By all accounts, Anurag Kashyap comes across as a practical man. He knows the constructs of the industry he works in, having been a part of it long enough to see the highs and lows, and hard enough – as an outsider and now a perceived insider.
He says it like it is and ahead of his due-for-release film, he sounds no different.
Ugly is releasing a week after PK . Any fears?
Why should there be insecurities? It’s a very well thought through thing. The primary reason, when we were trying to release Ugly was: Why should we spend more money on planning and analysis than we have spent on the film? It doesn’t make any sense. The industry is not going to change; everybody thinks that there is a certain way in which every film should be promoted. Secondly, why should we promote the film in a wrong way you know, just by using songs, or promising the wrong things. Also, during our discussion, we realised that you decide you want to watch a film by its first promotion, its first trailer, its first look. We do a lot of promotion to get people’s interest in it. Ugly is not a big star cast film, the only promotion is going to be for its content. The content of the film is such that till people don’t see it, there won’t be any word-of-mouth. So we just focussed on making people watch the trailer, see the poster and get intrigued. PK is a 6000-screen release, we are a 400-screen release. We just need four to six shows, they’ll have some 15 shows in every theatre. PK is like a big fish in the sea, all the small fishes cling on to it. We are the small fish.
How did the idea for Ugly germinate?
I’d started writing a story about kidnapping quite a while back but the head of STF in Lucknow, Amit Pathak, he helped me a lot with the actual cases and that helped with the script.
Did you have a specific star-cast in mind while writing the film?
Not the rest, but Rahul Bhat definitely was in mind…
Which is surprising given that he has been off the grid for quite some time…
He has been off the radar for a long time but he was in my head. In my struggling days, I used to see him often. I have seen his rise through Heena and then doing films and then disappearing, then he became a producer. So he was definitely in my mind.
Some call you a pioneer, some call you a sell-out because now you have ventured into commercial cinema. You were quoted saying, “I am not an NGO for indies.” So how do you tackle that kind of criticism?
I am indifferent to it. It is the nature of things. I did not want to start a movement. I wasn’t fighting for everybody’s cinema, I was fighting for my cinema. People turned that fight into everybody’s fight. Then I was made into a poster-boy, I never asked for it. People put you up, then they pull you down. Every poster-boy becomes a dartboard. One thing I take pride in is that I pick up good films. I picked up The Lunchbox. A lot of people make films for God knows what reason! Take responsibility, bring returns. Now anybody can make an independent film, but every film isn’t good. Zaroori nahi hai ki indie hai toh achhi hai. A film that makes sense to me will be supported by me. Many of my films get delayed because we don’t ask for a percentage of the money it makes. Yeh baat sabko pata hai ki ye aadmi free mein karta hai. But main yahi sab karta rahunga toh main kya karunga? I have suffered so much because of this, so much of my time gets consumed in getting a film released, that at one point I used to think ki main hi karta rahunga ye sab ya koi aur bhi karega?
But in Hindi commercial cinema, content isn’t king. Some films making profits are low on quality content…
If it is a Salman Khan, Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Ajay Devgn or Hrithik Roshan film, people will go and watch it. In that case, the responsibility lies with the producer-director. A Rajkumar Hirani film will run successfully from the start till the end, because content is good. Aamir’s star aura is not as much as Shah Rukh and Salman, but he makes sure that the content is good, so his films run more. If a producer and director take responsibility for the content then the film will make no less than `300-400 crore. But that never happens; they take it for granted ki stars hain toh log aayenge film dekhne. Now look at Queen’s opening. When it opened it made `6 crore but over time, it made 10 times the opening business. With other films, the weekend is `100 crore but by the end it hasn’t touched 200. Ugly won’t have a big opening and I know it. We’ll come after PK on December 26 so the first week of release will be our promotion week. After that the word-of-mouth will pick up and then the second week will be our actual release week. That’s how I’ve thought of it, but let’s see what happens.
You fought a long battle with the Censor Board over the ‘Smoking is injurious to health’ disclaimer in Ugly…
The case was deferred by High Court because a similar case is pending in Supreme Court.
In retrospect, do you think that you wasted your time fighting?
Definitely, time waste hua. We would have released the film earlier had we known that the issue would be stretched for so long and this would be the end of it. I wished they told us earlier about the SC case, we would have released Ugly earlier. I’ve decided to forget it because kisi ke paise lage hain aur ispe interest padh raha hai. So, better to release it now.
Do you think that the Censor Board is too touchy?
See, the Censor Board is not an autonomous body. It’s not the Board that is touchy, it is the people who are leading the Censors who are scared of controversies because they are scared of the Ministry. The bureaucrat sitting in the ministry is like ‘Boss, I am not going to the court and be answerable for something.’ And we have this old dinosaur sitting in the ministry. Till the time the Censor Board is not autonomous, things won’t change.
How do you plan on taking on the deep-seated hypocrisy?
We have to fight it. We have to call a spade a spade.
Do you get support from within the film fraternity?
There are people who actually pat your back and say, ‘Let’s do it’ but they don’t come together.
They don’t?
Coming together means vocally addressing an issue together, not lending support silently off-record.
But why is it so? If an issue like the ‘Smoking is injurious to heath’ message gets resolved, it will benefit everybody right?
Nobody cares. Someone who doesn’t care about his cinema wouldn’t care how many disclaimers are put on screen. If you really care about your film, if you really love what you do, then you will not allow anything to be put on that screen. The fact that they don’t come together and they allow for so many disclaimers on the screen shows how much they love their films.
About your next release Bombay Velvet, rumours have been doing rounds that Ranbir Kapoor is not happy with the film…
All these rumours have started from one trade magazine, Box Office India. That trade magazine co-produced a film with Fox Star Studios and unki aapas mein ladai chal rahi hai. It doesn’t matter what the rumour is.
When are you releasing the first look of Bombay Velvet?
That is not in my hands. That is for the studio to decide. I can tell you Ranbir loves the film, everybody loves the film; you ask them and they will tell you the same thing. There is a hell lot of excitement around the film and we cannot reveal what we are planning, we aren’t at liberty to say.
Reports suggested that you were playing the lead in a Sudhir Mishra film?
Ye news jahaan se aayi hai unhi se poochiye! I shot for Sudhir Mishra’s Aur Devdas precisely for one day; it is the film that he is shooting at the moment.
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