this one’s for Rajen.. the greatest fan of both films on this blog.. hopefully the following meets his standards..

Roughly midpoint through Anand Bachchan’s character, Dr Bhaskar, expresses surprise that the terminally ill Anand does not have any family to lay claim to. He is told by his friend, Prakash, that Anand is a child left orphan by Partition in Delhi. This is a remarkable moment in the film though as with so much else in Mukherjee’s work it is presented in the most unobtrusive fashion. Anand, as the expiring offspring of a tragic Partition is a suggestive metaphor.


The film also pays homage to presumably the director’s romance with the city of Bombay. There is not very much of the ‘outdoors’ in the film but it begins with one of the best credit sequences in Hindi cinema (with a superb score as well). Mukherjee offers a dedication to the city and his master, Raj Kapoor (it should not be forgotten that another illustrious protege of the legend, Manmohan Desai, started his career with a Partition film in Chalia and the resonances of which stayed with him throughout his career) with a marvelous montage of iconic Bombay sites (eventually the frame is reduced so it is almost as if one is watching all of this in a screening room with the editor.. one moment must be spotlit.. the one with the double deckers swishing across the screen, wipes of a kind, a memory that maybe stayed with Rohan Sippy when he did something similar in Bluffmaster). This city is most often privileged in the director’s work.

But something kept fascinating Mukherjee with the theme of the terminally ill lead protagonist. He of course re-interrogated this space in Mili, another film with the lead character giving the film its title, another film which begins ‘at the end’ and ‘rewinds’ the time of the film. Because Anand has a definite ending we learn at the very beginning that the lead character in in fact dead. Mili however remains open ended and is to this author the greater film even if Anand has the greater iconic claim.

Each film offers the literal physical decay of the patient as a response to a larger socio-political set. If Anand is the child of Partition he is also a victim of the post-Independence experiment where the cynicism of commerce has quickly replaced the idealism of the Independence era (this connects Mukherjee to Raj Kapoor’s oeuvre, one especially thinks of Shree 420). The ‘dialog’ between Dr Bhaskar and his colleague cum friend, Prakash, is central to the film and erupts at more than a few points. If Rajesh Khanna’s character is the film’s philosopher advising us on how to live life the conflict itself is staged between the two friends who are in different ways not completely reconciled with their profession. Bhaskar is especially a tortured soul. It is this humanism that Anand, that Raj Kapoor also represented by way of his Chaplinesque self in Shree 420, that has been forsaken in post-Independence India.

Anand is the great foundational film of Mukherjee’s career and he returns to some of its central concerns from time to time. It could be argued that in some ways his vision also grew darker in later works though the director never quite lost his affection for the bourgeois world he otherwise satirized or critiqued in both his ’serious’ films and his comedies. Mili is a darker film than Anand because it operates in a universe of greater social specificity and hence the sickness of its eponymous protagonist winds a more immediate correlative. One thinks of the obvious scandal at the heart of the film that crystallizes the larger social malaise of that social system. The even later Jurmana also operates with such a ‘given’. By the time we get to the really late Bemisaal, in many respects the most ambiguous and certainly most unsettling of the director’s works, the circle that began with Anand is in a sense complete. Here too the clinical and disease are twinned with the failure of a socio-political project. Interestingly here it is a disastrous abortion that leads to the film’s climactic crisis. One cannot stop here. There is the all important ‘double’ of the film, rather muddled as a narrative element but one that is thematically quite important. But one must backtrack a bit here and reflect on the space Amitabh Bachchan occupies in Mukherjee’s oeuvre.

Bachchan is always the ‘out of joint’ personality in Mukherjee, always the character who unhinges the film a little bit. We see this in Anand where his character is always angst-ridden and where Anand’s otherwise simplistic worldview finds a much more sophisticated expression in his character. In fact Bhaskar is led to his own ‘project’ because of his acquaintance with Anand. One knows that he will lead a fuller life for having known Anand even if the latter himself (though a great star outing for Rajesh Khanna and also one of his most endearing ones) often seems no more than an index of the gestural without ever convincing completely as a diagnostician. Anand’s project at any rate depends on Bhaskar. As an aside I should add that the re-coding of Anand in recent times as a Bachchan film seems either completely ridiculous or at least a sad reflection on how passe Rajesh Khanna is at the present time but in the light of the reading I’ve just offered it at least becomes more comprehensible.

Moving a bit quickly now in Namak Haram once again Rajesh Khanna has the title role and seems to bring about the crisis but the greater ‘political’ gesture is handed over to Bachchan. Rajesh Khanna’s ‘betrayal’ is in a way pre-ordained in as much as he remains truer to his social class by going down this path. It is Bachchan however who atones for it and who offers his ‘corporatist’ father the ultimate price. He represents the apotheosis of his friend’s dream and subsequent ’sacrifice’. This move was of course repeated years later in Bemisaal, a film which even as it completes the circle begun with Anand also reunites all the threads that first emerge in the latter and find varied expression throughout the 70s work of Mukherjee. Here too Bachchan pays the price for a very different betrayal that his friend-brother engages in. It is only in Bemisaal where the ‘doctor’ who treats and the one who kills are symmetrically offered in the same narrative. The medical practitioner ‘arrives’ at Bemisaal’s site as the possessor of a ‘pharmakon’ in the Plato-Derrida sense of the term which is to say as the bearer of a drug which is equally medicine and poison. The same social model engenders and it paralyzes, it opens up possibilities but it also murders in each instant. This is always Mukherjee’s lesson (which is why for example Anand’s death is almost necessary much as Dharmendra’s is in Satyakam… the social compact demands this sort of blood sacrifice from those who would seek to reorder it by taking its ‘morals’ a bit too seriously.. if there is a bourgeois principle to Mukherjee’s films it is this — mores must always trump morals.. a truth that leads both to comedy as well as tragedy and Mukherjee was a master in both modes). Sometimes madness might also be a result. Again let me get to this a bit later.

Abhimaan offers an ‘unhinging’ of Bachchan and later on he is once again the only one in the tale who can set things right. Jurmana’s crisis is yet again ‘manufactured’ by Bachchan who is the surest cynic starting out and in essence a great casualty of his social framework. At least before her reforms. Alaap finally has the complete abdication of social ‘responsibility’ for the higher pleasures of art. And finally Bemisaal, the film where Bachchan must be split into two. One the one hand Sudhir, possibly Mukherjee’s most enigmatic character, one who with everything else that might be said about him also operates at the boundaries of bourgeois sexuality. The director is extraordinarily bold here for Bachchan’s relationship with Raakhee always functions in a twilight zone where lover and sibling frequently change roles. There is a definite ‘coupling’ here. Bachchan starts out being attracted to the woman, perhaps. Then he sacrifices her for his best friend/brother, perhaps. Finally he begins a very strange, even unsettling tango with his sister(-in-law)-lover. There are moments in the movie where Bachchan seems to be ‘acting’ and yet something real always transpires between the two in these instances and Raakhee’s character is not unaware of the strange charge of this relationship.

But Mukherjee also puts forth in his darkest move the mad brother (a victim of feminine sexuality perhaps in keeping with what has just been discussed.. towards the end of the film there is a point at which the principal character also appears a bit unhinged as he stages a kind of sexual overture with his sister-lover) who functions as the double of the ‘rational’ one. The ultimate price is paid by these brothers. One repeats the earlier Namak Haram sacrifice. The other ends up in an asylum. A rational medical professional and his literally unhinged patient brother/other. The role the woman plays in each instance is not unproblematic.

What begins with physical disease ends with madness. This entire journey is also peppered with Mukherjee’s great comedies where again the bourgeois order is always lampooned affectionately. Khubsoorat in the wake of Indira Gandhi’s Emergency and subsequent return to power might contain the most overt political statement. Amol Palekar meanwhile in many of the films retains an element of subversion that reminds me in other contexts of Mohanlal’s ‘double’ (Srinivasan) in many of the comedies he did.

To reiterate Anand remains Mukherjee’s authentic beginning. One only has to consider an earlier successful film like Anupama to reflect on the gulf between the two. Mukherjee really invented himself with Anand but also found an appropriate site to take some of Raj Kapoor’s themes in a new direction. He was ever the social commentator in inimitable style though one can render him bland by only insisting on this and ignoring his more profound designs. My aim here was to rather chaotically rush through some of this history. Not a formal exercise by any means but hopefully one that opens up some areas for reflection. If I have attempted something like a thesis here it points in the direction of magnifying the equation Mukherjee sets up between physical ailment and social malaise (itself a rather novelistic idea) and for which his rightly classic Anand offers a canonical beginning.

Just revisited the restored DVD transfer on this, I was glad to find a video online..

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It’s surprising, yet not new! Big B had done it before, now he is doing it again. The 65-plus actor will be featured as a hubby to the much younger actress in Pritish Nandy’s movie ‘The Actor’. Amitabh Bachchan plays the title character as Ashmit Bhargava who is a top star and the movie is said to be based on the actor’s life.

However, the movie won’t be solely based on the pair’s relationship. “The age factor is of no consequence to the plot,” said Nandy, “It won’t even be mentioned in passing, they’re just a happy couple.”

‘The Actor’ is directed by Kushan Nandy (Pritish Nandy’s son) and is produced by Pritish Nandy Communications.

Tabu (Cheeni Kum), Jiah Khan (Nishabdh) and now Lara. Lucky old dude, we say, to share the screen with young choris of the town at this age!

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At the launch of his biography Unlikely Hero, Om Puri got quite emotional as he remembered the people in his life. And what a life it has been. From a rag-picker to an actor of such fine caliber, Puri has lived a full life. He tells us about his biography — written by his wife Nandita Puri — and also the controversy that accompanied it.

On wife Nandita Puri:

My wife studied in an English medium school while I studied in a Municipal school. One day, when we were fighting, she used the word ‘zilch’. I said zilch kya hota hai [what is zilch]. She said zero. I said kya zero nahi keh sakti impress kisse kar rahi ho angrezi se [couldn't you just say zero? Whom are you trying to impress in English?].

I have known Nandita for many years now. We first met in Kolkata when I was shooting for City Of Joy in 1991. She was writing for Hindustan Times, The Statesman and The Telegraph, and had come to interview me. She never went back and stayed glued to me. I tried my best to separate but the Fevicol was very strong (laughs).

When she came to Mumbai, she didn’t do anything for five years except meet friends and party. Then Gulzarsaab reprimanded her and asked her why she wasn’t writing after leaving Kolkata. I coaxed her to write too. Eventually, she started a column on Mid-Day. She wrote a book of short stories and is almost done with her historical novel.

I told her to write my biography in 1991 but she has been sitting on it. Twenty years ago, Shyambabu [Benegal], who knew some of my childhood incidents, told me to write my autobiography because he could smell a film in it. Those words remained in my mind.

But my wife sat on it for 20 years. I had to threaten her that either I will write it myself or I’ll get it written by someone else. Within a year and a few months, the biography was ready.

I asked Rensil D’Silva — who wrote Rang De Basanti and directed Kurbaan — what his discipline of writing was. He said that if he didn’t write at least four pages a day, he would not get sleep. Gulzarsaab gets up early every morning and starts writing or at least reading. God knows what will happen when I go home today!

About the controversy:

I was shooting in Chandigarh. Somebody told me something was written in Tehelka [about me], so I picked up a copy. There was a nice interview of Nandita, and two excerpts from the book, which were naughty. When I read it, I took it in the right spirit. I thought ke kitaab ka hisa hai, toh theek hai [it's part of the biography, so it's fine].

But then it came on television, the first thing I realised was the power of the electronic media. The entire country came to know that Om Puri had slept with working class women.

I got angry with my wife. I told her that even if she had no control over the leaked excerpts, she could have at least shut Barkha Dutt up and say that Om Puri’s book is not about this only. Yes, he did sleep with a working woman but the book is about his struggles. I got very angry.

Two of my college friends called the next day and were not happy with the controversy. They asked me if it was a publicity stunt. I was very embarrassed. So I decided to speak to the media. A journalist, whom I’d spoken to many times before, called me. Like a fool, not realising that six lines can become a full page, I spoke to the journalist.

The media protects the media. No one will write about Barkha Dutt or Miss De [Shobha De had blogged on the subject calling it a publicity stunt].

But I admire media too. I have been in this city for over 32 years. Not once have they written an article on the controversies or scandals in my life. They have always admired me and written nice things about me. But I’m just saying that a few sentences can destroy anyone.

I expected Barkha to ask Nandita what the book was about and wanted Nandita to say a few lines about the book. Then Barkha could have asked about me sleeping with the working class women. If I had to hide something, why would it be in the book?

I have a question for the media: When you say Om Puri slept with the working class women, I want to ask what’s wrong with that? I belonged to the working class myself, not the middle class. I was a rag-picker. I used to pick up coal from the railway tracks.

On his childhood:

In the ninth standard, I was chucked out of my maternal uncle’s home [the story goes that Om Puri's aunt was sleeping with her midriff showing, and he caressed it. She did not say anything but removed his hand. The next day, he was asked to leave the house].

I explained myself to the school’s headmaster, and he tried to persuade my uncle [to take me back]. He said that I was so bright, good in studies and sports. But they were very upset. I couldn’t return to my parents’ home as they wouldn’t be able to send me to school. So my headmaster got me a rented house, gave me some money, got me a bicycle and a few tuitions so that I could take care of my expenses.

I was a boy scout, so I did my cooking myself. I would wash my clothes, take tuitions and go to school. When I look back, I wonder how I did all that. My biography is a tribute to children, who are going through this and worse in their lives.

On his mentors in the film industry:

My book also talks about my journey, my times in NSD [National School of Drama] and FTII [Film and Television Institute Of India], my theatre work, my films, my love life, my mistakes, my weaknesses and my tributes to friends who helped me, my teachers who influenced me and my mentors like Govind Nihalini, Shyam Benegal and Girish Karnad.

I was rejected from FTII, as I was very unkempt and skinny. I did not look like a hero, villain or comedian. But Girish Karnad and [veteran actor] Jayraj said that I should be taken based on merit, not looks.

My first film Aakrosh brought me to the notice of all the good filmmakers of India. Satyajit Raysaab called me after seeing the film and offered Sadgati to me. Ardh Satya was my lottery, and I thank Bachchansaab for that.

Govind Nihalini had first gone to Bachchansaab but he was very busy. So I got the role.

On Amitabh Bachchan:

Amitabh Bachchan is an institution. He has been an inspiration to an entire generation of actors. He is not much older than me but he’s six or seven years senior to me in the film industry.

I was in NSD when I first saw his films, Anand and Namak Haram. That gave me hope that some day, I will get to work in Bollywood. I didn’t realise that one day, I would work with him. It was my dream come true when I worked with him in three films, Dev, Baabul and Lakshya.

On the biography:

Almost one third of my life is not mentioned in the book. I would like to include some portions in later editions. It’s unfair to a couple of people and relationships, where I wanted to express my feelings.

Two people are not mentioned in the book the way I wanted them to be. I feel guilty about that. One is Mala. She’s a costume designer and did costumes for Tamas and Drohkaal. She got a National Award for Rudaali.

The other person is my ex-wife Seema Kapoor. I have known her for 11 years. We had a good friendship but when we got married in 1990, things did not work out between us. She was a good singer and talented writer.

At the three-month shoot for City Of Joy, I thought she would stay with me but she left within a few days. Our marriage lasted only eight months. I was very upset. Many years later, she explained that she had a complex with the English language and could not handle the foreign unit.

I was desperate and found Nandita. I fell in love with her. I was in a dilemma for a year. I had to select between Seema and Nandita. I thought Seema was stronger. Nandita was just 24 and so, more vulnerable. So I left Seema and filed a case against her.

My lawyer asked me to file for divorce on grounds of adultery. I protested against it [but we went ahead]. I feel ashamed and guilty now.

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Several production houses want to make a film with Prabhu Devaa post Wanted, but it is AB Corp that has managed to sign the director. AB Corp has finalised the deal with him for a film with Abhishek Bachchan in the lead role. Boney Kapoor and Sajid Nadiadwala were also in the race to make a film with Prabhu Devaa, industry buzz reveals. But for the time being, it looks like AB Corp has won. Our source said, “Prabhu Devaa narrated the idea to Abhishek around 20 days ago and he loved it instantly and immediately agreed to do it. So now, Prabhu Devaa is busy working on the script. The film is a typical Prabhu Devaa film with an abundance of romance and heavy action. The film will go on the floors around June next year.” Abhishek Bachchan played safe, “We are talking about working together. Nothing is confirmed as of now.”

earlier piece here
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The balance is tilting—of the 1,300-odd movies produced in India everyyear, the south Indian cinema industry comprising Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam films accounts for 60%. The southern industry is estimated at over Rs 1,500 crore and has done better than Bollywood this year with the Hindi film industry showcasing more flops than hits.

Typically, south Indians are avid cinema-goers and hence, it is no surprise that Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Karnataka house almost 5,000 theatre screens, which is about 50% of the total number of operational theatre screens in India.

And yet, there’s scope for much more, for 75% of the southern film industry’s revenues come from domestic theatrical collections. “The traction for robust growth for south Indian cinema is to tap the vibrant non-theatre revenue streams like radio, TV and mobile,” says Farokh T Balsara, media and entertainment expert, Ernst & Young. “Film content when sliced and diced to suit non-theatrical content like music and comedy clips on mobile, the radio & television market will open new revenue vistas to the south Indian cinema industry,” he explains while presenting the ‘India entertainment down South’ report.

Analysts say the southern film industry is known for pioneering talent not only among actors and artists, but also technicians and crew members who have driven innovation in cinematography, sound engineering and post-production techniques. But despite this, the south Indian cinema needs to bring transparency in collections, market films better, especially worldwide, and curb the spiralling production costs, according to analysts. Something—rationalisation of production costs—the Hindi film industry has already started doing after meltdown pressures brought about a severe cash crunch, made all the more worse by a two-month strike, poor content and the swine flu scare.

According to Balsara, both the Telugu and Tamil segments posted a revenue of around Rs 700 crore each in FY09, while the Malayalam and Kannada films contributed Rs 100 crore and Rs 50 crore, respectively. In terms of overall share, Telugu and Tamil segments account for approximately 45% each, while the Malayalam segment accounts for 8% and Kannada segment accounts for 2%.

As for revenue streams, the domestic theatrical revenue is by far the most dominant, accounting for nearly three-fourths of the total revenues. While 17% revenue comes from cable and satellite TV rights, international theatrical rights contribute 5% to the total revenue pie. The other revenue streams—music rights, domestic home video rights, Internet and mobile right, etc—contribute merely 5% of the total revenues earned.

Many southern releases are held up at the censors, too. Says Kamal Haasan, actor, director and producer: “The Censor Board has double standards in liberally allowing expletives in Bollywood and denying the same to South-based movies. The board should have egalitarian standards so as to promote equality of film product without the Bollywood-South regional biases.”

The cross-over market

Unlike Bollywood, the south market is characterised by cross-overs with each state’s movies having a notable presence in the four states. The size of the cross-over market, however, varies considerably, depending on market for films by language and state as also the format in which the films are released. For example, Tamil movies are typically always dubbed in Telugu.

Tamil films have a significant market in Kerala and Karnataka where they are released without dubbing. These states contribute up to 5% of Tamil Nadu’s theatrical revenues. Selected Tamil films, say 10 to 12 a year, are dubbed or remade in Telugu. Films from leading actors are released simultaneously in Tamil and Telugu. The Tamil film producer either dubs the film himself and releases it in Andhra Pradesh or sells the dubbing and remake rights to a Telugu producer. In the latter case, the Telugu producer decides whether to dub the film and release it or remake it with Telugu actors.

Telugu films have a significant market in Tamil Nadu. Around 20-25%of them are released in the state. Earlier, these films used to be dubbed or remade into Tamil films but of late, with increase in the Telugu-speaking population in Tamil Nadu, they are being released without being dubbed. Another trend is that of Telugu films being dubbed into Tamil solely for the satellite TV market. Telugu films also have a significant market in Karnataka that accounts for around 3% of theatrical revenues in Andhra Pradesh. A few Telugu films are dubbed into Malayalam and released in Kerala.

As for Malayalam films, there is a limited market in Tamil Nadu. Only a few starring reputed actors are dubbed into Tamil. Malayalam films have an insignificant market in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka.

The winds of corporatisation are slowly blowing through the southern film industry as well, with banks now willing to lend to film producers. According to a field general manager of UCO Bank, the bank has lent up to Rs 400 crore to 67 films in the four southern markets with no bad debts. But he admitted that banks were not allowed to finance movies produced at the cost of over Rs 100 crore.

Unlike Bollywood, the south Indian film industry hasn’t tapped its full overseas potential. For example, the international market for Telugu films is highly unorganised and under-tapped.

Says Allu Sirish of the Telugu Film Producers Council: “At a time when marketing cost of movie-making rivals production cost, the Telugu industry is yet to exploit the multiple media streams of publicity to enlarge the revenue pie.” For example, he points out that as an industry that produces more number of films than any other southern movie market, it is hampered by the curb on releasing a movie in a home video segment after a year of the theatrical release.

According to Balsara, the industry can evaluate options such as a joint venture by producers to set up an international network to market and distribute Telugu films. The market can also be expanded beyond the Telugu diaspora. The industry should draw analogies from Japanese and Korean cinema in getting international attention and viewership, point out experts.

Malayalam producers are not able to realise the optimum value of international theatrical rights in the Middle East, as there is a single buyer who dictates the price. Further, producers may not have explored other international markets such as the US, the UK, Canada and Europe. As Malayalam cinema is artistic, it is likely to appeal to an international audience if the films are sub-titled in English.

The geographical reach of Kannada movies is limited outside Karnataka, with a few producers exploring certain selected parts of west and northern India, while hardly one or two movies actually get distributed in the international market. Kannada-speaking population is present outside the state as well as in countries such as Australia, the US and pockets of the Middle East. However, these markets are not exploited, like in the case of Tamil and Telugu movies.

As the E&Y report highlights, the limited exploitation of non-theatrical revenue streams will hamper growth of the southern film industry. This is where the Hindi film industry fares better—it exploits each revenue stream to the hilt. In contrast, the southern Indian industry often bundles rights together and sells them for life. This results in substantial under-exploitation of rights. In order to realise their full revenue potential, the rights should be split and sold separately, says Balsara. Further, the rights should be sold only for a specific period of time. Additionally, producers can consider entering into revenue-sharing agreements with the acquirers of rights instead of an outright sale.

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The ‘hopeless businessman’ plans a comeback as a cool CEO who has learned his lesson the hard way.

Amitabh Bachchan says he doesn’t want to be left behind and is trying hard to match the supersonic speed of Gen X, Y or Z. In doing so, he has noticed that he speaks much faster these days than he did 10 years ago, write Shobhana Subramanian and Shyamal Majumdar.

“That’s cool — a favourite expression of youngsters these days — fascinates me. It compresses everything for which I would have perhaps used 10 sentences earlier,” the megastar says. Not any more — the 68-year-old youngster has made “that’s cool” a part of his everyday lingo. And that’s the reason why he thinks he is still getting “some work” even after four decades in Hindi films. Gen X, we thought, would do well to reciprocate and take lessons in modesty from him.

We are at AB Corp’s headquarters at Juhu, a stone’s throw from his home — Jalsa. The speed is evident in other ways, too. While it’s common for stars, much lower in stature, to keep guests waiting for hours, we are ushered in to his well-appointed office where huge cut-outs of Auro (his character in Paa) greet us, almost on the dot.

Dressed in a white Pathan suit, Bachchan looks as imposing in real life as he does in reel life. We point out that his a-bit-rusty wrist watch looks familiar as we have seen it many times on 70 mm screens over the years. Bachchan is quick with a repartee: “You must have really noticed it when the camera took close-ups of me signing the cheques on Kaun Banega Crorepati,” he says with a hearty laugh, ordering tea for us and lemon juice for himself.

The superstar is quick in gifting us CDs and signing autographs on miniature posters of the film. “Take one extra autographed poster please — your friends might want one. I hope you will see Paa and enjoy it”, Big B says. From anyone else, it may have sounded like a salesman’s “buy one, get one free” pitch, but Bachchan’s innate courtesy and passion for his film can be infectious.

Paa, due for release next week, is something India’s biggest movie star has never done before. Apart from his unique role of a 13-year-old with an extremely rare genetic defect that causes accelerated ageing, the face that you see in the film is the result of deep research. Kids affected by this problem become bald and their veins begin to show prominently on their heads, which enlarge to a size beyond normal. To get the special look for the character, director R. Balki roped in Hollywood make-up artist Stephan Dupuis.

The prosthetic process was arduous. Around eight pieces of specially-crafted clay models were meticulously stuck on to the face. Once the process started, it was impossible to move even a few centimetres. Eating and drinking had to be avoided and he couldn’t talk because it would have displaced the pieces. The entire process took four-five hours every day over 45 days of continuous shooting. He was even willing to go through the process of showing his eyeballs bulging out to give a more authentic look to the character, but doctors said that would require injections in his eye every two hours which could affect his vision.

“Ninety per cent of the job is done if you have that kind of make-up. My grandchildren took care of the remaining 10 per cent,” Bachchan says. That’s the reason why he has dedicated the film to his grandchildren from whom he picked up the mannerisms of the boy in the film. The doting grandfather tells us that one of the biggest compliments he has received so far is from his granddaughter who pinged him just the other day, on his Blackberry, to say that Auro behaves exactly like Aggi (his grandson).

With Paa, Big B also dons another hat — that of a producer in collaboration with friend Anil Ambani’s Reliance Big Entertainment. While AB Corp is producing the film, the distribution rights are with Reliance Big — a business model Bachchan intends to follow for his forthcoming ventures as well. Bachchan says his family would do what they are best at — giving creative inputs — and depend on specialised companies to do the rest. “That’s the model followed the world over. Fragmentation of roles and specialisation are the way to go,” he says, with the flourish of a CEO making a slick presentation.

He is particularly proud of the fact that the production costs have been kept below the Rs 15-crore budget set by his son Abhishek. Paa cost AB Corp Rs 14.75 crore, of which a tenth went into Auro’s make-up alone. “AB Corp has no intention of producing the so-called Rs 40-crore, 50-crore films which are sold for Rs 70-80 crore, making returns on investments that much more difficult,” Bachchan says.

A self-confessed “hopeless businessman” a few years ago, Bachchan says AB Corp, founded in 1996, made a decent profit of Rs 16 crore in the first year, but ran into turbulent weather soon enough because of two reasons: One, he forgot that his specialisation was creativity and not other aspects of the entertainment business; and two, he depended too much on recruits from multinationals who could make slick presentations on impressive spreadsheets, but knew nothing about the intricacies of entertainment as a business.

In the process, he signed “ridiculous documents” and found himself alone when the cookie crumbled after the disastrous Miss World pageant. The debt burden was huge, but Bachchan says he ignored his friends’ advice that AB Corp should declare bankruptcy, close shop and escape the debt recovery proceedings.

Bachchan worked harder to repay the dues — every single paise of it. “Many of the debtors were from my own industry and I couldn’t have looked at them straight in the eye if I hadn’t paid back their dues. After all, the company derives its name from my late father,” he says.

We have long overshot our allotted time and his aides walk in with worried expressions, but Bachchan is in a mood to talk. He doesn’t think that there was anything wrong with the idea behind AB Corp and cites the corporatisation of the film industry that happened much later. “A film can have so many brand extensions —TV content, merchandise, music concerts, internet properties etc. AB Corp saw the potential much ahead of others, but the execution let us down,” Bachchan says, taking a sip of lemon juice.

Is he dismayed by the failure of Bollywood films and TV serials to raise the quality bar? Bachchan says he indeed misses the fascinating films made by directors like Hrishida (Hrishikesh Mukherjee), but doesn’t mind flowing with the tide. The reality is that an average Indian wants to forget his worries watching some nach-gana, action, beautiful locales and even more beautiful ladies on screen, he says, adding: “If the entire country (including wife Jaya) is willing to empathise with the participants of Big Boss 3 (a show he is hosting on Colors), who am I to stop them?”

How does he react to Sachin Tendulkar’s famous comment that he is an Indian first and then a Marathi? Bachchan says the cricketer spoke what he truly believed in, but the question was asked by the media “with a purpose”. The media has a responsibility to avoid such unnecessary controversies and it has to decide how to balance its money-making compulsions and social conscience — the theme of his forthcoming film Rann.

It’s time for us to leave, but we still steal time for the last question. Abhishek, who plays the role of his father, has described him as a mischievous son. How would he rate Abhishek as his father? “Well, he is a very caring, conscientious and principled parent,” Bachchan says, with all seriousness. Many youngsters would say “that’s cool” to the rather prompt answer.

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When you look at films that you wouldn’t be comfortable doing, is that out of choice or ability? Like when you say you couldn’t make a Wake Up Sid…

Oh, there are a lot of films I can’t do. And I look at them sometimes happy I can’t do them and sometimes really sad I can’t do them. For the lack of a better word, maybe I’m not talented enough to execute a certain kind of a film.

When I saw Rang De Basanti, I was so floored by the way it was shot and executed, and I was like ’sh*t, I can’t do this,’ and I feel limited sometimes. And then I see some films and I’m like ‘I can do this and I would have done it better,’ you know?

But it really depends on how honest you are to yourself, and you have to know and understand what you are and what your limitations are, and you have to address some of your delusions. I think most of us are delusional. Very rarely do we put ourselves out there and really understand what people think of us.

So do you see yourself now as increasingly aware of the external perception? And has that consciousness helped your work?

I think the last five years have really been my wake up call, in a sense. That ’sh*t, I may think that I’m somebody, but there’s a whole world that can’t stand my films.’ And there’s a whole world that loves it. So I have to know that. And then I do what I have to.

I’m not going to cater to anybody’s sensibility because I would never be able to, and then I wouldn’t be honest to my craft. But I do know that there is a world that doesn’t like me. And I love meeting all kinds of people who tell me good and bad, and I think it’s very important to surround yourself with no-men.

That’s the first thing I do around me. I’m like, tell me what’s wrong. Because I know what’s right, that’s why I’m doing it. But I don’t know what’s wrong. We never do. When we see our films, we love our work.

Do they hold up as well in hindsight, or do you now find yourself questioning decisions made earlier?

Kabhi Alvida was coming on TV the other day, and I was like ‘it’s half an hour too long; sh*t, it’s too boring; sh*t, these item songs don’t work; it’s overcast.’ And none of that was told to me when I was making it. And we had a really good group of young, energetic, evolved people around me.

But we love our work. We go on set, and with an equal amount of passion. None of us are dishonest about what we do, but no one actually tells you. It’s important to try your level best to self-analyse, and I think the older you grow, your degree of self-analysis increases. When you’re young, you’re more innocent and honest and, I would say, vulnerable, whereas now we may not be.

So external criticism doesn’t matter as much anymore…

I mean, who doesn’t like to hear praise? We all do. Come on, all of us in the business love reading great things about us. And it pains you to read some terrifying reviews and you cringe everytime someone criticises you, from your dress sense to your sense of cinema. But at the end of the day, you have to know that that’s the way it is, and that’s the business you’re in.

You’re in the only business in the world that’s judged on one friday, globally. And your failure and success are highlighted with equal measure. So what do you do? You chose to be here. And there are so many great perks that come out of it (smiles)

Coming back to the bit about being suited for a kind of cinema… Accepted that you know your creative space, but it has to be said that you’ve been altering your subjects quite significantly with each film, most drastically perhaps with the next one. Do you then just look at a personal connect with the script when deciding what film to make next, and does that evolution from subject to subject proceed alongside your personal growth?

What works for me in My Name Is Khan is my personal disconnect from the script. I was part of the research, part of the thought process. But I wasn’t involved in the minute scripting level, which Shibani [Bathija] actually wrote, and I found that for me, as a director, that worked really well.

When I write the material on my own, I lose objectivity. And I perhaps don’t have the ability to strike that, that sense of ‘I wrote this [but] I don’t need this’, but now I can look at Shibani’s work from the outside, and have a clear perspective.

Now because I’m so away from it and so detached, I almost have the sense of a cinegoer directing a film. And I don’t mean that creatively, I’m detached from owning it. I almost feel like I’m living in a flat that I don’t own. So I will treat it really well because it’s not my own, but I’m not hysterical about it. I’m not hysterical if you drop a bit of paint on my sofa, or if you clutter the kitchen.

I’m not hysterical, and so, I sleep better at night. And because of that, I’m calmer at doing what I do. And I feel I’m making, therefore, a far more honest film.

Do you feel your earlier films suffered from a lack of this clarity?

Oh, I think I’ve been very dishonest in some of my films because I’ve always tried to balance things. And I think this is my first honest piece of work. Whether it’s a failure or a success I don’t know but I definitely believe it’s my most honest piece of work.

I remember Kabhi Alvida started with this really organic, honest space. And it went on to be slightly dishonest for me creatively, because I cluttered it with things that I felt I had to achieve to make a certain audience-space happy because I felt they would want it. I realise I don’t have that feeling anymore.

I don’t disregard the audience, but I’ve started to regard myself a little more.

You want to give them something in your own voice while you paradoxically realise your voice is only relevant if they want to hear it. As a filmmaker, isn’t there an inevitable need to second-guess your audience constantly?

Always, always. But I don’t see myself doing that so much anymore. You do second-guess an audience. I know when I put up a shot that at this point they’ll react, this point they’ll cry. I don’t say that anymore. I say, ‘I hope it works for the film.’

I think certain energies that have walked into my life have changed the way I feel. My editor Deepa — I have to give her a lot of credit — my first Assistant Director Karan Malhotra and my [cinematographer] Ravi Chandran are the three people who have taught me to think differently and achieve a certain result without, as you said, second-guessing a commercial response. I think when I sit with Deepa, Ravi and Karan — who is I think an immensely talented boy — they really are amazing at putting things into perspective for me.

I think I was in a little bit of a comfort zone earlier. Dharma Productions is a bit of a family run unit, and we’re all a bit incestuous. And I think what I’ve done is cheat on family and venture out a little bit. And I think that’s helped. That cheating and that infidelity to my organic organisation has helped.

Has it been harder than usual, stepping out of that comfort zone and exploring not just a script written by someone else or working with new collaborators but making, consciously, a different kind of cinema?

Totally. I’m in a zone I don’t know anything about. It’s the only film I’ve needed external research for. Everything else was my understanding of human emotions, sometimes looking through rose tinted glass doors and windows, sometimes looking at urban relationships that I’ve absorbed, sometimes about friendships and people that I have seen in front of me.

This is the first film where I know nothing. I don’t know these characters. I don’t know anyone with Asberger’s Syndrome, I know nothing about the global perception of Islam beyond the obvious that we all know and read, being evolved people. But the intricate details of the research actually opened my mind up.

I know so much about the religion now, I know so much about the disorder now, about the world now. And it’s all because I’m making this film. And I feel I was cocooned slightly, earlier. Even working with Ayaan on Wake Up Sid, I learnt so much about how people his age think. I feel when I was his growing up, I did nothing that youngsters do today.

It hasn’t been that long, surely things haven’t changed that drastically?

I think I was always an old soul, and kind of skipped my younger days. I never quite enjoyed the beats of being young. Like Ayaan keeps going for a drive in the night, and just hanging out. I didn’t do any of this. I had friends, but I was always trying to work, and make myself into a certain kind of person.

I didn’t do any of those things, so when he put things like that into a song, I thought that it would be boring. Today, when I look at that song, I feel that pinch that I didn’t do it. So I know it’s going to connect to people like me as well.

If having new people around you is so clearly broadening your horizons, why do you feel compelled to stick with a majority of the old-guard? Your film still stars Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, the music is still by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy…

Some of those are the way they are, and the way they will be. I think if I yank myself totally out of my zone, it might affect me. Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy have also composed music that is completely different: there is no lipsync song in My Name Is Khan, it’s all background. And the music is not Western at all, barring the fact that it’s somewhere fusion based. Also it’s got different voices, people I haven’t worked with.

When I spoke to Shah Rukh, I said ‘look, it’s very important that you play even this character as a mainstream hero,’ because that’s one call that I took commercially. I felt he had to be an endearing character, no matter what. So if that takes bringing about a certain level of ‘cutiefying’ at times, or toning down the disorder in areas but still maintaining a regular pitch, I think it’s imperative.

Yet you did research the disorder heavily and make sure you were being completely accurate?

We sent the script to the National Autistic Society, just to read the dialogues. Because there are a lot of things characters like Rizwan Khan don’t say. They say things literally, so there are a lot of expressions they won’t use. And then we sent the first bits of rushes to people, to see if we’re doing okay. Because we needed to know. You see, it’s such a varied disorder and there are so many strains of it, there’s no one way of doing it. So one had to strike that balance between the projection of this character on mainstream celluloid and getting the facts right.

So, therefore, having Shah Rukh and Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy and Sharmishtha [Roy, art director] and Manish [Malhotra, costume designer] and all the people I’ve worked with earlier were also important. But I think all of them have been challenged. I don’t think they’ve done something like this. We’re very far away from the release, and one can never be sure, but the feeling definitely was that we haven’t done this before. So either we could have totally screwed it up or maybe got it right, so that’s something that I don’t know. At all.

While you do mention the need for his character to conform to Bollywood stereotypes, in a sense, and be an endearing hero figure, these are weighty subjects you are dealing with. Does this film then, for you, fall within the purview of serious cinema?

Oh, it’s a serious film. No doubt about it. That’s why it has a world of its own, its own beat. But I would say it’s a drama, a quintessential drama which is definitely serious. There’s nothing frivolous about it.

Don’t you think we’ve stopped really tackling dramas in our cinema? Even our serious love stories seem trapped by the need to also be funny and sexy-looking. Don’t we need to give in to the genre instead of playing it safe?

I just think that I have a certain pitch and tone. There are bits that are funny but they’re not trivialising the subject matter at all. I think that one solid drama… yeah, maybe you’re right, because how can you? How can your drama have song-pieces? A drama has a different kind of structure.

You have to realise something about Indian cinema — no other cinema in the world has an interval, and one doesn’t realise how drastic that makes your storytelling structure. That one gap in narrative actually changes the way we write our films. Which is our USP, it’s what sets us apart — but it’s a huge deterrent. We would write films differently if we didn’t have an interval but we have to, we have to.

So you start, you peak, you pitch, you stop. You build again, you peak, you pitch. So you have two peaks and two pitches and two finales in your film, which you don’t realise, actually. Ninety percent of the problem with our scripting is that. On the global level, that’s the problem we have.

Actually the half point of Khan, the film where one is trying to be careful, is not a peak-pitch point, it’s just that something happens and we stop. It would have been seamless without it also, one has been conscious of that. But very rarely do you find that.

So then this writing around an interval means that we end up having to stick to the genres we know best, the ones suited to our mix and match masala genre…

In 90 percent of our films, you know when the interval is happening. You just know it. That means you’ve written it in a certain way, you’ve graphed it in a certain way. And that is our big problem, our big, big, big problem.

That’s why we don’t get most genres right. We don’t get a thriller right, ever. Because we have to have that relationship running, that music coming. So we can’t have a quintessential thriller, the way it’s meant to be done. We can’t get a drama right.

We can get comedy right because comedy can be a little sporadic in its narrative structure. And we always get family right, because we know that the best.

No Syd Field can tell you what to do with an interval. He might have a vague understanding of it, having viewed Indian films, but the three-act structure does not work for us. It just doesn’t.

Also, I feel, we aren’t good at wrapping up. Many Indian films build up effectively enough but are completely let down by their second half. We falter and stumble so weakly in the third act…

And we always will. Because basically, you’re trying to wind up everything because you’ve explained too much. If you don’t explain everything too much, you won’t feel the need to wind it up. The problem is that we have such little respect for an audience, while we are writing it.

We second-guess them in that way also. We feel that they won’t understand this, they won’t feel this. So you emphasise. And you over-emphasise and when you try to wind up that over-emphasis, you mess things up. Instead of just letting things be, we don’t, we justify it, we analyse it, we say it out loud. Therefore that character becomes of such importance that you need to bring that track back and, some way or the other, wind up that track effectively, and you end up messing up your second half.

Also, we very rarely, as an audience, have a way of feeling that ‘this happened. Why did it happen, we don’t need to know.’ Sometimes people behave in strange ways. You could be a neurotic man, you just are. You could be a great guy, you just are. Rani doesn’t like Abhishek, she just doesn’t. ‘Why doesn’t she, but?’ Why do people ask this. ‘He’s such a great guy, he’s such a nice man…’ She doesn’t. She’s not turned on by him.

Do you see this then as a product of conditioning? The fact that we’ve reinforced these mother, sister, wife images too deeply, imposing them on an audience so much that they’re now used to it?

Yes, conditioning, I suppose so. Because you can’t take out the iconic status of the actor projecting it and yanking them into the realms of what is real. You just can’t do it. You kind of feel that Shah Rukh is a noble man, and Rani is a quintessential good girl. You’d be surprised at how strongly an audience has made up their minds about the kind of person you are, and sometimes they can just reject you because of your off-screen persona.

India does that a lot. You know that some audiences really love Salman, that Aamir just qualifies intelligence. He can validate anything. You watch Ghajini, and even if you don’t like it, you feel that he’s saying something in Ghajini also, because he’s Aamir Khan. You know? ‘Somewhere he must be making a comment on violence.’ You’ll give it that kind of validation.

Whereas if you come across frivolously, you can do what you want but you’ll not be able to come across as a noble, Gandhian character.
My non-film friends have such strong opinions about actors. As people, not as actors. ‘He’s always sleeping around.’ How do you know? Are you under his bed? ‘He’s cheating on his wife.’ How do you know, are you the wife? They have these opinions, they just ‘know it. ‘

And that doesn’t detract from their enjoying the said actor’s work on screen, right?

It tends to become a part of the actor’s persona, which again doesn’t happen anywhere out of the country. I think we’re a very sensitive people, as a nation. I think we have an interval in our souls (laughs), we pause sometimes and think too much, and that’s why we like that in our films. We tend to be very very judgemental about humanity, much more than other cultures, other nations.

About that interval point, now that we are making films between a 100 and 120 minutes long…

Yeah? Who is? (laughs) Who are these people? You aren’t talking to one!

Do you think we can start thinking about doing away with the interval?

Well, the diaspora audience doesn’t stop the film at all. They don’t have an interval. They take their own interval, they’ll go out and come back. It’s the most annoying thing to watch it with them, because they’ll walk out at the worst time and you’ll keep wishing they hadn’t.

But no, I think the interval is a part of our culture in a certain sense, and I don’t think we should ever do away with it. There’s just a magic in coming out and talking about the film. Where else in the world do you talk about first half/second half? Either a film worked for you or it didn’t. Here we say first half was good, second half dropped. They’ll look at you in the West like you’re mad.

And that’s the way it should be. We should be culturally different.

Coming back to actors and their images creating perception issues, especially when it comes to casting them in some light… Don’t you think that just intensifies the trouble that we have a tiny pool of stars that all filmmakers are clamouring to sign?

Totally. We have five actors, four actresses, three directors, three art directors, four choreographers. So when you’re starting a film you don’t know what to do. And you go about saying okay, lets give this one a shot. And out of the four actors, one of the actors has a problem with that choreographer because he’s new and he can’t dance well and so there are internal problems… it’s all very, very limited.

You have 20 working people in the industry whom you can work with. So then? Then that brave attempt has to be made of taking somebody new, and then you have to work with a new actor, which I don’t want to do. And then that whole process starts again.

You do bring in a lot of new directors, though.

I’ve been accused of never launching a newcomer. I say I do even better, I launch new directors. Which is far more important for me. I don’t even want to sound cliched and say when the script comes, I’ll work with a newcomer. I don’t want to work with newcomers, I have no interest in it. I like to work with stars. With people who made their mistakes and have now evolved.

I don’t want to play Professor Higgins to newcomers. I want to have an interaction, not a teaching. I don’t have an inherent desire to teach, I feel I have things to learn. So I have absolutely no interest in going down that path.

But I love interacting with new directors, because I really believe that they’ll teach me a helluva lot. Like I know so much about films from these new kids making movies, and whether they make a good one or a bad one, they teach me a lot.

And that same learning from a fresh approach doesn’t happen when you tap into new actors?

There can be nothing more frustrating than working with a non-actor. The few moments that I’ve lost it on sets — and they’re very few because I’m relatively calm — are when I have a bad actor. I don’t think there’s anything worse. I’d rather slash my wrists than work with a bad actor.

I can’t tell you how annoying it is. You’re used to a certain standard, and now you can’t work with them. And I really have no desire to. Maybe when I’m 50 and nobody wants to work with me then I’ll say, ‘now I’ll make my newcomers film,’ but not now.

Agreed, but a lack of experience doesn’t mean a lack of talent. In any case, there is a bigger talent pool out there beyond the obvious, the five heroes and four heroines. There are talented, experienced actors who aren’t getting the platform they deserve.

And I’m actually working with a lot of them, as a producer or a director. I mean the ensemble of Khan is full of people who are doing a lot of great work in all kinds of films. Besides the lead actors, there’s a whole ensemble full of interesting people in the film. And I’ve enjoyed working with all of them, and I want to work with all kinds of actors. But my main cast will always be my main cast.

What about size and scale? Do you ever see yourself making a smaller film?

I don’t know. I can’t right now, I wouldn’t know what to do. The films I’m producing are small films. Wake Up Sid, I wouldn’t have been able to make, it’s been shot in a really tiny space, the size of this room, and I wouldn’t know what to do. But I’ve learnt a little bit on Khan, how to make a small space look cinematic, so I’m learning. But produce, I’d love to. I wish somebody had given me the script of A Wednesday. I loved it. That was one small film I wish I had produced.

I would love to produce all kinds of tiny films on a script level, and then project them. To market a film is now something I may understand the world of, how to put it out there. And I would love to produce it, to nurture the talent and put it out there. But direction, no. I can’t do it.

Not yet, you mean.

No, maybe not ever. Yeah, maybe that’s my big sweeping statement that I can’t make a low-budget small film. I can’t do it.

Because as a viewer, it would be fascinating to see your kind of filmmaking trapped within heavy constraints.

And I’m really happy that you might expect that but (laughs) I’ll be sad to report that I won’t be able to deliver. And I know what you mean, it would be interesting to see me try. But you’d hate the film, because even if I made it, it’d be the most wannabe thing I’d ever do. To try and downsize my vision. And wannabe is something I can’t do. I can make sh*t, but I wouldn’t want to do anything that’s wannabe.

Are you a very hands-on producer?

No. I have no sense of economics. I have no sense of money handling. My CEO is my oldest and best friend, Apoorva, who’s been with me through school and college. He takes care of all of that. He sits in my father’s chair now, so it’s a given that he does everything and I don’t even know what to do. I was a 90s student in every subject besides Mathematics, and there was always a 32 or a 34 in that one. In my ICSE exams I had five 90s and one 40, and that’s the way it is with me. Signing cheques is also an issue, I don’t know where the signature has to go half the time. I stare at that one line. It’s still not something I’m used to.

I remember the fourth day after I lost my father. I walked into this room and a gentleman walked in and said, ‘Hi, I’m your chartered accountant, we’ve never met.’ And that pretty much sums up my financial and monetary cluelessness. So if anyboy wanted to take me for a ride, I’m the best victim possible (laughs).

I meant as a filmmaker, with all these young boys making movies for you.

Well, Apoorva keeps them all away from me because whenever they ask me for something, I just say yes. But I’m hands on creatively. I sit with them on the screenplay till I think it’s ready to shoot. But I stay away from the sets because I feel I shouldn’t be there. Unless I go to meet them or the actors socially, I just don’t go to the sets.

I’m hands on but I consciously make an effort to let go. I remember when Ayaan (Mukerji) was discussing the music of Wake Up Sid he started using words like jazz and blues and something he started saying, and I said all this I don’t know, and I’ll come and screw it up for you, put a louder beat or something. So I told him that the world of Wake Up Sid is yours, and I don’t want to yank you out of your vision. So even if I don’t like the songs, go ahead.

Originality is running low in the industry today with most filmmakers cashing in on sequels and remakes, trying to build everything into a franchise. You haven’t gone the remake way yet. Is this a conscious move?

There are many films that I’d like to do, but I don’t know if I could do them better. I think I would only remake a film if I know for a fact that I could get it right, and you can never know that. I’m adapting Stepmom officially and that’s the director’s vision, and I’m all for it. Tarun is directing and adapting Agneepath for me, and he came up with a great idea of how to adapt it, to set it in today’s time. I liked the idea.

I love so many films, and there are so many stories I wished I could tell, but I don’t know if I could do justice to them. I don’t venture into that territory. I don’t want to be told, ‘why did you do it? It was so much better the first time.’ It’s the fear of failure that keeps me away from that sphere.

What excites you as a writer? When you start out writing a script, what’s the big kick for you?

Creating worlds. It’s almost like a power you have. The closest we all come to being God is when we’re a writer. You just make things happen. You make a life, you destroy a life, you make them pick up their pieces. You do so much. It’s so, so challenging. I love it.

And since your cinema is so personal, is there a lot of yourself in your characters?

Always. They’re all behaving and talking like me. Which is bad or good, I don’t know, but if I’m writing a script somewhere they’ll all be me. That’s something you can’t run away from. Either subconsciously or very externally, the characters will always be a reflection of the writer’s personality.

You balance a million different hats; you do a lot more than making films. As a writer is it difficult to find time to create that world? Do you set aside specific times for different kinds of work?

I kind of work when I work. Whenever I’m doing anything, I’m writing in my head. Sometimes at a meeting, during a work-trip, on a flight.. I think the only thing I know is filmmaking. I don’t know or care for anything else.

It’s not like I have a heavy personal life to go back to, or if I have anything else to invest in. I’m not a holiday person. I don’t have any desire to go to the mountains or the beach or take off for a month to find myself. I’ve found myself. All I do is think about movies I want to make. Getting them right or wrong is not really the criteria, I just feel that’s all I want to do. To keep working, keep meeting talented technicians and actors, keep making movies. Talk shop, all the time.

I’m not even such an avid watcher of films. I don’t watch as many films or read as many books. I watch films, but I’m not one of those people who’ll collect DVDs, or rush to the cinema for one film or follow it on IMDb and know if it’s coming out ‘in the fall of’ whatever. I’m travelling a lot so catch films invariably all over the world.

So you’d rather create films than watch them?

Yeah. People look at me and say ‘you must read a lot.’ I don’t read at all. I only like Hindi film music or whatever’s playing on the radio stations when I’m travelling. I don’t listen to music at all. I have this thing but.. [fumbles with iPod and dock, gives up, laughs] I’m also technologically challenged.

So there’s a lot that people don’t know about me. I’m really, really happy in my head, in my alone-space. Which is where I constantly think about films. But there’s nothing that drives me, in the sense that I’m not passionate about music or cinema. I’m just passionate about what I want to go on set and do. I think I’m a Gemini, so I’m a little mixed up like that.

Fashion designer, television host, writer, producer, and occasional actor. Is it then safe to say that the Director role resonates strongest within you?

Yeah. There’s too much pressure on deliverance, but everything else is a hobby. I love directing, and I love what comes with the territory. I love the glamour, the showbiz in-your-faceness. That’s why I’ve done everything, and so unabashedly. Sometimes people might think ‘he’s weird, why is he doing so many things?’

Five years ago, I was told ‘why are you doing this? A director should have a mystical quality, you should be intense, somethings should be kept to yourself and that’s why actors should respect you.’ I think actors will respect you if you do good work. Hosting a talk show, endorsing a brand or hosting an awards show… these are hobbies, and I love it! I love walking the red carpet. It’s something I was attracted to as a child, so now I feel a sense of triumph when I do it.

Did you always have this clarity of wanting to be behind the camera, to direct?

I wanted to be a celebrity. I decided I would be somebody that the world knew. I just decided that had to happen, and I didn’t care how it would happen. I think I sent that energy out into the universe (laughs), wished for it on a daily basis. I think it was when I left school that I decided to be somebody of public prominence, you know?

I dabbled with the idea of becoming a fashion designer, then for some time I thought I’d be a copywriter in the world of advertising. Then I thought maybe I should act, do stage, do theatre. I hadn’t thought any of it through, but direction was not really one of them. I thought movie-making is not something I’m tuned into, but it’s run its course and I’m happy with what’s happened. It’s something I thought I wasn’t capable of doing, of directing a whole film.

So when did that epiphany come? That moment you realised that you could, in fact, direct a film?

It happened when I started assisting on Dilwale [Dulhaniya Le Jaayenge], and I felt that this was something I could perhaps do. I just thought it would be much tougher than it was.. And it is tough, I don’t mean to undermine what we do as directors, but I thought ‘oh, this is what it is.’ (Laughs) I don’t know what I’d envisaged, but when I was an AD on that film I thought, ‘oh, I may be able to do this.’

So the next step was writing. And who had ever written a film? So I started that and it was quite organic, the flow wasn’t as bad. It just seemed much better than I’d imagined.

Would you ever write a film and let someone else direct it?

I have. Kal Ho Naa Ho [directed by Nikhil Advani]. But it was a tough experience, and I don’t think I’d do it again. And therein lie internal problems. When you write something on your own, and you’re a director yourself, there’s no reason to… I don’t know, I may do it — never say never — but only if it was something special. Like if someone I respected requested me to write a film for them, and I was close enough to them and I feel I should just do it. Or if it was just not my idea and I had the time to spare. But I don’t see that happening in the next few years.

Do you look back on your films a lot? Try and rewatch and figure what you’d have done differently, maybe pat yourself on the back a bit?

You know, I really can’t sit through most of my films. I look at them and I cringe. A lot. But then I cringe at the rushes of my new films also. When I look at them, I can see a definite graph that is a reflection of my state of mind on each film. I can almost see what I was thinking at that point of time.

You must understand that with directors like me and Adi [Chopra] and Sooraj [Barjatya], we were in a zone where we were new and there was an old zone, and we ventured into a zone where the new zone came in, and we had to come back to being who we were, but we’d adapted earlier to match that time. We’re the only 3-4 people who were in that transition phase.

So when I was making Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I had to appeal to a Delhi-UP distributor and a CPCI exhibitor, and then I went into a zone when suddenly they didn’t matter and new audiences and new intellectual belief came in. So there was a bit of a shake in our mental makeup. So it was always going to take time for us to adjust to being who we really were.

Which is who? In the sense, when you look at Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and the others, how much of them is an adjustment from who you were?

Inherently, when I directed Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, I was different and I was changing myself to reflect that time. When I wrote Kal Ho Naa Ho, I had just seen Dil Chahta Hai and I said ‘look, this is a really cool film and it’s cool grammar, and I think it’s something I can do.’

And it’s something I hadn’t tried before because I didn’t think it would work and now I attempted something cool and — barring the last 20 minutes of Kal Ho Naa Ho which is far from cool and very overdramatic — I think upto a point we had managed a certain new language in the film and reached that romcom space the way Hollywood does, in a way. Cross-cutting narratives, split screens. I wrote that and I knew I’d be able to, but I’d curbed my instincts much earlier because I felt that is not what the Delhi-UP distributors would like.

My father had drilled it into me, you know? That you have to have this, and there should be a buffer scene after the interval, and there should not be a slow song pre-climax… you know, you’re tuned into certain things. Having said that, after 12 years of working I think I’m only now finally finding my space, catching up to who I am, today.

So filmmaking today comes with lesser concessions, lesser compromise?

Yeah. We’re thinking more about cinema as a larger entity, as opposed to a micro-entity and thinking about appealing to quarters. We’re seeing it in a far bigger fashion.

As a producer, are you then seeing the new directors automatically finding their own skin and voices, without having to adjust?

It depends on the kind of director. Ayaan [Mukherjee] is different from Renzil [D'Silva]. And Punit [Malhotra] is making a film that is your quintessential romcom with an edge, I Hate Luv Stories. And you might think that it’s still a love story, and yeah it is but I like its energy. And that’ll again go into the Dharma space a bit more, so it’ll go up and down depending on the director. It’s not that I make some conscious decision to go against the grain. No. Let the director decide what he wants. Don’t adjust to me, my company or what people think out there. Do what you have to, screw up or get it right.

It’s funny how you refuse to work with newcomer actors but conversely you refuse to work with established directors.

Yeah, now that is a conscious decision. I think the rawness, innocence and hunger only comes in that space. And once they’re established, I’m also a director and there’ll be an ego-dynamic. We’ll have a point of conflict, so why do we even go into that space? You’ve made three films, don’t come to me, I’m not interested.

You’ve spoken about your admiration for films like Kaminey and Rang De Basanti, even though they’re well outside your current space. Would you be open to producing films like those?

No, because I may not have understood it on paper. I may not have bought Kaminey as a script because I may not have been able to judge it. I didn’t understand parts of the film but it really, really excited me. I was blown away by the film, by the music, by Shahid and Priyanka’s performances.

But I would not have produced Lagaan and Rang De Basanti either. They’re magical on celluloid, but on paper they might have read really strangely, who knows? And I may not have had the foresight to predict what would happen.

Are there times when films work really well on paper, but translate really badly on screen?

All the time. Don’t they? You know this. (laughs)

Fair enough, but in your case, as a producer. Have they all turned out pretty much the way you expected them to?

Barring Kaal, which I didn’t read only on paper because I get scared of horror films, and had no understanding of the genre. And that is something I think I’ll never do again. Like a sci-fi film I’ll never produce, or a horror film. Or a film not in the real world, like a Lord Of The Rings or a Harry Potter. I don’t understand them. I like to watch human beings who you can take a blood test for, and not some strange android or whatever, I have absolutely no interest. Kaal was more of an investment in [director Soham Shah's] sense of energy and hard work, but it was something I was never clear about.

Did you literally not read the script?

I did, but I didn’t know at all. Was it scary? Maybe it was, I didn’t know. I have no sense of horror, anything scares me. A dog barking loudly in the background, and I’m on the edge of my seat. I’m the wrong person. And now I only want to do what I understand.