Just the write time

After the success of 3 Idiots, he's said to be the highest paid screenwriter in Bollywood (reportedly charging Rs 1 crore per film). But it's a little tacky to ask Abhijat Joshi about the money he makes, especially in an age when the script needs to be the hero of the film and since the few films he's worked on have turned out to be super hits. So we prefer to ask him other things instead:



The making of an idiot
I'd taken a rickshaw at midnight on the very first day of the 3 Idiots release. While negotiating a tricky traffic jam, my rickshaw driver commented, "Life is a race." I felt like I had heard this line before and so I asked him where he'd heard that line and he replied that it was a dialogue from 3 Idiots, which he'd watched first day first show! I was struck by the impact the film had had on him. People are going over and over to see the film. It's fantastic.

Three is company
It's fantastic to work with creative geniuses like Rajkumar Hirani and Vinod Chopra. It's important to have colleagues who know how to enjoy a companionable silence, when to speak and when to call it a day. Over time I have realised that we share similar views on life, entertainment and art and that really helps. As for the films, it was sheer hell. Even in Lage Rahou2026u00a0u00a0 every scene was a battle. We struggled to make every scene look better than the earlier one. The same was for 3 Idiots. All our films have been hits. But that doesn't mean that everything we do will always work. Someday we are bound to fail. It would be disappointing but at least we will have done our best. By the way, my first film Kareeb totally bombed!

Thrilling experience
Vinod and I are working on a Hollywood thriller this time. Vinod is directing Broken Horses, a story that deals with a crime that happens in a border town between US and New Mexico. I want to try my hand at all kinds of stories provided it has a social context or a profound human story.

We are the bhais
Raju and I working on our next Munnabhai adventure. And yes, it's a little scary, the project's already worth Rs 200 crore, industry experts say. After a long time, the germ of the idea is finally ready. We're trying not to copy ourselves. Every film has its unique DNA. In Lage Raho, it was ulta karo (try the opposite of everything) but that doesn't work in 3 Idiots. All we need is to find the DNA of our next film.u00a0u00a0u00a0u00a0
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