the watchword, competition between millionaires and paupers. And if the paupers cannot survive— why, they can go and look for jobs elsewhere. This is the substance of an exit policy enforced on the cultural world, the forced exit of every serious filmmaker, thus leaving the field clear for an unending supply of trash. In the arts, trash always sells better than classics; penny dreadfuls always knock Tolstoy out. Herein is the role of the government— if it is interested in educating its people. There can be no free market in the arts. Just as the government cannot resign its responsibility to check and restrict the sale of heroin, similarly it cannot sit back and say: Ray must freely compete with Bombay. If the Government of India were not composed of a bunch of Shylocks, it would have realized that, given the opportunity to watch serious films for some time, people would reject the gruesome, mindless violence of the commercial cinema and demand more and more socially conscious films. It is a fact that Ray’s films were not originally patronized in Calcutta to the extent that could be considered socially significant. But as he began to pour out more and more films, Ray addicts grew fantastically in number, until the release of a new Ray film became a danger signal to commercial cinema in West Bengal. This is a lesson that the Government of India should have learnt: that classics have to have channels of release to the people; it is only then that they become irresistible. Of course, a government which consists of hirelings of money-bags cannot interfere with their free market and set up the new cinema as a rival to rubbish. Rubbish has therefore been ennobled by a new name— ‘mainstream cinema’, thus declaring to the world that the mainstream of Indian art flows in channels of imbecility.

All this began with Pather Panchali, which the highest executive of the Government of India saw in Calcutta and went red in the face. Fuming, he asked Mr Ray whether showing such poverty on celluloid would not bring India to disrepute in the eyes of the world. A typically Indian question: appearance is all the Indian rulers believe in. Mr Ray’s answer put the executive down immediately: if it is not disreputable for you to tolerate such poverty, why should it be disreputable of me to show it? This cry has been repeated again and again: that films should not present the stark reality of Indian life but must whitewash it, pretend—as in the mainstream cinema—that every Indian drives a Mercedes, that a taxi-driver goes home and routinely turns on the air-conditioner before going to bed and that every Indian girl sports an exotic hairdo. Thus alone can Indian honour abroad be enhanced. The cry has been heard from big capitalists as well as from disgruntled, frustrated actresses of Bombay. A prominent Calcutta newspaper while defending City of Joy—an American film being shot in Calcutta—wrote: ‘If Mr Ray can show the abject poverty of Calcutta, why should this foreign director be denied the right?’ It is like saying: why should Bombay films be denied the right to show violence and rape, since Shakespeare shows them freely? All these organs of big capital were spreading a scare about Ray and the new Indian cinema: that these films do not entertain but make you worry about problems— so avoid them at all cost. Go where the beautiful girl gets soaking wet in the rain while she sings a rollicking number and the macho boy singlehandedly knocks 10 toughs out. That is the real India, where there is no inflation, no unemployment, no suffering.

Ray has shown Indian artistes their responsibility to society: that they must be truthful, that it is not only their right but their duty to probe poverty and expose it, lay it bare for all to see and ponder over the inhumanity of it all. To mix Ray up with the maker of City of Joy is a low-down trick. The people’s objection to City of Joy was not because it showed the poverty of Calcutta, but that it was lying. Dominique Lapierre wanted to probe Calcutta’s underworld, without knowing a word of Bengali or Hindi; in the process, he discovered a tiger from the Sunderbans straying into Calcutta, spoke of Calcutta’s overcrowding being caused by refugees from the Himalayas who had fled the Chinese invasion of India in 1962, recorded a flood in Calcutta where all the ground-floors of all the houses—literally, all the houses—had been inundated and corpses floating so thick in places that you could not see the water. The people objected to the portraiture of a so-called mafia in Calcutta borrowed from the exploits of Amjad Khan and Amrish Puri in Hindi films, without any verisimilitude to Indian reality. City of Joy was crass imperialist propaganda calculated to malign India, and hence the peaceful movement in Calcutta against it.

Let us therefore drop the word ‘Indian’ before Renaissance when assessing Ray’s work. There has been no such thing in history. Historians for a time spoke of a Bengal Renaissance beginning with the rise of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio, the teacher, in the 1820s through the work of Rammohun Roy, Iswar Chandra Vidyasagar, Michael Madhusudan Dutt right up to Rabindranath Tagore. But historians have now withdrawn the word Renaissance from this upsurge of progressive ideas and call it simply the Bengal Reform Movement. They now argue, and rightly so, that a Renaissance ‘presupposes the existence of a revolutionary bourgeois class who through the upsurge of Renaissance ideas advance to capture of power and a democratic revolution’. The British imperialists prevented the rise of the Indian bourgeoisie and therefore ‘Renaissance’ is idle talk in India. But perhaps they have reached a governmental decision to use the word ‘Renaissance’ loosely, to describe certain qualities of Ray’s art, irrespective of historical context. History has never been a strong point of the bureaucrats in New Delhi. One remembers with horror the various histories of the Indian freedom movement compiled by them, where India appears to have won freedom because she dutifully wove khadi and drank goat’s milk, where the Naval Mutiny of Bombay does not appear to have happened, where Subhas Chandra Bose and the Indian National Army are given five lines of dubious prose, where Bhagat Singh is actually criticized for being a terrorist.

If the word Renaissance has been loosely attached to Ray, one expects an analysis of his works to trace Renaissance thought in them, what these ideas are and how they have appeared in his films. But alas, for that one requires not only a knowledge of film art but also extensive reading in Renaissance literature, neither of which, one is sorry to note, is available to the numerous secretaries who run the actual work of governing. When Mr Ray was dying, they were busy discovering the identity of the gentleman who used Mr Solanki as a courier to Mr Felber, and even more busy trying to conceal it. Renaissance literature does not fit into this routine. The only explanation of the expression we have heard over the TV is Mr Ray’s amazing versatility. That a man can be a filmmaker, designer, painter, writer of note, music composer, songwriter, book-illustrator and an acknowledged authority on the art and history of printing is inexplicable to them, and therefore they seek to explain it all by a convenient label—as if versatility is the principal characteristic of Renaissance men. But Leonardo da Vinci is not a universal model of Renaissance genius; he was an exception in his time. The other great exponents of Renaissance ideology were men who specialized in just one field, and yet moulded the thoughts of their age. One has never heard of Michelangelo doing anything but paint and sculpt, or Shakespeare doing anything but write plays, or Machiavelli taking time off from political pamphlets to sit down at the harp and compose a sonata. Single-minded devotion to a single art does not negate their claim to being Renaissance men.

The Renaissance released a deluge in Europe which changed social relations, struck a blow at the dictatorship of the Church over man, released the creative energies of men, drove the aristocrats and feudals from positions of social dominance, and generally laid the foundation of a revolution. The ideas that rose from this storm will have to be painstakingly traced and related to their relevance in Ray’s films before such labels can be stuck to him. Time does not permit us to do it on the spot. All we can do is identify certain general trends in Ray’s films and see if they conform to the ideas of the European Renaissance— not Indian, of course, because no such thing exists.

The Renaissance brought man to the centre of attention. Before the Renaissance, man was merely a Christian— oppressed by the Original Sin and a toy in the hands of God. The Renaissance freed man from this intellectual slavery and portrayed him as one who shapes his own destiny by his own will and passion. If there had been anything called an Indian Renaissance, Indians would have been freed by now of belief in kismet, in the pantheon of gods directing man’s destiny and in the burden of a past birth and sins committed therein.

Already in Pather Panchali, Ray’s protagonists suffer not because gods have willed it so but because of poverty created by men. They are evicted from their home by a power that is stronger than gods— a social system that condones exploitation. And this revolt against a concept of gods who crush human beings reaches fruition in Devi, where a girl, a common housewife, is declared a goddess incarnate and is expected to heal and cure every sick villager, until the boy she loves more than her life is dying and is placed before her so that she can touch and heal him. She dare not play with this boy’s life and tries to flee, her sari torn and her mascara running all over her face. One has merely to compare this film with dozens churned out from the cinema-machine of this country, where a dying child, given up for dead by medical science, is placed before the image of a goddess—and, of course, there is a lengthy song glorifying the goddess—be it Santoshi Ma or some such forgotten local deity. Then the stone image is seen to smile, or to drop a flower on the boy’s corpse, and lo and behold, what the best doctors could not do, the piece of stone achieves in a second! The corpse opens its eyes, even sits up. This is followed either by another unending song of thanksgiving, or the boy’s parents weeping and rolling on the ground to show their gratitude. This kind of brazen, shameless superstition is peddled by film after film in this country every year. Are they any less dangerous than drugs? If drugs destroy the bodies of our young men, these films destroy their minds. A proper tribute to Ray would have been to make it impossible to make such filth and, instead, to make arrangements for Devi to be shown all over the country at cheaper rates. Devi is a revolutionary film in the Indian context. It challenges religion as it has been understood in the depths of the Indian countryside for hundreds of years. It is a direct attack on the black magic that is passed off as divinity in this country. Instead of the vulgarized Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Indian TV could have telecast Devi again and again; then perhaps today we would not have to discuss the outrages of the monkey brigade in Ayodhya.

Renaissance ideology was mainly a bourgeois-democratic ideology and therefore had to herald the death of feudalism and the suicidal excesses of the aristocracy. Ray’s Jalsaghar (Music Room, 1958) is a masterpiece in this sense— the lonely, drunken aristocrat, living alone in a massive palace, alienated from life and his fellow men. Doom appears to be written across the tortured face of the landlord, whose pride equals his financial bankruptcy. The history of overturning social relations has been captured in this film with the same unmistakable certitude as in the chronicle plays of Shakespeare. And the social question is emphasized when the little bourgeois visits the lord, a philistine towards art and beauty, but rich and arrogant. He even tries to toss money to the lord’s dancing girl and is prevented by the lord’s stick touching his arm. One can only compare this to the usual portrayal of landlords in Indian commercial films, which not only consistently glorify the lord’s kindness and charity but even where the young hero is shown as a poor boy from the village, you can bet it will be proved at the end that he is actually the lord’s long-lost son. His pedigree has to be established, damn it; a peasant’s son fighting for justice cannot remain a peasant’s son at the end. That would be propaganda for the Mandal Commission.

Shatranj ke Khilari (Chess Players, 1977) does the same thing with Mughal feudals who are so devoid of love of country that they play chess while English imperialists imprison and drag away their master, and their country is enslaved. They could not care less. Where Ray goes way beyond Renaissance ideology is when he chooses to chronicle his own time, such as in Sadgati. We see the heavily lined face of the Indian working man perhaps for the first time in Indian cinema. We have been given glimpses of the Indian proletariat, usually as a slogan-shouting union man in the background, waiting for an Amitabh Bachchan to use his fists to knock the exploiters out. Mainstream films have consistently portrayed the workers as tame middle-class types who wait for a messiah to come and liberate them. Sadgati is the first Indian film to capture the real Indian worker who is doubly exploited: exploited as a worker and exploited as a lower caste. In fact, Sadgati is the prehistory of the present Indian proletarian movement which began in an atmosphere of brahmanical scorn and contumely. The Ray of Sadgati is certainly not a Renaissance thinker but a poet of the contemporary world, confronting the elements of class struggle.

We can extend our study to his last films and see the same political process working in his active, superbly contemporary mind. Ganashatru (An Enemy of the People, 1989), based on Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People, does not end as Ibsen ended his play, with Dr Stockmann standing alone against the world and declaring that the individual is always right and the majority always wrong. Ray knows this is no longer true in today’s world where the masses have advanced to a political role in society. Ganashatru ends with a procession of working men who have arrived to help Stockmann (Dr Ashok Gupta, played by Soumitra Chatterjee in the film) fight his battle. Or take Shakha Proshakha (Branches of the Tree, 1990), where Ray flays the immorality of a middle class that is wedded to the capitalist ideal of making money. Or Agantuk, where Ray indicts so-called civilization which can wipe out a city by pressing a button and at the same time showers contempt and hatred on the tribals of the world who have not learnt the art of murder.

One has a sneaking suspicion that all this talk of Renaissance ideas may well be a ruse to remove from sight the living contemporaneity of Ray’s ideas and relegate him to a museum of ancient statuary which has ceased to bother us now. This suspicion is strengthened when we consider a film like Ray’s Hirak Rajar Deshe (Kingdom of Diamonds, 1980) which was his response to Mrs Gandhi’s Emergency decree. This film in the guise of a fairytale is a blast against all forms of dictatorship which believes in thought-control, prison for the workers, arrests and deportations but which all the while is preparing its own ultimate destruction.

Renaissance is an inadequate term for Ray. He was a moment in the conscience of man.

ON JANA ARANYA – A LETTER TO RAY FROM DUTT

Translated from the original Bengali by Samik Bandyopadhyay.

Excerpted from On Cinema by Utpal Dutt, courtesy of Seagull Books. You can purchase the book here

The Moveable Feast – Directors

Posted on October 12, 2012 by admin

A moveable feast is many things. A religious holiday whose dates keep changing, a party and most famously, Hemingway’s immortal moniker for Paris. We are adapting the phrase yet again; adopting it to introduce a series of conversations on cinema between those who are instrumental in shaping it. The idea is to have an honest, informal chat on how we watch cinema and how we make it; to determine our co-ordinates on the map of the journey of Indian cinema; to have a laugh at ourselves; to share what we know, and identify what we don’t. Most of all to raise a toast to cinema. For cinema alone is the most exquisite moveable feast.

For our first Moveable Feast five Hindi film directors come together to talk about the trials, tricks, and sheer thrill of film direction. All five have vastly different personalities and processes and have made very different films. Yet they are united by two crucial factors. Each of their last films was remarkably significant and all of them have braved the peculiar challenges of making films in India.

Meet (clockwise)- Anubhav Sinha (dir: Ra.One), Bejoy Nambiar (dir: Shaitan), Imtiaz Ali (dir: Rockstar), Raj Kumar Gupta (dir: No One Killed Jessica) and Raj Nidimoru (co-director: Shor In The City). – Pragya Tiwari.

Watch:

The full video .

Is there such a thing as too much publicity?

Has any of you not had a run in with the censors?.

Is there any award that you aspire for? .

How difficult is it to raise money for your film? .

What qualities have helped you as a director and what qualities could stand in your way

How much and what should and can the director control? .

What role does the ‘director’s instinct’ play in your work? .

(Location Courtesy – Opa, Juhu)

Or read an edited transcript:

Pragya Tiwari: What is the most challenging thing about being a director?

Imtiaz Ali: Giving interviews

Pragya: Yeah?

Imtiaz: Yeah

Pragya: Before the film is released or after?

Imtiaz: Anytime… anytime

Pragya: Why is it a challenge?

Imtiaz: Because often times when you are talking about your film you are so obsessed with it that you want to really get into the depth of it and talk and it becomes very exhausting. And it is sometimes confusing for the guy who is interviewing you, who wants a quote or something. So, you know, you get involved but you feel cheated when the guy is not listening but reading his next question and you think: ‘Why the fuck? Why the hell are you doing it anyway?’ Because it’s important. It becomes a complicated and an exhausting thing and… remaining not very meaningful either.

Bejoy Nambiar: For me starting the film is like the most challenging thing about being a director. We were just discussing that even before we started here.

Pragya: Getting it on the floor or… ?

Bejoy: Not just that but getting it all together. I think a film starts on an idea, you know, from the idea. Then there are a lot of other processes that happen, before we actually get it on the floor. I’m talking about that. Funding becomes one big issue and that’s one big part that you have to cross over. I’m just one film old. So, right now, as a director, I think that’s the most challenging thing for me, to actually get it going, to get it started.

Anubhav Sinha: Actually most of it is very challenging. Har kaam… Jaise Imtiaz ne bola usmein doosra challenging part yeh hota hai ki aap jab interviews karte hain toh din mein agar sattaais interviews karte hai toh, same panch sawaalon ko sattais sattais baar answer karte hai. Ki film ka ek incident bataaiye. Toh kya baatyein? Matlab, we’re not stand up comedians ke hum aap ko ek interesting joke sunayein jisko sunke aapko hansi aayein. Arre humne dedh saal invest kiya hai, khoon lagaaya, paseena lagaaye. Film banaayi hai. Pyaar karte hai film se. Ab usme kahaan se anecdotes dhoondenge, yeh toh sabse irritating sawaal hota hai duniya ka. (Everything is challenging. Like Imtiaz said the other challenging part is that when you give interviews, and if you do 27 interviews in a day, you have to answer the same five questions 27 times. Questions like: ‘Narrate an incident from the film.’ So what do I narrate? I mean, we’re not stand up comedians that we’ll tell you a joke that’ll make you laugh. We’ve invested one and a half years, our blood and sweat. We’ve love the film we’ve made. Now where do we look for anecdotes in that film? This has to be one of the world’s most irritating questions). And I also agree with Bejoy. See most filmmakers are always… they find stories in everything. That’s why they are filmmakers. That’s why they are storytellers. And then to figure out which one… I’m going through that phase right now, so I relate to what he (Bejoy) said more. Figuring out which one story I want to convert into a film, which one I want to invest in. And you invest a part of your life. And then, the next process— of finding who you want in your film. Not just the actor, but who should produce it, who should release it, where do I want it released— the whole lot. I think after that it is pretty routine stuff. Filming it. Post producing it. Releasing it. There’s a certain mechanics you follow. But the part before that is emotionally and logistically the most challenging.

Raj Kumar Gupta: From the two films that I have done, I’ve realized that the easiest bit of being a director is directing, you know, because that you only do when you’re on set. Try the road to trying to figure out what to make and getting a producer to make your film, and getting that… bringing him on the same page about how you are looking at the film. Getting a cast together, and that whole road to reaching to your set, is the biggest battle I’ve faced.

Anubhav: Also a lot of, you know, compromises that you need to make. They may not be very blatant compromises, but the moment logistics come into play, slowly, some minor decisions keep trying to change your film. And you don’t want your film changed. So that battle is very tough. And the bigger your film is, the demands are higher, because the investments are higher. The smaller your film is, the demands are still higher because it is not saleable. So I think we, within us, have to probably overcome this. I have been interacting with a lot of international producers. The mechanics that works there, which we do not see in our business much, is that the producer finds a director with a story that the producer believes in as much as the director does, and the producer believes in the director and then it is all about helping him make that film. Here the producer and the director are continuously accommodating each other. The producer’s also trying to accommodate you. He doesn’t necessarily believe in your vision. And then what happens is that when the producer finds a good project— it’s a good commercial proposition. Now he wants it, because it’ll make money for him, but he doesn’t believe in it. So producers will have to learn to let go of such things.

Raj Nidimoru: For me it’s more about, I think—I was thinking as you guys were talking— about getting other people to see the film that you see. That’s my biggest challenge every time I make a film. Starting from the producer, to the actor, to the D.O.P. (Director of Photography), to anybody around you. To say: “Look, this is the same but not the same; this is not how I want to shoot it, but this is how.” So you almost want to pick up the camera, act yourself, everything, put it together, and say: “This is what I want to make.”

Imtiaz: Ya but that’s also the job I think Raj…

Raj: Correct.

Imtiaz: That is the only job where you have to…

Raj: That is the biggest job too.

Imtiaz: You have to break it down to small things.

Anubhav: Dispersement of the vision.

Raj: It’s just that everybody comes with such blocks or baggage that… Yeah, it’s like you (Anubhav) were saying. Compromises, in terms of you only come with a certain set of ideas, that come to clash with what others have in mind. It’s more than just ‘let’s get together to make one’.

Pragya: Have anyone of you had formal training at a film school?

Imtiaz: Not me.

Bejoy: Nor me.

Pragya: Do you wish that you had formal training?

Imtiaz: Really?

Raj: No. Not really.

Anubhav: We were too talented to go to a film school.

Raj: I’m surprised none of us went.

Bejoy: I know, I’m surprised. I thought someone was going to say yes.

Anubhav: The only reason why I regret I didn’t go there is because it’ll take me a lifetime to catch up on those films that I could not watch.

Pragya: So you’ve all learnt on the job, so to say?

Bejoy: Yup.

Anubhav: Have we learnt? (to Imtiaz) Have you? I haven’t.

Imtiaz: I have not. No, no.

Pragya: We’ll keep that for when the cameras are off.

Raj: We (he and his co-director Krishna D.K.) made a bunch of shorts. Didn’t want to experiment directly on an audience. So we thought it’s not fair to make a feature film and learn on the job. So we thought let us make a short every month or whenever we get time. So we were making shorts for a while for almost one or two years. Just by ourselves.

Bejoy: That’s what I did it too. I also started with shorts.

Raj: Nothing formal, just take a camera…

Anubhav: I hadn’t heard of shorts when I made my first film, I just made my first film.

RKG: But I have worked under Anurag (Kashyap), so I’ve worked… I have learnt on the job.

Anubhav: I have been an assistant myself.

RKG: As an assistant I, you know, have picked up a lot of things. I never believed in… still I don’t believe in the ‘going to school’ thing. There are a lot of practicalities that you have to deal with when you are making films. There are so many things that you have to handle on the job. And those things are so unbelievable that you don’t…

Anubhav: …those cannot be taught

RKG: …nobody can teach you. So you can only see and learn from filmmakers; or while you are on the job, looking at the director work, and understand what kind of situation he is going through, and people in and around him. At least that’s I learnt how to handle a film. I learnt to preempt that if one has to handle a certain situation, I can do it this way or at least I can try doing that.

Pragya: I’m sure that there have been plenty, but can you guys recall some turning points in your learning curve? Like some lessons that you remember, that you learnt on the job?

RKG: For me everything was quite an eye opening experience. When you see them, see directors handling actors… We are just assistants, you know. When you come, and when you join, you are just assistants. You see a director handling an actor, you see a director trying to navigate through different people or different situations to make the film that he wants to make. So you learn. And also I learnt not what kind of films to make, but the spirit of filmmaking. You know that’s what you learn while you are doing… while you are working under somebody.

Bejoy: I was pitching for Shaitaan. To Mr. Mithun Chakraborty. I went to meet him. And I was pitching for this one role to him and, in ten minutes, I just explained the idea to him. He understood the film immediately. And he was quiet for sometime and then looked at me and said “Kursee se awaaz nahin aani chahiye (There shouldn’t be even a squeak heard from the chair).” So me and my writer just looked at each other and we looked back at him and he repeated the same thing again. He said: “Kursee se awaaz nahin aani chahiye.” So we both shifted in our chair as if something was wrong. He said: “No, the kind of film you are making, if the audience shifts in their chair, then this film will not work. You need to make a film which is really fast.” That was like: Whoa! Where did that come from? But he understood the spirit of the film; he got that that’s what the film should be like.

Imtiaz: I think in my case I only started to learn about direction, if at all, after I started directing, and not before. I have not assisted anyone or gone to film school. Then it’s that I’ve made four movies but I don’t think that I know anything more than I did when I started out. And it used to make me very insecure to feel like this, initially. The thought that I should know more, I should feel more confident on the set. Why am I feeling less confident than I felt when I directed television? Why am I feeling less confident and less at ease now in my fourth film than I used to feel during the Socha Na Tha (his first film) times? But I have learnt to accept that. My feeling is not that I have learnt. In fact, in this last film I felt that ‘Oh, so this is the direction to take to start learning.’ It’s really like that for me.

Raj: I didn’t go to film school, I didn’t assist anybody, and sadly I wasn’t attached to anything that is film. As in, I had not even any remote uncles or aunties in the business.

Imtiaz: Yeah, same here.

Bejoy: Same here.

Raj: We were from an engineering background. When I say we, (Krishna) D.K. and I, we make films together. So all we knew was the fact that we were analytical enough to see if we can breakdown what we see. So we were just sitting during weekends and looking at films and thinking ‘Why can’t I do the same thing?’ We had no clue how to write or direct, or where to put the camera, so it was more about… for us, it was a very self taught breaking-down process, an analytical process. You know, let’s sit and see what we can do. I have a camcorder, so now what do I do? How do I stitch a scene together? So that was it. So you’re reading a little book—those days there were not so many books either—just read a little bit and then you go, ‘Okay, let’s do this.’ I used to get amateur actors to act. So you are handling just enthusiasts— that’s it. So how do you make it look good with an amateur actor? So I thought that was our quality. Because I wasn’t a born story teller, nor was I… nor did I have it in my genes. So it’s more about, we thought, ‘Let us break it down.’

Pragya: And is that still an essential component of your filmmaking?

Raj: Yeah because every time we attempt a new genre or a new technique or something of that sort which you haven’t done… Like, let’s say, we do an action film tomorrow. Green Screen, CG (Computer Graphics) and stuff like that. I haven’t been on a single director’s set. So I don’t know how directors handle it.

Anubhav: One is logistical learning. That is the simplest job of it and, like Raj said, that once you have to shoot a film on green screen— you are surrounded by specialists. They teach you, you learn. If you are a smart man, if you’re willing to learn, you’ll learn. The more difficult thing is the creative learning and that’s something which does not come from…

Imtiaz: Teaching.

Anubhav: Teaching. It comes from watching. It comes from doing. Like a very simple example of Rockstar. It’s a story about a man who loves a woman, doesn’t get her, loses her and then goes back to get her, can’t get her, whatever. That’s the story. Now how do you tell that story? He could have started the story anywhere in the timeline. He chose to start it from some place. Now that is creative learning.

Pragya: I was also talking about the qualities, that you feel that you have, that have helped you. And what is the job requirement of a director. And something that you think might stand in your way. I mean it could be something small like…

Bejoy: Hustling?

Pragya: …not wanting, not being comfortable with…

Bejoy: All directors are hustlers, we all are hustlers.

Pragya: It could be being someone who doesn’t like confrontations.

Bejoy : We are constantly hustling all the time.

Anubhav: But honestly, though he may be saying this in a light vein, but all directors essentially are fantastic manipulators, we are manipulating all the time and for good reasons.

Pragya: Sure.

Anubhav: Also sometimes for bad reasons, for wrong reasons, wrong for you good for me; but you are manipulating, you are… Today, you want this actress who you think is not a great actress. She is doing an intense scene today. So first thing in the morning, when you see her, you try to transport her into an intense day. But there are actors who are laughing. I worked with Kareena, she’s SMSing all the time. She’s on Blackberry all the time, and she’ll listen to you… but then she transforms. There are manipulations we do with our DOPs, with everybody. You have thought of editing a scene in a particular manner and your editor wants it in a particular manner. He shows it to you. You hate it. You don’t say you hate it. You say: “Fantastic man, what if we start with the close up? Let’s try this and… ”

Imtiaz: The whole scene changes.

Anubhav: You slowly manipulate him into doing it the way you want to do it. After all it’s your film. And there is nothing wrong with that. So we are all fantastic manipulators.

Pragya: And managers?

Anubhav: Managers, yes. Creativity comes last.

Pragya: How important is control?

Imtiaz: Control, I think, is a very dangerous commodity. I think the attempt to control is a kind of shortcoming that directors have and the less you can control, the less you can come in the way of the movie getting made on its own, the better it is. You need a huge kaleja (liver) for that, I think. Because in my case, starting out, I was very clear about what I wanted. That this guy has to sit down and say this line and get up and da da da, whatever, because my breakdown was based on that, and it was on paper. It was in my mind and nothing could change that. So if the actor came up with a thing like: ‘You know what, I feel like saying this line standing, you know, how will it be?’ Then you’ve got to make him sit down because you don’t know any better, and what if then the close-up will come like that. Then how is the continuity going to work? Blah blah blah… everything will get fucked up. So he better bloody sit down and I better find a way of making him sit down without appearing to rebuke him.

Anubhav: You have to intellectualize it.

Imtiaz: Then you’ve got to intellectualize it. You’ve got to say, “Sir woh kahaani mein na woh sunlight-wunlight (Sir, the thing is the story requires sunlight to fall on you in a specific way)… .” Tell him what he doesn’t understand and make him do it. But then, if you know in your heart that the moment was true for him to stand and deliver, then gradually I think you let that go and say okay what’ll happen yaar? If he stands and says this I can’t take that shot, and the edit will not turn like that, so then what’ll happen? Is there a way out of that? Can we take the breakdown in another way? Then you start losing that control. I feel that the good, I mean, the few good things that I might have seen in my movies are coming from there, from not from imposing a control but actually giving it up.

Pragya: Has the struggle for you stopped— in negotiating the balance between control and letting go?

Imtiaz: Never.

Anubhav: Never.

Imtiaz: It never stops.

Bejoy: I think it’s a constant struggle.

Imtiaz: It’s constant.

Pragya: But you become more comfortable with it?

Imtiaz: Not really. You never become comfortable with it.

RKG: You know, it is about being a director or playing a director. It becomes such that once you direct an actor—also we work with actors who have their own mind, I mean very sound minds—what happens a lot of times is… it happens that they might come up with something, where they might, say… You might have constructed a scene in a particular way, then they come in, they read the scene, and it might turn out very differently. So either we (the directors) can say, “No I want it this way.” And then they (the actors) become very defensive and the environment becomes very tense. Or you can just work around things, and you can see how that can work for you.

Imtiaz: It’s like… if you love something, set it free.

Anubhav: I also kind of disagree with Imtiaz on this. There’s a logistical control that I agree you should let go of. But there’s a film that you thought of when you started making that film. And slowly, by losing this control, you may end up making a film that you had not set out to make. I’ll give you an example of a great filmmaker. Stanley Kubrick. Eyes Wide Shut, he disowns that film. He said, “I got so enamored, overwrought, by my stars that I did not make the film I wanted to make.” And this is Stanley Kubrick. You have to keep a watch and still, when you’re doing a film like Ra.One, what Imtiaz says will have to be done. There were scenes that had to be shot in a particular way, because these shots were prepped like it, rigged like— ‘Don’t move!’ And then there were scenes when I would shoot knowing those were performance scenes, when it didn’t really matter how you shoot them. When Amitabh Bachchan tells Jaya Bhaduri (in Silsila), “I’m in love with Rekha,” it’s a single shot scene. When Dilip Kumar tells Amitabh Bachchan (in Shakti) ke “Tumhari maa beemaar hai, ho sake toh dekh aana (Your mother is ill, see if you can go meet her),” single shot scene hai. So some scenes are like that.

Pragya: Related to creative control is the area of a director’s instincts, right? Is that something that you go back to, I mean is that something you fall back on while directing? As an instinct, do you think filmmaking is getting better for you?

Imtiaz: I think instinct is very real and often times the only thing that you’re going by. You decide to do something in a certain way, okay. And you’re talking constantly to a lot of people. And this brings me to the point of manipulation as well. Then you will find the logic to give, to say, you know— “The glass should be here. You know why? Because the light, because the XYZ… ” and you will find intelligent things to say to justify the glass being here. If you ask yourself honestly— ‘Why do I want the glass here?’ I don’t know. I just want it here.

Pragya: But that’s pretty much how we manipulate ourselves as well.

Imtiaz: Exactly. And then sometimes you try to find logic for your own head, to reassure yourself that you’re not just, you know, on a completely illogical plane?

Anubhav: Playing the director or being the director…

Imtiaz and Pragya: Yeah.

Anubhav: Actually what is dangerous is the imitation of instinct.

Bejoy and Imtiaz: Yeah.

Anubhav: Once your instinct works and then you try to imitate that instinct chances are it’ll be wrong.

Pragya: All of you have a writing credit on at least the last few films that you’ve done. Most of you write your films, or at least partly write your films. How is working on material that has been written for you to direct different from being part of, a very active part of, the writing process?

Imtiaz: I can’t answer that because I’ve only directed what I’ve written.

Bejoy: Same.

Pragya: Have all of you always had a writing…

Anubhav: No I have. See the truth is that I don’t know of many directors… I was talking to a fellow director the other day, about the fact that I am waiting for a writer to come to me, say Ashutosh Gowarikar, and give me a script. And I say, “Wow! Let’s start breaking down. Let’s start shooting.” It cannot be so.

Imtiaz: Yeah it can’t.

Anubhav: Because a story and the way you want to tell it—and there’s so many elements in the story the way you would see it—is your job profile. It’s what you do, the way you want to tell the story. Nobody can be a duplicate of that, so the truth is that all scripts are eventually supervised, at least supervised by the director. Sometimes you take the credit, if you feel you’ve done enough. Sometimes you don’t.

Imtiaz: In a few words, just to substantiate what he’s saying, just as a director directs actors, he also directs everyone else— all the various departments.

RKG: For me, you know, I don’t know whether I have written all my films. But when I look at somebody else’s material, for me, I don’t see it. It’s a very strange thing but when I read something written by somebody else I don’t see the film. But while I’m writing it, while I’m doing it myself, because we describe our situations there— at least I do that—I see the film. Something will be here. He’ll walk in here. This. That. So I see the film in my head. So I find it very difficult to direct what someone else has written. But I also want to do that, you know. I also want to take somebody else’s script and see whether I am able to do justice to that script or not.

Pragya: You know, one of the defining features, at least in the new Hindi filmmaking, has been the introduction of the bound script— that now everyone has a bound script. What is your position on improvisation? How important is improvisation once you have the bound script?

Anubhav: I mean that always takes place.

Pragya: How open are you to improvisation?

Anubhav: Always very open. There are certain situations where logistically you cannot afford to improvise. There you have to be stubborn. But otherwise, if it is to improve the film, the scene, the character, the moment, it should be done.

Bejoy: For me, improvisation is like a part and parcel of the film. It has to be there. In fact, when I work with any technician, any actor, I lay it on the table that I expect them to come in and tell me, or come in and pitch in what they think would be right for the film. At the same time, at the end of the day it is a mutual thing, at the end of the day it’s a call… Like he (Anubhav) was saying earlier, you are letting them do what they want to do, but at the same time you are making sure that they’re doing, finally, something closest to what you really want.

Pragya: But there are lines. I’m sure that there are things you wouldn’t… I mean when I say bound script, there are things that you would want to keep sacrosanct and say: “Well, this is the realm of improvisation and this is what, you know, we stay within.”

Anubhav: See, on set, it’s not the first time that you are meeting the team. You’ve been through it. So even the team knows the realm of improvisation. So it’s not something that they will do absolutely out of the box. Sometimes that happens too, but…

Imtiaz: It’s not a random process, the improvisation.

Anubhav: Yeah. It’s gone through a process.

Imtiaz: And guess who improvises the most— away from the script? It is usually the director who has written the script. So… you do that, other people do that. You are actually trying to reach the script, the real script. Which is not worded, or not in the bound format, or laminated, or whatever.

Pragya: I’m going to go back to something that you were saying earlier, about picking the story you want to tell. I mean you’re constantly fascinated by stories and then the process of narrowing in on that one story. That this is the story I want to tell for my next film. I’m sure it’s different in small ways for all of you guys but can you talk a little bit about that?

Anubhav: We are all kind of vagabonds, intellectually. Sometimes something fascinates you so much that all night you are so excited. You want to shoot the next morning. And yet, after a shower, you say, “Yaar it’s an okay idea.” And you move on. It keeps happening to us all the time. So, speaking for myself, I don’t even know why I pick what I pick.

Imtiaz: For me it’s instinctive as well. You don’t know why you do it. But, as he was saying, I think the story that you want to tell is organic to you and it’s who you are at that point, and what is the voice at that point of time. What you are really. It’s not… when I say: “What is it that you want to say?” it’s not a definite sentence that you have to say, but something that you want to express.

RKG: The thing is that at any given point we have five to six to seven stories which, at least in my case, appeals to me. The only factor that rules, which decides things, is— which one am I able to write and bring to that screenplay format where I say: “Okay. This is the screenplay and I want to make the screenplay and I want to make this film now.” Because at that point I am as excited as I was when I first thought of the idea. So I guess that the whole struggle of writing that… whatever you think… I mean firstly we look at people to write it. The easiest thing that you do is, you look at people— “Arre, tu likh de yaar, tu likh de yaar (Hey, why don’t you write it, or you write it).” You know… you do that. But ultimately you realize nowadays writers are very smart. They don’t write. They’ll say, “Where’s the cheque book?” and it’s fair enough.

Imtiaz: Yeah. That’s what’s so unfortunate about them. No no… in the way that they are the last guys to get paid and after that their work is done.

Bejoy: Writers are very under-rated, they’re not paid well.

RKG: And so this reaction is fair for them. So you realize that, if you have to become a director, especially a first-time director, you have to write your own film.

Bejoy: I remember when I went to pitch this narration to a director (who might have produced the film)… a full detailed narration I gave. After two hours I’m like waiting for his reaction, and he is like “Acha aap ke paas aur kya hai (okay, what else do you have)?” I was like “Aur kya hai (What else do I have)?!” He is expecting me to going in with a bouquet of ideas like: “Yeh bhi hai, ye bhi hai, ye bhi hai… ab aap bolo (There’s this, and there’s this, and there’s this… now you tell me).”

Anubhav: That brings me to one shiqaayat (complaint) that I have with the business. Why do I narrate it to you? Read it! Nobody reads.

RKG: I think now people have started reading. But they will ensure that they hear a nice script.

Bejoy: They still hear it out. Yeah.

Raj: They will still want to hear you out.

Imtiaz: Because that’s what— they check you out.

RKG: Yeah they check you, it’s basically to gauge…

Imtiaz: Yeah, how good, how ‘in it’, how passionate you are. He’ll say, “Hum log toh aap director ke passion pe picture banaate hai. Aapke conviction pe (We make films based on the passion and conviction of you directors).” So you bloody look convinced and passionate all the time. That’s what they look for…

Anubhav: Maybe some great directors and writers are not great narrators so what do you do?

Raj: Initially my apprehension was that whenever I hear a narration, I think it is so manipulated that I can see through it. When somebody’s narrating I’m thinking: That’s just a very clichéd situation I have heard ten times before. You’re just being a funny guy. You are very funny. You’re a really good narrator. I’m thinking: This is not how it’s going to translate on screen. The audience is too smart. They’ll see. They’ll select the next scene.

Imtiaz: But it depends on how smart that person is, who’s hearing it…

Anubhav: To see through it.

Raj: Yeah, I can see that half the scripts are being sold to actors or producers just on the power of convincing the guy.

Anubhav: “Sold!”

Pragya: Okay, how involved do you guys get in your marketing?

Imtiaz: I get very involved.

Anubhav: So do I.

Bejoy: Same here. As much as they allow me. I’ll just get more and more into it.

Raj: Yeah. I get to cut my own trailers, is what I do, because this is what I want the trailer to be so I sit and cut my trailers and design my posters and give it to them. But then it’s really the producer’s call.

Anubhav: No it’s not.

Raj: I mean, you can fight it…

Anubhav: You cannot put out a trailer that I don’t approve of.

Imtiaz: Yeah, sure.

Pragya: No but beyond the trailer as well. There are so many aspects of marketing

Anubhav: Everything. Poster design. There are merchandizing tie-ups and brand tie-ups, like Rayban… That being the case, I am not a part of it. But presenting the film, I have to be a part of it.

Pragya: Does it concern you how the film is being projected or is all publicity good publicity?

Bejoy: No no, for sure. I think the correct pitch of your film, the correct communication, has to go out to the audience. Especially—I can only speak for myself—when you’re not doing a mainstream kind of film and you’re trying to do something different, which doesn’t conform as such, the correct communication has to go out to the audience, because the audience coming in, paying that money, should not feel cheated. My film, for example. Shaitaan. On satellite it was projected as a horror film. They cut a trailer, they cut a promo, to make it look like a horror film. They took some weird shots, put some weird music on it and that was the communication that was put out on TV, because they thought that that’ll get more eyeballs for it. I feel that’s a wrong approach, you can never compromise on your content that way, because then you are cheating your audience.

Anubhav: People go with a certain mindset to watch a film. So you have to create the right mindset with which they should settle into their seats to watch the film. They should not be expecting a cheesecake and get a mousse.

RKG: For me it’s very interesting in the sense that… I mean, obviously, I have to look at the poster, I have to look at the promo to see if I have a doubt, or if I feel that I have certain reservations. But otherwise I think for me, personally, I don’t get involved too much in marketing because I feel the producers don’t tell me how to make my film— so I don’t tell them how to market their film.

Imtiaz: It’s also subject to who you are working with, who your producer is. It’s usually a sharing of strengths and if you feel like you can contribute then you should, as a director. And I don’t think there is anything that should be kept away from the director’s reach, per se, because he obviously doesn’t want to harm the film and he knows the film best and is expected to have the kind of objectivity that will enable the film to reach out.

Pragya: Is there such a thing as too much publicity?

Imtiaz: Too much publicity might be wrong communication.

Pragya: But you don’t think that they are two separate things? One thing could be wrong communication and one thing could also be publicity overdrive.

Anubhav: I would want to hear, actually, their views on this. Because this was labeled against my film— Ra.One

Pragya: I was actually going to bring it up.

Anubhav: That one day, Riteish Deshmukh came to the shoot. He was shooting somewhere close by. He came to Shah Rukh’s (Shah Rukh Khan) van and he cracked a very interesting joke. He said “Ab toh sab log isliye picture dekhne aayenge kay, agar nahin gaye, toh Shah Rukh ghar aa jayega.” (“Now everyone will come to see the movie because they’ll feel that if they don’t then Shah Rukh will come to their house.”) I am very intrigued to know from you guys, did that happen to my film?

Raj: I feel that…

Anubhav: I don’t think there was any wrong communication.

Raj: No. Wrong communication wasn’t there. It was the most publicized film, of course, in the recent times.

Bejoy: You couldn’t avoid it.

Raj: You could not not see it, which I thought was a double edged sword. I was thinking, discussing, about it. Thinking that this will make the haters and lovers both go on the first day, but because they’ve been fed so much (publicity)… Let’s say you don’t like the film. Then in one day or two days, whenever, first show or second show, whatever, they’d come back and say: “Why did they feed us so much?” The antagonism just grows up so much. Everything is so instant these days that I feel that… I thought maybe it would have been safer to do publicity in smaller chunks. Like if you see Hollywood films, in a lot of films you’ll see a trailer coming one and half years early. You’ll see a Batman trailer that’s coming next Christmas. Everyone’s like – ‘Oh my god, one and half years I’ve got to wait for this,’ which seems to be working there. But here I don’t know if anybody is putting so much thought and analysis and marketing brain behind it. It’s one person’s idea and that person’s saying like: “You know what— fuck it; let me just do the film for six months.”

Anubhav: There was actually a thought process. While we released the first poster in January, the 2^nd of January, and the film came out on the 26^th of October. So pretty much 10 months. The thought was: Shahrukh Khan, lover-boy, not many action films, superhero costume. Will they accept it? Will they like this costume? No? Yes?

Raj: To test it?

Anubhav: No.

Imtiaz: Let them get used to it…

Anubhav: Let’s put it out. Let them live with it. And they will eventually accept it. That’s what happened. But I guess what has been alleged, if I may call it over-publicity, in case of Ra.One, probably happened in the last 8 weeks or 6 weeks. And I wonder if that affected the business adversely. I think…

Raj: See, it might have affected the audience, a part of audience, thinking that ‘Why are they doing this to me so much?’ But business wise, you can say, that if it worked in the first few days, then it worked.

Bejoy: It worked right? The whole idea worked.

Pragya: I think with Ra.One, it was about, like he said, in the last couple of weeks, the intensity was literally everywhere.

Imtiaz: Yeah so but it was there Anubhav. These jokes are also coming out of there, I guess. And it’s interesting actually to find out from you whether it worked or it didn’t work— what you think about it. Because the nation was going “Yaar yeh bahut kar rahe hain (These guys are doing too much).”

Anubhav: See I met two kinds of people. Literally, two kinds of people, two kinds of responses to my film: “I loved it.” “I hated it.”

Imtiaz: The publicity or the film?

Anubhav: The film.

Imtiaz: Oh okay.

Anubhav: That’s where I’m trying to combine the two, probably. That it was very early… during the making, during the promotion, I told Shah Rukh that this time you’re doing so much that they are going to expect Shah Rukh Khan to actually come out of the screen, in every theatre, and this can become a letdown. That “Shah Rukh toh aaya hi nahin yaar, screen ke bahar nahin aaya woh (Shah Rukh didn’t come out dude, he didn’t come out of the screen)”. The film did like 240 whatever crores. Great numbers. Top 3, top 4, top 5. Could it have been 400? And did it not become 400 because we over publicized? I don’t know. Nobody knows. Maybe some people in the business say that it could have done 300 or 400.

Bejoy: Because of lesser publicity?

Anubhav: Because it was over publicized, ke Shah Rukh, toh bahar nahin aaya, screen ke bahar nahin aaya.

Imtiaz: Acha expectation. Like that?

Anubhav: Humne yeh promise kiya tha ke Shah Rukh bahar aayega (we had promised that Shah Rukh would come out of the screen), metaphorically speaking.

Raj: I’ve heard this. And I’ve had a producer say this to me…

Anubhav: What?

Raj: The other option. Maybe next film, whatever they were doing it’s a big enough film and they were saying that we’re going to do it only for a month— the whole thing, from the teaser to the release. And it’s a big film and I’m thinking, “Haan.” Because I think it was one person’s opinion, to think that overexposure might let people down. But in a bigger film I feel there’s no letting people down because your business is done in two days. Because the way I’m seeing it is— in the first weekend it’s done. I mean it’s the big ones, especially, taking all the screens. It’s over (after the first week). And at the end of it, even if it just drove the people to see it to figure out how to do their Facebook jokes, you do it. What do you care? It’s become like that.

Imtiaz: I think every movie has a personality. And some movies are shy and some movies are extroverted— and that’s how they need to be projected. So you can’t have a single defined way of publicizing any film.

Raj: And in the case of Ra.One, I don’t think there would have been another way to do it. I mean you have to compare it to other films that are doing publicity and think: I made the biggest film that’s coming.

Pragya: You know this leads to another question, which is budget, given that an amount of budget has now been put into marketing. I’m going to start with Bejoy. You’ve had a tough time raising money for your film. You want to talk a little bit about that? I mean how difficult is it in real terms, to raise money for the film that you want to make and make it exactly the way you want to make it? I’m sure the answers will be different, because it’ll be experiential as well.

Bejoy: It’s extremely difficult, and that’s all I can say. And rightly so. I mean I’m not trying to say…

Pragya: Why do you say rightly so?

Bejoy: I’ll tell you. Because anyone putting their money in, putting their faith into you, they’ve seen your work okay? As a first time filmmaker, it’s a different ball game altogether. If they don’t know about your work and you’re trying to do something different, you don’t have a star, then obviously it comes with all that baggage of: Why should I put my money into someone or some film which I don’t know anything about? I know the story is good, it’s nice. You don’t have a star. You have not made a film before this. So all that works against you. So that’s what worked against me in my first film. But having said that, even for my second, I’m struggling right now to raise that money so I think I’ll be the most bitter one here because I’m literally fighting to get that money. The economics have to make sense.

Imtiaz: There’s also a danger of films doing well, which is when people stop looking at the merit of what you’re trying to make next. Because, like I was telling Raju (Raj Kumar) Hirani once, that: “You are totally screwed because no matter what fucking story you write, and who you take it to, they are going to listen to the story and say, ‘Raju, kamaal kar diya tune, tu is baar chappar phaad dega (Raju, this is wonderful, this time you’ll hit the jackpot).’” Because they will be convinced that he has written a great story because look at his record— who’s going to object to that? So he’s screwed, he has no objectivity that he can get from it. He’s writing in a room and he’s hoping that he’s writing well, and it’s going to work out well, but when he goes out to anyone they’re saying: “Raju?!” Woh toh sunne se pehle hi haan bol dega (They’ll say yes without even hearing him out). So any safety net or any collaboration that he could have got, it’s very unlikely for him. So then he got very insecure, of course, and he said, “Main tereko hi sunaaunga, tu sach bol diyo (I’ll read it out to you, you tell me the truth).”

Bejoy: Most people who are the producers, the corporates and all that, their first question, more than the script, there is no… yeah, of course, they’ll listen to the script, they’ll give importance to the script, but the only question they’re still driven by is the star system.

Imtiaz: Especially the studios.

Bejoy: They only ask who is in your film.

Imtiaz: Exactly.

Bejoy: I am an example. People are not even… they don’t even want to listen to your script if you have a star. They say, “Okay, we are done, what’s the number? This is the star? Okay we are on.” They didn’t even want to know what I’m making, if I had that star on board.

RKG: And that’s the dangerous part.

Bejoy: And that’s sad, that’s sad. Then you are not giving any importance to the content, which is scary.

Anubhav: That brings me to this thing that I was saying about a producer believing in the director and his film. And we must… in India we must start understanding the difference between a studio and a producer. Worldwide, a studio buys into a film that the producer has set up. The producer has invested in the development. He has put the film together. He believes in the director. He believes in the story and he wants to make that film. The studio believes in the producer and says, “This man has never lost money, I want to invest in him.” And they get together. Everybody has a role and function. The director’s job is to… he should be the most protected animal in the jungle, and yet here he is the most exposed animal. He is answerable to his stars. He is answerable to his producer. He is answerable to his distributor. He is answerable to the censor board. We tell the director, “I want a U/A film.” Fuck off! He is making a film, let him make a film. So producing is a job, is a very specialized job. We don’t have producers.

Pragya: Is that why a lot of stars and directors are taking to producing themselves? And is it a good idea?

Raj: (laughing) I don’t think so.

Anubhav: No, no it is more about control.

Pragya: It is about control.

Anubhav: Yeah.

Raj: It is about money.

Anubhav: Directors are doing it out of frustration, because they want to control their film. And stars are doing because it makes good business sense, because they are charging 50% of the production cost anyways.

Pragya: But that can also be dangerous. I mean, if it is such a specialized job…

Anubhav: It is so dangerous, can’t you see? Your films are not recognized outside of this country. You’re still seen as Rajasthan ka Jaipur in the world film market. Have any one of your films done 20 million dollars outside of India? No. Why? Thai films, Vietnamese films, Taiwanese films, Korean films, Iranian films are doing 20 to 30 million every other day. The reason why you’re not doing it is because you don’t understand films. You understand projects.

Pragya: This brings me to the question of audiences, I mean this clichéd separation of multiplex audience and mass audience, and, you know, class audience. Firstly that’s very typical to India because we have such a discrepancy, in our social scenario. I mean massive discrepancies.

Anubhav: Yeah we have two Indias, at least.

Pragya: We have at least two Indias. How does that translate into, in real terms, into the stories? Are you writing for the India you inhabit or are you also sometimes feeling the pressure of writing for an India that exists in some exhibitor’s, or distributor’s or producer’s mind that you don’t know…

Raj: We used to make films that everybody should be satisfied with, the whole of India; anybody who watches your film. Everybody wanted to make a 3 Idiots; like 3 Idiots is accepted all over India, pan India. Right? Doesn’t matter who it is. But I feel, lately that, you know, with the audiences, with the multiplexes, with whatever business models, depending on your budget you make your film. You make the film that you like to make, that is entertaining, that gets your money back. That I think is fairly important— that you have to make your money back. Hence you kind of set your budget, you know, low, big, medium, whatever. Like we have A, AA, B, B1, B2 on all these centers, I feel, even in the non-western countries, there are markets, there are kids films, there are horse films, there are dog films, there are animation films and there is sci-fi. And then there is gore, ultra gore. We have lots of these genres and everybody makes films in their genres. In a similar way I feel that we have… we are developing into that, where we have audiences for different genres, different kinds of films, slowly. So you don’t have to worry about making a 3 Idiots every time.

Anubhav: One new director comes, makes a film called Shaitaan, which is not a commercial title. You can’t sell it otherwise. It becomes reasonably successful. They want him to make 3 Idiots, now his next Shaitaan has to be 3 Idiots. “Ke thoda comedy daalo na sir? Arre nahi? Ismein nahi ho sakta ek item song? (Why don’t you put in some comedy sir? Oh no? Can’t we have at least one item song in it?)” The economics becomes so compelling. And, like I said, you are the most exposed, and weakest— the most vulnerable animal. 35 people who are much more powerful just got off Range Rovers or a set of (BMW) 7 Series; and you were intimidated anyways, so you say, ”One song doesn’t hurt a film yaar, let’s do it.”

RKG: As filmmakers, at least I’m talking about myself, both the films that I did, I wasn’t the first one to say that I’ve made a multiplex film. Suddenly people come up to you—big producers or exhibitors—and they tell you that it’s a multiplex film and you just say, as a filmmaker, “I just wrote a film.” I didn’t know what the market is. All of us want our films to be seen everywhere. You know, so somewhere down the line, I thought that I never categorized my film, never thought it was a multiplex film.

Anubhav: It’s not even your job, that’s what I’m saying.

RKG: That’s not my job but suddenly people in and around made me feel that it was a multiplex film. And somewhere down the line, even not believing that it’s a multiplex film, I mean, I gave in. My mind also got conditioned to: ‘Okay, so it’s a multiplex film.’

Pragya: But if you control the budget somewhere like Raj was saying, why just multiplex and the classes? Within the multiplex, there could be different genres. There could be different people who go for a different reason for films. I mean there could be slasher comedies…

Bejoy: Our audiences have not started doing that. They have not started cultivating a habit of going for a certain kind of film. I don’t think. If that was the case then we would have seen more and more films working like that. Small films of different genres working like that. Like for example, I think there’s a whole zombie film culture, which is very popular abroad. But it’s not started here yet. Once it comes here, once people go for it, once the film becomes a hit, then yeah. Then we’ll have more categories. Right now we have like: horror, comedy, multiplex…

Pragya: I’m going to talk about actors, stars or not. It’s such a crucial part of being a director, you know, communicating with your actor. Have you guys learnt some tricks along the way or do you have start afresh every time with every actor?

Imtiaz: Start afresh every time with every actor.

Pragya: Yeah?

Anubhav: I have a different philosophy that I treat them with. I grade them in three categories. There are actors, there are stars, and there are celebrities. There’s a difference between stars and celebrities. A celebrity is a person who would be mobbed, but that mob will not go to the theatre. He’s just a celebrity. So Anna Hazare is a celebrity. You can make a film with Anna Hazare and you can make a film with a cricketer. That’s your choice. Now you have to figure out who’s a real star. A star is a person who’s not dependent on how the film is looking and still gives you X amount, every star can have a different X, X amount on the box office on the weekend. That’s a star. The rest are celebrities. And then there is Naseer bhai (Naseeruddin Shah), Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur… Gods.

Pragya: Or the new actors. You (to Raj) had some really good onscreen actors.

Raj: Yeah, it’s always a great high when you find somebody and sometimes you don’t even know that they’re going to work out. And when you start your movie, when you start working on it, you realize that there is so much potential that you can pull out of them. And for me it’s been like that in my films. Every time I find one or two guys who are like… Wow! You know? I didn’t even think. Sometimes I don’t even realize until people start saying that. You’re just working with actors. He is fitting my character very well. I’m just making sure he stays within the character— not his own personality, or whatever he wants to do. And later you realize that everybody’s going, “Oh my god, look at this guy, where did he come from? Look at this actor.” And you’re like: He’s done a good job there.

Pragya: Is it also a good high, I mean, that you get a star to act in a way that…

Raj: It is, right? When I saw Chak De! (India), and I realized that—and what’s his other film? Swades—you suddenly don’t see Shah Rukh any more. At least in parts of it, or a length of it. He’s not the guy I’ve been seeing in other films. You’ll think: ‘Wow, that’s a good job!’ That’s like… because, you’d love to see Shah Rukh tilt, but at the same time you’d also want to see another face of him. Because that’s what stars have, they transform every time.

Imtiaz: Yeah. But so the point really is that a star and an actor are not mutually exclusive.

Pragya: No, sure enough.

Raj: Yes, a star is primarily an actor at the end of it. The day of the movie he realizes, or after seeing a particular scene he realizes, that he did a great scene.

Pragya: I’m going to talk a little bit about… has anyone of you not had a run in, small or big, with the censors, anyone who’s not had any trouble?

Raj: All of us have. We always make movies that have troubles with the censors. Problem with censors, you say? Yeah I’ve had it.

Anubhav: That is another strange… I think we can smoke now, on screen, right?

Imtiaz: Can we? I don’t know.

Raj: No, now again you can with a big disclaimer. So I’m thinking—in my film, 80% of the time they are smoking, so I’m thinking—what do I do? Cause you have to have a two-minute disclaimer, I think. In the film somewhere, somebody, has to say, the character has to say… I read a whole article on that…

Imtiaz: Oh okay so you’ve got to build that into the script…

Raj: They say that somewhere. ‘This is bad man, fucks you up’, or whatever, ‘Don’t do this smoke shit’, and then smoke it. I don’t know… I don’t know how to do it.

Anubhav: And if you kiss you get an A certificate or what?

Raj: No. I learnt that A, U/A…

Imtiaz: No, you don’t. No I realized that in Jab We Met, there was a full-out kiss; in fact in Love Aaj Kal as well, and in this one (Rockstar). So no A certificates for me. But you can’t say ‘sex’.

Anubhav: You can’t say ‘sex’?

Raj: You cant?

Imtiaz: You can’t say ‘sex’ even for an adult rated film.

Raj: But what about Love Sex Aur Dhoka? The title has it in it.

Pragya: Even for an adult rated film?

Imtiaz: I don’t know what the fuck man? Yeah. Maybe the rules were different at that time. Because I was told…

Anubhav: I don’t believe this.

Imtiaz: Yeah! I was told this by the censor chief, now, I mean… during Rockstar.

Raj: Wow!

Anubhav: We must have a meeting with Pankaja (Thakur) ji also.

Pragya: What about ‘fuck’? Do you say ‘fuck’?

Anubhav: Of course. You can say bhosadi ke… (literally ‘of a vagina’, in Hindi slang)

Pragya: Yeah that you can… Thank you.

Raj: No, I’ll tell you. I went through the exact thing in Shor (in the City). Shor got a U/A which is weird. There’s a lot of kissing and there’s also a lot of blunt kissing, not sensual kissing. But everything works in the story. I don’t think, I don’t believe it was gratuitous anywhere, the words or whatever. This guy’s putting a gun and saying “You fucking dogs, I want to kill you right now!” So it kind of went in. So that lady who was watching, I don’t know her name, she said, “I liked the film a lot. I don’t want to mute that ‘fuck’ because he is saying it in such anger, that it makes sense. But I cannot do this right now. If you are using an F word, you have to… I have to give an A certificate. But your film is so close to U/A, can you do something ‘aesthetically’ good to it?” So then we figured out. I gave her a solution. Can I do ‘f-u-h’, mute it and ‘i-n-g’? So you kind of feel it? So we actually worked for over two hours on that word, where it was like: “Fuh–ing dogs!” People all thought, “Arre they got away with that whole ‘fucking’ word.” Except what we did was we worked on it, tweaked it. Tweaked it to: “You fuh-ing dogs!” So it’s almost like he is swallowing it. And then it works like that. She came and said in a very sweet way, very well clad in a sari, like a cotton sari…

Imtiaz: Hot nahin bol sakte (You can’t say ‘hot’).

Raj: “See Raj, we cannot do… we have to take out the three ‘fucks’ in the film, you can keep your ‘chutiya’ (‘fucker’, in Hindi slang), you can keep all that.” I was like: What!? It was hilarious. I couldn’t even laugh.

Imtiaz: That’s a great scene yaar.

Pragya: (to Imtiaz) You had a very strange thing, with Rockstar, with the Tibet thing. I’ve read several accounts. So first tell me, tell us, what it was actually.

Imtiaz: There was this slogan, this banner that people were holding. We shot at Dharamsala and Norbulingka and it was part of the brief of the song (Sadda Haq) that it catches roots and people start associating their own angst or troubles with this slogan of ‘Sadda Haq (Our Right)’ and so there was this banner saying ‘Free Tibet’ and there was the flag flying, the Tibetan flag. Now, Tibet, of course, technically, is not a country anymore. Ultimately what happened is that, they said, “Free Tibet is not India’s position on Tibet, in our diplomatic situation. So you can’t say ‘Free Tibet’ but ‘We support the autonomy of Tibet’.” But I said, “That won’t be a good banner.”

Raj (laughs): …make it ‘autonomous’.

Imtiaz: Yeah, so they said: “We can’t let you use ‘Free Tibet’, but what you can do is, you can do just a little bit of a smudge and we’ll pass it.” Now I spoke to them for a while, but honestly also let me tell you, that I thought that— I’m a filmmaker. I can’t also kid myself and say that India’s position on Tibet should be so and so. And unfortunately the guys who you are talking to have a rule book as well. They say, ”Sir, aise humein… I have to go by this,” and I, not very grudgingly either, said, “Okay fine, as long as the point communicates.” Just like, you know, ‘fuh-ing’. As long as we all know that it’s ‘Free Tibet’, then it’s fine.

Pragya: Does anyone feel that we don’t need a censor. I mean in this age, with internet, that we don’t need censorship anymore, or there could be another way, like self regulation?

Imtiaz: There could be another way. There could surely be another way. I don’t have a clear position, unfortunately, about it. I don’t know whether there should be no censorship. But sometimes I think there should just not be any censorship because people can choose for themselves what they want to watch, what they want their children to watch, etc. etc. I don’t even know whether people…

Anubhav: You could well have, a section, a certificate, that says ‘Uncensored’. Enter at your own risk. Like, I’ll give an example. I was walking into the preview of Rockstar and I had my 10 year old kid with me. I don’t know why—Imtiaz doesn’t make films like those—I don’t know why, I asked him, “Imtiaz, bache ko le aarahan hoon (I’m getting my kid). Okay na?” So he said, “Haan, perfect, perfect.” It was just a passing conversation. But as a father, I was concerned. I was watching a Norwegian film, a very simple film— two brothers’ story. Suddenly one brother walks in, the other brother is called in, and my son strolled along, he was just sitting, he was not interested in the film but he started watching it. And one brother said, “Why did you call me?” And the other says, “No I wanted you to be present,” and he takes out a knife and slits his throat. And blood all over. And by then it was over. I just covered his eyes, but it was over. So as an audience I want to have the right to know what I am getting into. As a father, as a parent, I want to have the right. As long as you tell me this could be dangerous. Like what they write? Use ‘viewer discretion’ kind of a thing. I think there should be a certificate like that. Trust me, they’ll be blockbusters.

Pragya: But I think the danger of not having a centralized body could also be that there could be arbit forces censoring things.

Anubhav: But what is the sanctity of the centralized body? A central body that Imtiaz goes and struggles with ke “Dekho bhai (look brother), I’m not for freeing Tibet, it’s just a placard in the existing India.” So he does his entire fight and suddenly Mayawati stands up and says, “You can’t show this film in my state.” Who are you? Or who are they? Tell me. The central government must take a stand. Prakash Jha could not release his film even after censorship. Then what is that censor board doing there?

Pragya: Or the things that happened with Gujarat. Because Aamir (Khan) spoke against a dam. Then they wouldn’t allow a film to release there.

Anubhav: This is so ridiculous,

Imtiaz: Religious bodies… I had some trouble with Love Aaj Kal. Some religious body stood up to say, after censorship, that you can’t show it and then this Censor Board was pressurized and then lot of shit happened.

RKG: There are two kinds of censorship that we face. One, the censorship we go to. The other one, which comes to us.

Pragya: Also inculcated self censorship, given that there are so many censors… (to Anubhav) Did you ever… Your film had a lot of risqué comedy. Did you ever anticipate that? Is that something you start thinking about? Or is it something you just…

Anubhav: It is. It is something worth thinking about. This is a very sensitive area, I don’t know if I should bring this up on record, but the least that I can say is that it also depends on who you are. So, honestly, I don’t think many other producers would have gotten away with ‘bhosadi ke’. So I’m sure, going by the same logic, I got away with some.

Raj: Yeah that’s true, the amount of… Delhi Belly. I love the film. It’s great fun and everything, and it’s funny and all that stuff, but the amount of profanity in the film… Aamir must have just gone in and said, “I think it’s alright,” and they’d just pass it. So it’d be nice to have a producer like that when you want to make a film the way you want to do it.

Anubhav: So it also depends also on who you are. I mean Bandit Queen went on with the censor board for so many years before it made the world go gaga over it. I saw Bandit Queen on a pirated DVD much before it was released, because it took forever to release.

Pragya: As with Anurag’s (Anurag Kashyap’s) Paanch.

Anubhav and Raj: Yeah.

Raj: One angle for censorship is that I was just thinking, as a filmmaker, you don’t want censorship. You want to do what you want, that’s it. But the reason for censorship in a country like ours is that, as they say, with great power comes great responsibility. I don’t know if all the filmmakers, this includes directors, producers, distributors—whoever is making a film—are always thinking, right? Pretty much what you’re saying is: this is a country that doesn’t have a system in place, that doesn’t always have a good father, say, who closes his son’s eyes. It’s just, people are just growing up, ad hoc-ly, seeing ad hoc stuff and then minds are shaped like that. So my aunt said like, “I saw this film.” And of course she was also referring to my film. “Joh bhi inko pata nahi hai, they learn from your film (Whatever swear words my children don’t know, they learn from your film).” So I’m like— I see that, I feel for it. My answer would be don’t show it. Be a parent. Be a good parent. Don’t show it to them. What’s the first thing that a guy who is not attached to the film industry says to you when he knows you’re a filmmaker? “Arre mujhe bhi ek role dena (Hey, give me a role too), I want to be the villain.” Nobody says, usually, and I’ve heard this a lot, “I want to be… (the hero).” Instead it’s the original, whole, B movie villain, raping the maid, that you see in the eighties films. They say: ‘‘I want to be a villain. I know I’ll be good in this scene, rape, and all that stuff.” So we’ve been cultured like that. The fact is that for us nudity and sex, comes from that little bit of a villain raping the maid, poor thing, while she’s mopping the house. This is what it is. And I realized that: Oh my god. All my friends are saying, “I want to be a villain.” Nobody’s saying: “I want to be a hero.” Instead it’s: “I want to be that guy who smokes and kills, you know? Stabs and picks out the chain.”

Imtiaz: Smoking has got nothing to do with killing, okay?

Raj: No no I’m just saying, you know it’s all cool, na? You get to smoke, you get to wear sunglasses, you’ve got babes around you…

Pragya: You know talking about institutions. We don’t have an Oscars, we don’t have the equivalent of an Oscar or Golden Globe.

Anubhav: We have Filmfare, we have Screen Awards…

Pragya: Yes Anubhav, we do. But is there any award that any one of you aspires for in India? I really do want a serious answer.

Imtiaz: No.

Bejoy: When we started off, long time ago, we used to look forward to all these awards. All. National, Filmfare, Screen… but over the years the kind of films that have got the recognition, they’ve really lost a lot of credibility I feel. And now, being part of the industry, you get to hear so many things. You see, you start to question…

Pragya: And the cynicism is so much that I don’t even know if anyone even debates this. At least, post Oscars, there’s a debate about the politics of the committee or whatever. But here, I don’t even know if it’s… I mean I think everyone just assumes that it’s really random.

Anubhav: How unfair, and how blatant? You can say that of the five nominated films in the Oscars, this one deserved a little more. But all five were great films. There’s no debate about that. So that gives it more credibility. So what Bejoy has said is probably the most important thing which is: How credible do you think those awards are?

Raj: I mean, even in the Oscars, it’s the best way, I feel, the best way of voting, where you get every director to vote, every writer. Every Oscar nominated guy gets to vote. So it becomes, over the years, a pretty credible body that can vote for it. Who is voting for you, who is choosing you as the award winner— is the most important thing. That’s what it boils down to. But even in the Oscars, the five films that make it from the 300 films that are shortlisted…

Anubhav: …there’s a lot of politics that goes on.

Raj: Lot of lobbying.

Imtiaz: Yeah, a lot of lobbying.

Raj: It’s just money now, how much can you spend to make them see a film? There’ll be great films out there but…

Anubhav: There was a time when Harvey Weinstein could practically get a film nominated himself.

RKG: He used to fight. He used to thrash people. He used to punch…

Anubhav: He would fly people down to the Bahamas and Hawaii and whole lot of such things went on. But still, look at the history. You’ll find out that all those films deserved it.

Pragya: Yeah I mean he wouldn’t dare to go with something that was below a certain standard. I mean it’s not like he would take any damn thing, just because he was Harvey.

Imtiaz: No but that is not a valid point of view. I feel then it’s subject to somebody who is powerful and his intellectual or moral standards. That’s not a fair judgment on anything. No one should have the power to do that, ideally.

Raj: I think a lot of awards have been invented over the years. There must be like 15 to 20 awards.

Imtiaz: There are so many awards man.

Raj: I’m sure half of them were idealistic, thinking that ‘I’m going to be the Oscars of India, I’m going to set a standard.’

Pragya: Really? You think?

Raj: I think at least half of them. Otherwise why are they doing it? I’m hoping. I’m hoping…

Pragya: Because it’s marketing.

Anubhav: I disagree. Let’s understand what an award function is. What is an award function? Tell me, why do you want it? Tell me. You give me the answer.

RKG: A television event.

Anubhav: It is a television event where the stars will come and dance and some movie clips will be shown. Some old retiring actor will be given an award, you will see him after 15 years. And things like those. And it’ll create great TRPs .

Pragya: And there’ll be branding.

Anubhav: And there’ll be branding. So at the heart of it all, it’s a commercial activity. It’s not a desire to recognize excellence.

Pragya: But you know, the National Awards were. But they have been mired in controversy so much. Do they still mean anything?

Raj: When I saw the list of people who vote… Sometimes somebody puts it up on Facebook right? Now Facebook is the news channel. And you get the list of people who were voting. And you don’t know 80% of them or you don’t know who they are or how they are connected to films. And you realize: Oh my God!

RKG: Also the category itself doesn’t inspire confidence; I mean a film can be best film. It can’t be best popular film, best romantic film. I mean you just give something a best film?

Bejoy: Best actor in a society awareness role.

Pragya: Really?

RKG: I mean what are these categories?

Bejoy: Yeah. I saw one recently…

Anubhav: And best actor in a seriously useless role. So there’s all this… All this, so that a lot of people will come. All this, so people will come and it’ll be a star studded event. I was on a jury once and I decided I’ll never be on a jury again. Say you are a bad actress. And suppose I said to Imtiaz that we have to give you an award. We are all intelligent, credible people; history behind us. So we can’t say, “Now give an award to her.” Because I’d look like a fool. Yet all of us know that the award should be given to her so, like we intellectualized the ‘glass yahan kyun hona chahiye’ (‘why should the glass be placed here’), we say: “This time, she did something, I feel her eyes were very honest, I could see through her eyes.” Yeah, yeah. Everyone knows this is what it is, but everyone has to give a dignified reason. I was on one such jury once.

RKG: But I was also on a jury, at least a critics jury. I found it very fair.

Imtiaz: Yeah my experience has not been bad either. One jury. But on the critics jury, not on the popular one.

Anubhav: No wonder. You were on the critics jury. But our awards are the only awards in the world that end with the best actor award, not with the best film award.

Pragya: Two more questions.

Bejoy: Two more?

Pragya: One is about technology. Is it necessary?

Anubhav: I have nothing to do with it.

Pragya: You know that you have to talk the most here, right? Is it necessarily making the films easier and better?

Anubhav: Not necessarily. It’s about the kind of film. Technology can’t help No One Killed Jessica.

Pragya: It’s a part of every film.

Raj: For me it is. For me it has helped tremendously, I think. Just the logistics of the whole thing.

Anubhav: It helps you…

Imtiaz: Yeah maybe logistics, but not the whole process of it. I mean it doesn’t make the film better.

Raj: Yeah, not the film itself. It’s just the process of it. I can take it to my room and open a laptop and start working.

Anubhav: Oh that way. Of course.

Imtiaz: That way— yeah.

Raj: Yeah, that’s it.

RKG: At one point there was this guy who walked up to me. He didn’t have a script, he didn’t have anything. He said, “Sir, I want to make a film on 5D.”

Anubhav: On?

RKG: On 5D. “But where’s the script?” (is what RKG said to him, and he said:) “Woh ho jayegi, kar lenge (That will happen, we’ll do it).” So I don’t know how to take it.

Raj: It’s been advantageous for me for sure. That’s why I’m pro-technology. I’m always loving this new stuff coming up. Shor was really shot on the streets, in the middle of real people, where I couldn’t control the crowd. I couldn’t get enough security, or money, to recreate a scene like Slumdog (Millionaire) would. You are just shooting it there. So I’m glad I can take two cameras and just keep shooting there for an hour, get a 5 second clip out of it. Stuff like that is what helps in technology, tremendously.

Pragya: But what can be tricky?

Imtiaz: What can be tricky is, if you stop thinking. For instance, if he has the ability, or we have the ability, to shoot for endless hours, and if he says, “Let’s roll the camera, something interesting is going to happen.” That’s when it becomes a problem.

Raj: Use discipline is what you’re saying.

RKG: I think technology can only help you make a film. It can’t give you a story.

Imtiaz: It can’t give you a story. It can enhance. It can take you there. It can make it cheaper for you.

Anubhav: It can even help you think larger.

Imtiaz and RKG: Yeah.

Anubhav: Yeah. Like if you wanted to… there was a time when… how would you make Jurassic Park?

RKG: Yeah it can open up the possibilities of what you can think of.

Anubhav: How much you can think and how much ever you can do.

Pragya: When talking about the tricky part, I don’t know how but I’ve heard this story…

Anubhav: How do you bring VT down (Mumbai’s VT or Victoria Terminus Station, now renamed the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, was shown to be brought down in Ra.One).

Pragya: Yes, how do you bring VT down. No, but I have heard this story, I don’t know how much of it is true. But when Jaws was being made, you know, Jaws was not working apparently. And he (Steven Spielberg) was showing it around. And he created the whole fish, he actually created this shark and everything with whatever rudimentary special effects were available at that point. And I think he showed it to (George) Lucas. I’m not sure of the story.

Anubhav: So far it’s right…

Pragya: Yeah and he (Spielberg) said, “Okay tell me what’s not working.” And he (Lucas) said, “Take the fish out.”

Anubhav: No it was not him. I think it was his wife (Marcia Lucas), who was an editor, or the editor (Verna Fields) of Jaws. She said, “Not seeing the shark—it is looking fuck all anyways—not seeing it is more fear.”

RKG: The inspiration also came from Spielberg’s first film Duel. Where you don’t see that guy. You know, you just see this protagonist, you don’t see the antagonist. So it became one of the reference points.

Pragya: Yeah, but you were dealing with so many technicalities when you were making Ra.One. Was it challenging to keep your eye on the human core of the story?

Anubhav: Sometimes it is so intricately technological that it’s… You’re talking 45 degree angles from here, and then six feet… no it has to be eight feet. You suddenly lose the actor because both are as important to the shot. Because if this shot doesn’t work technologically, then it’ll look fake. And no matter how well the actor performs, the shot will not work and, as a director, at that point, you are answerable to the visual effects supervisor, the DP, the actor, the make-up, the special effects— a whole lot of shit.

Pragya: They’re both as important. In all the superhero movies. It’s the emotion that… I mean when Spiderman’s uncle’s dying or… it’s always that. And actually there’s so much technology that’s invisible that in a sense there are so many wires that you just don’t see, and you actually just, you think it’s all really happening, while, at the same time, it’s just the emotion that you’re really connecting to.

Anubhav: No, I disagree with you.

Pragya: Yeah?

Anubhav: I think if all those things were not working, you will not get to that emotion.

Imtiaz: That’s what she’s saying.

Pragya: That’s what I’m saying

Anubhav: That’s what you were saying? I’m sorry.

Pragya: No I’m just saying that a lot of times there’s also… when we talk of genre film viewing a lot of people tend to believe, even in the US, you are going to see great special effects. I’m not sure that that’s not a myth. I’m not sure that it’s not the simple story of Spiderman that’s always moving you. That’s what I’m saying.

Anubhav: Correct.

Raj: Nahin (No). It drives people to go to the theatre wanting to see the stunning visual, what makes the film run, and become a good film, is the core of the film. So it’s both.

Pragya: Okay, absolutely final question. What is the experience of putting your movie out? I’m pretty sure you’ve been asked this question before, but if you can describe it for me… What is the experience of releasing a film and having it out there for everyone, critics, audience, everyone, to see and react to? I know that there are so many pre-screenings that there’s a sort of buffer period.

Anubhav: My experience at pre-screenings is that they are the wrongest reactions you get. Do you think so?

Imtiaz: Yeah. Can be. I mean potentially yeah. I’ve not done…

Pragya: It’s like the exit polls, they’re always wrong to me.

Imtiaz: They are exit polls. There are friends I guess. There are other industry people…

Anubhav: Some of them are there to love your film and some of them are there to hate your film.

Imtiaz: Yeah usually you would know who’s going to say what.

Anubhav: Yeah.

Pragya: One change, personal or professional, that your last film has brought about in your life?

Raj: Made in my life?

Imtiaz: How has the film changed you?

Pragya: Personally or professionally…

Raj: I mean you learn every time what not to do, what to do— I could do this better, how I would have shot it better. I’m never satisfied with the film because given that the person is saying: “Oh it’s a great film, man,” I know I can just see all the flaws in it. So I realized that. I say, “Yeah, thank you.”

Anubhav: You only see flaws. Yeah, you only see flaws in the film.

Raj: Correct. I’m always seeing it, and saying: “Oh my God!”

Imtiaz: You never enjoy your films like other people can.

Raj: And somebody says: “This is a scene to remember.” Writes about the scene. And I’m thinking, ‘Oh fuck— I mean, I patched that up. This is bad.’ That way you’ll learn at a basic level. Shor, because of the reception it got and the fact that people got it, it kind of gave me the confidence of tackling something ‘off’. Because I always felt that Shor was an entertainer. No matter what, it’s a fun film. Anybody who watches it, even though it’s a topical film, you can still have fun. I don’t care about the depths you go to or not— the script or whatever… you have fun. I didn’t think everybody is going to care for it. So when they did care for it, I realized that… hmm. I’m more confident that next time I’ll put a little nuance in the film, or a subtlety, or a little… a subtext or a subplot. I’ll be very confident with what I’ll take on. I can do a superstar film and still have my nuances in it with great confidence because if this can relate to people, that’ll relate better.

Pragya: Do you feel more a part of this industry, after Shor?

Raj: I’m always on the peripheries of the industry. Only now I have met four directors. But I really don’t know anybody.

RKG: As he said, you learn a lot. I believe with every film you live a life, you know, when you’re making a film, from the time of its inception to the time of release, and the reception, I personally feel, I have lived a life with my film and you have your lessons from there. You get to know another’s point of view. Some things might be as you thought; some might not be as you thought. And those are the things that make you think; and then when you go back to look at it, maybe certain points of view you agree with, certain points of view you don’t agree with. But it makes you think; and because you handle so many people, be it actors, different kinds of actors… you deal with different kinds of people so you also learn lessons in life. How to, you know, deal with things and go ahead.

Imtiaz: All of the above. Additionally, I think, for Rockstar, it was more internal learning as such. For one thing I felt how much each person, like a technician or an actor… how much that matters for a movie. That I understood in this film. Also somehow I’m a little less ashamed of mental instabilities or typicalities, after this film.

Pragya: Eccentricities…

Imtiaz: Eccentricities… just… typicalities is more like it.

Pragya: Was it in anyway cathartic to make that film?

Imtiaz: I think it was.

Pragya: More than the others in some ways?

Imtiaz: Surely. For sure.

Bejoy: I think… my conviction in what I was doing. Like he (Raj) said, if the film had not found a connect with people, then I wouldn’t have been as convinced about what I’d wanted to say. So the conviction became much more stronger, in the ideas that I wanted to put forth, going ahead. And if the film had not been received as well, of course, there would have been a lot more introspection on what I want to say in the future.

Anubhav: Nothing left, besides one achievement, that does not come from every film, which is a big plus and a big minus as well. The size of the film, the kind of film. Not only the budget. The kind and the size; so that gives me the confidence of being able to handle any kind of film. But at the same time I realized while they were talking that I am having difficulty choosing my next. Ke, yeh bahut choti toh nahi hai (That, isn’t this too small)? It’s a bad consideration but you are used to it. Like I said in an interview, which is true, that on one day, I asked my production manager “How much are we spending today?” And he said, “How precisely do you want to know?” I said, “Quite precisely.” he came back and told me the number, which was the budget of my first film. And I did that at least four times in my film.

Imtiaz: And all four times it was?

Anubhav: Haan matlab teen-teen crore rupyon ka din tha. Aap kahen… ki aisa ek choti si kahaani soch rakhi hai, mujhe badi achchi lag rahi hai, getting very drawn— love story. Bahut samay se, love story hai, toh agar banaau? Choti hai yaar. Toh mai jhagda karta hoon apne aap se. Ke choti hai toh kya hua? Kahaani hai. Picture hai. Tujhe achchi lagti hai. Yeh bol na. So that is the negative. The positive is ke theek hai, le aao, paanch sau aadmi le aao, koi tension nahin. Le aao paanch sau. Hazaar hai? Le aao. Hazaar bhi they ek din set pe. Hazaar aadmi in a set man. Aur ek-do hazaar ke barabar Shah Rukh.

(Yes I mean it was about rupees three crores in a day. You tell me… Now I’ve thought of a small intimate story. I really like it and am getting very drawn. It’s a love story. It’s been in my mind for a while now, this love story. So what if I make it? It seems too small. So I keep fighting with myself. Keep telling myself: So what if it’s small? There’s a story. There’s the possibility of a movie. You like it. So tell the story. So that’s the negative side of things. The positive side is that: Bring it on. Bring on 500 people to the set. I’ll handle it. A thousand? Sure, bring it on. There were actually a thousand people on my set one day. A thousand people in a set man! And Shah Rukh, who’s the equivalent of a thousand to two thousand people himself.)

RKG: I’d like to ask Imtiaz a question. I mean, when you read reviews, when people react to things like, you know, in reference to Rockstar, people react saying that you know, Imtiaz, “Yaar achchi hai, lekin, you know, Jab We Met jaisi nahin hai, Love Aaj Kal jaisi nahin hai (Man, it’s nice but it isn’t like Jab We Met or like Love Aaj Kal— Imtiaz’s previous films),” the one thing that comes to my mind is—you know it happened with No One Killed Jessica also, that’s why I’m asking you this question—how do you react to that? Because as a filmmaker you’re never going to… you never went and thought that I’m going to make a film like Jab We Met. You were making a Rockstar.

Imtiaz: See I feel that… I tend not to be very harsh to people who say that. I feel they will obviously say that yaar. Now every movie that I make, or anyone of us makes, will be compared with every other movie. People might expect that. No One Killed Jessica and your next etc. etc… that that’s for them to figure out. And I’m sure that they’re going to say after every movie of mine that this is not like that. But I’m okay with it, with people criticizing in that way, that their expectations weren’t met. As long as I’m sure that I’m not falling, I’m not becoming a victim of that. I’m not getting into that trap— that after making Jab We Met I should have made Jab We Met again, and Jab We Met again, which would limit my career and really make it…

Anubhav: I don’t think you’ll be able to make Jab We Met again.

Imtiaz: Not at all. Or any other film yaar.

Pragya: I think it links up to how you take feedback and where you draw the lines of accepting feedback. See that I’m pretty sure that that might be the dominant voice. But I can say, just as a random example, that I would say that Jab We Met was not Rockstar.

Imtiaz: When Love Aaj Kal was released, a lot of people gave it like three and half stars or four stars etc. and many of them wrote that it’s nice but it is still not Jab We Met. Those same critics, because I’m the director of both movies (so I know), had given two and half stars or two stars to Jab We Met when it had released. The same critics.

Anubhav: Yeah he’s right. I have had the same experience.

Imtiaz: So you don’t take it very seriously, do you? As a result of which I don’t really read reviews any more. Honestly I have not really read reviews of Rockstar either. Not because I hate them and I think whatever shit, but because it’s irrelevant to me. The same blacker (person selling film tickets illegally, in black) standing outside Chandan Cinema has told me when Love Aaj Kal was showing, that yeh kya kiya second half mein? Jab We Met ka toh itna achcha tha (What have you done in the second half? Jab We Met’s second half was so good). Achcha Jab We Met ne paani maanga tha single screen mein (Jab We Met hadn’t really worked in single screen theatres, one of which was Chandan Cinema). And today after the release of Rockstar, when I went there, the same group of guys (blackers)— “Imtiaz bhai, kya kar diya aapne second half mein, Sadda Haq ke baad toh picture so gayi hai. Love Aaj Kal mein kitna acha kiya tha. Aapko waise karna tha.” So yeh sab chalta rehta tha. (“Imtiaz, brother, what have you done in the second half? After Sadda Haq—one of the film’s songs—the movie’s gone to sleep. You’d made the second half of Love Aaj Kal so well. You should have made it like that.” So all of this keeps going on.)

Pragya: Would you guys ever want to have a conversation like this with critics and genuinely ask them and what they think and how…

Anubhav: You know what? I’d just add one line to this. I think Raj Kumar, this is a good sign, when they say this film is not as good as your previous films. They were expecting more from you. So it’s respect. It is respectable.

Pragya: That was a random question. But would you ever want to have a conversation like this with critics?

RKG: No. I think everybody has their opinion on films and that should be respected.

Anubhav: There’s a very interesting saying: “Opinions are like assholes, everybody has one.” Some are published, some are not. Maybe there will be some opinions which will be much worse than the reviews, unfortunately they are not written…

Pragya: It’s not about good or bad, but it’s about understanding a thought process about how… Like you said, do you ever get curious about what they think? I mean what are they thinking, how do they think?

RKG: There’s a love hate relationship… (between filmmakers and critics)

Bejoy: Same thing like you were saying about credibility. You are used to reading reviews of certain critics, you see what kind of films, how their ratings have been in the past. When they’re rating your film, you kind of judge them based on what they have been doing.

Raj and Bejoy: So you have your benchmarks.

Anubhav: I read one of the reviews of Ra.One that said, “The most expensive mid-life crisis ever.” Are you reviewing a film?

Pragya: Or are you taking personal potshots…

Bejoy: It’s like a personal thing.

Anubhav: So when you… then it’s about what Bejoy has said— it’s about credibility. That ‘this’ is a respectable review. There are some reviews that I think are very accurate about how the film will do at the box office. You may or may not…

Pragya: Which is not a review, which is…

Raj: A prediction.

Pragya: Yeah which is a prediction. That’s what it’s called.

Anubhav: We are still a developing industry, so let people have the time to learn the art of really ‘seeing’. And then there are reviewers that directors, filmmakers ask, “Kaisi lagi? Kya gadbad hai. Achcha, haan yaar, sahi keh raha hai (How did you like it? What’s wrong? Oh, right. He’s right).” Woh aane mein time lagega. Yeh filmmakers ko bhi yeh seekhne ko time laga, waise sab ko time lagega. (That will be a while coming. Just as filmmakers will take time to learn, so will every one).

Imtiaz: The one thing that I’d like to say about critics is the fact that… They’re entitled to their opinion. Nobody is debating that. You hated my film, loved my film, liked his film better than mine… all that is fine. But sometimes you can see an agenda. Sometimes you see that it’s all about: I’m trying to become an opinion leader, by criticizing and having a voice which needs to be quieten-ed… so then I can have you on my show etc. etc. That’s the beginning of what seems to me a big kind of agenda. That is not on, no? That’s not on.

Pragya: Provocation?

Anubhav: The reviews are a very creative… it should be a very creative…

RKG: Reviewing a filmmaker rather than a film, reviewing a filmmaker, getting personal…

Pragya: I don’t know, I think it’s a…

Imtiaz: Reviews just tell you a story…

Pragya: Yeah.

Anubhav: And now toh reviews are more about ROI. ‘Return On Investment’, this new…

Imtiaz: Everybody is a trade guru, rather than a film critic.

Anubhav: The ROI, the ROI of this film is not good. Return on investment.

Bejoy: There’s this one reviewer I know, in the first three paragraphs, he gives the entire story out. Everything is given out.

Imtiaz: That’s exactly what they do. Most people do that, no?

Bejoy: And that’s… you should never… you can’t do that to a film. Then what are you leaving your viewer with? What? You say: “Okay this is what the film is about.” That’s okay. Here he is giving the details of every scene, the plot… everything is being given out. Now who would want to watch the film?

Anubhav: And it comes out on Thursday.

Bejoy: Thank god you stopped writing!

Raj: I’m just glad people don’t read reviews much, they just see the stars. I’m telling you, nobody’s reading it.

Bejoy: Haan they say na. “Aapke films ko chaar star milein hai, teen star milein (Your film’s gotten four stars, gotten three stars).”

Raj: A lot of times it doesn’t even match.

Anubhav: I don’t think many international reviews give stars.

Imtiaz: Exactly. You know why? Because in many magazines the stars are not up to the reviewer, it’s a very big financial decision for the company.

Raj: Yeah, no, I agree. The headline and the stars, I think.

Imtiaz: A lot of reviewers have told me that I loved your film but… whatever. Stars do hi hai but andar bahut achcha likha hai (there are just two stars but inside I’ve written very well of the film). Yeah, or the reverse.

RKG: Also, are the critics morally supposed to say that: don’t go and watch this film?

Imtiaz: No, no. Never.

RKG: That it is a waste of money? I think only in India, I’ve seen something like this happening… so offensive to any film, to any filmmaker, I mean whether he’s making a B, C grade film…

Raj: Yeah it’s very personal, that’s the problem…

Pragya: Yeah that’s what he said. Also that they’re trying to create a brand, using, feeding off against films…

Anubhav: Yeah. There’s a whole race to say: ‘See, I said this.’ Abhi toh picture release toh chod do, reviews chod do, release ke pehle, shaayad bees din pehle, trailers pe woh shuru ho jaata hai; Ke yeh itne ka opening weekend legi. (Nowadays… the movie’s release and reviews aside, it all begins before the release of the film, at times 20 days before the release, the speculation over how much it’ll earn in the opening weekend.) It’s so disturbing, and people should respect the process of making films. Sometimes a director can end up making a bad film but the fact remains that a team passionately works towards something for a long time, that whole sanctity and respect is somewhere…

Pragya: And social networking has made that much worse, because Twitter and Facebook now have these…

Imtiaz: I don’t know about that. I don’t know…

Pragya: Are you on Twitter?

Imtiaz: I’m not on Twitter, I’m not active on Facebook much. But I feel that instead of one person accumulating all the power of opinion, leading it, there are many people now. So if you can write a review, I can write a review as well. It’s like… if there are more opinions then at least there is some sort of division of scale, and that there are so many opinions that you have also seen the other point of view etc.

Pragya: That is an ideal situation Imtiaz, but the way it’s actually playing out on Twitter is that there seems to be a competition on who can get nastier. And that is how you attract followers and build a brand.

Imtiaz: That’s true. But that’s exactly what critics do anyways. Before the advent of Twitter, that was going on anyways, or it can potentially go on…

Anubhav: No Imtiaz is right. It’s just that number has increased on different platforms, but the act is the same…

Raj: Unfortunately the Twitter guys, all the anonymous blogs and everything, have such a small voice compared to the main critics. One, two days ago, four days ago, you get your three stars, four stars, you are just overpowering everybody with that. So the critics, no matter what, who is saying what on Twitter, it’s just a few critics that have the power to really start off the buzz, no matter what. So yes, it becomes extremely shitty.

Anubhav: I think only in Bombay, Raj. I’ve done this research.

Raj: No, I agree

Anubhav: Bodyguard had such terrible reviews across the platforms (and it was a huge hit).

Raj: Some stars are beyond critics. Some movies are beyond critics.

Anubhav: The mid-sized films suffer the most.

Raj: Some are just… it doesn’t matter. That’s why… I saw a poster of Ready, a re-done poster of Ready, somebody put up these posters saying how the movie should be. So they changed the posters. It’s Ready and Salman (Khan) showing a middle finger to critics.

Pragya: I don’t know if that is valid. At the end of the day criticism is not supposed to reflect box office numbers. I think it’s about, it’s ideally supposed to be about, the art of filmmaking. It’s ideally supposed to represent a niche art point of view.

Anubhav: When did we reach Europe? We were in Juhu.

Raj: I know. It’s beyond control. I think it’s too idealistic…

Anubhav: I had come to Juhu (where everyone is)… now we’re discussing Europe…

RKG: That’s also a point of view. They can say Dabanng is a tribute to a seventies film. And another film set in the seventies can be called a rehash of a seventies film. So you have completely different points of views just because of some factor…

Pragya: Yeah, which is true. Somebody said that about (The) Dirty Picture. That it’s not an ode to any eighties film, it is an eighties film.

Raj: I think the solution is that more voices…

Imtiaz: More voices is not a bad idea…

Raj: Or something that just summarizes all the opinions, at the end of it. You get an idea. Rotten Tomatoes— that’s why I love it because at the end of it you’ve got 150 to 200 reviewers reviewing everything, and you get an idea.

Anubhav: We are still playing at Shivaji Park, so these things matter. The day you start playing at Perth or Lords you won’t hear these voices. They won’t matter.

Imtiaz: That’s true.

Anubhav: So the bigger responsibility on people like these is to create films… what is the 3 Idiots number? 40 million dollars, right? What is 40 million dollars? Peanuts. So, some day, one Indian film which holds steam, that’s what it tries to do. They (the audiences, especially the international audiences) are looking at us. They want to see our films, and you start… Then that one day, you will be on the world platform and then nothing of this will matter. Then you will have to follow the existing (global) culture, which is quite dignified.

Pragya: So the evolution of our cinema will also lead to the evolution of the dependent industries, which includes critics.

Anubhav: These guys, the directors, the directors have to win the fight. And then this will happen.

Pragya: I’m pretty certain that that’s the best way we could end this— directors have to win the fight.

Eye of the Beholder: Teju Cole

Posted on October 12, 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.

Teju Cole, 37, is a writer, art historian, street photographer and Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He is the author of a novella, Every Day is for the Thief, and a novel, Open City, which won the PEN/Hemingway Award, the New York City Book Award for Fiction, and the Rosenthal Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the New York Public Library Young Lions Award, and the Ondaatje Prize of the Royal Society of Literature. He is currently at work on a book-length non-fiction narrative of Lagos, and on a Twitter project called Small Fates. In this interview, at the Jaipur Literature Festival, 2012, he talks about the influence of cinema on his writing, his characters and his own life.