‘Aladin’ or How I learnt to start worrying, slow down and make a movie : 2
‘Agar kisi cheez ko dil se chaho toh saari kaynat tumhe usse milaane ki koshish mein lag jaati hai’
- Om Prakash Makhija
Things were cool. Were going to get cooler as I was off to London (very bad joke, sorry) to meet Charles. I was running seriously low on money and had just got permission to use a small gym in Pali Hill, FREE, which was fantastic. Very nervously I had sent a text to the owner of the gym if I may use it and pat came the reply “of course Bro!’
And Sanjay Dutt had only met me once before. (If you look closely at that statue of Atlas holding the earth on his shoulder…you will see the face of Sanjay Dutt.)
I met Charles in London and he gave me the lowdown on making a futuristic film. In such films creating the world is very important. The world in which the audience is going to reside for two-odd hours. The world they will see for the first time and hopefully won’t want to leave.
In ‘Borivali’, as in ‘Aladin’, I was trying to create a new world … and that meant WORK. Everything needed to be worked out in precise detail. The look, the feel, and every single ingredient of that Mumbai of the future. It’s this work which would allow the audience to believe that a Mumbai of the future could exist. Just like we believed in ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Jurassic Park’ and in a watch that made Arun Bhaiyya invisible in ‘Mr. India’. It meant more than a year of pre-production, shoot and an equal amount of time in post-production.
It meant embracing a long forgotten word – DISCIPLINE.
I was one stop short of fainting. It was a Charlie Brown moment of GOOD GRIEF! How do we make this? Suddenly a simple thriller became a very expensive simple thriller! And lot of green cloth appeared out of nowhere in the budget… The lighting budget tripled. An 8 hour shift suddenly became just 2 hours of productive work and my number of shooting days got multiplied by 4. I was not allowed to move my camera. Moving of camera would be directly proportional to increasing budget. HUH!!?? … It was a wake up call. A resounding slap in the face. Even Rana didn’t slap Dr. Dang so hard in ‘Karma’! Us thappad ki gunj still echoes in my ear!
With that budget-breaking news from Charles I headed towards a distribution house. My friend Shabbir had asked me to visit a company called Eros and meet a person called Kishore Lulla. I had no clue who he was… and at that point of time I didn’t care… I was too messed up trying to figure out how to make ‘Borivali’ work. Because I was almost there… just a stop short of getting to work with Amitabh Bachchan. And now this whole funda of creating a world required me to rob a bank. Time was nigh to dig out copies of ‘Kaante’ and ‘Rififi’.
But I had to. Nothing was going to stop me from working with Mr. Bachchan.
EPILOGUE
When you are a Bengali, born in THE( pronounced THEE ) Kolkata… a few things are your birthright … Satyajit Ray, Rahul Dev Burman, Kishore Kumar and of course, Amitabh Bachchan.
No matter what you say, they are ours. No matter who tries to stop us… we will always love them. To prove a point in case.. let me narrate an incident which Mr. Bachchan told me.
Kolkata. Inside a cinema hall. ‘Main Azaad Hoon’. Last scene.
Azaad, as he promised, plunges to his death. Suddenly there is a cry up in the balcony… “GURU TUMI EKLA JAABE NA( you will not go alone) ” and proclaiming this… the fan along with Azaad jumps from the balcony.
PHWEEEEEE and THUD! (Thank god it wasn’t a SPLAT!).
Q.E.D.
I could see Sir’s concern when he told me this… he felt responsible but had no idea how to stop something like that. God forbid anything happened to that fan he would have never forgiven himself. I have never seen anyone who loves his fans as much as he does and I realized it’s great to be a star, but not easy. As Aunt May said to Peter “… with great power comes great responsibility”
But somehow I like that incident. It is funny, it is scary, it is madness – but it is Kolkata. Love, king size.
And in 1978 I saw a film called ‘Muqadder Ka Sikander’ – the best DEVDAS ever – with the audience of Kolkata, and was converted. I just wanted to do 2 things. See every film of this actor called Amitabh Bachchan and get a middle parting in my hair.
Apart from Moses I think Sir is the only person who can claim to have parted anything on such a large scale.
CUT TO:
ICICI bank building in Prabhadevi, Mumbai. Sets of ‘Baghbaan’.
I met Sir for the first time and underwent what was… one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of my life. I was in complete awe and shit-scared … should I say something out of place…
But he was very kind. He took my concept and promised to read it on the flight as he was leaving for Europe that night. And after I came out of that meeting I realised I had just spoken to Amitabh Bachchan. That feeling, unfortunately, I cannot describe in words.
Since then I have met Sir on the sets of ‘Khakhee’, ‘Lakshya’, ‘Black’, ‘Babul’, ‘Cheeni Kum’… and finally, on the sets of ‘Aladin’…
I never gave up. And Sir never left my side.
Every time I met him he encouraged me.
‘Home Delivery’ flopped miserably,.. He encouraged me more.
The trick is to.. ‘rise again’.. he had told me.
And thank you for that Sir.. because.. rise we will.
BACK TO:
I sat in front of a man called Kishore Lulla. A complete bundle of energy. Watching him jump from one task to another was like watching a tennis match…
He painted the true commercial picture to me. ‘Borivali’ was going to cost a lot of money and did not seem a viable project at that point. I was mentally working out the time and cost to make Borivali and realised …it was going to take a bit of time… so I had to do a smaller film in between…
My friend Suresh Nair and I had written a story called ‘Home Delivery’…
“What other films are you thinking of?” Kishore had asked me.. I casually mentioned ‘Aladin’ to him.
“…I will do it” Kishore said.. “Right now you have my commitment”…
But I wasn’t listening.
It came through one ear and straight out of the other.
What ‘Aladin’? If I can’t make ‘Borivali’… how will I make ‘Aladin’? ‘Aladin’ was 20 times bigger, in scale, than ‘Borivali’.
I didn’t even hear the wheels of saari kaaynaat begin to hum and grind…my mind was on other things…and stayed there a while…
(To be continued…)
Tags: Aladin, Amitabh Bachchan, Borivili, Jhankaar Beats, Sujoy Ghosh
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
Sujoy,you are a damn good story teller…Aladin gonna rock!! I am surely buying a ticket.
Hello Sir,
Read both your articles. Thanks for sharing them with us. I am not saying this to for the hec of it. Home delivery was really good. I can stick my neck out and say better than Jhankaar Beats. Please keep it coming this is really interesting.
For the love of Amitabh…
Waiting for the next chapter…
awesome…always like stories behind the making of a movie…thank you so much…eagerly waiting for next parts..
hahah..Sujoy..gotta tell you you have a sick sense of humor and i love it!!!
Thanks for Jhankaar Beats…keep writing…love it!!
WTF is all about “to be continued”…haha..likhte rehna sirjee!!
awesome! awesome!! awesome!!! … keep ‘em comin!
Sujoy, you seem like a very intelligent yet fun and easy going guy. Thanks for Jhankaar beats, it was undoubtedly the direction that Hindi cinema should have been heading towards (i think it did to an extent). Really looking forward to Aladin and your next post.
“If you look closely at that statue of Atlas holding the earth on his shoulder…you will see the face of Sanjay Dutt.”
Whos/Which/What version of the Atlas holding the earth? Am curious.
Warm welcome.
And Om Prakash Makhija can’t make the KKR win:)
Even if the universe/milky way/star-wars galaxy/Krypton conspires for it.
“Apart from Moses I think Sir is the only person who can claim to have parted anything on such a large scale.”
GEM!!!!
Sujoy, Reading your blogs has been such a pleasure. I think you can make a movie out of these write ups and it is going to be damn entertaining. Cheers!!!!
“When you are a Bengali, born in THE( pronounced THEE ) Kolkata… a few things are your birthright … Satyajit Ray, Rahul Dev Burman, Kishore Kumar and of course, Amitabh Bachchan. ”
YES YES YES YES YES…Sujoy how right you are
;)
sujoy, i wud hv watched Aladin anywhichway coz of AB, but now with u on PFC, i guess “double masti at single cost” is in store…
.
am born n brought up in Kolkata, and i faintly remember that main azaad hoon story… i guess it was priya theatre.
“guru, tumi ekla jaabe naa”… i can see a bengali in him…
Ah! Sujoy reading this I was literally transported to the days when I was a school kid & how I would watch ANY Amitabh Bachchan movie because it had HIM.Last night I watched another repeat of Desh Premee- the man is a legend.Just the 1st teaser of Alladin that I saw long back was enough to heighten my curiosity,keep writing and entertaining us.May the force be with you.
Sujoy..“GURU TUMI EKLA JAABE NA( you will not go alone) ”
Mairee Guru..eta toh jaantaamna (shit..this I did not know)…having seen Main Azaad Hoon in Orient at 3.15 pm show on a muggy summer day in Kolkata!
Fabulous writing..
Sujoy you are one of the best things that has happened to PFC.
Speaking of AB, his films somehow were clear of many cliched dialogues, events, circumstances, which would be the brainchild of his directors, no doubt. Wondering why him. Because Vinod Khanna, Shashi Kapoor, Rajesh Khanna, Shatrughan,e tc have all acted in MANY hamming films. Not AB, not so much, at all.
Does AB interfere or “suggest” changes in the script?
But really what were you thinking when you made home delivery! And what made you work with Vivek Oberoi
welcome sujay….gr8 movie Jhankar beats…gud luck for aladin…
Yes Sujoy,
please tell us. at what point while making Home Delivery did you realize you were cooking up a turkey? or did the realization never sunk in till the box office reports came in? I’m always intrigued by this question… Don’t filmmakers realize at any point while making eventual duds that they are heading into disaster? I mean doesn’t the script give hints what you are up against? Please enlighten us…
regards
guru tumi ekla jabe na…osadharon….
more power to Sujoy Ghosh!
Was it Om Prakash Makhija who said that or Santiago from The Alchemist? :D
i love it when people who love movies this much get to make movies. your writing and your work clearly shows the film-buff in you. it’s like you get to erect a taj mahal each time for all of your mumtazs out there. thats why i look forward to movies from ppl like u, anurag kashyap, farah khan, quentin tarantino, kevin smith…these guys just simply love movies.
@ Amir – Home delivery wasn’t that bad. the first half is funnier than most comedies out there.
i would have killed you if u were present before me for leaving the story ‘to be continued..’
@ Aseem: familiarity breeds contempt. i sincerely hope u r close enough to sujoy to use such strong language. else, i guess its stretching a bit too far…
Satyendra Jha – please develop a sense of humor. PFC seems to be in a severe drought.
Reco. for you – watch “SuperBad” asap.
Home Delivery was funny? People actually liked it? I agree with Dr. Chu, PFC visitors really seem to be severely deprived of some genuine humor.
you are really a damn good story teller…aladin has to be something out of the box….but one thing wanna know…abt postproduction….kothay korcho tumi?…India te na out of india?….as a graphic artist i am really keen to know that….it would be good if you start a blog and post some pre post story board pictures.plz.
best of Luck!
Hey, whether I watch your film or not – I honestly didnot think that much of Jhankhar Beats – it IS nice to know you are just as geeky as us.
ALL THE BEST.
hey home delivery was not at all funny. Jhankar Beats though I liked. I hope Alladin Rocks Dude.. :D
what is so apparent in these columns is your love for cinema! u r a true movie buff …. that way u feel lot more approachable, cheers !! great to read both of ur post, going to read next post
acha haan u hav used borivalli and aladin interchangeably earlier but now u say made aladin instead of borivalli plz explain 