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8/20/2008

My reactions to reactions

1. This excuse of making films only to enjoy the process sounds irresponsible.
Ans: You got me wrong. I am not making an excuse, I am saying that it is the only choice any filmmaker has whether he realizes it or not. Every one of the makers of the 120 or so films made in Bollywood every year think that they are making a film which will be a big hit. No one in the right mind will go ahead and make a film aiming it to be an average or a flop film. 95% of them will not reach their intended objective. When the audience sees the final film they imagine it has been done with carelessness and a non-thinking attitude but that would never be the case. A viewer is spending a couple of hours and around Rs.100- to buy a ticket. A maker is spending a year or more and crores of Rupees. He would never be irresponsible because he has much much more to loose than the viewer. It happens because it is an extremely difficult thing to match the mind-state of the Director, where he started from and the mind-state of the viewer when he enters the theatre. It is too complex and too long drawn out for me to explain here.

2. You yourself have raised your bar and that’s the burden you carry.
Ans: Maybe you are right but that is also the reason I became what I am.

3. I don’t want to read articles posted by fakes like you.
Ans: Ok.

4. I think watching Aag will be scarier than Phoonk.
Ans: Let’s make a deal. If you shut up about Aag, I swear on your mother that I won’t make another Aag.

5. I think you source your actors from theatre. Mohanlal is known, Chakri and the Contract guy are Telugu actors. Phoonk guy is a Kannada actor. I won’t even get into how you get your heroines. Did you select Fardeen Khan because he gave you money?
Ans: Yes sir, Yes sir, Yes sir, you are absolutely right about what all you wish to be right.

7. You spelt Nietzsche wrong.
Ands: That was a typing error. Thanks for the lesson anyway! Where do I send the cheque?

8. Why are you an atheist?
Ands: Because I can go ahead and commit as many sins as I want without getting scared.

9. Stick to making movies. Sexist jokes don’t make good comedy.
Ands: Ok, Ma’m.

10. Only if a Government committee regulates the sensationalisation of news the media scene will improve.
Ans: I disagree. If it’s regulated by a Govt body it will just breed corruption and censorship which will make the situation worse. At least now the least the media is doing is to entertain us. A Government body will destroy that too.

11. I think most celebrities have found solace with internet blogs.
Ans: Definitely. At least there’s one place where they can communicate to whoever is interested or concerned without being edited, quoted out of context or lines being highlighted which were not meant to be etc.

12. Seems like you have very good material for the media film. Please don’t screw it.
Ans: I won’t screw it. I will fuck it.

13. Why do you target only Khalid, Deepa and Subhash?
Ans: Read my blog again. I gave them just as examples because I know them only.

14. Invest in a good screenplay, good writer, good cinematographer and a good music director.
Ans: Please don’t give away such brilliant strokes of advice for free.

15. Stop manipulating things.
Ans: Ok, Your honour.

16. In films you are driven by techniques alone and fail and in blogs you are driven by analytical views, so they come out good.
Ans: Partly true for most part.

17. I want to know if the confidence you exhibit is real or fake?
Ans: Why don’t you imagine whatever makes you happy? Why know and spoil it for yourself?

18. I think Ayan Rand has seeped into your blood.
Ans: Yes, but the problem is that she doesn’t come out as sweet.

19. I request you to use all your witty humour in the media movie.
Ans: Of course. Do you think there is anything more funnier than the media?

20. This journo rushed to the village to tell her about her husband’s death so that he can capture her reaction.
Ans: Thanks KG. I appreciate this input. You gave me an idea for a scene.

21. A wise man learns from others mistakes. A practical man learns from his own mistakes.
Ans: Yes. That’s what sensible men do, but mostly men don’t realize that they have made a mistake as they don’t think with common sense and that is because there’s nothing common about common sense.

22. Does your psyche fascinate you?
Ans: Actually after reading your understanding of mine, yours fascinates me more.

23. By the way, when are you going to get married?
Ans: Among all the weirdo’s I interact with, you take the cake. If you can take time off from whatever you do (which I am sure would be nothing) and look for a girl for me I will. Otherwise get sensible and at least make an attempt to ask a little more reasonably relevant question.

24. Are you patriotic? Do you respect our country? Can we expect a patriotic film from you?
Ans: NO. NO. NO. I am pretty much immersed in my thinking of how to serve myself and don’t even spend a minute in thinking of serving anyone or anything else.

25. Have you ever thought of making something like Mackenna’s Gold?
Ans: Dying to.

26. Are there any movies that made you cry?
Ans: No, but there are plenty which made me laugh when they made others cry.

27. Please take care of your looks and dress when you come on TV.
Ans: Why? You want to marry me?

28. I have a feeling I won’t like Phoonk.
Ans: If you don’t you can find me in the Versova graveyard. Come there if you dare.

8/14/2008

My take on the media.

The media is a reporting agency. It reports news. News is what you hear for the first time and for it to catch your attention the media has to make the news sound as dramatic as possible. The publications and Channels have no choice but to do that so as to be able to stay in business and make money. So finally is it only about just making money? Not necessarily intended by all concerned, it could also be for the individual egos and clamouring for fame among the journalists themselves. Most of the media people bitch about each other as much as they bitch about others. But again like any other industry you cannot generalize them. Like there are good, bad, ugly filmmakers, there will be good, bad and ugly media people as eventually they are all human.

The interesting point is that how smoothly and without anybody consciously realizing the media has transformed from a truth telling machinery to a power-mongering and money-making enterprise.

What the media basically does is, it just strips everybody and makes money out it. The only difference between a strip-teaser and the media is that a strip-teaser bares herself so that others can enjoy her and give money, and the media strips others so that some others can enjoy and give them the money.

I know it sounds far fetched but does anyone out there believe that anybody in the media truly feel the gravity or the tragedy of happenings. They can hardly conceal the glee in their eyes when bad things happen. The badder the better, as there will be more eyes reading and watching them. Did you notice the pleasure they get in ripping films or personalities apart? But wait a minute. The film people are worse.

For all the anger film people show against critics it is actually the film people who enjoy and relish the nasty and bitchy comments or reviews much more than the public who read them, that is, except obviously the people who are being bitched and commented upon. The reason for this is nothing but jealousy and jealousy is a human trait and like lots of other emotions it gets magnified in the context of the entertainment industry.

The main reason for the jealousy is because people by nature cannot bear anyone else to be successful except themselves and one way of feeling successful even if one has not achieved anything is to watch with glee someone else fall down and to be ripped to shreds and the media supplies this pleasure to everyone in well-cooked great helpings. I truly think I deserve great credit for creating a project such as Aag to enable the media to dish out such fantastic entertainment to all concerned in ripping it apart. If entertainment is the sole purpose of a film, I think Aag has done more than a wonderful job, definitely much more than what it could have done in the theatres even if it turned out to be a damn good film.

The pressure to perform and the fear of failure and ridicule are at utmost peak in the film industry more than in any other place and that is mainly because of the media. Nobody knows or is interested what decisions went wrong in an hoteliers or a cloth merchants business and how much money he lost but if a filmmaker makes a flop everybody will know that because of the media. Fair enough the media is also responsible for the fame it gives to the same.

And fame is the key word here. Much more than money everybody wants to become famous, whoever comes to the industry they want to develop their own identity. The Khalid Mohammed’s, the Deepa Gehlot’s and all the other etc's of the media are all desperate to get their individual fame and identities registered with all concerned as much as the film people. So as a consequence they tend to fall in love more with the way they rip the film apart much more than they hate the film.

The reporters is a truly thankless job what with day after day hour after hour to fill in so many papers and Channels and on top of that it has to catch eyeballs at any cost in fear of competition so they do it even if they have to be ruthless enough to hurt and scandalize personalities, and they do this to even to the people who they know on a personal friendly level. (Agar ghoda ghaas se dosti karliya toh khaayega kya?). When they get a certain whiff of an interesting story on someone a journalist’s greatest fear would be that it will be denied by the person. But still the necessity of having to feed the media monster he will cook up something even in that situation.

A few days back one Ashwini Deshmukh from Mumbai Mirror texted me to ask if there was rift between me and Amitji, to which I replied in the negative. He sent the same message to Amitji, to which Amitji replied that he was planning to do 20 films with me. So now one would imagine that he would drop the story as the only 2 people who could confirm or deny the story have spoken. But he went ahead and put a story with a headline “Kaput… Ramu and Bachchan relationship over”. He gave all kinds of reasons, what he heard or imagined and incredibly at the end quoted mine and Amitji’s denials in small print.

Now why would he do that? It is simply because he knows mostly people read only the headline and even if they read the rest of it they will only remember the headline like always people remember the number of stars more than the reviews.

The proof of this is the number of media people who asked me about the rift taking their cue from that article and when I said ‘didn’t you read our denials at the end?’ they grudgingly said ‘yes’ almost as if given a choice they will believe the rift part of it than the denial because the rift is news and it will help fill pages, web-space and TV footage whereas the closeness of me and Amitji will be expected and hence boring. So the logic is if so many media people and film industry people can have a field day discussing, speculating and getting entertained on it, the irritant it will cause to just 2 people, me and Amitji, can be ignored in the larger interest of making fools out of the common people.

Similarly a report mentioning a war between me and Karan Johar appeared where Subash K Jha the reporter claimed that he has seen me lashing out at Karan on my blog. Now even a dim nitwit can see that I was joking and making fun of everything and most of all myself in that blog post. It’s not that the reporter can’t see it but he will choose not to see it as he wants to take out only what suits his own agenda.

Another interesting part of the media is the difference between the Mumbai media and the media elsewhere. It’s primarily because the most of the Mumbai media hobnobs and rubs shoulders with the film people.

The film people out of their fear and greed and in order to use the media people open their doors to the media people and almost become informants to the media about the rest of their colleagues in the industry. So the media kind of looses its primary objective and tends to get embroiled in the camp culture of the industry.

An outcome of this rubbing shoulders with film people, results in the journalists stepping beyond their job responsibilities.

While Khalid Mohammed initially in his position with Times of India and his supposed influence over the Filmfare awards wanted to use actors and technicians to make his classics, they all primarily obliged in fear of getting bad reviews and the greed of getting awards. He openly uses his position in the newspaper to write articles and bitchy pieces against several people who he wants to settle his personal scores with and on top of that he brags about it to all. It beats me how the management of those papers can’t see this. Today he can’t do it that much as Hindustan Times does not carry the same weight as TOI. It might be a good idea for him to convince HT to start HT Awards for him to be able to be back in business.

Subhas K. Jha has a unique trait of calling up film people whenever they are in a low like just after a flop. He will call them with soothing words and gives them a shoulder to cry on. He gives and takes information from various film people and passes it on to all concerned. Most in Bollywood trust him more than the journalists who stay in Mumbai because he stays in Patna and he is a voice on the phone. So they feel safer confiding in him as he is far away, and imagine that what they tell him won’t come back here.

The media elsewhere since it does not have that much of access to the film people is relatively unbiased and comparatively has much more integrity. Another big problem is that we all film people believe that 3 or 4 papers in Mumbai represent the whole country for the simple reason that we get only them into our homes. On a tour to 5 to 6 towns it came as a revelation to me and how much of a frog in the well I was when I realized every town in the country has its own media and I found far superior journalists there. I don’t think it’s because they are necessarily better journalists but I think it’s because they live in a relatively far less polluted atmosphere.

On the brighter side, I don’t think both us film folk and the media are all that bad because after all the pressures and the frustrations we go through, the least we are doing is entertaining the people in one way or the other. Whether it’s a lie or a truth or half-lie, what is the big deal? If the common man’s interest is in knowing who slept with whom? And who slapped whom? The media will supply it and us film industry folk will supply it to the media. I think it’s a fantastic threesome.

I want to sum up this article by taking the line from “Company” which best describes both us film folks and the media. “Yeh bas hamare dhande ki jaath hai.”

P.S:- I am just on the verge of finishing a script I am working on about the functioning and psychology of media. So far you have seen the media exposing things and now I want to expose the media in all its naked glory. I promise you that it will be one fucking hell of a strip tease. Cheers!

8/9/2008

Fearing fear

I would describe fear as a feeling which comes out of being threatened with either emotional or physical violence, and it gets magnified especially if it comes from an unknown or an un-understandable source.

If you truly understand the mechanics and the motivations of the force which is threatening you, you won’t be half as scared. For example if you are confronted with a snake you will be chilled to the bone but if you can recognize the species, know what it’s poison contains, how it can effect your system, how fast it can move etc kind of details, instead of being scared you will think of ways of escaping it or killing it.

Similarly if you are alone at home at night and you hear a moaning kind of sound from inside a room where no one is supposed to be there, the slow wary walk of yours towards the room to check the source of the sound is when you will be scared maximum. That is because your own imagination takes over your mind. But once you see the source no matter how dangerous or frightening it is, you will either scream for help or run or attack it depending on you as an individual. You will simply jump into a defense mode and your fear at this time will be much lesser that what it was during the walk.

Belief in God I believe primarily comes out of fear because we have an overwhelming need to feel safe and we will never truly trust our family or the society or the police or the Government to protect us. Hence we are compelled to believe in a force which we desperately want to protect us in every which way and that is where God comes in and in order to feel the power of God we have no choice but to invent and pit his power against a counter point and thus evil forces like demons and black magic are invented.

Black magic is supposed to be used to hurt or kill an enemy by either practicing it or hiring its practitioners. Whether it exists or not, nobody can tell for sure, but I am truly stunned by the sheer number of people who in spite of their education and social status, how much they believe in it.

I think it’s mainly because whenever they don’t understand the reasons behind some negative happenings or at least when their minds refuse to accept the obvious for whatever reasons they tend to believe in the aspect of black magic.

I know of parents of this actor who was seeing a girl who they highly disapproved of. Unable to break their relationship and refusing to see a possible negative side to their own son they started believing that the girl did some black magic on him, and it started growing to the extent of them fearing everything about her.

I was always fascinated with the feeling of fear, how it consciously and subconsciously affects people in so many ways.

If you are traveling in a car on a highway and you see a very dirty looking truck coming from the opposite direction with broken headlights, peeled of paint and hanging bumper, that will scare you more than a slick looking well maintained truck. Logically speaking both will do the same damage if they hit you. But it’s somewhere your subconscious insight into the driver of the dirty truck that if he doesn’t care so much about his own truck he might not care so much about himself or you too.

Also if you observed when we with the whole family leave the house and go on a holiday for a few days, when we return, open the lock and step inside a thought fleetingly might cross our minds what the house and the various objects in the house have been up to while you were away.

Can we be really sure that the various inanimate things in our house we so take for granted in the course of the day don’t really come alive in the night after we go to sleep?

In "Phoonk" I attempted to use the above aspects of human psychology to accentuate fear. I went to the extent of attempting to make people feel not safe even with idols of Gods around.

To make the viewer fear and question everything and everyone around and what he depends on and what he believes in is the primary objective of "Phoonk".

Coming to the contest of watching “Phoonk” alone in the theatre actually no one realizes what the experience can be like. To sit in a large empty dark theatre let alone a horror film even a normal film can be a scary experience especially if you are sitting in the middle of theatre you will develop a nagging feeling that someone or something is behind your back. Actually even at home if you are alone by yourself it is very scary to watch a horror film. I would say probably it would be scarier at home than watching it in a theatre for the simple reason that there will be more hiding places in a home than a theatre for something to hide and pounce on you.

When Azam Khan, the Producer of “Phoonk”, asked me what I think will be the reaction of people who watch “Phoonk, I said the following 5 type of people could be there.

(a). One is the kind of a person who will be scared even before he enters the theatre as he connects to the intent of the film and his mind takes over after that.

(b). Another one will be a guy who will keep challenging the film to scare him. This specimen is commonly seen in theatres showing horror films. He will be booing and tittering in the silences, spoiling it for others. At heart he will be more scared than anyone else, so he tries to release his tension by making noises.

(c). Yet another one would not see most of the film especially whenever it is scary as he simply will close his eyes and ears.

(d). Also there will be a guy who will just watch the film without any feeling and this will be because he has absolutely no imagination at all. (Read ‘dumb’).

(e). And finally yet another guy might not even come to see the film not necessarily because he is scared of “Phoonk” but it could be because he saw “Contract”.

“11 things which scare me the most”

(1). To be closeted in pitch darkness. (I would like to see what is about to kill me. It will be pretty dumb to die without knowing that.)

(2). Traveling alone on lone highways in the night. (God knows where it suddenly might lead to.)

(3). Being alone on a deserted beach. (I have this nagging feeling that something is lurking just under the water, just waiting to catch me alone.)

(4). Some women who don’t know anything and don’t listen to me about anything. (I so wish to God that he makes them with a built-in remote control.)

(5). The spirits of whoever died in the cast and crew of “Sholay”. (The police can protect me from the living, but who will protect me from the spirits?)

(6). People who are my well-wishers and can’t stop advising and patronizing me. (They just make me feel as if I am dying or dead.)

P.S: I love the critics and the people who hate and bitch about me and my films as atleast they make me feel alive.

(7). Children because they take the attention away from me and also keep making me realize that I am as kiddish as they are.

(8). Police-men because I have this nagging feeling that I am a criminal somewhere deep inside and they will some day find out.

(9). Criminals because I feel one of these days they might just think that I am letting too many of their trade secrets out and… well.

(10). Karan Johar’s films for the very very obvious reasons.

(11). My own films for even more very very obvious reasons.

Hey women, children, well-wishers, spirits, critics, Police-men, criminals and Karan, I was just kidding.

And then maybe… I am not.

My reactions to reactions:

1. What is or who is shameless?
Ans: Nothing and nobody… as shamefulness is something which comes out of a social programming. If you have the wisdom and the understanding to see through the programming you won’t feel ashamed ever.

2. Apart from that quote about Khalid, you said so many other nasty things about Aamir. What about that?
Ans: I already said in my post, I wanted to state everything here as I can be sure that it will correctly come out. I can’t really know what all might have been printed, if it was misquoted or quoted out of context.

If you still have doubts about me then let me say this that Aamir is a super fantastic gem of a guy and I am a selfish untrustworthy good for nothing guy. Fine? Happy? Smile now.

3. This Ilayaraja’s way of working will not work.
Ans: Got the point loud and clear. Thanks Sanjay.

4. How did you learn so much English?
Ans: You don’t have schools where you come from?

5. Truth lies always between…
Ans: It always does.

8/6/2008

The strokes behind Rangeela :

In my college I used to hang out with a guy called Ramesh who was a kind of a street goonda. Those days there used to be a lot of hobnobbing between students and goonda elements. Ramesh was a very feared guy in the locality and me and my friends used to be in awe of him. We used to spend endless hours with him in an Irani hotel.

He developed a huge crush on one of the college girls which slowly turned into intense love. But he always used to look at her from far and never used to go near to her or talk to her in spite of our encouragement. I used to think it pretty ironical that such a tough guy becomes so tender when it comes to her.

He always used to wear some dirty chappals and one day he came wearing a brand new pair of Nike shoes. They looked so funny on him and everyone laughed. He was hurt and I could see that it was his attempt to smarten himself to impress the girl.

The girl started seeing this very good looking guy who was also rich and one of the very few guys who had his own car. All of us chamchas of Ramesh sat in Irani café and started goading him to go and beat up that guy and get him out of the way. Ramesh turned around and with a choked voice said that she deserved the best and the other guy was better suited for her than him in every which way. Rangeela took birth at that moment in that Irani café. The Nike shoes incident of Ramesh would appear as Munna wearing the yellow dress later in the film.

I used to hear stories of a how Sridevi’s mother used to be a junior artiste and how she used to to go from studio to studio to make her daughter a star. I kind of combined bother her and her daughter into one and created the character of Mili.

Jackie Shroff’s character I took from the Countess character in “The Sound of Music”. I was amazed at the dignity with which her character was treated resisting from the temptation of depicting her as a vamp. Once I finished the story I wanted to make it in Telugu with Sridevi and Nagarjuna and was planning to ask Rajnikant to do guest appearance. Both Sridevi and Nagarjuna did not like the story and they preferred another story I had which was made into a film called “Govinda Govinda”. Primarily I think they were not hot on the subject, not so much because of the subject itself but it was more because they thought I will be better in action films because of my Shiva background. So I kind of forgot about the subject for a few years.

Meanwhile at some point I came to Mumbai to sign Madhuri Dixit for a role opposite Nagarjuna for my film “Antham” (Drohi). Madhuri’s dates were not available and Boney Kapoor suggested to me that there is this new girl called Urmila in a film called “Narasimha”. I didn’t think much of her but because there was no time and no one else available I signed her. Neither the film nor she worked. A few months later Mani Ratnam and me wanted to work together and we wrote a script called “Gayam” in which Revathi was the main lead and for a supporting role Mani suggested Urmila not because he thought much about her but for that role he thought she would be fine.

I was planning to shoot a song with Urmila for Gaayam in Vizag when a choreographer called Suchitra missed her train from Vizag. So instead of canceling the shoot I asked Urmila if she could dance on the music by herself to which she did. Seeing her dance to that song completely by herself I was mesmerized and I decided to make Rangeela with her that moment.

I loved Aamir in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and also Raakh. I off and on used to meet him in Mumbai. He loved my first film Shiva and we were planning to work together and I went to meet him with the Rangeela script which he immediately liked.

I happened to see Mani ratnam’s Roja songs which really blew me away and for the first time in my career I wanted to shoot songs as beautiful as possible. So I went about seeing all the great Hollywood musicals in the course of which I made an observation that my mother was not flinching in the song sequences of “Singing in the rain” where there was so much exposure of the girls bodies. She was otherwise conservative and used to look down upon the Sarkaylo Khatiya David Dhawan-Karishma kind of songs. Then I realized that the way the heroines used to expose at that time was in an atmosphere where they were made to feel dirty and crass with the use of lyrics and movements and that hardness use to come on their faces whereas girls from “Singing in the rain” were exposing with a sense of pride and with a feeling of joy. In both cases my mother was connecting to the feeling and not to the bodies. This is what I told Urmila and I said ‘if you feel beautiful you will come across beautiful and if you feel that you doing something vulgar you will come across like that’.

I wanted to shoot the songs very glamourosly and “Hai Rama” extremely erotic with lust inJackie’s and Urmila’s eyes rather than romance. I thought animals don’t hide behind closed walls or look for a dark place to make love. When they are in the mood for that they do it in broad daylight anywhere, any place and except their feelings for each other everything else around them vanishes. You see that aspect in the sequence in “Hai Rama’ when Urmila and Jackie are circling each other in the Kuldhara ruins with intense lust in their eyes.

Somewhere half way through the film Aamir started having doubts on the script and definitely with a lot of valid reasons. He said if Munna is an extrovert, sells tickets in black and has such a flamboyant personality why would he delay telling Mili that he loves her. He felt that just for the convenience of the screenplay I was delaying that aspect. Put that way he was absolutely right, but I thought nobody felt it when I was narrating the story including aamir which means the emotional dram must be carrying it forward whereas now since Aamir had the time to think he sees it as a problem.

He also felt if Mili is a nice girl, Munna is a nice guy and Jackie is also a nice guy there was absolutely no drama anymore and the whole film is resting on just that one line of Munna not telling Mili till the end.

He told me that as no two people can have the same vision and since I am the Director he would go along with my vision inspite of his disagreement with me. Contraray to popular perception, Aamir is absolutely non-interfering compared to any actor I worked with or I have heard of. He is a very intelligent man with a tremendous sincerity and a superb reasoning power. But since most people don’t have his sincerity including myself the guilt in us would make us say that he interferes even though I never said that.

When the film released and was declared a big hit Aamir hugged me and said that he was glad I proved to be right. But that is not necessarily true. Maybe the film would have been a much bigger hit if I incorporated all his suggestions. Also in my heart I know that if the film didn’t work it would have been precisely for the same reasons Aamir feared.

Anyway the famous controversy between me and aamir happened 6 to 7 months after Rangeela released. Khalid Mohammed was doing an interview with me in which I was giving an explanation that the audience can rarely understand the difference between a character and an actor. I cited the scene in Rangeela when Aamir takes Urmila to restaurant. Now the waiter being a Five Star Hotel steward is more higher in social status than Munna but being a waiter he has no choice but to serve him. But on a human being level he can barely hide his disgust hearing Munna’s lines. So I told Khalid that the lines are being delivered by Aamir but the look on the waiter’s face is what is making the audience laugh. So it calls for more complex acting on the waiter’s part compared to Aamir in that particular scene. Khalid who apparently had a personal axe to grind with Aamir went ahead and printed this article which read like as if I said “The waiter was better than Aamir”. By the time the article came out I was off on a Telugu film shoot in interior Andhra Pradesh. Aamir tried to contact me and those days there were no cell phones. The fact that I was not getting in touch with him and him not knowing where I was, he thought I was avoiding him and as the media was hounding him to react he went ahead and reacted and the media blew up the thing into a full scale war. The moment I realized what happened I met Aamir and explained it to him. He wanted me to give a statement in print against Khalid that I was misquoted to which I said I can’t because all those things I did say, it’s just that it’s too technical for a layman at that time to understand and I should not have spoken to a man like Khalid about that and that was a mistake.

Some cold vibes still remained with good reason till years later we met at a party and had a long chat and since then we are cordial. So whatever happened between me and Aamir was completely 100% my fault and I am saying this now here because I was not trusting any journalist to put it across in the correct perspective.

And before some minds out there jump to this conclusion that this is an effort on my part to patch up with him in order to do a film with him I want to categorically state here that I will never ever do a film with him and the reasons for that are:
(a). I am not as sincere or as committed as him.
(b). I don’t have his patience.
(c). Above all I truly think he is a far better filmmaker than me.

My reactions to reactions:

1. Is Phoonk a copied version of the Exorcist?
Ans: Exorcist was about demonic possession and Phoonk is about black magic. Black magic is according to legend the application of an evil force to harm or kill an enemy. So in that sense there is no similarity. But yes in the emotional aspect of the near and dear ones concerned for the affected party there is a similarity.

2. I cannot keep watching your assembly line of productions.
Ans: Don’t.

3. I think you have great ideas but not so good execution.
Ans: Teach me.

4. Would you consider changing the format or presentation of your movies?
Ans: Won’t

5. I am ready to take up the challenge of watching Phoonk alone.
Ans: I am just the Director of Phoonk and the idea of contest was the One More Thought production company’s. Since every movie has some kind of contest going on, for a film like Phoonk they thought that this kind of contest will be very apt as the film belongs to the scary genre. They are working out the technicalities of when and how to implement it. As soon as they are done with it they will post the details on a designated website.

6. A strip dancer shows all to a crowd to make a living. Shameless are those who watch.
Ans: Neither are shameless. They are consenting adults.

7. You often tend to show only what you want without thinking of how it unfolds to the audience.
Ans: You could be right. But like I always say you can’t generalize audience. What for one goes above his head, the same for the other will affect him deeply. There is a very thin line between spoon feeding and being clear.

8. What is vulgar?
Ans: Vulgarity does not exist except in the mind because anything and everything is there for a predetermined purpose. The way one chooses to look and think and feel about it is what which differs. The mode of presentation of anything to a receiver is actually what programmes him to feel in a certain way. A woman’s body is the same. If it’s back-lit it’s called erotica, and if it’s front-lit it’s called porn. If you are seeking intense gratification you would want to see hard core front lit sex and mere erotica won’t suffice it. I remember that in my teens reading a porn magazine with provocative titles and bad paper and bad grammar used to arouse me. I don’t think reading it in a hard bound well-written smart and profound looking books will serve the same purpose.

A feeling can be neither vulgar nor aesthetic. A feeling is a feeling.

9. Do you think you can ever take the idea of Daud and make it work again?
Ans: Yes, because ideas are never wrong. Only their implementation and execution can be.

10. I think Shimit Amin is brilliant and he won’t take up a project like Gayab.
Ans: This only tells how brilliant you are. If you read my article once again you will realize that I was not talking about Shimit’s or anybody else’s brilliance but only about how non-brilliant I am.

11. I think you just got hurt with the failures of your recent films and you wrote that article “Everybody is a nobody”.
Ans: I said what I wanted to say and you can think whatever makes you happy. Like the philosopher Nietrsche said “There are no facts, only interpretations”.

8/1/2008

Everybody is a nobody :

I always find it very strange the tendency of people to emphasise on whose idea it is rather than the idea itself.

I for one have been credited many times for innovative ideas and also discovering so many talents both in actors and technicians. But did it occur to anyone what I might have thought about those ideas and the talents at that point of time?

The fact is that I never thought anything of anybody or anything or thought everything of everybody and every thing. The only reason I took Anurag Kashyap in Satya was nothing to do with my perception of his talent, but it was because he was the first writer to approach me after I decided to make that film. And later on he got Saurabh Shukla to join in as a co-writer. Why I credited Saurabh Shukla’s name first in the titles of satya was because he was older in age than Anurag.

People thought Anurag was the main guy among the two because I continued to work with Anurag and not Saurabh. The reason I did that was because Saurabh got married and he did not have as much time as Anurag to hang out with me.

Similarly I did not think that Shimit Amin was more talented than Prawal Raman just because Shimit made Ab Tak Chappan and Prawal made Gayab. On the contrary I believe that given the material of Ab Tak Chappan Prawal would have made a better film and given the material of Gayab Shimit would have made it worse.

I made Satya and Daud back-to-back at the same time. So who is the real me? Anurag writes “Satya” and “Main Aisa Hi Hoon” and makes “Black Friday” and No Smoking”. So who is the real Anurag?

Likewise why would Rakesh Mehra make “Aks” first and “Rang De Basanti” next? Why did Ashutosh waste his time and talent on “Baazi” before he could make a “Lagaan” and why were Yashraj making blockbusters last year and failures this year?

The fact is that each and every one of us here are as good or bad as the material we take up at that particular time. The rest of the hype is in the media’s, the industry’s and the audiences mind. Fair enough the material I or anyone picks up surely is an individual choice but without knowing what factors affected that choice at that particular time, one cannot take it for granted that someone is very talented. That is just being ignorant about what goes behind the making of a film.

In effect I am saying if Anaurag came to me for Daud, we would have made as bad a film and if some other writer was in Satya it would have been as good. I am not taking away the credit off him or Saurabh’s or Sandeep Chowta’s or the various actors and technicians of that film. All I am saying is that we all shined because of the material I picked up by chance and ‘chance’ is the operative word here. If I precisely knew what material to pick up why would I be also making bad films?

And what did all those actors and technicians of the film do before and since Satya released 10 years back? All you have to do is to list down the works of Anurag, saurabh, Manoj Bajpai, Sandeep Chowta, Mazhar Kamran the cameraman etc including myself for you to see my point.

In Satya an idea just fell in place. Every one connected should just be happy with it and forget it, and be thankful that nobody realizes that a good film or a bad film can happen as random as that.

The day you start thinking that your idea is you that is when you start taking yourself too seriously and you will start falling in love with the ‘I’ and start losing track of your thinking thereby loosing track of the source where the ‘I’ is coming from in the first place.

If I come up with a hundred ideas, out of which 10 could be film ides, 80 of the other ideas also fail and 7 of the film ideas fail too. The people will only know about the failure of my film ideas. For instance I am known to be a huge success in my video library business when I started which is true from the perspective of my family and my colleagues in the video business at that time. But only I know that it was a big flop and here’s why.

The reason I had started my video library was because I knew about 20 people among my friends and relatives who owned video players. So I thought that if they between them hire 20 cassettes, going by Rs.10- per cassette I would get Rs.200- a day and Rs.6000- a month which was the running cost of my shop. Anything extra I thought would be a profit which I can take a chance upon. Within a month of starting my shop I was renting out more than 100 cassettes a day but none of the 20, I was counting upon ever came to my shop or if they did, they never paid the money as they were my friends or were related to me. So in effect what I counted on didn’t happen and the success came from unexpected quarters. But I know in my heart that if I knew those 20 people would not come, there is no way I would have started my shop.

So am I a success or a failure? I would say that I was a failure in intent and successful by chance. I believed in Raat more than Shiva and I only made Shiva first because the producers did not allow me to make Raat first. I believed in Daud more than Rangeela and the proof of that is why would I make a film like Daud after Rangeela unless I think it is better.

I had the same belief in J.D.Chakravarthy to Manoj Bajpai to Vivek to Prashant to Mohit to Adhvik. I had the same belief in Urmila to Antara to Nisha to Amruta. I had the same belief in Anurag Kashyap to Jaideep Sahani to Sajid Farad to Prashant Pandey and my belief in any of them does not change till today. Some of them made it and some did not. But the people are seeing the effect of them and making judgments on them whereas only I know the cause of what made that happen.

Any way to cut a long story short the point I wanted to make was that all my successes were by default and all my failures were by intent.

Then what made me sustain all this time? It is nothing but me going on making decisions. Decisions led to me making an appalling film like Daud after the super success of Rangeela and decisions led to make a highly experimental film with sweaty bearded faces like “Satya” after the failure of Daud.

I would any day go on making my decisions and make my lot of good, bad and ugly films rather than sitting in a Barista or the Marriott coffee-shop having endless cups of coffee tearing down others films and planning to make masterpieces which will never go the floors.

I would rather any day live the moment and make my film right now which might not be remembered by others than endlessly plan and never make the film which I want to be remembered forever. But then I never said I am into public welfare. I am just a supremely selfish guy and my only intention is to have a ball which I am surely having. Cheers!

Yes, ideas are the main thing. But if the people who got the idea themselves do not know the power or value of their own idea what is the big deal? So it is far more profitable in every which way for all you concerned out there not to waste time on knowing or being in awe of ideators and concentrate on their ideas which worked for you.

My reactions to reactions:

1. What is the need to be so spiteful? Come on, you are intelligent enough to understand.
Ans: Come on, what I said was in good fun. Don’t take me or my films or for that matter your own analytical comments that seriously.

2. Contract is absolute trash.
Ans: Thanks.

3. How do you deal with your sexual desires?
Ans: By having sex. I am curious to know how you deal with it.

4. How to get extreme self confidence like you?
Ans: Just by being plain arrogant. If you are successful people will call it confidence.

5. How come Goonga did not recognize Iya if he knew RD before?
Ans: You win.

6. Do you say anything and everything out of guts or shamelessness?
Ans: Guts, is a personality trait, which comes out of either out of complete understanding or absolute ignorance. Shamelessness is in the context of having to be morally, religiously and socially correct. Now you can deduce for yourself which category I fall in depending on whether you like/hate me or like/hate my films.

P.S: After you finish the above exercise please let me also know.

7. What do you say about Contract being a flop?
Ans: I just say this that you stick to whether you liked or hated the film. The financial affair of the film is the investors concern and by no stretch of my imagination can be of concern to your mental or physical health. If the film wasted your 2 hours and Rs.100- and also gave you a headache or an allergy and you regret your decision of watching it, then stay away from my films in future. This you should do even if the film is a hit at the box-office because even in that case the money is not going to come into your pocket.

8. Why are doing cheap publicity for Phoonk?
Ans: When publicity comes cheap why should I pay for it?

9. People around me are saying that you are an unreliable director.
Ans: Obviously they are smarter than you.

7/23/2008

Reactions to reactions:

Instead of reviewing reviews of CONTRACT I decided to do that on my series of reactions henceforth. If the idea is to react to the reactions of various people on my thoughts and works then why should I give special attention to the Khalid’s and the Deepa’s of the world? I find more juicier, bitchier and insightful comments coming from others. Come on guys. Let’s have fun!

1. Words can make you or break you – at least that was what I was taught in grammar school.
Ans: I was bad at school and worse at grammar.

2. If only ideas and thoughts matter what is the logic behind “A film by Ram Gopal Varma’s” in the end.
Ans: I love to see my name on screen.

3. If you don’t need acknowledgement and perception, why do you seek attention?
Ans: I am like a kid.

4. Why do only stars get paid bundles and not the people who worked behind?
Ans: Money is never paid to talent or work. It’s paid to the names who get people to buy tickets.

5. Are you a follower of Ayn Rand’s objectivism philosophy?
Ans: Yes. But I rarely apply it.

6. I believe it takes more faith and persistence to become an atheist.
Ans: I really think that is a wonderful observation.

7. Do you read only crime sections in newspapers?
Ans: I definitely don’t read articles on politics and social welfare, and yes, I love watching pictures of sexy babes too.

8. What was the budget of Kaun?
Ans: Rs.75Lakhs shot in 12 days.

9. Why does an army man in Contract listen to a terrorist ranting about his purpose?
Ans: Because he found it interesting and that’s the point of the film.

10. In Contract why is a kid perched on the Commissioner’s desk?
Ans: I just called her and asked her and she told me that the kid is her younger sister’s son who came for holidays.

11. The lawyer Bhansali beats up an invisible woman.
Ans: She is not invisible. She is off the frame and that was intended to capture the kind of man Bhansali is.

12. Why is the gangster permanently stationed at sea with a family of intelligence officers and spice girl?
Ans: Either pay more attention or ask another viewer with more brains or better still don’t watch my films in future.

13. How can the protagonist finish off the entire gang in a jiffy?
Ans: It’s not in a jiffy. If you noticed it was shot in a suspended time.

14. Who killed R.D and the Home Minister?
Ans: The point was to leave a doubt in the audience’s mind which would be more interesting than to clearly tie-up all the loose ends.

15. Why did you engage in blasphemy by calling Contract a trilogy after Satya and Company?
Ans: I didn’t. The media dubbed it as a trilogy. I was only trying to highlight the variance in the concepts.

16. Contracts requires serious trimming?
Ans: Where?

17. What was Shama Sikander doing in the so-called item number in the party sequence?
Ans: Dancing.

18. Why did you make a film like Contract?
Ans: That is a secret.

19. Not bad… is not good enough.
Ans: Point taken.

20. Next time I will wait for one of those pathetic critics to review your film before I rush to see it.
Ans: That just explains how much more pathetic you are.

21. Who keeps financing you after you keep making such turkeys?
Ans: The same people who will never finance you for the classics you are planning to make.

05:45 PM 23/07/2008

7/14/2008

Reactions to reactions

1. Did you apprenticeship under anyone?
Ans: No.

2. Is it possible for someone to direct without any prior experience?
Ans: The only thing you need to direct, is the clarity of your own vision and the ability to communicate it to your cast and crew. Experience has got nothing to do with it.

3. How was the shot in Kshanam Kshanam of the guy falling between 2 carriages taken?
Ans: That was a dummy. The close-up of Sridevi’s reaction after that is what created an illusion of seeing a real person fall.

4. Do you make calculated statements for attention?
Ans: Everything I do is only for attention.

5. Haven’t you ever cried?
Ans: Only weaklings cry! I psyched myself to feel like Superman.

6. How can people like Black Friday, Satya and Karan’s films at the same time?
Ans: It takes all kinds to make the world.

7. I think you are antisocial, have no decency, have no morals or respect just like other atheists.
Ans: Yes, Yes, Yes, Yes. Anything else?

8. If you copy scenes from other movies then how can you be the best?
Ans: I am the best copier.

9. Was the scene in Shiva of Nagarjuna reacting to Naresh in hospital bed thought of instantaneously?
Ans: I copied it from Mad Max.

10. Amitabh and Aamir take pains to acknowledge the reader while answering. Why don’t you?
Ans: Names and people don’t matter. Ideas and thoughts do.

11. You don’t see the need to please anybody?
Ans: The only one I want to please is myself.

12. I am extremely pleased that you read my comments and responded.
Ans: Here’s a piece of unsolicited advice. Don’t care about what others think of you. Your identity should never be dependent upon others acknowledgements and perceptions of you.

13. Please don’t water down your instincts by fearing Rajeev Masand’s egg.
Ans: I love eggs.

14. For all the bravado you project I think you get shaken with people’s criticism.
Ans; If thinking that makes you happy, please do.

15. The Phoonk posting of yours is just a clever ad for the film.
Ans: It is meant to be. You thought I was concerned about sharing my experiences with you just for the heck of it or what!

16. I noticed the shadow of jib camera in Sarkar Raj.
Ans: I did too.

17. The word agnostic would be better than atheist.
Ans: As long as you get my point does the right word matter?

18. In Sarkar why did you make Abhishek take such a long walk before he tells Sarkar that he killed his brother.
Ans: Only because of the long pause I think that dialogue has the effect.

19. Why don’t you write your scripts yourself?
Ans: I hate both writing and typing.

20. Why do you make films in a hurry? Instead of that why don’t you take more time and come up with stories that will be remembered for long?
Ans: I want to make a thousand films and I don’t care to be remembered.

21. I couldn’t help but notice all these things being an eccentric myself.
Ans: I felt very happy and was elated with your observations till you said this. Thanks for being a spoil-sport.

22. Did the name ‘Satya’ come from a girl you knew in school?
Ans: College.

23. Do you think seeing violence affects kids?
Ans: I think kids are more violent than adults. Did you notice with what relish they kill insects and throw stones at dogs?

24. ‘Satya’ to me seemed like a underworldish version of ‘Drohi’.
Ans: It is.

25. What is the reason for your portraying some characters without any dialogue and just playing upon their facial expressions?
Ans: I believe that then these characters power will come out of the imagination of the audience and hence more effective.

26. I hope Contract will relive Satya experience.
Ans: It won’t.

27. Why do you keep using the bird flying shot often? Example Satya, Sarkar Raj, Contract etc.
Ans: No reason. It’s just my childlike homage to a shot in one of my all time favourite films Mackenna’s Gold.

28. Can a promotional campaign prepare an audience what to expect?
Ans: Very important question. I will soon write a long piece on this.

7/9/2008

My tryst with the underworld

When I first came to Bombay from Hyderabad I couldn't get over a train ride through the Dharavi slums. It looked like one single roof and I wondered how people live there, how anybody can go in and go out. I saw children 2-years old crawling just about 3 feet away from the railway track while the trains were rushing to and fro. Those things made me understand the nature of the city. The general atmosphere of Mumbai was one thing I was really fascinated right from the time I was making Rangeela, while traveling around doing various shoots.

Once in a while I used to hear the word Underworld. Obviously I knew about Dawood Ibrahim and many of the gangsters, through whatever was revealed in the papers. But I never consciously thought about what exactly is the underworld. Then one day I was sitting in a Producer's office and he got this call that a prominent person was shot dead by some gang. The producer was telling me that the person who died woke up around 7.00am and had called him in the morning and said that at 8’O’clock he went somewhere, at 8.30 am he was suppose to meet some friend of his etc…. etc.

People have this habit of recounting each and every moment what happened before someone met with a violent unexpected death. While he was talking, since I have this tendency all the time to think cinematically, I thought “If the person who got shot got up at 7 o'clock, then at what time did the killer get up? Did he tell his mom to wake him up because he has a shooting to do? Did he have his breakfast before killing or after killing?” These things were coming into my head because I was trying to intercut the moments of the man who died with the man who killed. Then it suddenly struck me that you always hear about these gangsters only when they either kill or when they die. But what do they do in between? That was the first thought which eventually resulted in Satya.

While being in that frame of mind, I saw some photographs in Times of India of arrested gangsters covered with black cloths on their head. Nothing about their body language looked like how Bollywood portrays them. They are like any ordinary people. The guy walking on the road could be a gangster. Even the guy living next door could be a gangster. The whole point is that they have to mix up in the society and look like anybody else and because of that you will not realize that he is a gangster.

A friend of mine, not a film guy, who lives in Oshiwara on the fourteenth floor, told me about an instance. A guy lived in his building somewhere in a flat above him. My friend used to bump into this guy in the building’s lift once in a while. And they used to exchange pleasantries, "Hello, how are you? Happy Diwali" and things like that. And then one day my friend’s wife told him that this guy has been arrested and taken away as he has been absconding in a murder case in Karnataka or somewhere.