Tête-à-tête with Shibani

Mix a neat Southern California weather with an evening walk on the streets of Beverly Hills and you just found the right formula for a super duper Sunday hit. Of course meeting a screenwriter who’s very first two films are the biggest hits of the year is like having your cake and eating it too.

Meet Shibani Bathija. Writer of Fanaa and the co-writer of Kabhie Alvida Na Kehna. She’s in Los Angeles to chit chat with anyone and everyone who sleeps with a DVD cover under the pillow. The meet’s organized by SAAFA, at Chakra Cuisine in Beverly starly Hills. It’s another matter that the restaurant shares its shoulders with a building that by strange coincidence is the Writer’s Guild of America.

Perfect place for a movie maverick and a screenwriter to meet over crispy cheese pakodas and “wish I could get some more of those” sheek kababs.

On her suggestion we move out to the patio where I attempt to jump into the writing mind of one of Bollywood’s newest star writers. I switch on my recorder and start firing my toned-down-to-the-point-of-being-genteel questions to a very warm and approachable Shibani.

Shibani, two of your first scripts, Fanaa and KANK, both are one of the biggest hits of the year. Did you know or had a clue this is how your first two movies are going to turn out?

No… I think Indian population are one of the few people that love a good story, so they will forgive bad cinema, misses, ups or anything clunky in a story. So if you start with a good story, and as long they are satisfied and really into the story, there is a good chance that people will enjoy it.

Ok Shibani, here’s a big secret. I write for Desi Train dot com and Passion for cinema dot com. And on both the blogs I’ve reviewed both Fanaa and KANK… please don’t read it cause I haven’t given either of them a good rating.

(Smiles) That’s fine

One of the primary reasons being (for the bad rating)… for example… there’s a lot of implausibility in Fanaa. How do you as a writer, rate the “acceptability factor” from a viewer’s point of view – what implausible things mentioned in your script will work just fine and be accepted and what things will not?

I’ve said this before; I think implausibility is in the mind of the viewer. If you buy a story situation and a circumstance and if you buy the story sequence and the struggles they go through you may not find the things as implausible as somebody else may find it. I’ll give you an example. Casablanca is one of the classics of all time. Now what are the chances that in the entire war scenario, the two people would end up meeting at that same place and that he would be dealing in the one thing that she needed to get out? If you think about it you won’t feel that implausibility because it is done so convincingly.

And classical love stories tend to have this so called “leaps of faith”. That’s the basic idea of a classical romance… there is this “fate” factor, the “destined to be or not to be” that is meant to be part of a classical romance.

Take Dr. Zhivago for instance. It’s a huge bloody country (laughing) but she happens to be the very nurse at the very place. Oh come on… (I end up laughing when I see what she is exactly pointing me to)

But it’s a classical romance and it works.

We did debate a lot during Fanaa about an injured Aamir Khan landing on Kajol’s door step. You can look at it as implausible if “you” are in the questioning mode of romance. But a romantic story should not be putting you in the questioning mode… if it is then it is not doing its job.

The (love) story should make you feel that “they are destined to meet”. And Aamir does mention in the movie (Fanaa) that it was destiny that brought him back to Kajol’s doorstep. And that’s what I love about classical romance. And people who could get into the story, which many people did for this film… they simply loved it.

So coming back to your question, implausibility is based on whether you have “submitted” yourself to this film and its characters or not. And I’m not saying if it’s right or wrong, but for whatever reasons if you don’t submit to a movie you will find implausibility even in the best of movies.

So Shibani when you are writing a story do you have the audience in mind when you carve the story out or do you just go with the flow? (My idea was to ask her whether she “dumbs” down the story for the lowest common denominator but based on T!’s advise and Shibani’s openness to discuss everything under the sun, I somehow managed to keep my undiplomatic straight forward nature in check)

I don’t keep the audience in mind in terms of demographic… that’s not a factor. I keep the audience in mind with respect to the empathy factor, because I believe the beauty of cinema is that you can touch people’s hearts, whatever part of the world they may be from. There’s this common human “space” that we all have, and that’s the “space” I go to (while writing).

And I do the same when I go to watch a film. I want to be in that world (of the film). It takes a lot for a film to throw me out of that world. I’m actually going there to “submit”. Now it’s up to the film to draw me in or throw me out.

Fanaa was given really bad reviews by the main stream media. But on the other hand, with KANK, you won them all over. For me KANK didn’t work as I thought it could have been done in a much better way. But with respect to the critics’ reactions what do think you did in KANK which you did not in Fanaa?

Movies are a team effort. So it wasn’t just me (my writing) that you see entirely in Fanaa. There are lots of things (negativities) that a lot of people pointed to me about Fanaa… that I agree with. (T! will come out with a separate post on the private one on one she had with Shibani, where Shibani told her what Fanaa was on paper and what it became on the screen… if I remember correctly, Anurag Kashyap faced the same problem in Paanch)

A lot of this (script to actual movie) is an interpretive thing. What happens on paper is not exactly how it may end up on the screen. It is always the director’s interpretation and vision. So I may see a story differently and have the corresponding logic in place. But the director may see it differently, for one reason or the other, and that changes a lot of things. But I’m not gonna go to the world and say it’s not what/how I wrote. The film is what it is.

How much control do you have over the script, after the fact that it has been passed over to the director and his team for execution?

I’ve been fortunate so far with whatever interaction I’ve had (with the director, actors and team) that there has always been a dialogue… but the final decision is not mine… I can only some something and I can get upset about it, but it doesn’t help (smiles). Hopefully you’ll work with evolved people and sooner or later they’ll realize, if they make a mistake, where you are coming from and even if it can’t be modified (script changes), its still something they’ll have at the back of their mind and they’ll come back later to give you more space.

You’ve got to understand that Fanaa’s my first film. The fact that both my first films are very big makes the people very interested, but it also makes them very critical, which is fine with me, so I’m not put off by that (others messing with her script) at all. They were just my first two films. So I’m only gonna get better from here on.

How do you start a story? Does it start with an (imaginative) idea or does it start with reading a reality?

It doesn’t matter. It could be really anything.

Ummm… so how did Fanaa happen?

Fanaa was actually an all out attempt to get Kajol back to screen. She’s a family friend and she wanted to do a movie that wouldn’t keep her away from her family, her baby… you know all those things, some project where she wouldn’t have to travel a lot. And that’s how I started Fanaa.

As far as KANK, it is not my story; it is Karan’s (Johar). I just did the co-writing part of it. And coming back to your earlier question, KANK was embraced by the critics because it broke many myths, many boundaries, of the treating of the extra marital relationship, of what you do with the mainstream superstars – it gave them colors of grey… these are all the things that are a usual occurrence here (in Hollywood), it just doesn’t happen as much in Indian cinema and critics really responded to that. With Fanaa… ummm… I felt some of it (criticism) was valid because I felt the same way, but a lot of it was also uncalled for (by the critics). You just can’t sit there with a microscope. It shows that you have not submitted to the film. Because every single “lay” person I’ve met has loved Fanaa. It’s only film people and critics who’ve had issues with it. And I’m not saying that one is right and one is wrong… I’m just saying that when people go to see a film they don’t go to criticize, they don’t go to look at it with a critical eye.

So therefore the people’s response to Fanaa is a lot more visceral. But conversely, even if critics raved about KANK, there are a lot of lay people in India, who had huge issues with it, though everybody here (in America) has loved it.

I just laugh. You know at the end of the day a critical review is the view of just one individual person.

(It was important at this point to let Shibani know that my reactions to movies is more of a visceral reaction rather than sitting in the theater with 50 tool sets meant to dissect a movie)

I thought it’s important to say here, Shibani, that this (interviewing her) is not our regular job. We have regular day jobs. Our passion for cinema brings us out on blogs in the evenings and here to meet people from the industry like you, today. Simply said, we are regular every day people, who just happen to be cinema fanatics. So we watch movies as a viewer and write about it as a viewer. So perhaps it wouldn’t be justifiable to include us common bloggers to be put on that “high mantle” of main stream media critics.

No I mean even in India, try asking a regular media critic for their Resume. I mean… they have no background. They have no training. Again, it’s one person’s opinion. Conversely, the same isn’t true for the critics in the western media.

But when they review our movies, I sometimes laugh at what I read. They simply don’t understand what they see (in Indian movies). I don’t mean to be derogatory in any way, but it’s funny. What I mean to say is they have a vocabulary to describe and critique an orange (Hollywood), but here we give them an apple (Bollywood). It’s a whole different ethos. It’s a whole different way of looking at cinema. Both are completely justified and completely successful in their own right.

Every time a Hindi film tries to become too angrez or too Westernized, they fail. And the reason is our appreciation for stories is in a different lilt. We have a different vocabulary and language. So say, if I was to take the story of Fanaa and write it for someone here (Hollywood), they would be two different scripts all together. Because it’s a different way for approaching cinema or the story.

For me it’s basically kept quite simple. I connect with the story or don’t. The factors (like implausibility) that threw me out of the story only come in for introspection much later. So when you are writing a story do you have an eye on what elements in your script will connect extremely well with the audience and what will not… and if those positive elements will be able to pull the story through on the whole.

I think Honesty is what will help your story connect with the viewer. I don’t contrive it (elements that will and will not connect with the audience) like that (my question) at all… I don’t think that even works. I think Robert Frost said something like – if you don’t cry, your readers will not cry. If you have a story that moves you, makes you laugh… that’s the first step, that’s the only thing that you can really do and hopefully after that you will get the chance to make people feel the same.

What’s your next project?

It’s not decided as yet. Maybe two or three things with Karan and some others.

What would you say if someone comes to you and says he couldn’t digest the implausibility factor in any particular scene of your movie?

My recommendation would be to tell people to go with an open mind and an open heart and then let the film do the talking, if you don’t like or if you carried away with it… great… but go with an open mind, and then you have a better chance of appreciating something.

Rang De Basanti is here now, having been selected as Indian official entry for the Oscar best foreign film category. There were 9 films that the selection panel in India had to choose from. KANK was one of them. How do you feel that it didn’t make it.

If I was on the jury, I would give all the awards to Rang De Basanti. It’s my favorite film of the year. Infact I questioned Aamir (Khan) after watching Rang De Basanti as to why the hell was he doing Fanaa! But in Aamir’s view they both are different films with different messages. So yes, even if I love Fanaa, I wouldn’t give any precedence to it over Rang De Basanti.

Lastly, since you’ve been exposed to both the cultures here in the US and back in India, what do you think would be the acceptability factor by the people here, once RDB is re-released in the main stream cinemas here in the US later this month?

God! I’m dying to know. I hope it will be positive because I feel it’s a great write. I’m hoping people get drawn into the spirit of the movie and not be put off by things which “they” may see as flaws, like the length or something else. RDB is part of new spirit and I believe it is just that.

Part 2, tomorrow, takes you to the actual meet where SAAFA spoke to Shibani and then there was an open Q & A session between Shibani and the participants.

My personal view on Shibani and the evening are recorded back at Desi Train.