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First man standing

Even as he revels in the success of Go, Goa, Gone, Vir Das sets his eyes on his next big dream: creating a space for himself in Bollywood as a comedic lead actor. He tells it like it is in a conversation with After Hrs.

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You know you’ve arrived  in Bollywood when you can rattle out a whole list of movies you are doing during an interview you are giving between a busy shooting schedule in an exotic foreign locale. Going by that standard, stand up comedian/actor/ musician Vir Das is sure having his moment in the sun.

Not that he needed any reasons to enjoy the good times, but for starters, his latest movie, Go, Goa Gone continues to regale audiences with its irreverent humour and his performance, as Luv, in the movie has been garnering positive reviews. While on the movie, one gets the feeling that the humour, the funny one-liners mouthed by the actors was less rehearsed and more improvised; something the actors would have thought up on the spot, during some casual bantering, maybe?

Vir concurs  before delving a little more into the Go, Goa Gone experience. “A lot of the stuff you see in the movie today, including the dumb charades scene, happened on the fly.

It helped that I had a great cast of actors to work with like Kunal, who’s literally grown in front of the camera and Anand Tiwari who’s got a lot of experience in theatre because when you have actors you can play off against, you end up taking what is a simple scene to a whole new level.”

Delhi Belly, Go Goa Gone, Santa Banta... the roles he’s got in his kitty are anything but ordinary. One may theorise that the quirky roles are happening to him because he is not boxed into any one  particular Bollywood stereotype. Not yet at least. Being a round peg in a square hole is working for him, we presume. Vir wholeheartedly agrees, “I don’t belong anywhere in the industry and I happy I don’t.

In an industry where you have an assembly line of actors who can deliver the same thing, being a comedic actor is an advantage. My idea is to become a definitive performer.” He explains, “If I’ve played a role in a movie, I want you as the audience to think that nobody else could have done the role.” And then without much ado, Vir reveals, “Can you think of replacing Adam Sandler or Steve Carell in the roles they’ve done? My aim is to become a comedic lead actor like them.”

Aspiring to be a comedic hero is quite the ambition but you know Vir is serious about the aspiration because besides a comedy like Santa Banta, he’s also signed on movies that will see him as a leading man. There’s Amit Sahni Ki List where he’s playing hero to seven ladies; Super Se Upar, which is an out-and-out commercial film; and then there’s the already-hyped Revolver Rani, where he plays hero to Kangana Ranaut. Quite a move that! Vir says, “The idea is to mix things up because I want to cater not only to the film audience, but also the stand up comedy-audience and the rock audience — all of whom follow my work.”

From the blink-and-you-miss-it role in Love Aaj Kal to becoming a hero, the journey, Vir agrees, has been a good one. But with a schedule that’s keeping him on the toes literally, we wonder if  its a good bye to stand up comedy, albeit briefly. “I am trying to balance it all out,” he enthuses, adding, “Once I wrap up Santa Banta, I will be going on a world tour, purely for stand up comedy.”

Finally, as the interview comes to a close, our parting question is if he is glad he decided to chuck his management degree long ago to follow his heart and do stand up and he warmly concludes, “Doing stand up comedy was this stupid idea I had at the time. I am happy that this stupid idea I had found its audience. Everything that’s followed is just unexpected. Yes, I am glad that I did it.”

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