Anurag Kashyap talks about his fight with KJo, meeting with SRK

The first time ever that filmmaker Imtiaz Ali saw what a portfolio looked like mdash an album with photos of a person in multiple looks and poses mdash was that of an actor called Anurag Kashyap Back then Ali was in college in Delhi helping out a local TV serial crew when Kashyap approached him with his portfolioIt was 1992 Imtiaz was in Delhis Hindu College I had just discovered theatre and was told that you need to get pictures clicked if you want work I did after collecting Rs 3000 which was a big sum then And I started doing a lot of acting on stage and I did some films the candid Kashyap recallsEver since Ali told me about that portfolio in jest during an interview Ive been meaning to ask Kashyap about it Besides he is before me on the screen mdash this conversation being held over a videoconferencing app And the last time I saw him on screen was as an actor in the recent cutesy Zee5 release Ghoomketu where he played a cop Kashyap shuts his eyes with his palm feigning embarrassment at the mentionWatch the entire video hereAlso what Imtiaz did not tell you was one of the first films that I did as the leadactor he was my costar The only copy of the film is with Zee where it had premiered on January 26 1994 We dont talk about it Imtiaz will kill me If you ever pull out a copy from the Zee library he will come after you tooThe good thing about being a bad actor is you know how to extract great performances Kashyap tells me later Which in his case Im told notoriously involves hardly ever saying action or cut on set Often no lines for actors to mug up let alone extensive rehearsals before shoot Its a process only the best can surviveAli of course played the 93 Bombay bomb blast accused Yakub Memon in Kashyaps first release Black Friday 2007 He played a bigger role in his life if you consider that Kashyap used to shack up at Alis place while the latter was doing a postgrad course at Mumbais Xavier Institute of Communications XICThis is also how Kashyap first met his key associate Vikramaditya Motwane with whom he later founded the production company Phantom where they did a string of films together Kashyap also produced Motwanes directorial debut Udaan 2010 Likewise Motwane was the showrunner for the Netflix global series Sacred Games 2018 which Kashyap directed both seasons ofHe reminisces I couldnt get into XIC and was living in Imtiazs room Aarti Bajaj my first wife and permanent editor for both mine and Imtiazs films was a year junior Vikramaditya Motwane was Aartis classmate Thats how we knew each otherBut we really became friends during the shoot of Deepa Mehtas Water Vikram was an assistant and I was writing dialogues The shoot got stalled due to protests and we spent a lot of time in Banaras Thereafter I kept meeting him because he was first assistant director AD to Vishal Bhardwaj in his first film called Barf before Maqbool mdash that never got madeIn fact if it wasnt for spotting Motwane mdash somewhere in the back in a baseball hat mdash in a picture from the mahurat shot of Kashyaps directorial debut Paanch that he had posted on Twitter I wouldnt have known that the two went that far back together No it wasnt the films anniversary being celebrated on socialmedia Cant be That movie never releasedKashyap says Yeah that was sometime around 2000 Vikram was one of the sound designers on Paanch And because I was scared of shooting songs and he had been Sanjay Leela Bhansalis assistant I asked him to direct the songs He had two credits in the film mdash sound designer and director of songs It was a first for many people mdashBoscoCaesar as choreographer Natty Natarajan Subramanian as cameraman Wasiq Khan as art director Aarti Bajaj as editor Abbas Tyrewala was the lyricist in the film and Vishal Bhardwaj did the music Both of them Vikram I and others used to hang out together Then there was Sriram Raghavan Shivam Nair and a whole lot of others mdash part of another gang Even Tigmanshu Dhulia Irrfan and others were all close to my brother Abhinav That was the third gang I was the centrepoint everywhere And then I had another friends circle with Anand Surapur who directed Fakir Of Venice Farhan Akhtars acting debut Zoya Akhtar and the lot When I wrote a script I had way too many boards to bounce off And thats what we didI was a huge fan of Sriram Raghavans Raman Raghav a docudrama on a serial killer that Kashyap remade in 2016 And I used to write with Shiva Nair They gave me credit on their script Ranga Billa although I was happy to work without credit Likewise I rewrote a script of Shiv Subramaniam Auto Narayan because I had a take on it But they also gave me credit Then a strange thing happened with a script I wrote officially for the first time called Nagarajan mdash with Kamal Swaroop Om Darbadar as director For that film I found an actor I was a fan of from Delhi stage called Manoj Bajpayee I put the film together But it never happened Nobody was showing faith in Manoj He was going through a hard time and doing Ram Gopal Varmas Daud which is when Ramuji said he wanted to make a film Satya with Manoj And asked if he knew of a writer for it Without having seen any of my written works Manoj took me to Ram Gopal VarmaThe rest as they say mdash if you casually scroll up the gangscast of characters again mdash is history Of postmillennial part indie part commercial wholly entertaining Hindi cinema Charge of the bright brigade if you will The new subversive Bollywood arguably It helps that Kashyap was not just at the centre of several spokes and that he continues to beThe Hitlist editor connects over a video callBut that hes also a liberal raconteur Oh one of my favourite stories is about Mahesh Bhatt He happened to me right before Ram Gopal Varma He got me to write films And Mukesh Bhatt his brother and producer was very miserly with money I was struggling for rent Pooja Bhatt was the nicest and kindest I would tell her to talk to her dadThen I just walked up to Mahesh Bhatt saab once and said that Id rather be a carpenter than work in his office With his brother Mukesh around he didnt say a word When I was leaving he came down said Dont ever change And he put Rs 10000 in my hand That was big money in 19941995Years later at a postscreening event in a filmfestival abroad Kashyap was narrating the first part of the story above He heard a voice from the audience Aur Mahesh Bhatt ne paise diye the Woh bhool gaye Bhatt saab was sitting in the crowd I got so emotional I have had funny incidents like theseI remember the media maven Amit Khanna trying to hold me back to work on TV serials where there was so much money Naseeruddin Shah also cast me in a play Androcles and the Lion I walked out of everything to do Varmas Satya It was instinctive I had to write that filmMy favourite Kashyap story is about a prominent 90s filmcritic who was chatting with Ram Gopal Varma on the sets of Shool Gazing at a young Kashyap who had written the film and mainly to haze him he asked Varma if his bratty assistant even knew what the word shool meant Kashyap stuck out his three fingers Thats trishool Staring at him still he left his middlefinger pointed up And this is shoolHe repeats the punchlinemove laughs continues There was a time when Mukul Anand was making Trimurti 1995 I wanted to work with him as an assistant I would call his house landline Every call was a rupee gone And he was always busy Third time I said Subhash Ghai bol raha hoon Unko bolna kal se set pe aane ki zarurat nahin hai This is producer Subhash Ghai tell him not to show up on the sets from tomorrow and hung up Now when somebody trolls me on social media I just remember my timeThere is then the moment he randomly landed up at Shah Rukh Khans bungalow Mannat he mistakenly calls it Jannat on Bandstand I was hungry and I walked into his house using our college connection both went to Hansraj in Delhi I remember him feeding me He only knew how to make omeletteScreenshot of Anurag Kashyap during the callAnd then there are the more famous spats with those clicheacuted kickers Anurag Kashyap ko gussa kyun aata hai Karan Johar gave an interview calling me a psychopath Till then we had not met I called him a fat kid who still thinks he is in school Remember we had this fight in midday I also said something about Anil Kapoor in the interview that became a headline But people always knew I was childlikeOf course much about public exchanges have changed since the late 2000s where the audience is now equally a participant mdash altering and shaping opinions on public figures based on beliefs rather than any firsthand knowledge Despite lack of the latter one opinion is as good as the otherKashyap vividly remembers I bought my first laptop and discovered the Internet Whats the first thing you do then Google yourself I landed on a page where people were talking about me and my films with incorrect information I was also going through a phase when everybody was saying things that I am not I told them this is not true These people were like who told you I said I am Anurag Kashyap They said why dont you start talking I said fine Ill talk assuming 20 people will readThat website was called Passion for Cinema PFC If youll excuse the exaggeration it was BombayVersovas very own Cahiers du Cinema with diverseoffstream voices expressing themselves as criticsbloggers before filmmakersKashyap cites Chaitanya Tamhane Court Anand Gandhi Ship of Theseus Dibakar Banerjee even before his first moviehellip There was composer Sneha Khanwalkar Kartik Krishnan who runs Filter Copyhellip So many names Vasan Bala Mard Ko Dard Nahin Hota and Neeraj Ghaywan Masaan quit their jobs Suddenly many of these people started working with me We were raising money My officespace became a kind of dharamshala People stayed and lived there mdash all we could provide was foodThis alternate ecosystem might be Kashyaps far more dramatic contribution to films than merely his movies alone Hes perhaps a film buffactivist first And this has always been the case Hes gone to the extent of rescuing actor Rajpal Yadav from Andheri railway station since he was returning to his hometown having given up Thats when Kashyap says he first met the nondescript Nawazuddin Siddiqui standing next to YadavAt a datapractical level consider the ensemble cast of Gangs of Wasseypur GoW 2012 which looks now like the first batch of national school of leadactors for films and webseries mdash besides Nawaz Manoj Bajpayee Rajkummar Rao Pankaj Tripathi Richa Chadha Huma Qureshi even Jaideep Ahlawat who killed it in the deathly dark Paatal Lok Or why not Vicky Kaushal since he assisted Kashyap in GoWAlso over years hes allowed unfettered access to younguntestedfresh writingdirecting talents having actively produced their films lent his nameheft for no benefit to himself or generally egged on peers and past associates alike Who am I Someone like Martin Scorsese still makes time for that Kashyap reasons Speaking of which and exploring the filmbuff side still mdash in a very PFC fanboy sort of way mdash Kashyap equally lights up when you ask about his AliceAnurag In Wonderland moments meeting his own greatsLike Scorsese for instance who after having watched GoW invited him to be on the jury of the Marrakech film festival Before Scorsese walked in Kashyap was smoking outside with the Oscar winning Italian director Paulo Sorrentino without knowing it was Sorrentino Both were nervously puffing awayWhen Scorsese sat down on his table mdash me GermanTurkish stardirector Fatih Akin French sensation Marion Cotillard Italian star Golshifteh FarahanihellipWe were all equals looking up to him We were also there because of himOr this other time Kashyap was in the same room as Francis Ford Coppola Sophia Coppola his daughter was with him He is old I kept staring at him for so long that he made me sit on his lap and said now talk to meThese are of course perks of having your works travel among audiencesaesthetes abroad as Kashyaps both as producer and director have especially at the movie Mecca Cannes Plus a global streaming giant like Netflix helps reach around 200 countries simultaneouslySince Netflix began commissioning Indian content only threefour years ago Kashyap has already directed two shorts in the selfexplanatory Lust Stories Ghost Stories directedproduced two seasons of a show the underworld saga Sacred Games produced a zombie miniseries Ghoul and directed a feature ChokedWhile the Netflix model evidently allows him to go out of the box office as it were there is also the mainstream audience that cant be altogether alienated I know at least one friend who did not understand Kashyaps short film in Ghost Stories at all While the others were gently scratching their heads it went totally over hers It was the same look on theatrical audiences with Kashyaps No Smoking 2007 Where does he stand on the art for selfexpression versus art for masscommunication debateScreenshots of Kashyap during the callNo film is ever made with the intention of people not getting it I just dont like to overexplain So I try to leave hints here and there With Ghost Stories I thought absolutely everybody will get it The idea behind that was of a woman dealing with her own trauma Then Zoya Akhtar pointed out that I could have confused people by putting the kid in there No Smoking taught me how not to make Choked Both are magic realismChoked is about kitchen and bathroom plumbing choking with moneycash Its also the first Indian filmic commentary on the 2016 demonetisation Screenshots of related scenes from the film are already doing the rounds as memes on the Internet Which is the default popculture response to most of Kashyaps filmsFor instance the tagline Emotional Atyachar in DevD 2009 Where does that come from There was a line in the song Pardesi that went Ikke ho gaye agge yaar Sounded like atyachar to me which is what I kept humming when emotional hit my head at night so I called composer Amit Trivedi to write it down The brass band elements came from Kamal Swaroops Om Darbadar and Emir Kasturicas The Underground I told Amit and lyricist Amitabh Bhattacharya Band ko record karna hai Emotional atyachar gaana hai Baaki you guys figure outWhat about the runningchase sequence in Black Friday 2007 There were too many arrests to be shown in Black Friday so we just compressed them with a chase where we could see the world these characters blastaccused came from How about Tumse naa ho payega from GoW That was all in Tigmanshu Dhulias delivery And what abouthellip Okay this could leap across pages Will stop now Deserves a seriesCatch up on all the latest entertainment news and gossip here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps MidDay is now on Telegram Click here to join our channel middayinfomedialtd and stay updated with the latest news