Sit With Hitlist: Maverick director Anurag Kashyap traces his journey in the movies -- from a wannabe actor in college to now -- via funny, never-heard-before anecdotes
Mayank Shekhar (MID-DAY; June 12, 2020)

The first time ever that filmmaker Imtiaz Ali saw what a portfolio looked like — an album with photos of a person, in multiple looks and poses — 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 portfolio.

"It was 1992. Imtiaz was in [Delhi's] 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 recalls.

Ever since Ali told me about that portfolio (in jest, during an interview), I've been meaning to ask Kashyap about it. Besides, he is before me on the screen — this conversation being held over a video-conferencing 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 mention!

"Also, what Imtiaz did not tell you was one of the first films that I did as the lead-actor, he was my co-star. The only copy of the film is with Zee, where it had premiered on January 26, 1994. We don't talk about it. Imtiaz will kill me. If you ever pull out a copy from the Zee library, he will come after you too!"

"The good thing about being a bad actor is you know how to extract great performances," Kashyap tells me later. Which in his case, I'm 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. It's a process only the best can survive.

Ali, of course, played the '93 Bombay bomb blast accused Yakub Memon in Kashyap's first release, Black Friday (2007). He played a bigger role in his life, if you consider that Kashyap used to shack up at Ali's place while the latter was doing a post-grad course at Mumbai's Xavier Institute of Communications (XIC).

This 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 Motwane's directorial debut, Udaan (2010). Likewise, Motwane was the show-runner for the Netflix global series Sacred Games (2018), which Kashyap directed both seasons of.

He reminisces, "I couldn't get into XIC, and was living in Imtiaz's room. Aarti Bajaj, my first wife and permanent editor for both mine and Imtiaz's films, was a year junior. Vikramaditya Motwane was Aarti's classmate. That's how we knew each other. But we really became friends during the shoot of [Deepa Mehta's] 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 — that never got made."

In fact, if it wasn't for spotting Motwane — somewhere in the back, in a baseball hat — in a picture from the 'mahurat shot' of Kashyap's directorial debut Paanch, that he had posted on Twitter, I wouldn't have known that the two went that far back together. No, it wasn't the film's anniversary being celebrated on social-media. Can't be. That movie never released.

Kashyap 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 Bhansali's assistant, I asked him to direct the songs. He had two credits in the film — sound designer, and director of songs. It was a first for many people —Bosco-Caesar 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 — 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 centre-point, everywhere. And then I had another friends' circle, with Anand Surapur [who directed Fakir Of Venice, Farhan Akhtar's acting debut], Zoya Akhtar and the lot. When I wrote a script, I had way too many boards to bounce off. And that's what we did!

"I was a huge fan of Sriram Raghavan's Raman Raghav [a docu-drama 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 — 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 Varma's Daud, which is when Ramu ji 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 Varma."

The rest, as they say — if you casually scroll up the 'gangs'/cast of characters again — is history. Of post-millennial, 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 be).

But that he's 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 dad."

"Then I just walked up to [Mahesh] Bhatt saab once and said that I'd rather be a carpenter than work in his office. With his brother [Mukesh] around, he didn't say a word. When I was leaving, he came down, said, 'Don't ever change.' And he put Rs 10,000 in my hand. That was big money in 1994-1995."

Years later, at a post-screening event in a film-festival 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 these."

"I 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 [Varma's] Satya. It was instinctive. I had to write that film."

My favourite Kashyap story is about a prominent '90s film-critic 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, "That's tri-shool." Staring at him still, he left his middle-finger pointed up: "And this is shool!"

He repeats the punch-line/move, 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 land-line. 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 time!"

There is then the moment he randomly landed up at Shah Rukh Khan's 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 omelette."

And then, there are the more famous spats, with those clichéd 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 mid-day. I also said something about Anil Kapoor in the interview that became a headline. But people always knew I was childlike."

Of course much about public exchanges have changed since the late 2000s, where the audience is now equally a participant — altering and shaping opinions on public figures, based on beliefs, rather than any first-hand knowledge. Despite lack of the latter, one opinion is as good as the other.

Kashyap vividly remembers, "I bought my first laptop, and discovered the Internet. What's 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 don't you start talking? I said fine, I'll talk, assuming 20 people will read."
That website was called Passion For Cinema (PFC). If you'll excuse the exaggeration, it was Bombay/Versova's very own Cahiers du Cinema, with diverse/off-stream voices expressing themselves as critics/bloggers, before filmmakers.

Kashyap cites, "Chaitanya Tamhane [Court], Anand Gandhi [Ship of Theseus], Dibakar Banerjee, even before his first movie… There was [composer] Sneha Khanwalkar, Kartik Krishnan, who runs Filter Copy… 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 office-space became a kind of dharamshala. People stayed and lived there — all we could provide was food."

This alternate eco-system might be Kashyap's far more dramatic contribution to films, than merely his movies alone. He's perhaps a film buff/activist, first. And this has always been the case. He's gone to the extent of rescuing actor Rajpal Yadav from Andheri railway station, since he was returning to his hometown, having given up. That's when, Kashyap says, he first met the nondescript Nawazuddin Siddiqui, standing next to Yadav.

At a data/practical level, consider the ensemble cast of Gangs Of Wasseypur (GOW; 2012), which looks now like the first batch of national school of lead-actors, for films and web-series — 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 GoW!

Also, over years, he's allowed unfettered access to young/untested/fresh writing-directing talents, having actively produced their films, lent his name/heft 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 film-buff side still — in a very PFC fan-boy sort of way — Kashyap equally lights up when you ask about his Alice/Anurag In Wonderland moments, meeting his own greats.

Like 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 away.

"When Scorsese sat down on his table — me, [German-Turkish star-director] Fatih Akin, [French sensation] Marion Cotillard, [Italian star] Golshifteh Farahani…We were all equals, looking up to him. We were also there, because of him!"

Or 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 me!"

These are of course perks of having your works travel among audiences/aesthetes abroad, as Kashyap's (both as producer and director) have, especially at the movie Mecca, Cannes. Plus a global streaming giant like Netflix helps reach around 200 countries simultaneously.

Since Netflix began commissioning Indian content only three-four years ago, Kashyap has already directed two shorts (in the self-explanatory Lust Stories, Ghost Stories), directed-produced two seasons of a show (the underworld saga Sacred Games), produced a zombie mini-series (Ghoul), and directed a feature (Choked).

While the Netflix model evidently allows him to go out of the box (office), as it were, there is also the mainstream audience that can't be altogether alienated. I know at least one friend who did not understand Kashyap's 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 Kashyap's No Smoking (2007). Where does he stand on the art for self-expression versus art for mass-communication debate?

"No film is ever made with the intention of people not getting it. I just don't like to over-explain. 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 realism."

Choked is about kitchen and bathroom plumbing, choking with money/cash! It's 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 pop-culture response to most of Kashyap's films.

For instance, the tagline Emotional Atyachar in Dev D (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 Swaroop's Om Darbadar and Emir Kasturica's The Underground. I told Amit and [lyricist] Amitabh Bhattacharya, "Band ko record karna hai. Emotional atyachar gaana hai. Baaki, you guys figure out."

What about the running/chase 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 [blast-accused] came from." How about 'Tumse naa ho payega' from GOW? "That was all in Tigmanshu Dhulia's delivery!" And what about… Okay, this could leap across pages. Will stop now. Deserves a series.

Anurag Kashyap denies rumours that he is on the verge of a split with his co-producers, Madhu Mantena, Vikas Bahl and Vikramaditya Motwane; admits that he went completely wrong with 'Bombay Velvet' and now has to live with the nightmare for the rest of his life
Sanyukta Iyer (MUMBAI MIRROR; November 24, 2015)

Apart from the ban on cuss words being lifted, the issue of recensorship of films for TV viewing was also addressed in the Censor Board meeting
Sonali Joshi Pitale (MID-DAY; August 3, 2015)

The battle of bleeps has finally come to an end with the infamous list of cuss words that was issued by Censor Board chief Pahlaj Nihalani earlier this year being withdrawn. Besides the film fraternity, a few Board members were also not in favour of a ban on 28 swear words; many even openly criticised the regressive decision. Nonetheless, quite a films had to bear the brunt of it during the certification process. A couple of days ago, the list was trashed after a majority of Censor Board members voted against it.

A source at the Board says, “There were 16 members in the meeting and they expressed resentment against it. It was decided that the cuss words will be allowed in films if used in appropriate context. The examining and revising committees will review the film taking into account where it has been set and if the words are important from the script’s point of view. For example, in case of Gangs of Wasseypur (2012), it was necessary for the filmmaker to include some expletives to establish the (rural) characters and it was integral to the film. So, the board had to pass it with a fitting certificate. Now we will follow general rules and won’t refer to the list at all.”

The list banning the use of  “objectionable” and “abusive” words was circulated by Nihalani, but the Board had decided to put its implementation on hold after a controversy broke out and there was a dominant opinion that more consultation was required.

Mukesh Bhatt, president of Film and Television Producers Guild of India, welcomes the decision to scrap the cuss word list. “It is definitely a good thing. When you have an adult film, filmmakers need to use certain words and scenes. We also have children. We don’t incorporate such content only for the sake of it. It is a welcome change and I consider it as a good sign,” he says.

Agrees producer Ramesh Taurani. “No one uses cuss words purposely; we add it to a script only when it so demands. In fact, I feel 95 per cent of films do not use foul language. But, thankfully, there are no restrictions anymore. As a producer, I would say that the decision does not make a huge difference to our films, but I will not deny that it is a positive change. It will be like earlier times when the Board members took into account the backdrop of the film and understood the entire context of scenes and dialogues before giving it a certificate,” he asserts.

Navdeep Singh, who helmed the A- rated NH10, says, “I have no details about it since I am travelling, but I am glad it has been taken down. The list was silly. It made the Censor Board seem like a prudish school teacher.” It is said that the members also discussed recensoring films for television screening. Normally, a film that has been awarded ‘A’ certificate goes through cuts before it is aired on television or shown late in the night.

The source adds, “The auditors had objected to recensoring of the film. It was proposed that films with adult certificate not be shown on television at all. However, it has been struck down. We will stick to the original process so that films which secure an ‘A’ certificate can get U/ A rating by effecting cuts here and there for the small screen audience.”


Stuck in a rut
The fate of Sunny Leone-starrer 'Mastizaade' hangs in balance as all three committees of the Censor Board having rejected the film for excess sexual content.

The Milap Zaveri-directed flick was supposed to hit the theatres on May 1, but the only option left with the makers is to move the High Court for its release. The Film Certification Appellate Tribunal, which watched the film in May-end, notified: "There is no redeeming feature of any sort in the film. The film is only concerned with the exploration of the different parts of the human anatomy, both male and female, and is such as to deprave the minds of the audience. We are thus constrained to hold that. Freedom of expression cannot and should not be interpreted as a license for the cine-magnates to make huge sums of money by pandering to shoddy and vulgar tastes."

This is a rare rejection by the board for any film. The last time a movie was rejected by all three committees was 36 years ago, for Raj Kumar Kohli's 'Jaani Dushman' (1979). 'Mastizaade' producer Pritish Nandy had reportedly met representatives of the Infromation and Broadcasting ministry last month hoping for relief, but in vain.



Facing the censor heat
>> 'NH10': The release of this Anushka Sharma-starrer got delayed by a week as the Censor Board took objection to the cuss words and violent scenes in the thriller. It cleared the film with an 'A' certificate after effecting nine cuts as opposed to the initially suggested 30 audio and video cuts.

>> 'Calendar Girls': The Madhur Bhandarkar film was supposed to hit theatres this Friday, but has now been pushed to September as the Censor Board has asked for deletion of 10 cuss words to secure U/A certificate. The board earlier rejected a bikini-babes-on-the-beach song from the film for television viewing.

>> Unfreedom: A modern-day thriller which explored a lesbian love story entangled within an Islamic terrorism-related angle was rejected by the Board for packaging two "taboos" in one film. It did no approve of the nudity and lovemaking scenes and was denied release in India.

>> Gandu: The black and white Bengali film was a rap musical, which irked the Censor Board with its explicit sexual scenes and was not allowed to enter theatres.

>> Paanch: The Anurag Kashyap, said to be based on the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders in 1997, faced the Censor Board heat for its violence, crass language and drug abuse. It decided to ban the film and people awaiting the release of the film had to make do with its pirated version.

Roshmilla Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; December 17, 2014)

Fourteen years ago, while filming Anurag Kashyap's directorial debut Paanch, Tejaswini Kolhapure would return home physically drained but creatively satiated. And one day, she announced that she wouldn't mind retiring after this.

Tejaswini believes that God took her words to heart. Paanch was banned for three years following the CBFC's objection to the depiction of violence, drug abuse and use of abusive language. By the time it was cleared in 2001, Tutu Sharma, her brother-in-law and the film's producer, was grappling with problems of his own. It was leaked online in 2010 but never got a home video or theatrical release.

Padmini Kolhapure's talented younger sister, after turning down a stream of producers who encouraged by her "bold image" wanted her to wear a bikini or do an intimate scene, returned to modelling and theatre. There were stray films, like Happi and Mani Ratnam's Raavan, where her role was cut down to a fleeting scene, but Tejaswini remained out of the spotlight.

Her 14 saal ka vanvaas will end on December 26 with another Anurag Kashyap film. In Ugly she plays a woman whose second marriage is a disaster, with a stalker for a husband. She turns suicidal, seeking oblivion in alcohol and sleeping pills. Then her daughter, from her previous marriage, is kidnapped and the guilt puts her back on track.

Like Paanch, Ugly too was a draining experience, including an hour-long crying session for a sequence. "It was cut down to 30 seconds to fit into the film's non-linear narrative. Fortunately, that was the only cut," says a relieved Tejaswini.

She went into the project blind. "But I've known Anurag for years and trust him implicitly. I'm glad he thought about me for another film. I can't say if Ugly will change my destiny but I'm happy a film of mine is finally releasing," she says.

The film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2013 and released in France three months ago. But in India it was delayed when Anurag moved court protesting against the Censor Board's anti-smoking disclaimer. "I asked myself why he had to launch the protest with this film. I had my fingers crossed and finally the jinx will break," she says fervently.

Today, her niece, Shraddha Kapoor, and nephew, Siddhant Kapoor, too are experimenting with different roles. "But not all makers find funds and buyers," she says. "Would Ugly have got a release if it had been made by someone other than Anurag?"

Has Anurag approached her for another film? "No, he seems to have gone underground," she laughs. "And there are no other offers. I'm hoping something beautiful will come along after Ugly."