Renuka Vyavahare (BOMBAY TIMES; April 5, 2018)

He swears by the Coen brothers, and just like the acclaimed Hollywood filmmakers, he too has a few quirks. There are two things that put him off — badly made chai and people mistaking his name for Abhinav. The man has acting in his genes; his parents Ramesh and Seema Deo are veteran Marathi and Hindi film actors. Yet, Abhinay was always fascinated by the art of storytelling. In an interesting conversation with BT over a cup of invigorating chai (just the way he likes it), the director talks about his forthcoming black comedy, Blackmail, starring Irrfan, and also tells us why Bollywood needs to take a leap and make more genre-bending cinema. Read on…

Your parents Ramesh and Seema Deo and brother Ajinkya, are actors. Were you never drawn to acting?
Yes, aai, baba and my brother are into acting, but how many members of the family should do the same thing? (laughs!) From the start, I was inclined towards directing as facing the camera never appealed to me. What matters to me is how I can tell a story differently. I wrote my first screenplay at the age of 14 and I did it hoping I could direct it. My writing was always directorially driven. I remember taking the script to my father. He told me, “First finish your studies and come to me when you are 21.” Education was always a priority at home, but it was never just about getting a degree or a job.

It was about knowing and exploring things beyond the surface. They never stopped us from doing what our heart wanted and that killed our desire to rebel. I am an architect first, then an ad filmmaker and then a filmmaker. My brother is a computer engineer. We are academically qualified, and only after we completed our studies we decided to enter the film industry. I guess it’s a very Maharashtrian way of life. I must have accompanied my father to a film set not more than 6-7 times. My parents weren’t really in favour of taking me along on the set.

Coming from a home where your parents were both renowned actors, did you interact with actors from those times?
The atmosphere at home was very simple. My parents weren’t as social or starry. They consciously kept us away from the limelight or filmy parties, but I have fond memories of dadamoni (Ashok Kumar sahab) coming over and having varan bhaat with tup (ghee) in our house. I was little but I also remember Rajesh Khanna visiting us and chatting with my father for long hours in the afternoon. He used to smoke cigarettes and I was very fascinated by his tin of cigarettes and the way he smoked them on our terrace. It was all very informal. Even if we met stars we never met them in the capacity of Bollywood actors. We met them as family. I don’t remember any fancy parties at home like the ones we see today.

Delhi Belly put you on the map. It set a benchmark for dark comedies in India but that genre largely continues to be untapped. Blackmail comes six years after Delhi Belly and it’s a dark comedy, too.
I love that genre. I have grown up with a quirky sense of humour myself and I am a huge fan of the Coen brothers. Their stories are inspired by true events, their characters are realistic and yet their films are so quirky. That is exactly the genre that Blackmail and Delhi Belly are set in too. You are laughing at someone else’s misfortune. Having said that I also love other genres like action, which is why I made the television series 24, Force 2 and Game. Conceptually, I don’t like to repeat the same thing again. I want to explore newer territories and keep coming back to what I love the most. With Blackmail, I feel like I am coming back to the genre I love the most.

Filmmakers who make comedies always stress on the fact that making people laugh is tough business. More so, when you are making a black comedy, it has to be intelligent and funny. Your films also have a good dose of toilet humour. It can be hilarious, but tricky too…
Yes, I enjoy the kind of toilet humour I use in my movies, but I am aware that the writing needs to be clever, not crude. It is a delicate genre. You need to handle it cleverly because if you cross the line then it becomes slapstick. The minute it becomes slapstick, it’s anybody’s game. To do it subtly is the challenge. Dark humour, particularly, is the most difficult to pull off. Slapstick is relatively easy to write or perform. To keep a straight face, do less but show more and make people laugh without doing much is challenging.

Blackmail seems like a zany take on infidelity...
The story is part real and part fiction. The premise is real, but of course, it’s a fictionalised tale of a straightforward middle-class guy, who discovers that his wife is sleeping with someone else. Think about the common man’s predicament. Can he beat up his wife’s lover or the wife? No. So he gets smart. He has an EMI problem so he decides to blackmail his wife’s lover and kill two birds with the same stone. It’s a quirky way of handling a very grim, realistic problem.

An actor like Irrfan must have added his own quirkiness to a story like this?
Irrfan was my first choice. I wanted somebody to look like an aam aadmi and who can act like he doesn’t have the balls to tackle his boss, his own wife or her lover. He is a zindagi se haara hua aadmi. The character needed someone who can deliver with the least amount of lines and expressions on what’s going on inside him, and there was no one better than Irrfan who could pull it off.

While working with Irrfan, did you have the slightest inkling of his illness?
No. Even he didn’t! Nobody knew. It’s so unfortunate. My heart goes out to him and his family. They are fighting this battle well. They are incredibly strong and amazing people. I am sure they will win this fight and will be back soon. I met Irrfan before he left for his treatment. I showed him the film and he loved it. What he has managed to do with the writing is spectacular.

If you had a chance to blackmail someone for a day, who would be that be and why?
I’d blackmail the Coen brothers so that they give me one of their scripts to direct! They can sue me after that but this is what I would love to do (laughs!). You keep thinking about their films long after you’ve watched them and they make you smile. Burn After Reading for instance, was insanely funny and an actor like Brad Pitt played a daft role. Matt Damon does so many crazy cameos too. He does an Ocean’s series and then a Bourne film, where he is the lead star. More Indian actors should be open to doing such stuff.

Do you think Indian actors have a long way to go before they give preference to great scripts over their screen time in a film?
Unfortunately yes. I would appeal to all the Bollywood actors that for every two commercial films you do, do one for yourself or for the craft or the story. What they don’t realise is that the so called ‘mass audience’ that we try and cater to is slowly converting. They want better ideas and better films. Imagine a film like Pad Man releasing 25 years ago. It would not even hit the theatres. Actors like Akshay Kumar and Aamir Khan take risks. Ajay Devgn is pushing the envelope as well. An actor is as good as the audience and an audience is as good as the actor. You can’t wait for the audience to get smarter and then do something different. You need to start the trend. If it wasn’t for genre bending films like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro and Dil Chahta Hai and, we would still be making the same kind of cinema today.

Have you ever thought about directing your parents?
My father is 90 and mother is 80, I really hope that one day I’ll be able to direct them and make a film on their love story. That’s been on my mind for a while.