Anurag Kashyap: One needs his own method to make a film
Second and concluding part of the excerpts from a conversation occurred between Director Anurag Kashyap(AK), and Ajay Brahmatmaj (AB), is presented here.
[Following is the loose translation of the Hindi Interview and may not do full justice to the original interview. Its advisable that one should go through the original interview to read the exact sayings of Anurag Kashyap. This is simply a trial to expose the interview to those readers who can not read Hindi at all]
AB: After writing 40 pages of a script you decided that you would direct it yourself. To direct a film is first step. What happened next? You accepted yourself as a director but to make a film you need money which would come from other sources and to give you money people need to have a faith in you.
AK: There has been an internal kind of journey. So many things have been generated out of my disillusionment with the things and people. Since childhood, because of my father, I have been having a lot of thoughts dealing with idealism. That idealism is still lying inside me as far as cinema is concerned. How I live my life and what I do, I will not say anything on that at present but I still have idealism when matter is related to the cinema and literature. It may happen that they will also be lost in future but at present they are part of my life.
So disillusionments were happening all the time with me but biggest driving force for me has been my desire to do the work in my own way. See, I want to do something and people are unable to understand my point of view about the work. That driving force still exists within me.I feel that still people are unable to understand me and my work. My films are halted and few of them are not released. I feel why I am not allowed to express what I wish to?
When I look back I find that whenever my voice has been suppressed and whenever I have been rejected, I have worked with more determination and internal strength.
I had started with Last Train to Mahakali and I had made it under desperate conditions. I was angry also that nobody was allowing me to make my type of films.
I had understood one thing that here Producer controls the money and he thinks director’s job is to set the camera only. So for this thing only I decided that I would also set the camera. I had no prior knowledge of doing so.My brother, Abhinav, was making a serial called Darr. He used my name to promote his project and I was apprehensive about this thing. I asked him not to do this and he said that with my name it w’d be good for his serial and I would get some money also.
I demanded ten thousand rupees and I was given the amount. Serial was promoted as the serial by the author of Satya, Shool and Kaun. I scolded my brother why he was doing it and he said that I lacked in confidence. I even called Star TV to remove my name from the serial.
But I realized from that episode that I had a stand in the market. All people were calling me a foolish person, “A serial is being promoted on your name. Why you want to remove your name”?
I said,” I feel shame inside”.
They said,” You are an idiot. You can see how much credibility your name carries in the market. You should go to Star Plus. They will give you whatever you demand”.
I went there and narrated a story and they approved it immediately without even considering my potential as a director. I had written three films and perhaps this was sufficient for them to give me an approval.
I felt that something could be done with full devotion. I had met Nati in Delhi and he was a fan of Satya. I had seen and liked his video, Ab ke sawan jhhoom ke bareso. I called him and he came to Mumbai. I said to him that let’s do something. But a day before the scheduled shooting I became very nervous.
I thought,” How would I do it. I have never done it before”.
I phoned Shivam at 12 in the night and said,” Sir, tomorrow is my shooting but I have lost the courage”.
He said,” Ok do it the way you have thought. Don’t be a mad to cancel the shooting. Go with the schedule”.
He tried to console me through whole of the night and tried to give me the courage,” Don’t worry, you have started it and you should finish it”.
He said,” I would also join you at your set in morning”.
In the morning I went to the location. I had a 9 A.M shift. I was waiting for Shivam.
My friend Rajesh Tibriwal was with me. Dr Chandra Prakash Dwivedi’s assistant Yashwant Shekhawat was also with me. He said to me,” Ok let’s do it this way”.
Rajesh also had made a serial and he also said,”Let’s do it that way”.
But I was utterly confused and I was not able to follow their thinking.
Nati asked me,” So what should we do”?
I said,”Nati this is the scene. Now how to do it”?
I said,” I tell you the locations and actions of the characters”.
I started staging scene before him.
Nati asked,” But from where we would start the scene”?
I explained him my first scene and asked him,” Is it possible that camera captures this and that at same time”.
Nati replied,” It can be done”.
He started setting the camera and slowly I figured out myself the ways to shoot my very first scene.
I took seven and half hours to complete my very first scene but I figured out very well at that time that there was no method to make a film.
Whatever method is there it is your own method. You have to make the film in a way as you see it in your mind.
My reservation was to express my thoughts clearly to my team.
I feel that my mind is a visual mind and I see things in a visual manner. Now thing is how to translate those visual impressions to your team? This is the most arduous task for a director.AB: You wanted to direct the films. While facing difficulties during your efforts to direct your first film, did you feel that you should have attended a film school because it could have taught you the essential technical things required to make a film.
AK: This question had approached my mind long ago. Initially I had tried to join a film school but I was always late. I was late at every place and I could not go to any film school. Later when I started meeting and spending time with filmmakers then I found that film schools bring limitations also to a man. I had thought this as per my own point of view. When I started direction then I had felt this lacking of not knowing the things in advance.
But all these confusions and doubts were lost once I started learning while doing the things on my own. First thing that came to me was this only that biggest responsibility of a director is to manage the people because people think differently and in different directions and to bring them under one direction is quite a big task.
Nobody is wrong in the way he sees the things inside his mind but difference comes when this visual has to be expressed to cameraman and other team members. That translation and relationship is very important.
From first day of shooting I started sitting with papers. I showed to Nati that this was the frame. But it was a static frame. When I see in my mind then it’s a static frame and I never see it with movements and that is my limitation.
Movement came through Nati. I used to see static frames in my mind. Light is falling this way on the face of a character. I used to sketch the placing of the camera also in the frame. Nati used to place the camera according to the sketched frame and he used to add movement on his own.
He would say,” Anurag, I am placing camera in this way. Tell me how it appeals to you”?
I used to like it. So a method was evolved in this manner only.Wasik was there and Aarti was there. Our team has been the same since that phase.
Now I wanted to shoot on roads and inside the train so my mind started working on these themes.
I started feeling that film was important and I should do anything to make it better.
I had a friend who could arrange a DV camera but only after his office was closed.
I gave him a role in my film and said,” I need the DV camera”.
In the night he used to bring the camera.
I had an impression about DV camera in my mind that it could be used to shoot without using light.
I said,” If I get this camera then I can shoot inside the train”.
We caught the last train and hijacked a compartment. We shot without light.
I had an advantage that a cameraman was with me who was ready to take a risk.
He also had a desire to do experiments.
We did everything on the spot. By the time shooting of Last train to Mahakali was finished I had written the script of Paanch also.
I had finished 20 pages and that was also another journey. I sat for four days without writing and on fifth day kidnapping scene came to my mind and It opened a channel of thoughts before me. I sat in the morning on the 5th day and by the 8 P.M. I had finished the script. It was done in a flow without prior planning. Story flew in a direction. Police station was not there in the story at that time. It was a linear story then and which was finished with the murder of Luke.
I took my script and started meeting different people and they said its ending was hard and it was not possible to make a film on it. At that time due to first half of the script, I had a desire to make a film on it. I was desperate to make the film. Incident of Mission Kashmir also happened at that time. Later I went for Water. Last train to mahakali was aired and got raved reviews. People did not like the story but they praised my way of handling the subject.
People said,” What a way to shoot the film!”
Water was stopped and I had a lot of anger inside. Water faced protests in Banaras. I was angry with the people and things.
I was disillusioned with Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Ram Gopal Verma and politics that was played on Water also broke my illusions. I was sad because of the people I knew. It was decided that we would protest against the ban on the film’s shooting. We distributed the papers. All were agree on this protest. But everybody reverted from this position.
Everybody turned against me and people said,” Because of you, film would not be made”.
I was banned.
I got disillusioned with Shabana Azmi also.
I was sad with all the people here and there.
I felt that nobody was interested in making the film and they were interested only in making some noise.
People were angry at me without any reason.
Nobody was saying the truth. They were hiding their true feelings. I used to say anything anywhere. Media started following me. After many years I got the realization that I was becoming the mouthpiece.
If bytes were needed then I was required by the media.
I started avoiding people.
I have no words to explain how much I was disillusioned.
Then I decided to make the film.
I had worked with Manoj and Raveena before in Shool.
When foundation of Paanch was established then I had given a narration to Manoj and Raveena and both had become ready to do my film.
But When I was ousted from the Shool then they felt I was a useless person now.
Manoj said that he would charge 17 Lakh Rupees as his fee. Raveena also demanded 17 Lakh.
Jhamu ji was ready to do the film. He said,” Make it in 1.8 cror rupees”.
Later I made the film in 1.11 Cror only but earlier it seemed difficult to make it in 1.8 Cror.
I was so disillusioned with everyone that one day in the anger I decided that I would make film with those people who have not worked in any film before. Everybody w’d be a newcomer there. I w’d make the film in 40-50 Lakh Rupees and w’d not depend on the star system.
I w’d keep a distance from people having big status. I made rules for me and all these rules were products of the anger. I was very angry. I felt that all the people here had no passion for cinema and they wanted to make films for different reasons and not for the sake of making the films. Too much idealism was there inside me.
In that angry phase I went to meet Sudhir Mishra and said,” Sir I have to make this film”.
He asked me,” How much you need to make your film”.
I said,”Whatever amount I get I will make the film in that money only. I don’t know how I will make it. I will shoot at Handycam or at 16 mm”.
It was decided that I would make the film in 40-50 lakh rupees.
At that time I was writing a film for Sudhir and Tutu Sharma was producing it.
Tutu asked me about the cast.
I said,” I don’t know. I have done last train to Mahakali with KK so he would be there. Rest I don’t know at present”.
He said,” Ok assemble your cast”.
I called Aditya Srivastava and gave him the script to read.
He asked me,” Who is doing Luke”?
I said,” KK”.
He asked,” For which role you are considering me”?
I replied,”Murgee”.
He said,” OK I will do it”.
His entry gave me more confidence.
Vijay Maurya was my friend and I said to him,” You play the Pondy’s character”.
I said to TuTu Sharma,”This is my cast”.
Tu Tu said,” Yaar, with this cast its difficult to sell the film. What can be done? Bring somebody in”?
I was attending a Christmas party at the home of my friend, Trishala Patel. I saw Tejaswani Kolhapure dancing there.
She was doing theatre with Pt Satyadev Dube then and I had seen her play.
I found her suitable for my film. She had a strange pull and a different sexuality in her personality.
I asked her,” Teju, yould you do my film”?
Then I talked to Sudhir and he approved it.
Tejaswani asked us to talk to TuTu Sharma.
Sudhir said,” Lets talk to Tu Tu”.
We narrated the script to Tu Tu.
He said,” Man how you can make this film in 40-50 Lakh Rupees”.
Sudhir Mishra and Brij Rathi were with me.
We told Tu Tu about our cast and our plans to cast Teju also.
He said,”Ok I will produce the film”.
So this way Tu Tu Sharma came in to the project. We started shooting exactly twelve days after this meeting.
Tu Tu had asked me in that meeting,” When would you like to start the film”?
I replied,” I am ready”.
I wanted to start it as soon as possible.
I sat with Rajesh Tibriwal. He had seen Vijay Maurya in one play and he said,” He is good”.
He had seen works of Aditya Srivastava in Bandit Queen, Satya and TV serials and he said for Aditya also,” He is good”.
But everybody had objection/reservation on the name of KK.
I had decided that I would not cast Manoj Bajpai. I was adamant at that time not to work with Manoj.
I said,” KK will do this role”.
They said,”No”.
I said, “Let him do the test shoot”.
I was asked,” How would you like to do the shooting”.
I had read somewhere that some director had made a film somewhere and he had no financial support so he shot the film under the light of tubes and bulbs only. I had liked that film.
Without thinking much about the results I said,” I w’d shoot in the light of bulbs and tube”.
Nati was astonished to hear this and he stared at me and said,” What! Have you gone mad”?
I said,” Yes, we w’d shoot that way only”.
Nati became worried and said,” Man how can we do that“ ?
I said,” Let me show you”.
I had VCD of Chung King Express and I showed him the beginning of the film.
Nati did not believe this and he asked me,” Was it really shot in tube light”?
I confirmed it.
He said,” I would have to test it”.
I said, “Ok we test KK”.
We booked a room and bought 5-6 tube lights.
Nati still had his fears.
We have kept that test shot as such in the film also.
————————————————————————————————
You see we are doing our test shoot. All the four actors are sitting there in the scene.
We are shooting something strange. Everybody is suspicious about the light coming from the tubes. People are worried about the glow.
But after some time Nati becomes confident and he says, “Babu, some kind of magic will happen”.
————————————————————————————————–
We shot and shoot was seen and KK was rejected again.
We planned the shooting.
We searched the location. And what was the location?
Somebody told us about Watson hotel where cinema was shown first time in India.
It was an added attraction for us and we said,” OK lets go there and shoot”.
But how to shoot there?
It was a house that was closed for some 18-20 years.
We opened the house and saw the house in the light of torch. Old furniture was there.
I said,” We should shoot here only”.
People owning the house said,”You people should come in day time to see it properly”.
I said,” No we don’t need to see it again and we will do shooting here only”.I sat with art director. I asked him to convert the room into Luke’s house.
I had old photographs of my own room with me. I still have those photos with me.
I showed him how I used to write on walls?
After coming to Mumbai I had written my first poem on the wall of my room.
Wings of my fan were also not spared.
So fan was running all the time because I had written on it,”Which stupid fellow has closed the fan”.
I used to write, sketch and paint like this only on walls and fan.
I said to art director,” I need something like this”.
He wanted to know more so I gave him the biography of Jim Morrison.
I said,” There is a face of doll in it. Give me such a face. I have to create an atmosphere and mood. Write this poetry also on the wall”.
That poem was written on the wall of my room.At that young age you have a lot of energy and you feel that you can do a lot and world does not understand it.
So I showed him so many things and things were evolved this way only.
There on the location work was going on and here people were saying that KK would not work in the film.
Shooting was supposed to be started after two days only.
Anil Kapur came for Mahurat and he also said,”Yaar who is this boy. Are you making him a hero”?
I had approached KK before Christmas even before meeting Tu Tu Sharma.
KK had started doing work out since then only and he had brought a change in his looks.
He had a long hair now.
I used to go to Aalim for hair cut and I asked him to help us.
Aalim started working on KK and I started clicking the photos in different looks.
Aalim said,” Let me try a golden highlight”.
I said,”Try it”.
He spiked KK’s hair with golden color.
This hair style changed completely the get up of the character.
Fabia said,” A military pant would bring a Nazi feel in”.
So things were added in this spontaneous fashion only.
But all this happened after the Mahurat.
I took KK to the set and all people were stunned to see his new looks.
So KK was approved on the first day of shooting only and not before that.
I had not visited the set myself after approving the site.
Wasik had changed completely the looks of that place.
He had painted five faces on the wall and a kind of mural was created there.
I asked him,” Wasik Bhai what have you done”?
Wasik said,” You don’t like it”?
I said, “ I needed the writings on the wall and not the faces”.
He said, “Ok give me an hour and I will change it”.
I started reading the script. This was the scene where Inspector comes there first time.
I was looking at the faces, painted at wall and I thought to include this new change in the film.
I stopped Wasik from removing the faces.
I started thinking to make it part of the scene and I wrote again the scene in a new manner.
I gave a thought process to Wasik and he made some changes accordingly.AB: You were writer of three films and had made a Tele film also for Star’s best sellers and you have got award also for that. But you did not know the nuts and bolts of actual filmmaking or say you were not aware of the process which starts after writing the script. Because so many things can be written on the paper but it’s difficult to convert them in to a film. Please say something more about this part of your journey.
AK: I know one thing. Today when I see back then I realize that I have been facing a lot of disturbance in the past. When Paanch was halted then I was very disturbed and I drank too much alcohol for 8 months. My weight was increased from 72 Kg to 92 Kg and I have not been able to shed this weight since then.
I thought a lot during those 8 months.
If you become successful then a mythology is created around you.
I had not fought only for my film but for “Water” also. I had fought because I had faith in a few things.
I used to feel that we should fight for the sake of truth. People had given me a fixed image.
“He writes certain kind of films”.
I had not gotten any such labeling after Satya but when I left Shool and Ram Gopal Verma and later when I left Mission Kashmir and Water then people gave me an image.
“He is a straight forward man who speaks truth”.
But I was not searching for these things.
What happened after “Paanch”?
People raised me to a pedestal after the fight.
I was not talking to anyone in a normal way.
Wherever I was going, people were expecting that knowledge w’d fall from my mouth.I would sit in Barista to talk on cinema and make my friends jealous by showing them DVDs.
I would start debating on cinema.
One may learn from such discussions.
Pravesh Bhardwaj had told me about many films. My journey is still going on and I am discovering slowly.
I search for new films and my journey is still going on.
New filmmakers are always resetting me.
But people had made me sit at a strange pedestal. I was influenced by thoughts and I participated in the discussions.
This film should be made in this manner.
Idealism came in my talks.
I had done everything in an innocent manner.
Perhaps this remained my strength also.
I felt it later because if I had known it earlier then I would not have done many things which I did under this innocent kind of influence over me and my understanding.
When I was invited first time for a workshop then my reaction was,” What can I tell others when I myself don’t know anything. I don’t know how to write”.
They liked my sayings.
I went to the workshop and I was asked there,”What is my process”?
I said,” I did not write Satya. Satya simply happened to me. It came through me and I learnt a lot during its evolution period and later also when it was finished”.
I started telling my mistakes.
People liked it and they said,” This is amazing. Nobody talks like this with us. People come and give lecture that do this and do that”.
There is always a touch of honesty in the innocent ways of not knowing much and I admit that I did not know anything.
It all happened. People felt that I was too humble. I was not humble but I was simply speaking the truth.
When I went to do a workshop in FTII, I said,” Friends, let’s leave this writing witing and we should watch some films”.
We saw some 30 films there.
I said,” Write, as there is no other way to learn the writing. Write continuously. First sort out what you want to say and what is the story and say everything through the story”.
I used to sit with them. I used to say,” Show me your writings”.
They were writing and later they themselves were suggesting the improvements also.
So I did that workshop on the level of Idea.
“Ok if we do this scene then how would it look”?
“If we change a bit then how would it look”?
And 17 scripts came out of that workshop.
Before that hardly 2 scripts used to come out of this annual workshop.
We produced 15 scripts more than the previous record of 2 scripts per workshop.
Everybody had written a separate script. 16 students had participated in the workshop and one student had written two scripts.
I meet a lot of people. They have not seen Paanch or Black Friday but they said they wanted to meet me.
I meet some producers who say they had this desire to meet me.
I said,” Do you know me. Have you seen my work”?
But here things develop like this only. Castles are made in air.
I felt that I did not know many things.
I feel that in this hindi film industry majority of people don’t know what they are doing?AB: Let’s come back to Paanch.
AK: I realized all these things after making Paanch. I knew only what I was doing. I was not doing anything to obtain some kind of greatness. I was not proving anything through Paanch.
Hurdles came my way and this happens that when a wall comes before you then your personality is changed a bit in the process of breaking this wall.
Wall comes again and you are changed again a little. I am still breaking the wall.
The journey which was started in the school has not been finished yet.
Atmaram Sharma still exists in my life. Sometimes he comes before me through censor board and sometimes through the court.
Same Atmaram Sharma was present during the making of Paanch also and he was present in the form of the question, “How to shoot the scene”?
The very first scene which I had shot in the Paanch can be identified very easily by any filmmaker as my very first shot.
Because that was the only scene where I was unable to decide from which angle I should shoot.So I shot everything. I shot from every angle. I took close up shots of every character.
50 different things have been accumulated in that scene.
Slowly that scene is ending and any filmmaker can understand its shortcomings.
But first scene on very first day taught me the ways to make a film. Scene is started in a very crude manner but by the time scene is finished a kind of rhythm has come in the scene.
So my journey as a director started there.
When I face a challenge then I perform better.
Shivam Nair also says,” If there is last minute crisis and script is needed within two days then you write and if you are given two years then you will not write anything”.
I always keep me under pressure.
Practical problems always occur at the shooting site.
During the making of Paanch also we faced a lot of problems.
Where to put up the lights?
Building was so old and it was not possible to fix the light outside. We kept light in the centre because every where we had some problems. We had not decided earlier to fix the light in the centre.
Central light created a different mood and I felt it was too bright and I told Nati about its brightness.
Nati asked me how much brightness I wanted.
I said,” Visually on screen I want this much brightness. This is up to you how much light you use”.
So we developed a process like this.
First time I was dealing with a film stock. Nati used to shout on me again and again.
I used to demand,” But it was done in Last train to Mahakali”.
Nati used to make me understand,” Baba this is a film stock”.
I did not know this difference.
Nati used to tell me the possibilities and I used to jump on the idea of doing experiments.
We did a lot of experiments with the light.
I learnt through that evolving process.
We were shooting the climax. Nobody knew the swimming. I said,” Let me teach you guys”.
I taught them swimming for 18 hours.
I said,” you give shot from here to there and rest I will manage”.
KK was not ready to dive in and that was the opening shot of the film.
So my problem was how to do it?
So many new methods or things are developed all the time because of these limitations only.
I asked KK to come on the set and said, “You bend a little and camera will go away from you and I will dive for you. I am standing behind you”.
Now I was playing a duplicate to KK. Nobody knew what I was shooting.
I had never shot underwater. I was cross checking everything.
So we tried and shot for 38 hours.
Joy had another problem and he said,” I am too fat and I will not remove my shirt”.
So I played a duplicate for him also.
We went to a beach to shoot the climax but water level was increased and fort was not visible because we were not able to take lights ahead.
Water level was reduced by 3 A.M and we were supposed to finish our shoot by 5 A.M. because we did not have permission to shoot after that.
We had only two hours with us and Nati said,” we don’t have time”.
Vikram Motwani, my friend, had brought a Polaroid camera there. He clicked the photos and showed us.
Light was in the background only and I saw that face was not visible from this side.
I said,” I will shoot like this only where only half face is visible. It will be a magic”.
Nati said,” Ok, let’s try”.
We had tried a lot of things before.
We kept more resolution to show the fort.
We asked actors to walk slowly.
Later we kept two shots only from that take.
We finished the shooting by 5 A.M and we shot dead body scene also there.
So Paanch was made this way!
First part : Anurag Kashyap: Noir is the story of underdog for me
Tags: Adesh Srivastava, Anurag Kashyap, FTII, KK Menon, Manoj Bajpai, Paanch, Ram Gopal Verma, Raveena Tandan, shabana azmi, Shool, Tejaswini Kolhapure, Tu Tu Sharma, Vidhu Vindo Chopra, Vijay Maurya, Water
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
Swadisht!!!
maja aa gaya ….Rk thanks for this
great read……
thank you RK
shukriya ajay
Interesting read..so true
Thanks RK. A very very good read.
Fantastic read Ajay and RK…am loving this series…waiting now for Vishal Bharadwaj’s….thank a ton guys..
remember..AK had the same issue of under-water in No Smoking too…but, he had a six-pack John and not Joy..eheh
Wonderful read…Thanks Ajay and RK..
very interesting…thanks RK!!
Thanks for translating RK Bhai. A great read an I must say I am inspired and have a new view about Anurag Kashyap…
Amazing!
I hate people writing their memoirs or discussing about themselves post their achievements or post their primes. I still consider AK not achieved all, and has to achieve many more goals as a filmmaker. All his answers look more honest and very forthcoming, which it wont once he attains more success(he would have to be more humble, sugar coat his answers(like Amitabh does)). Its better to get their interviews at this point of their life, who knows after Dev D becomes a hit, AK would be no more forthcoming.
Cinema..
your words are truly inspiring me Anuragh…
am also in this path…
there is some similarities of life…
keep rocking…
hi
your yesterdays are truly inspiring me anuragh….
some where its so similar my today & yours yesterday…
so much of life in it..
keep rocking…
“I did not write Satya. Satya simply happened to me. It came through me and I learnt a lot during its evolution period and later also when it was finished”.
RK SIr
This is the point I tried to make that any film or book or painting which is a product of effortless process makes an impact.That’s what happened in the case of satya.
No smoking could not make an impact coz It was too much of a self indulgence.
Its interesting to read how Anurag Kashyap has been developed the film-making sense of his through the time…to do things newly each time, to explore the whole idea & learning from mistakes; what would been better way to learn!
great… i did’nt want it to end, rongte khade ho gaye and this really inspired me to do at any cost and in what ever way. It am really impressed how Anurag Kashyap as a film director has developed. Few days before i also decided to write a script but did’nt how to do it, so what i did is just started writing and it really worked. So the moral of the story is that if you want to do some thing and you dont know how to do it then the best way is start doing it…
One little detail that Anurag Kashyap probably forgot to mention that whenever, as 6 or 7 year olds, we used to play GHAR-GHAR, Anurag always played the Cinema Hall owner. He would cut out local cinema listing ads from the newspaper and use them as film posters. then make us buy imaginary tickets with fake paper money and regale us with fascinatingly verbalised action stories mostly with dharmendra as the hero(SIGNIFICANCE: subconsciously, even as a child, anurag wanted to fight injustice and beat the bad guys. Now he does it not by beating them but by trying to educate them, entertain them, make them see the other side of coin.) When I think of it now, I can safely say that the seed of cinema had found its roots in him very early. Then there was a gap during which he tried many other things. The seed became a sapling and eventually a tree so big, that Anurag just couldn’t ignore it any more. He had found his calling. And in doing so, he helped many of us who looked up to him, find their own calling.
That said, I congrat and thank Ajay Bramhatmajji for providing us with a wonderful insight into Anurag’s journey as a film-maker. And RK for translating this work for the English reading public.
regards,
Bachpan se dost hoon.
@everyone: Yes Miraj is spelt as Mirage in english meaning Mrig-Trishna.. I think thats what anurag wanted to call Paanch first.
@Anonymous: Thanx for sorting out the confusion.!
its like hearing straight from anurag kashyap that too with so effortlessly . thanks AB & AK. ANURAG JI NO SMOKING MERI BHI SAMAJH MEIN NAHIN AAYI,AUR ISILIYE MAIN ISE DUBARA DEKHNA CHAHTA HOOON…!
Loved this article – because as for films, while I might not always like the end, absolutely love the process involved to get to it
AK is suffering from the age old problem of drawing a line between pragmatism and idealism .
I hope he gets what he wants ,he is a cinematic genius and way ahead of his contemporary bollywood directors ,but I still believe that AK should compromise a little so that every now and then he can make movies the way he wants or else he might wither away after a few films and it will be just another sad story.
thanks 4 sharing rk …..
I always thought ‘Darr’ was directed by Anurag before reading this, and indeed believed it to be one of his better works. I feel an unentitled disillusionment now. Why would anyone want someone else to have the credit for their work?