Nayandeep Rakshit (DNA; September 3, 2018)

Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK, have already directed five Bollywood films and have now ventured into film production with Rajkummar Rao-Shraddha Kapoor starrer Stree. The director duo, known for their quirky comedies, continue their foray with this genre. We caught up with Raj, who spoke to us at length about his debut production venture that releases tomorrow and discussed how comedy films in Bollywood have evolved with the times. Over to him.

Did you always want to make quirky comedies?
It was never a conscious choice. We started off like that because I always thought things are funny in life. When you look at anything, you can make it dramatic and you can make it funny too. My favourite example is heartbreak — when someone experiences it, we can show it in a serious way with a lot of pain and agony, and we can treat in a humorous way, too. Quirky is the kind of humour I like. It’s just not the standard humour we are used to. Human beings around us are quirky so it’s a matter of just picking those characteristics up.

Do you feel there’s a dearth of comedies in Bollywood?
Percentage-wise, there are fewer comedies in India. Because we are more used to making movies that have everything — there’s comedy, bit of melodrama, action and everything else. We come from a certain history of films and the ratio of comedies to other films is certainly low. Lately, there have been nice comedies with a certain sensibility. I think we are exploring the various aspects of the genre.

Stree is spooky and funny at the same time. How did you come up with this idea?
Go Goa Gone was in a way, a horror comedy. I just wanted to make a movie that had absurdist humour. So there’s a bit of that in Stree also. I really like that genre. Stree is truer to it. It’s always fun to mix, fuse and bend genres. Horror and comedy are such base emotions and when you mix it together, what you get is even more interesting.

Akshay Kumar said that comedy is the most difficult genre. Do you agree?
Comedy is under-rated, because you watch comedy and you don’t give it as much importance as a heartfelt drama, or an underdog uprising. It’s also the toughest thing to pull off — whether in terms of writing or acting. Doing drama is easier because the emotion hits you faster. It’s always easier to act in a drama than a comedy. People’s perception is what makes the difference. Like, I can tell you that ratings for a comedy film is around three stars whereas a drama gets four stars. So this is definitely a tougher route. Drama is great stuff and there’s nothing wrong with it, but comedy is tougher.

Having made so many films, how difficult is it to not repeat the same kind of humour in your movies?
You’re not making a conscious choice of making the humour different. We just want to make another unique film. There’s Shor In The City, which was a gritty film with a lot of dark humour in it. And then, we made an absurd film like Go Goa Gone which is completely the opposite. The concept and the premise needs to be different from the previous one. That’s what brings about different kinds of comedy.

Why didn’t you direct Stree?
I just wrote it for experience. It’s very personal and truly a baby for us. We write to direct and we did write Stree to direct it. We have four-five strong scripts that we want to start and I know that the expiry date for those might come soon. That made us think that we should make more films, and not just direct one film in one-and-half years. So, we started producing and it’s still our film but we just have a different role in it. We have a different tag. However, this also means we can do more films now, which we can produce.