Superstar Amitabh Bachchan’s irrefutable elegance and composure have placed him on the pedestal of filmdom for decades. Nevertheless, he shares with RINKU GHOSH how he is still as active in his schedules, nervous about sharing screen space with children and inquisitive about the modern tools of communication as a newcomer
Prepping to meet Mr Bachchan is an easy enough way to understand why he is a living legend. The publicist of his film calls you up repeatedly to ensure you do not show up late for he is a very punctual man who doesn’t like waiting or keep people waiting. Once you reach on time, you realise he has kept a 15-minute window, just to be on the safe side. He also asks me to keep it tight and not look for extra time for he is very precise.
So I wait with the customary tea outside the conference hall of JW Marriott and settle next to an animated man wondering whether the election will be “barobar” for Modiji and how he could have been a great surveyor because he is sharply observant of everything that concerns a voter, from traffic to society, economics to politics. He can process facts and people rather nimbly and is following the election updates on the giant lED in front of him. Deepak Sawant is not just Mr Bachchan’s make-up artiste of over 40 years; he’s a prolific Bhojpuri filmmaker who has himself grown in the entertainment business. He has glossed up Bachchan’s public image with the same deftness that he has managed his own shoot schedules in his after hours. He never leaves Bachchan’s side on his many outings while clearing his film’s rushes on his smartphone. “See how he looks,” he tells me, not so much seeking a verdict of his masterful strokes but emphasising how Bachchan is India’s most iconic and forever superstar. “You won’t find too many lines on his face; he is as calm as a picture. That’s because he doesn’t stress over small things or stretch his facial muscles in various expressions of anxiety like many actors today. When he is focussed on his job, he can go on and on,” he says.
Just when you picture Mr B’s unassailable grace and enigma in your mind, Sawant also gives you a reality check about his pragmatism. One that makes him porous to co-opting suggestions made by people close to him. Sawant, who advertised his own film by plastering BEST buses with its posters for a greater recall value, suggested Bachchan appear in TV programmes to promote his film apart from his press tours. “A print interview doesn’t have a shelf life. But when you appear on popular shows like Comedy Nights with Kapil, they are re-run and you can maximise the potential of a single outing. Everybody knows him but this is the way he is reaching out to families who will watch his films come Friday,” he tells us. Indeed. This is one of the rare promotion tours of Bachchan in recent times, frenetic and back-to-back. He’s matched the energy of much younger colleagues, yet held his own with a sharpness and discipline befitting his gravitas. He looks the part, not a hair out of place, engaging you with his deep set eyes, wearing a velvet jacket over that classic white shirt with a casual comfort only he can carry. He introduces us to child actor and co-star Parth, insisting we talk to the boy too who is getting lost in the publicity blitz around him. He turns the interview into a healthy conversation. And yes, we do overshoot our time limit. Here we share some of his thoughts:
You have taken to the new methods of publicity very well via social media platforms and blogs. You are very elaborate, thorough and disciplined about communicating with your fans and followers. How easy or difficult has this transformation beenIJ
We never had the opportunity to communicate with a lot of people earlier in real time. Thanks to social media, interactivity has become the norm with every artiste today. I have always felt that communicating is good but didn’t know how to go about it in my younger days. Once I started out online, I decided I should continue with it. There is a whole family, rather a community, that has contributed to my social presence. They keep waiting to read my blog. I make entries at 3:30 and 4 am as I feel I am incomplete without writing, without talking to them. I am not a writer, I just put together whatever comes to my mind. Nothing is pre-planned. There are no deep thoughts either.
It all started when somebody suggested I have a website. I didn’t know what that involved. So he explained how my fans had put up many websites in my name, documenting my life and career and so it would be nice if an original one came up. I asked him how long it would take and he said about six months. I said that was too long and couldn’t he think of something else that would help me connect directly to my audienceIJ So he suggested a blog. I wrote my first piece and got a response the next day. I wrote back to that respondent and the following day there were five more comments. Now I get about 500 responses every day. I have been writing ever since and it is 2,179 blogs at last count. I go straight to tumblr, write and take my own photographs. Then I resize them, digitise them and post them alongside my write-ups. Thanks to technology, it is good fun and simple. Then I came to know that there was something called Twitter which lent itself to random thoughts in the short format, and so I joined it. I have completed 1,442 days on Twitter and 543 days on Facebook. The entire following on Twitter is about 32 million. I cannot sleep without writing every day.
You seem to be enjoying yourself on such platforms...
It is wonderful to hear from people in the outside world and enrich yourself. They are all intelligent and many of them are such fantastic writers. They have amazing perceptions about who you are, what you did, what your films are about, what it should be, the state of the nation and so on. They are so eloquent that many a time I copy-paste their thoughts and put it on my social networking pages. It is such a joy to be able to interact with them and debate issues. I do not moderate my medium. So yes, there is also criticism and abuse but I think one must be prepared for it on a social medium. It has to be free-flowing.
let’s talk about your latest film, Bhoothnath Returns, where a ghost is a candidate for the elections. Since it has been released right in the middle of the lok Sabha elections, do you think it is a metaphor for honesty in politics being almost an other-wordly conceptIJ
That is an interesting perspective though I have never looked at it this way. Now that you have mentioned it, may be I should think about it. In the film, the character of the ghost gets into politics quite by default. In the first version, he goes away because he gets mukti but the second one begins with his situation in the other world. This is almost a parallel universe with people, offices, systems and organisations much like ours. But the ghost is a butt of ridicule. His peers make fun of him. He approaches the CEO of the ghost world and asks why he is being singled out as a pariah. He replies, “Aapne bhooton ki naak katwa di, aap ek bachche ko bhi dara nahi paaye. (you have humiliated our kind, you couldn’t even scare a kid.)” So he is sent back to the queue for rebirth. There are thousands of ghosts waiting for their token of reincarnation and Bhoothnath finds himself in for a long wait. Finally when his turn does come, he is told, “We won’t send you as a human being, we will send you as a ghost.”
So he enters the world again to scare children and live up to his reputation of exercising unseen power. But one of the kids is able to see Bhootnath who panics. “Oh gosh! Not again, my efforts will go waste as he can see me and I will be taunted again in parlok,” he fears. But he empathises with this boy from Dharavi, one of the largest slums in Asia, and develops a friendship. He watches his condition, the issues he is going through in his life and decides to help him out with his extra-terrestrial powers. Then there is the interaction with the politician who represents that region and Bhoothnath decides to plunge into the whole business of elections to end the tyranny of the corrupt. So I think there is a relevance to the extent that the power to change lies with exercising your franchise. The ghost is a friendly poke, a voice in your head who is just reminding you that if you want things to improve or change, then you must go out and vote, not be idle about using your right.
There are various movements in the socio-political space today trying earnestly to change the nation’s destiny. You yourself have been part of many films on popular movements like Aarakshan and Satyagraha. Do you have faith in these movementsIJ
Any force that works towards improving society must be welcomed. And that collective force has to come from the people of the nation. During the Nirbhaya protests, so many people came out in huge numbers in this very city, unprovoked, without any kind of political idea or without any backing or provocation from any political party. The youth just came out on the streets and forced the system to change the laws and rules. And they had to change that, sit up and take notice. It is not just happening here. You find these happenings in other parts of the world, be it Egypt, Brazil or the Arab world. I think people themselves are beginning to realise that they have had enough and are determined to challenge the status quo.
You had a bad experience with politics...
I would not say it was a bad experience. I was not qualified.
Would you say that today’s atmosphere is far more conducive to the way you envisioned politicsIJ Would you rejoin at some stageIJ
I am not involved in it and never will. I admire people who are in politics. Many of my colleagues from the film industry have forayed into public life and have done so well. I admire them and I hope they continue to do the good work. But I really don’t know this job and I have accepted it as my failure. I do not intend to go back to it again.
How is it to be working with children as co-stars in your films and ad campaignsIJ
Children have always pushed me out of my comfort zone. My co-actor in Bhoothnath Returns Parth Bhalerao is from Pune and has worked in Marathi cinema. He is an interesting artiste, completely uninhibited, very talented, instinctive, confident and very easy-going. I was actually afraid of working with him. I did not know what he would speak, when and how. I could not sleep in the night thinking about it. Kids are so unpredictable. They do not come with any set design but they are very diligent. And then they do things that can completely catch you off guard. You always have to be cautious, be on your toes.
Parth, my champion, has been a joy to work with. He has had no training and yet he is so committed to his art that he is skipping his exams for this promotion tour and will take them during his vacations. Creative challenges are there for any actor. If they weren’t there, they would not find any joy in acting. But when you have kids around you, especially like Parth, you enjoy the process. The joy that I had while working with him is visible on the screen as well, and that was the idea. My character is a friendly ghost, he is not out there to destroy somebody. He becomes aggressive when things are not right and the boy instigates him. So he is the pivot around which Bhootnath revolves and I had to calibrate my responses to him.
By now you have played a wide spectrum of characters. Do you put in as much preparation for your new role as you did on day oneIJ
Of course and why should there be a differenceIJ Each day brings a new challenge and I hope that I am challenged every day. Afresh. If that newness didn’t happen, it would be the worst day for a creative person. The moment you say that you are satisfied, you are no longer an artiste. I am forever hungry to chase perfection and be a better actor.
Given your deep involvement with each of your roles, why haven’t you ever thought of going behind the cameraIJ
I don’t know direction. It is true I interact with my directors deeply for each of my characters and have been exposed to their views but still I don’t have an idea on why a particular director uses a particular lens, sets up the camera at a particular angle, puts in a scene or cuts it, weaves in a background score and manages such a balance of techniques. I am just happy following what the director wants from me.
Even today would you call yourself a director’s actorIJ
I want it to be so and that is how it is supposed to be in the profession. We actors have enough time to discuss our roles before the film goes on the floor. I need not necessarily give my inputs. There’s a chance that we may exchange ideas but all this is prior to going in front of the camera. Once in front of the camera, there should be no further arguments. In some very extreme cases, I do share inputs. If the director agrees, it’s OK. Else I simply follow him. He has the vision and my job as an actor is to translate it onscreen. Most of the time I do not give suggestions because whatever I suggest is all rubbish.
This film is in the horror comedy genre. These fun movies are made few and far between in India. But now our mainstream Hindi film industry has co-opted a different kind of filmmaking, be it subject-wise or technique-wise. Do you at any point of time feel that the emphasis on craft has overtaken the soul of filmmaking todayIJ
There are several points to consider here. Every decade, time changes as do human beings. We might not notice it but there are changes, be it physically, mentally or psychologically. That’s what happens with life, society and our country of which cinema is a reflection. And because we make films for the people, its grammar has to change. So I would say that if you feel that there are different kinds of cinema, be it in craft, quality or quantity, a large amount of that responsibility goes to that evolving audience. If a certain kind of filmmaking is out of sync with people’s sensibilities, it doesn’t mean makers have forgotten it. It’s just that people have rejected it and once a film is rejected, nobody attempts it again because there are finances and other logistics involved. Therefore, observers say that stories and methods are changing.
As far as the soul of a film is concerned, it is not missing at all. It’s just that it is interpreted differently by successive generations. There will be an older generation which will always be comfortable with its idea and berate the contemporary saying “what is thisIJ” Writers Salim-Javed once said that the messiah-like hero was a societal reaction to people upset about no action being taken against an unjust system. Then we moved further down and the need for that deliverer hero died out. People thought enough of this avenging seriousness now, we should have happiness and joy. So, feel-good cinema became a rage. Society itself has been dictating changes and reinterpreting films.
There are wonderful stories even now. There are films being made without a big budget but with a good story content and they are succeeding. These stories existed in the past too. They were nomenclatured as art cinema but they were equally good. Perhaps, society at that time as a whole was not receptive to this kind of cinema. But it existed all the same. The industry made more entertainers because the alternative didn’t work commercially. It doesn’t mean that it didn’t exist or directors were not capable of making them.
I think part of the obsession with technique has happened with the evolution of IT. Everything has become very rapid. I can sit here and control everything. Earlier, communication was such a long process; it would take days and weeks. Now it takes a couple of seconds to reach out to the world. My voice recording can be played instantly. Everything happening in the other part of world is now known to you. If I am going to make something which has a time period attached to it, it may not be accepted.
Technically, if you go back to watching Dilip Kumar’s Devdas, follow it up with Shah Rukh’s version and count the number of editing cuts, you will find they are much faster and greater in SRK’s film because there is a recognition of and need for speed. You look at the younger generation, they speak so fast. We would take five sentences to sum up our emotions and they would wrap them up with “That’s cool.” It’s not that they lack communication skills or are any less on emotion. They just happen to be crisp and you do get what they are trying to say. It’s the speed of conversation and communication that dictates their style and attitude. Even TV doesn’t remain with one visual for more than a couple of seconds. Attention is getting short-lived. In such a scenario, keeping viewers engrossed for a couple of hours is a challenge. For one line of a song, you need 20 shots. When we talk fast, the soul may seemingly appear to be lost. But it isn’t, only its expression has changed.
Talking of television, you are now venturing into fiction with a daily show. How will you mould yourself to such a rigorous format and change the mundane, regressive formula of mass entertainmentIJ
We need to change the way we look at television fiction and this is one area that I just had to explore, having already broken format in non-fiction. I wanted to do something which was more finite and, therefore, let us experiment a little and expand the scope of viewership.
let me clarify that we are not denouncing the soap operas. I think saas-bahu sagas have their own importance and if the women of the household are hooked on to them in between their many activities, so be it. let’s not disregard their relevance in social messaging. You may argue that their TRPs, based on some 2,000 data boxes, are not a true measure of appreciation but neither can you disregard them as being indicative of boredom. The number of boxes cannot control the attitude of business but they do guide the business. I see television becoming like cinema, an all-encompassing variety.
Good cinema needs to be made alongside popular and escapist ones, the thrillers and grossers like Dhoom 3. There is a clientele for SRK’s films, Salman’s films and also appreciation and commercial acknowledgment for films like Queen, Bhaag Milkha Bhaag and Gangs of Wasseypur. This variety has led to an enormous explosion of talent and ideas. I am particularly happy with the way women have re-established their primacy in popular cinema, be it Kangana Ranaut in Queen or Vidya Balan in Kahaani. There is an audience for women-centric stories and so many women directors are now ruling the box office. So it’s a world of enormous possibilities.
As an artist, what’s the final frontier that you are chasingIJ
I don’t know. If someone tells me that this is where I need to go, I would be very happy to do that. I am just moving on.
There was a time during the 70s and 80s when you were described as a “one-man industry.” Now you are a “multi-character” industry. How do you fit yourself into various genres and keep reinventing yourselfIJ
It’s not reinvention, it’s just doing different jobs (laughs). It’s nice to be associated with different films, TV and to be doing KBC. It’s like looking at new jobs and opportunities. If I succeed, you call it reinvention.
As one of the first movers in the industry to have set up an entertainment and media company (ABCl) as an extension of your brand identity, are you looking into AB Corp on a day-to-day basisIJ
AB Corp is now reduced in its activities. We still do everything but it’s more like we share our ideas, co-produce and outsource some projects. I don’t know how to revive it on a grand scale and I am not capable of managing it, so why get into itIJ My job is of an actor and I am content executing it.