Q:Your next film Black Friday too was dogged in controversy.
It was banned by the High court but then Supreme Court cleared it. It was banned for 2 ½ years.
Q:As a writer was it difficult to adapt a work of non-fiction as it is based on Mid-Day journalist S.Hussain Zaidi’s, book Black Friday ?
It wasn't difficult to adapt the book, what was difficult was to find the start point. It was initially meant to be a 6-part TV series. So i was actually writing it as different episodes. I had already written the pilot episode. And that’s when it was decided to turn it into a movie. The only thing was, how do you put it together, till we came upon the idea that let’s use the police procedural investigation into the bomb-blast case as the protagonist element in the film. That is how we get into the whole conspiracy .Once that was clear; the script was written in 2 days.
Q:And how difficult was it getting legal clearances to use actual names?
That was the reason why the film was banned and the High Court issued a stay order. We don’t have a tradition of making films based on real events. So when i was writing the film , Mid-Day ( also the publisher of the original book) was backing the film, it was producing .Mid-Day and the producer Arindam Mitra also got the clearance for the location for wherever i wanted to shoot, because i was very stubborn that i would shoot in the same places where the incidents actually happened. And Arindam and Mid-Day got the permission. The crew would all wear Mid-Day badges and we would pose as journalists and we would say we are shooting a documentary. That is how we discovered how to shoot in low budget and in guerrilla style. Also a lot had changed;we were shooting it 2003 and the events were of 1993 and between 1993 and 2003 a lot had changed. In 1993, we had only Maruti cars. By 2003 we had all these modern cars, mobile phones, pagers and satellite television come in. All the hoardings were different .So we just could not shot Bombay as it was in 93’ and it would have been really expensive to digitally alter the footage. And those were also the early days of SFX, it cost much more than it does today.
So we started shooting from rooftops and that became the style of the film. We used a lot of tele lens and shot from long range distances. We would have a lot of our people in the crowd, who would then monitor the frame .There are couple of sequences seen in which the film assistant on sets would bang into someone who took out a mobile phone. That was the only way to make the crowd look convincing. We were monitoring them without their notice. And for Mid-Day the whole producing experience was so traumatic, they haven’t produced ever since. It was very courageous of them what with the subsequent court cases; they spent a lot of money on it.
Q:Has this low-budget kind of become your style.
With time it has become like that somewhat. But it was between Paanch and Black Friday that i wrote Alwin Kalicharan and Anil Kapoor was supposed to be in it. But at the last moment , i don’t know why he backed out. He didn't get why the film was being made. It was kind of a science–fiction inspired by Sin City graphic novels. And we created this whole futuristic Delhi where pleasure was the whole business largely inspired by Red Harvest. Nobody understood the film and it was shelved in 2003. Then Black Friday started.
Q:So until then, it was a lot of bans, stay orders and shelved projects. There must a lot of frustration.
There was, there was. I had decided after Paanch that whatever happens i won’t stop working. Black Friday’s stay order came a day before the release. I had got my first suit stitched for the premiere. That's when Black Friday got stuck .And then i said let’s start another film. I took up Gulaal, a script i had written earlier. We started shooting for 4 days and then had to stop because the producer disappeared after that. I picked it up again and Jhamu Sughand, who also had produced Lagaan liked Black Friday and blindly trusted me and gave me the money to go shoot for Gulaal.
We started the shoot and then Jhamu ran out of money as 2 others films that he was banking on tanked. So he pulled the plug on us. But even after that, what mattered was i never stopped working.
Q:And then you made No Smoking next, your film with the most hostile reviews. Is it a very personal film for you?
It..became very personal .It was very organic. It became what it became. I didn't analyse it when i was writing it .It was a time when i was going through my separation and a whole lot of other things at the same time. It was the time i started blogging. I thought i had stumbled upon a place where i could just let out my anger. I didn't realise that it would become such a public space. And suddenly what i wrote came in the papers the next day and i didn't know what to do with that. So suddenly my private rantings became public. I was just discovering the internet and i would just get a bit drunk and type and i would let it all out. That was the time i found money to make No Smoking as Vishal Bhardwaj produced it. No Smoking was made during that time all these things seeped into the movie. And it became an extremely personal movie and stopped being what it was meant to be. And that is why it is also the film that i feel the closest to.
Q:So were you taken aback by the sheer critical hostility towards the movie?
Yeah..yeah i was..completely. You know it had become a joke while i was shooting the film that when this film comes out, we should put a camera on the screen to get the audience’s reaction. We would joke about it everyday, but when it actually came out; people didn’t react at all to the film. The audience reacted exactly the way we expected them to react. Though we never taped it, the film never ran enough days i guess!
Q:For this film it was the first time that actually approached a major Bollywood star. You approached Shah Rukh Khan and then John Abraham eventually did the film.
Yes and Shah Rukh wanted to do the film. He was one of persons who reacted positively to the film. He said i will do this film, but you have to wait. But i couldn’t wait. I was desperate. I had 2 banned and one half finished film. I came to anyone who listened to me. And John had just came back after finishing shooting for Water .And Deepa Mehta had said some nice things about me to him . So he believed me. And he came on board.
Q:That was the only time you felt the need to go a bonafide Bollywood star?
That was the only option and the only way my film would get made. I was told that upfront by Vishal Bhardwaj and Kumar Mangat, because people think i am jinxed. My films get stuck. The only way to get money for the film is to get a star. That was the only time i approached a star.
