Anurag Kashyap Interview part I

This is an abridged version of the interview, which Anurag Kashyap gave as a part of the London Indian Film Festival workshop.

Part I

Q :Your first coming was as a writer, long before you became a director and now producer. Satya (1998) was one of the first films that you wrote for Ram Gopal Varma and that brought the world’s attention to you as a writer. I believe he told you he wanted to bring Howard Roark to the underworld.

That was the brief. But the film went through a lot of organic process. The first draft of the script was chucked into the dustbin by Ramu. Then Saurabh Shukla and i went back and started again.

That was the time when people didn’t write scripts in Bollywood. Scripts were not written. Nobody actually had the time to read scripts. They used to write a single line. One line and the sight of scene. It was called a one-liner. For instance, Satya arrives in Bombay. Satya meets Bhiku Mhatre. And then create a scene for it. And so after the script was thrown in,we worked on it again. But Satya is a film with a lot of improvisations and impromptu dialogues.

Q: What is your process when you write a script?

I just write. That has always been the case since i was a kid. I used to just write .My writing process has been two days at a stretch, 3 days at a stretch. Come out when the script is over .If you can’t just fill 6 -7 pages just like that, then it’s difficult. For a lot of people, the most difficult part is writing the first page, the first line or dialogue. Any aspiring writer should get into the habit of writing first .Until you write 30-40 pages, you can’t write. They don’t write as they feel it’s not working .Write crap, but write. If you can’t do that, you can’t write. I used to write 100 pages a day.

Q: Before you did Satya and before you became a reckoned name, you had to do a lot of hack jobs for other directors. Sanjay Gupta gave you the paper by paper screenplay of Reservoir Dogs for you to work upon for Kaante .

I used to do that for money at that time, yes.

Q:Was that difficult for you to write those films?

They were far more difficult to write. Because they were written keeping an audience in mind. Everything was to be done with that in mind. They would put in a resort with all the facilities and you just write according the brief. They give you more money actually for not taking credit and the director taking credit for the script and story.

Q:There was the time before Satya also, which many people call your struggling years. But you call them something else isn’t?

Yeah, those were the formative years. The struggle is now. Everyday you are struggling to make a film. And you don’t want to just get carried away with what you are doing. It’s like you feel what you are doing is really important. But those early days were fun days. There was no responsibility. We lived under a water tank. I and Prashant Narayanan, and we used to peep into other people’s windows. And we used to write stories like that .We were kids, just 19-20.Everyday we used to manipulate the security guard standing outside the Centaur Hotel. We would get in , one guy would have a coffee , another would go use the toilet, and then we would get out of there without anybody having a clue what we guys we up to. Those were great times. Paanch actually came out of those times.

Q:Your debut feature film is Paanch, which was never released.

Paanch actually came out of a lot of anger. With Satya, it was my equivalent of going to a film school. I learnt everything there .The film was shot and then reshot. The second half was completely scrapped and reshot .It was a film in which the post-production was done simultaneously .So everything, editing, sound design, dubbing and background score had to be done together in a studio in Chennai. That process taught me a lot about film making .Coming up with all those ideas. What you chose to keep and what you reject, that is where you learn the most and after that experience, when it released and became a defining film of the last decade, we thought, we could do something. We were young and we could change the world. But then people involved with Satya changed. Everybody started crediting themselves for Satya. Everybody involved thought it was because of himself that the film is what it is. That is why the whole team broke up .The success of Satya killed the team. And i was really disheartened, disappointed with that. Then i started working on Water. And they didn't allow water to be made in Banaras in 1999.Then i started working on Mission Kashmir . But again the whole point of making the film was dropped and i walked out the film half–way as it was becoming something else. When you are doing a film that is political in nature and you are trying to say something, it’s sad to see the idealism go away.

So Paanch came out of that anger and discontent. I thought, this industry is star-based, so i will make a film that has none of the stars and an entirely new crew. The art director, the camera-person, the editor-my ex-wife. We all were new. All of us. We figured out everything while shooting the film. And when the film was banned, it made us even more angry.

Q:What is you experience from Paanch?

I don’t know..i mean whatever person/film-maker i am today is because of that film. I remember the initial test screening for Paanch and everybody was raving about the film. Boney Kapoor told ‘which penthouse you want ..from Andheri to Bandra..i will give it to you .But you have to do this film with Sanjay Kapoor and Sunil Shetty.’ And i was seriously considering it .Had Paanch released and i had done that film, i don’t know what kind of a film-maker i would be today. That time i was very naïve and innocent .I asked myself ‘why can’t i say what i want to say? What is so wrong with my film?’

Q:Why exactly was it banned?

Because at that time the censor board was such .One of the members was this hairy guy and he looked at me and i was this 24-25 year old guy with a carry bag with me .I think he was first of all upset that how could i be allowed to make a film. He just looked and said ‘what does cinema mean to you?’

I said it means many things to me. What does it mean to you? He replied ‘Cinema is healthy entertainment. Your film is neither healthy nor entertaining. Why would you make it?’

And then he gave me various reasons like Indians don’t masturbate. He gave strange reasons and then i got into a fight. It became an ego issue and it got banned. Today it can be released, but the producer of Paanch has many debts and he can’t release it until he can clear that .Lots of people have offered to buy out the film but he refuses to do so.