NO SMOKING-Paresh rawal to be my Gabbar
Ramu has got his Gabbar..and i have found mine..finally..he plays “Shri shri prakash Guru ghantal baba bangali sealdah wale” in my film..the role for which we chased everyone from Pankaj Kapoor to Big B to Irrfan .. we now need to discuss the look and the language and the atmosphere..the nether world that he thrives in..
Adnan Sami sang our first song..The jealous of the cigarette song..you know my father respects me more today because Gulzar sahab wrote a song for my film..
We shot the second-most long and important sequence of the film .. the fourteen page long disintegration of John abraham..i always thought john won’t be able to pull it off..they scared me that a star would not work for more than eight hours..whatever they said can go to hell..the guy shot with me as long as it took..he did not sleep for fortyeight hours..he was supposed to look fucked and he made sure he did look it.. he put in every last bit of what he had in it..his body language changed..he found cynicism..
So much for what we achieved..Now what could not happen..Aditya Basu Bhattacharya could not shoot with us because his DUBAI RETURN was showing in a film festival(the film is hilarious)..i tried to get Darshan Zariwala..my producer and him couldn’t come to the same page.. Vinay Pathak was busy.. he recommended someone..we were one day away from shoot.. we could not find an actor to play the cop..then my old college mate and my working producer on HANUMAN-2, Akhauri Priyarvat Sinha visited me on the set..they needed to know when can i over see the voicing for the film ..and i remembered AP being a very good actor in college days ..and i asked him..will you act in my film..and he said when and i said tomorrow..he agreed to do so for a bottle of Blue Label.. he worked.. and Gautam remarked that he is the Mani Ratnam kind of an actor..educated and sophisticated..
I was so confused as to how will i shoot the sequence..so much happening..what can i do thats not repititive..Rajkumar asked me where do we begin and i said i don’t know..i was reeling under the impact of the antibiotics..i asked Rajiv Ravi my camera man to light up the whole place.. we will see what happens..he was upset with me..John was to arrive straight from a function at eleven..i tried my best but could not figure out how to go about it..i designed a shot which the steadicam guy(Sunil Khandpur) found boring so he wanted to change it..i said ok lets try it..rajiv said if you want to shoot the sequence from the other side than he will have to light up again..another half an hour.. by the time we were ready the city had gone to sleep..all the city lights were going off slowly.. so after we were all set up we cancelled the shot and moved indoors..by the time we actually began we had wasted five hours..john had not slept..he was in a strange mood..maybe he was tryin to get into the scene.. i needed him to be edgy and breaking down and disintegrating..his body on its own took a posture when we started rehearsing that it all just started coming together..after that i was the Mister Know All..i just knew what to do..where to go with the scene.. oh it was so fantastic..two days of ecstasy on sets..fourteen pdifficult pages just flew by..Ranvir and John did the most difficult shots in single takes.. Sad part was that all the characters that required to smoke, the actors playing them were non smokers..
Today we had a production meeting and we realised that in our excitement we went slightly over budget on our house location..we have been told to even out elsewhere..where and how..i don’t know yet..
looking forward to work with Paresh..finally he will play a non kathiawadi..non comic..devil..after Vishnu Pandey that he played in DACAIT..this will be the first time he will play a north indian which is as serious as it can get..
I hope i get this film right.. i am walking such a thin line..i am most scared of those who think i know so much.. am so scared that they will find out i know nothing..Pray guys
Tags: The No Smoking Diary
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
anurag, no stopping you now boss.. you WILL get this film right. don’t worry about letting those ppl down who think you know everything.. nobody does.. that’s part of the excitement. not knowing.. and then a strike of genius comes outta nowhere and everything’s rolling again as if nothing ever happened. knowing it all is boring anyway.. it’s those who don’t know and still make stuff happen that are the ones to look out for.. and we’re lookin out for you. turn around.. right there behind you is all of PFC. see oz in the corner with his jenna jameson magazine?
) ok ignore that.. get back to work and keep rocking!
Wow – great post. Fear and paranoia and stress – that means you will definitely succeed. Only when there is over-confidence and cockiness and complete surety is there the need to fear failure
Anurag, You must have read today’s Times of India, theres an article about your blogs on page 19. PFC people you can log into e-paper section of TOI and read it!
- Vishnu Pandey in Dacait was played to perfection by Paresh. Yet the failure of the movie may be the cause of him not being offered such roles of substance. This is fucking getting very interesting… Paresh Rawal with Anurag Kashyap… this is a dream combination for a fanatic… damn!!!!
As long as there is nervousness it will keep you on your toes… and it’s a good one for you cause there are no doubts, no confusions in you on No Smoking. So it’s good. It’s simply gonna take No Smoking many notches higher than what it may have initially visualized to be.
And thanks for recommending movies… I’m forced to now increase my movie slab on Netflix to “5 at a time”… and to think that I was comfortably cruising on Netflix 6 months ago at “1 at time” slot…
- Manjeet – can you print that article in the comments section or provide a link!!! What City Edition?
- Got it:
Link to the paper (you may need to log in)
Sub-letting creativity
Bollywood is seeing an interesting phase of creative collaboration, with film-makers delegating large portions of their films to others and even inviting and accepting suggestions via the internet. Meena Iyer takes stock
Anurag Kashyap, one of Bollywood’s bright lights, is making his new film, No Smoking, in a rather innovative way. The director posts details of the project on his blog and invites cineastes from all over the world to leave their suggestions and creative inputs. “So I have someone suggesting how to shoot an underwater sequence, someone else writing a song for me and yet others giving me gyaan on so many other vital issues,’’ he says, adding jokingly that the Rs 14-crore film starring John Abraham and Ayesha Takia is “Bollywood’s costliest experiment’’.
Kashyap’s little excursion on the unbeaten track may be the ultimate in democratic direction, but there are many others who have annulled the concept of the director as sole creative master of the ship. Vidhu Vinod Chopra, for instance, is rumoured to have let a couple of his close associates take over the reins from him for portions of his forthcoming Eklavya—The Royal Guard. “It’s no longer only the director who calls ‘Action’ and ‘Cut’,’’ says a Bollywood insider who’s worked as crew member on several films. “Very often different aspects of a film are individual endeavours all pieced together later.’’
Several masters on board the directorial ship isn’t a new phenomenon for Bollywood—for years now, choreographers have directed and edited song sequences while action directors have done the same with the fight-and-stunt portions (in action films, this adds up to over 50% of a film). What is unusual is that today more and more directors like Chopra and Kashyap are collaborating with their associates to turn film-making into a joint creative process. For instance, when Kashyap made his first film Paanch in 2003, he had Vikramaditya Motwane direct the songs “because I didn’t know a thing about song direction’’.
Six years ago, Chopra got his associate Ram Madhvani to direct the entire climax of Mission Kashmir. “That’s why you see a total disconnect in styles between the rest of Mission Kashmir and the climax,’’ says Kashyap. Ad man Madhvani, however, is politically correct. “To say I directed the entire climax is an exaggeration,’’ he smiles. “I just translated Vidhu’s vision on screen—cinematographer Binod Pradhan, Vidhu and I worked on it together. Film-making is a collaborative process and a few like-minded people working in unison can elevate the whole film. And Vidhu is the finest example of a director who can delegate work to an associate without losing control of a project.’’
When Madhvani moved to making his own films, Let’s Talk (2002) and the documentary on Amitabh Bachchan (2006), he had associate and cameraman Sumantra Ghoshal collaborating with him. “Sumantra brings complete objectivity to my work and having him on my set is my biggest asset,’’ he says.
Vipul Shah, who has imported some great white talent like cameraman Peter Fields of the Hollywood blockbuster Troy (2004) and an assistant called Kevin Wesley for Namaste London, is in tandem with Madhvani’s thinking. “Filmmaking is a collective effort, not a solitary one like painting or writing poetry,’’ he says. “Having said that, a film is usually one man’s vision and a very capable team of associates can help realise that vision. The idea behind hiring specialised professionals is to leverage their expertise, and for that you have to sometimes entrust them with the entire task.’’
Mahesh Bhatt is probably the trailblazer in this regard. Fifteen years ago, when he was the busiest director in Bollywood and renowned for “directing over the telephone’’, he would actually be present for only 50 per cent of a film’s shoot, leaving his assistants to man the other portions. “In fact, Jackie Shroff actually had a clause in his contract for a Mahesh Bhatt movie saying that he would act in the film only if Bhatt was present on the sets,’’ says a top actor. Directors like David Dhawan and Mahesh Bhatt, busy with mulitple ventures, have often left their capable deputies to handle the show. For instance, Milan Luthria, Bhatt’s first assistant, directed the “erotic’’ scenes in Criminal (1995) because Bhatt felt a young man was “more qualified than me to add that touch of erotica to the proceedings’’.
But while delegating responsibility is now in vogue, there are still directors like Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Prakash Jha who don’t allow a single shot to be canned in their absence. “Proceedings come to a complete halt on their sets even if they step out for a loo break,’’ says a unit hand.
Perhaps it is to balance the avant-garde Kashyaps and Chopras that we have the conservative Bhansalis and Jhas—who will not allow a bird to flutter its wings without their saying ‘Action’.
Good work Oz! I was away did not get ur message. I should have rather posted the article myself.:-?
Fuck… I was digging TOI site for this link for the last 1 hour but didn’t think of F5 key & when I did \:d/ Thanks.
AK: Boss you rock: I was always under the impression that Directors are know-all bastards (or they pretend to be), but you make us feel that you’re ordinary like any of us who is scared as shit while working on something new.^:)^
off topic: Can someone find out where Khalid Mohamed writes these days. His reviews are not be seen in DNA, since the release of DON:((
john, ayesha, ranvir, paresh- great cast! but plz plz plz try to fit in kay kay….somewhere….somehow!
Is the actor really imp? ok that you need to manifest ur thoughts on the screen… but is it really that big a deal. Anurag bhai, story bolo na…. get whomever to do it but gimme the story…
hey ravptor,can’t tell the story without the actor..or else will have to narrate it..this one costs a bomb and its someone else’s money..if i don’t earn it back for him, i might not make another film..
Gattu, The buzz is Khalid will soon join Times or he has already..
Thanks illuzon, will check that out.
hi sirjee,
gr8 to know that paresh bhai is your gabbar. it will be fantastic to see him move from priyan’s comic capers and do something totally wild. cheers. gd luck
Marketing the product will be the key thing for you. And if you market the film astutely in the overseas market then, all will be alright.Aap marketing mein koi kasar mat chodhna…
it’s lucky to have star ( John) in ur film.. that’s why No smoking from the beginning getting very much media attention.. i m dam sure NO smoking gonna bring large crowd to movie halls.. and vishal and kumar mangath knows how to market their product same as they done for Omkara.. and we all wish to see Mr.Anurag always at work
hey anurag! congrats! you finally got your gabbar! and who – paresh rawal!! superb going! really dont know the character sketch you have in mind for mr.rawal…but for his look you could refer to sir ben kingley’s character in jonathan glazer’s “sexy beast”…ofcourse the suggestion for reference is only if your character is playing some kind of a don…cheers!
that’s a fantastic suggestion ricky..one can have him with a shiny bald pate.. rest has to be very local, north indian feel..like a butcher
glad i come up with a reference which you liked! i’m open to more suggestions if you need them anytime…cheers!
Great news, AK. Paresh Rawal is a great actor and is being wasted now a days with same type of comedy stuff…bald pate, north indian immediately reminds me of Naseer in OMKARA…and then I remembered SHAKAAL from SHAAN…but I am confused since it you said he will look like a butcher and is some kind of a swamy. Best with the shoot. Edgy is great.
AK, u have got the best man of bollywood to play a mean character.
Give him the Dacait style. I am sure you will develop Vishu Pandeys character. I enjoyed Dacait only because of P.R. And till today waiting for him to continue the character in other movies. Unfortunatley, it has not happened.
P.R. has in him to be baddest man (behind Gabbar) ever on Bollywood screen. Somebody needs to give him that kind of role.
Also have the music directors give the best haunting backgroud music for his intro.
Best of luck with the moovie.
Why not go in for something that “stands out”? Have Gabbar wear designer suits and sport flashy shoes and watch. Quite an opposite of the “raw gabbar”. Its just a suggestion. Also, we all know nothing. Its just the “perception” which make us “seem” intelligent.
Ak: Also do try to add a dash of ‘pinky’ of daud in paresh rawal..That was completely crazy!Also,your way I feel is the most honest way of working…Many directors just watch and re watch and re watch hollywood films just to learn the shots and then have the same shot taking in their films…But your style is different!Its knowledge spontaneous instincts which leads to something completely original and wicked..I am all for originality….keep up the good work!
hey guys..there is this film i am trying to source..its called “the yacoubian building”..its also egypts entry for the academy awards..has it released in the U S..
AK – Yes! The movie was apparently screened at the Tribeca 2006. Here’s the link to the review. Unable to find the DVD info though.
http://www.cinematical.com/2006/05/03/tribeca-review-the-yacoubian-building/
anurag, looks like it’s still doing the festival rounds.. the latest being rome filmfest last month..
http://imdb.com/title/tt0425321/releaseinfo
even their own website (yacoubianthemovie.com) doesn’t have any info on release dates.. but now i know to keep a lookout for it.. thanks for that
- darn… bumped netflix to 6 dvds at a time…
hi Ak! Rajiv Ravi is your cameraman you said. How come natarajan or nutty isnt your cameraman this time around? you have worked only with him in all your films, havnt you?
Paresh Raval is a very good actor as he has proved in his films. Does any one feel he has a very strong accent(marathi/gujrati somewhat western Indian)? Does anyone remember him playing a convincing north Indian character?
Hi Anurag,
i wish all the so called directors read your blogs and learn something from you.here’s a question to you. what do you do about the guy/gal/group sitting next to you in a theatre who is constantly talking with each other or someone who picks up the cell one and start blabbering in it? i had asked this question to kunal kohli last week in a seminar and i was surprised at his answer .his answer was – “DONT DO ANYTHING”.
smash them
many prayers for u man!
hope u dont hit a hat trick with censors this time.
therz lot cooking about u for years on.. i’m yet n desperate to taste it.
u r a commendable actor urself, hv witnessed u being given the loudest round of applause for Sir,sir.. sarla at Prithvi among others. indeed u deserved it.
(btw, where can i get to c paanch, black friday?
any underground distribution?)
Hey Anurag, at this time, all I’m interested in knowing is as to when at all, ur mind boggling film ‘BLACK FRIDAY’ gonna be out. I was present at the PIFF where it was screened fr the premier. I’m one lucky ass!! Hvnt seen such stomach chruning cinema in a long long time. Fr all u guys out there, admirer of Anurag’s work, lemme assure u tht Black Friday is one film tht is a shining star in the history of the INDIAN cinema. Cant wait to watch it, again. Also, frm sm sources, hear PAANCH is no less. Why cnt we see them? its so frustrating…
anurag, i think you should shoot a psa with your lead actors. something like – hi, i am john abraham and before the film start i would request the audience to please keep their phones switched off or on silent mode & if you really have to talk to the person next to you then pls take him/her outside and speak.saw something like this in the special feature section of Fight Club.
Paresh is actor of that calibre that easily can opt any kind of accent. He was not having gujju accent when he spread his cynical laughing on screen, enough to terrorise Sanjay Daat and audience in Naam. He has played North Indian Thakur before in a film. and moreover he believes and says that to being Thakur you dont have to have a chest of 44″ but an appearance on screen with your facial expressions and voice modulation.Only thing he should not be shown clean shaven. Paresh’s make up man should see two Sanjeev Kumar’s films to search proper look for him: “Anokhi Raat” and “Naya Din Nayee raat” and guest appearance of Dilip Kumar in “Phir Kab Milogee” and blend of all three may create a new Paresh.
Hi, am new to this blog. Anurag, I heard about ur work through a mutual friend. (not sure how well u know the guy). And once I saw them, I was hooked. Anyway, could u tell me what was the role that you had offered to fellow film maker Rajkumar Santoshi???
AK: Have been late in catching up with your No Smoking blog, but thoroughly enjoyed the ride today. Kudos to you for finding time to blog! You have the adrenaline rising inside me to kick off my job and jump into movies…
RK, Thanks for your input buddy. I agree with your thoughts. I saw Naam a long time back but dont remember any accents. No doubt that he is a wonderful actor and among the top talented actors in bollywood!
Paresh is humble, polite and eager to do experiments with his acting abilities. He is more than what he looks. After all how many actors are married to a former Miss India? He married Swaroop Sampat.
hello sir!
congratulations for no smoking.wishing u all the luck. U ROCK!!!
Dear Anurag,
I wish that atleast “No Smoking” gets a release for your own sake. Over the years, I have heard a lot about “Paanch” and “Black Friday” being hard-hitting, different movies. Guess, those were so different and hard-hitting that they could not get a release. God only knows what happened to the much publicised “Alwyn Kalicharan”? Anil Kapoor looked good in the promo snaps. He being one of my favorite actor, I was looking forward for the movie, but alas! your destiny struck again.
And now, you are literally playing with fire. If one shot of SRK amid smoke can create a huge controversy, imagine what will happen when your promos come out? My humble advice is to complete it as fast as possible and visit Siddhi Vinayak, Haji Ali, Ajmer Sharif and any & all possible temples,mosques, churches and gurudwaras with the negative of your movie before taking it to the censor board. God Bless You.
Hey Anurag,
I think film making is all about passion and you have it. So just go with ur instincts. You managed a very right star cast to sell ur movie but now its all depends on you to run the movie on box office. About to shoot a scene, discussion with other is good but after all it is ur movie. For u, my trick is to think a lot of the scene before sleep(on the bed). Sometimes our dreams shows us a prefect scene.
One more thing….
just keep ur movie low profile b’cos u already have a very conterversial topic. It will give desired publicity automatically. So concentrate on ur movie.
Anurag, good going and no smoking go good too. Believe me it would be great to see the pains one has to go through stting at the lounge in the airport waiting to fly for 16 hours and what is missing. your cigarette lighter. the sucking guy at the security took it away. all you can probly do is smell your cig or better still get a licorice. whoa boy, am not sure what your film would be like and the paranoia building up due to this blog thing am going into a hyperbole myself. the urge to get some nicotine in the dang blood gets higher the more you see a sign “NO SMOKING”. What the heck? Who cares.
hope you make a real good smokin film dude.
Check out the trailer for the new David Fincher movie “Zodiac”. It’s awesome
http://www.firstshowing.net/2006/11/16/worth-watching-november-16-zodiac-trailer-in-quicktime/
anurag, i am praying to god that this film doesn’t get stuck with censors. i want to see this film in theatre not pirated DVD.
ur Black Friday simply rocked!!
ur the master
A crowded theater, people buying tickets and a guy starring at their wallets, now who could possibly he be :-?not a pickpocket for sure
he is a film maker thinking atleast 160 bucks from each pocket are mine;)
cant deny it you burn your brain cells for may b around 3 years on a project and the cruel janta rips it apart with in 3 hours so in a judgmental system this very fear propels to the right direction
now paresh rawal as “Guru ghantal baba bangali” :d great going already!
hey whats the deal with smoking on screen? isn’t it ‘banned’ by the censor board?
I’m presuming this film has some smoking scenes no? also, does anyone know if you are also ‘banned’ from showing people smoking-up on screen? what about pills.. can we do those atleast?? ..please?!
- Woody Allen, Umm… you should know :-w since you live in the city where the Censor Board of India is… Delhi… >:)
would be awesome if someone were to make a “this film is not yet rated” type movie based on indian censor board.. now there’s something i’d love to see :-?
oh OZZZ!!! how did ze know that I’ve waddled from Manhattan to de Delhi??
But seriously, whats with the Rating scene? I ask primarily coz’ I’m working on a script whose focal point is smoking up… and mid-way thru it i realized that U-huh, i might have to blur all ciggies touching the lips, or run tickers on the screen with the surgeon-general’s warning or maybe even replace the fags (the sticks, not the characters!) with lollipops and pretend that its a very clever comment on something or other (on the ball-lessness of the censors mostly- and please no PJs on them being all women yadda yaada!)
Say, won’t all these seem like great ideas after all!!
My grand dad told me once,
” Bhagwan sachey Logo ka hi imithaan leta hain ” and I have always believed that ….Look at Anurag Kashyap’s profile, the films he mades Speak bout the hidden “truth ” , People in india dare to make films on musy subjects ,but one man did , He wanted to show reality on screen, And thats why the problem..But Satyamev Jayate ! Truth will win , This film is going to rock ….Coz its going to be real !!!
Cheers anurag !
Ritika
hi….anurag ur fantastic writer there is no doubt abt it n there are several things i keep readin in newspaper abt ur new movie No Smokin n ur choice of Mr.Paresh Rawal would b ideal for tat role as i think he is the only actor who can potray any kind of role.
Well, Black Friday is going to release and that must be good for you as this movie has been in the news for sometime(well mostly in Mid-Day cos they produced it or sumthin. :P) Anyways, hopefully people will want to know the real story thru your movie. Goodluck.
I am thrilled just by the fact that i will see Paresh Rawal in a non gujju role. he is such a talent who has been typecasted. I really hope you don’t go overboard with him anurag. This will be the USP of ur film…not John Abraham not Takia baby.
Sexy beast is a good reference if u r going for the angry Paresh.
The opening 10minutes of SEXY BEAST is amazing!