Anurag Kashyap will continue his campaign against the disclaimer on smoking in films even after the release of his latest venture. He believes that the disclaimer only obstructs the experience of the viewers and fails its purpose. The director-producer talks about the role of government in cinema, how controversies curb creativity and the box office number game, which he never was a part of. A tête-à-tête with team Viva

You have been waiting for a long time to release Ugly (releasing on December 26). Was your campaign against the disclaimer on smoking in films the only reason for this delayIJ

Yes, it is because of the court case. And the High Court did not give a decision they just deferred the case because there is a similar petition filed by Bhatt saab that is pending for a long time in the Supreme Court. As long as the petition is pending in the Supreme Court, the High Court cannot take a decision. So we will have to run the film with a disclaimer.

Why is this fight against the disclaimer so important to youIJ

It all started with this particular scene in Ugly where Ronit Roy is holding a cigarette. It is a very important scene and it makes a revelation essential to the plot. The character does not even light the cigarette in that scene. I was asked to put a disclaimer which I refused. The actor is not even smoking, in fact, we created a character of this man who struggles to quit smoking. I did not want to distract the audience with disclaimer. I agree that smoking is harmful to health. But my point is that when I am putting out a film which is made with a lot of integrity and thought, and if a disclaimer appears on screen, it is a distraction for the audience. It mocks my work. And those ads are not even creating any impact. I am yet to see a person who has given up smoking seeing those disclaimers. Rather, filmmakers can come together to make a short film to convey the message effectively. The Health Minister has not been giving us an audience. When this ruling was passed it was never discussed, it was just implemented on us. I believe that all that can be easily resolved. We need a lot of government in the movies but we have them in the way we don’t need. In countries like China and Korea cinema has grown because of government’s support. I have an invisible support from the industry on this. Aamir Khan and Kiran Rao have been very vocal about their support.

Recently Aamir Khan’s PK was criticised by a few for hurting religious sentiments. Do you think such controversies curb the creativity of filmmakersIJ

We grow up with the idea that anything that makes us uncomfortable should be curbed. Sometimes things change only when we feel uncomfortable. So this notion has to change. Censor Board is an autonomous body and it clears a film after seeing something, so why such controversiesIJ We do not make genuinely realistic movies that bring out issues and talk about them. As a country, we have stopped making such films because they are not encouraged. Filmmakers get so scared that they try to camouflage the issue. We need to have discussions and debates. Cinema can be a tool for cultural exchange but we face so many restrictions that we end up doing a variety show.

You said earlier that Ugly peel us layer by layer and go to the core of human sensibility…

It is a movie which deals a lot with what is wrong with our relationships, our patriarchal society and it does not really matter whether a man is successful or unsuccessful; the patriarchy is damaging. And how children are at the receiving end with the change in modern interpersonal relationships. I have seen similar reaction in every screening. Everybody comes out disturbed and the first thing they worry about is their children. They call their children and find out what they are doing and that was the kind of impact I wanted to create.  Ugly talks about urban alienation, failures and resentment that we hold within us.

You took it up immediately after completing Gangs of Wasseypur (GOW)IJ

The success of GOW gave me the liberty to do this film. It is not a subject matter that has been tried and tested. It has more reference points. So for the audience, which is used to a certain kind of cinema — even when it comes to suspense drama they are used to a pattern which comes with an Abbas Mustan or a Vikram Bhatt movie — this movie is in a different zone. After seeing the film, everybody has liked it. But before seeing the film it is difficult to visualise it for a non-imaginative mind. They get scared with a film like this. It attacks the most vulnerable point in life — parenthood. My feedback came from women, who find my movies hard to deal with; they have come out and appreciated it.

Is it a throwback to Black FridayIJ

This film is based in a zone of realism. After the success of Wasseypur, I asked the producers about the budget that they could give me and set me free — jo chahe banao. They gave me a budget of `4.5 crore and said within that do whatever you want to and I did not have to share my script with anyone. I told them I am making a suspense thriller about a child kidnapping and did not tell anyone more than that. I did not lie to them either. But within the budget I worked with actors and people who trusted me enough to not ask about the script. So nobody knew about it except for me and my cameraman. We had a ready script and we did not share it with anyone. For me this is like entirely an uncompromised film, a chance I have not received since Black Friday. I was a first time producer when I did Black Friday so I did not know the process. I got that chance by default and I did what I wanted to. Ugly gave me 100 per cent freedom.

How did you go about the castingIJ

I could not have made this film with stars. Moreover, the casting process was based on the characters. I wanted people who would understand the emotional physiology of the characters. That’s why we cast Tejaswini Kolhapure because she understands the consequences of making choices that go wrong, Rahul Bhatt because he understands failure. We cast Siddhant Kapoor because he understands how misguided youth can be. Siddhant plays Tejaswini’s brother and he is also her nephew in real life. It was therefore easy  to bring a sense of family between them.

Why haven’t you promotedUgly aggressivelyIJ

A film should work on the word of mouth. I completely believe in a film working Monday onwards, not fighting for the opening. People often tell me that I have such short promotion, I say ki jo meri primary audience hai woh utni hi hai, irrespective of whether you promote it for four months or two days. Right now we are all victims of promotion overdose. Promotional activities are dominating the content and that is a big problem. For Ugly we have minimised and concentrated promotion, only for two weeks. Film journalism has become a competition. Earlier only a few publications were doing gossips, then serious papers also started competing and suddenly it has become all-pervasive. In Mumbai, I don’t even feel like talking when I go out for promotion, barring a few journalists who are not gossip writers. In Delhi, you can still hold a conversation on films. In Mumbai, I am mostly asked questions like why you didn’t make this film with Shah Rukh Khan. What kind of a question is thatIJ For me everything has to begin with a script and not with the star. 

Would you say that the audience has evolved over the yearsIJ

It is the younger audience that is evolved and that is because with Internet, they are exposed to world cinema and they understand new paradigm shifts in cinema. They are embracing the change. The most difficult audience is the older audience. For them good cinema is limited to Satyajit Ray and Akira Kurosawa. They are like the older school teachers of film institutes who believe that if you can’t be a Ray you cannot be a filmmaker.

Some of these so-called experimental films tend to get a little misbalanced in their understanding. As a director what is your take on itIJ

A lot of things are governed by the profit margin and the Friday to Sunday business so the filmmakers try to put every powerful ingredient in the film. They are also governed by the desires of the stars. Every thing in this process is interconnected. The filmmakers pay the stars big amount as they get them the box office numbers. To get the star on board they have to include something in the film that he fancies. All these factors decide what film would be made. There are very few filmmakers who begin with a script that they want to make and then decide who would fit the role best. There are two kinds of filmmaking going on where only 10 to 15 per cent of the directors have the script. Both kind of filmmakers are co-existing, which is good, both are needed but anything that is being made should have little sense to it. This year all the big budget films had asinine scripts. Regular film going people who still treat a Friday film as a big social activity with the family have questioned the lunatic plots that are at play.

If the family crowd is not happy watching these potboilers, where are these multi-crore figures coming fromIJ

These crores are coming from anticipation and expectations. Five years ago, 3 Idiots made `202 crore when the ticket rate was `150 and it was released in 1,500 screens. Now movies are released in 4,000 screens and the ticket rates are between `400 to 600. The movies are still not making `202 crore, that means there is a decline. The film’s entire income is within the first weekend. The star is actually doing his job by pulling in the audience but the director is not doing his job to sustain the film Monday onwards. But the director is sometimes restricted by the star himself or the market. It is the market that is imploding. Filmmakers are killing themselves by constantly encouraging star-driven drama and exhibitors are encouraging the trend by giving a large number of screens only to movies with stars and not giving a chance to a content-based film.

Is Bombay Velvet ready for releaseIJ

Bombay Velvet is releasing in May. The shooting finished eight months ago. It is a regular process for my movies. We finished GOW in March and released it in next year June, we took 15 months for post production. We took another 10 months for Dev D and 11 months for Gulaal. Since Bombay Velvet is a big film all eyes are on us. logistically it was a very difficult film. I take long for post productions. Normally Bollywood takes two or three months for post production but I take long as finesse is also required for the movies because of which most of the technical awards in the last few years have been given to us.

How is it to work with Ranbir Kapoor in Bombay VelvetIJ

The advantage of the younger generation is that that they do not come with a baggage. Ranbir has no baggage, he is the one who went ahead and did films like Barfi! and Wake Up Sid. His choices are largely director-based or subject-based. And he has been encouraged by the success of his films. The younger generation is less insecure. If you look at Siddharth Malhotra, Varun Dhawan, Alia Bhatt or Anushka Sharma, they are all trying to experiment. They are all trying to push boundaries and want original stories — Varun Dhawan has just done Badlapur and Ranveer Singh did lootera. They all are playing with elements and doing a kind of cinema that makes sense to them. When they all came they all wanted to be like Ranbir and make choices like him. Before that they wanted to make choices like Aamir Khan. Ranbir is malleable and ductile and a director’s actor.

How do you deal with persistent questions on your personal lifeIJ

I have stopped talking about it. It took me a very long time because I am a straightforward person. What is the point of answering the questions because what people are looking for I won’t answer that and even if I would say it, they would not understand it. If I would say that the reason why my relationship with my ex-wife Kalki is such because there is a certain kind of understanding and maturity between us, our gossip magazines would not get that point. When Happy Ending released, Kalki was there and all the promotional headlines was her and me. Kalki is doing so much more, she is doing Margarita, with a Straw, which is such a bold choice, she is involved with so many causes and she is doing so many plays. There is much more to her than me. I have spoken to the senior journalists and put a blanket ban on some. When it went on for too long, Kalki, Huma and I wrote a statement together that stop dragging Huma into our relationship. We sent it to a leading Mumbai tabloid and they said that they can’t publish the statement as it would make them look false. I told them that if they didn’t publish it then I would give it out to every single paper and they were forced to publish the statement. It came out about how all of us in solidarity said that it has not happened and then one of the portals came out with the statement saying that modern Bollywood relationship have become so perverse that Anurag, Kalki and Huma are having a threesome. We were going through a separation and this was the level that paparazzi was getting down to. later they did apologise.

Are you unhappy with your TV experiment, YudhIJ

Yes. While making  and watching it in our editing room we liked it, when we watched it on television with the ads, we didn’t like it. The Indian TV survives because of the ads. The series was atmospheric but when an ad break came, there was a different rhythm to it, a different loudness to it that disturbed the experience of watching the series. Even if we were trying to build up a mood every five or 10 minutes it was getting broken. The other problem was that Mr Bachchan fans wanted to see him like they watch him on screen, larger than life. They were very upset to see him weak and sick. He was great in the show, though, his level of achievement was amazing and he was associative and not starry. The larger TV audience is rural and they did not buy it. The last episode where he suddenly becomes all powerful was shot after five episodes went on air. It was a defeat in a way but then there is a lot to learn from that. Why does anything succeed on TV abroadIJ Because there is a mindset to it, so we have to create that mindset. We have to take advertising out to make something atmospheric. Abroad people pay for the show if they like it. Yudh did make a beginning but this beginning is taking us back. Everything that will be followed will be loud and people will say that only those work. Most of the TV audience have been conditioned. But we have not given up, we are trying to figure out what to do. It is a gradual process.

What happened to your co-production with Karan JoharIJ

After Hasee Toh Phasee (HTP), we are next co-producing Shandaar. As a co-producer I look into the script, post production and casting. HTP made profits but the problem was that the nature of the film was in a certain zone, songs were in different zone and it all didn’t come together. We worked as three different creative minds and we wanted to retain our differences to bring out diversity. Karan and I have been collaborating since The lunchbox. When we were doing Bombay Talkies, we spent a lot of time together and understood each other. We realised that we are similar but at two ends of the spectrum. He also works round the clock, generates money so that he can produce different kind of films and I do the same. It is just that he comes from a film background, he is not aware of the life that I have seen. He also wants to break boundaries. He did Gippy but it didn’t work, but the script was very unlike him. He experimented with Ungly, even Agneepath was not his kind of film. So my kind of films are not his kind of films.

Now I have to editShandaar. I am also a co-writer with Vikram. Phantom has six films coming next year includingNH10, Hunter, Shandaar, Bombay Velvet, Ghoomketu. My job next year is to take care of other things while Vikas and Vikram are shooting. I will take time to read, travel and assimilate content.

Don’t you think we need to invest more in storywritingIJ

Some filmmakers are doing that. But there are not many directors who will touch regional literature as this is the industry that thinks in English, therefore they only fall for Chetan Bhagat. They only understand what is selling. Chetan Bhagat is easy to sell, they don’t want anything complex. Today actors don’t know how to read Devanagari, the dialogues are written in Roman. I write in Hindi but then it is typed in Roman. Regional literature will come from Vishal Bhardwaj, Sudhir Mishra and Dibakar Banerjee.

You have been promoting young talent a lot...

The younger lot is much better than us. They are making much more braver choices than us and are courageous. The young filmmakers are much more real and edgier, they are being all that we have not been and they are the biggest inspiration for us. I like to mentor people who I know are better than me. I learn from them. While I become an opportunity for them, they become teachers to me.

Do you think the soul of filmmaking is evaporatingIJ

I think there is both evaporation and condensation happening simultaneously. There is a new droplets forming whereas the older ones are evaporating. The water cycle continues.

photos Pankaj Kumar