…And the next day we’ll go and hug and cry: Anurag Kashyap on Kalki

Editor’s note
B-Town is going through a metamorphosis for some time now, and if you haven’t noticed, you’re not reading the signs right. Thanks to a small but growing breed of directors who are increasingly led more by the voice of their conscience rather than the diktats of the market, there has been a conspicuous shift in the way we view our entertainment. Walking that line between art house and pure entertainment, has arisen a cinema that seeks to straddle both. Blame it on internet savvy audiences, who have developed and want to further a global conscience. Blame it on the rise of this tight, avant-garde clique of filmmakers who would not be swayed by conviction other than their own.

Whatever it be, there has arisen both expectation and acceptance of a certain kind of storytelling, one that allows for pushing the boundaries of creative freedom, even manages to amalgamate a degree of entertainment, yet retains that masterstroke that lifts the ordinary up to the extraordinary, such that a tale told survives its milieu, its immediate context, to become the voice of a particular window in time. Because of the introduction of this novel (?!) element, this absolute, unquestioning connect with reality, it becomes, in the words of the filmmaker, characteristic of this new age cinema: ‘documentary’.

Anurag Kashyap, proud representative of this break-out storytelling (for those who would like their memories jogged, he made Black Friday, Dev D, and recently Gangs of Wasseypur which, as was widely reported, charmed Cannes this year), was in the house to explain this shift further. And we were only too happy to listen, go beyond the framework of ‘gossip reportage’, as Kashyap and co would recommend lifestyle dailies eventually do.

As he spoke, we realised that B-Town’s reach went beyond India even in this kind of cinema, beyond niche film fest success to a sweeter high — newer, untapped global markets.

“Because we are going to explore a world market, which is a non-diaspora market and let’s see where it takes us,” he mused, in conversation. “It has led to a point where in a case like say, earlier people thought my film does not have an overseas market, ‘coz there’s no big star there, so there’s no feasibility, there’s no recovery. It’s reached that point where Gangs… has got an MG,  that is minimum guarantee from non-traditional markets which is at least three-four times higher than a good big star film, overseas price. Figures we’ll release when everything is locked in. They (the production house) are releasing for mainstream France on 25th of July. They’re not releasing for the Indian diaspora, they’re releasing for Latin America. These two are locked in. And they’re releasing across the world, we’re negotiating it — Russia, Scandinavian countries, Korea, China, Australia — everywhere. So that is what we wanted to crack. What happens, if that becomes a good enough figure, then it allows    me to make any kind of film without any pressure from anywhere. The idea is, that we’re trying to become that window for independent films outside. So we can help other people, also to keep making those kind of films and give them what we’ve learned the hard way last four-five years…”

Kashyap is not unsupported by peers in B-Town in either his plans or his films. In fact, that is also what is different in the evolving continuum of B-Town  today — a creative new guard, a thinking body of youngish filmmakers who get out of the proverbial frog pond of envy and feed off each others’ genius. “We have a very healthy competition,” reveals Anurag. “Like four-five of us, regularly meet (he won’t say how regularly, that’s secret) — Zoya, Imitaz, Dibakar, me (filmmakers Zoya Akhtar, Imtiaz Ali and Dibakar Banerjee, all credited with subscribing to this ‘realism’ in cinema now) — all of us hang out a lot together, and we drink and we abuse each other. And we’re friends, and the thing is, you know, hum en doosre ke saath ideas share karte hain, ek doosre ko gaali bhi detein hain. Like if my brother (Dabangg director Abhinav Kashyap) is part of the session he’ll teach all of us how to make money, and we sit and listen. And I fight with him, abuse him… I’ve thrown my brother out of my house: ‘Listen, stop trying to turn me into some kind of a commercial person that I’m not!’ And the next day, we’ll go and hug and we’ll cry. There’s drama. You know it’s like that, but it’s a healthy competition — we share scripts with each other, we show ‘cuts’ to each other and we compete with each other. And that competition makes us better filmmakers, and there’s no animosity…”


Talking about Kalki (wife Kalki Koechlin), does it ever affect you seeing her do intimate scenes on screen?
I would be lying if I said it doesn’t affect me. But it’s my problem. She’s being an actor, she’s being professional. And I have to learn to deal with it. If I see her doing an intimate scene and I get affected, I sit with myself and I deal with it. I can’t bring it out on Kalki. I won’t do that — that's the hypocrisy of the Indian male. Doosri films dekhte hain to koi farak nahin padta hai…

Are there any rules that you have set as a good Indian male?
No. I don’t because if you see the women characters in my movies and the way I treat them — I’m not that guy…

What if Kalki wants to do a nude scene?
If she wants to do a nude scene, she’ll do it na.

And you'd be okay?
I’ll deal with it. That’s a fact. You love someone, you love them regardless of the choices they make. And the choices they make are based on the conditioning and belief system they have. I’m not going to change her belief system. I’m from Benaras, it’s not her fault.

So is it that you put art above and beyond everything?
It’s not art above anything. The first time I started dating Kalki, and we were travelling and there was this big lake in the mountain, she just took off her clothes and jumped in and I was the one looking around, ‘did anyone see’, and then you realise she’s French, she’s been like that all her life — the moment she sees a water body, she jumps in. They’ve been brought up like that, I can’t go and force my morality on her. She’s her own person and I know she’s much more transparent and honest than most people. She says what she feels about me, I say what I feel about her. That makes it comfortable — you have to think less. Life is much more easier — we both sleep very well.

Is it difficult to accept the fact that you have a wider audience internationally than in the country?
It is vey difficult to accept that. Essentially I am a thet Banarasi, I want my audience here. The thing is I realise I have an audience here but that’s largely the non-paying audience. Largely the torrent downloading audience. That audience has existed for me for the past five years, but some of that audience has turned into paying audience, which is why there is slight increase in my box office. We have a new generation every five years now, the times are changing very fast, so the last five years suddenly there’s this generation that relates to my films. And at the same time my exercise is to find something that is very uniquely my own while making a film, which increasingly with Dev D, with Gulaal karte karte, with Gangs of Wasseypur, I feel like I have reached a point where I’ve found my commerce, where people do feel entertained, they’re constantly laughing, enjoying and all that. And I’m waiting to see whether the same happens in this country, where it has happened everywhere else.

Do you think your new film at five hours 20 minutes is taking a little bit of liberty with Indian audiences?
No, I just wanted to tell the whole story. I don’t know if audiences are lucky or unlucky, my first cut was seven hours. (Laughs) But for five hours 20 minutes my logic is, if an European,  French national or American can sit through the film with subtitles, Indian audiences know the language. And it’s a film that moves like a bullet train, you’re talking about a Hindi film that has on an average 70-80 scenes. My film has 780 scenes, so you can imagine the pace of the film.
 
What was the idea behind this film?
What prompted me was the place and the people. It’s so funny. Imagine if somebody tells you there’s a gangwar going on and you say what’s new about it.  It had been going on for 60 years but nobody knows why. And when you sit down and trace it, it’s like, accha? Isliye ladte hain. And you see the gangsters - the 13-year-old gangster, the 20-year-old gangster, who are film-obsessed. One thinks he’s Sanjay Dutt, one thinks he’s Salman, one thinks he’s Bachchan. And you see them, this guy thinks he’s a Salman on the road. He wears a Maine Pyaar Kiya jacket through the film, and he says the dialogues from Salman’s films and he’s a serious dangerous gangster. And it’s funny, because they’ve such low IQs. And why would you not make a film on that, because I’m not trying to do slapstick, I’m not trying to do comedy and people are laughing. And they’re real dialogues, they’re real interactions and real incidents. So for me it’s like — I’ve never seen gangsters like these. Why would I not make a film on them? And as the film moves from part one to part two it gets funnier because people get denser. It’s a strange world.

Is there anything about commercial cinema, certain nuances that you do not like particularly?
I don’t have issues with anything well done. I’m a big fan of Raju Hirani films, Imtiaz Ali, and now Zoya Akhtar. She does films where actors sing songs and I love them. And they’re well done films. I don’t have an issue with things like that. Meri problem hai ki hum log bahut zyada unreal ho jate hain. Raju ki film mein mujhe unreal kuch bhi nahin lagta, na Imtiaz ki film mein. Romance hai, but it does not look like, I know they’re set... bhaley bahar phir bhi shoot hota hai, there’s a sense of time and place, and there’s a relevance to it. Matlab aisa nahin, ki kahani yahan chal rahi hai, and suddenly we cut to Prague. There’s a reason why somebody goes to Prague. So I don’t have an issue with that. My problem is when people just gaana hua to kahin bhi chale jaate hain, which never existed when I was growing up in cinema. I didn’t happen much. It’s a phenomenon of the late ’80s and ’90s.

Couple of months back you said that instead of falling into the commercial and mainstream format, you would like to make your own kind of cinema mainstream. Do you think that’s happening?
That’s what I’ve been trying to do. There’s a constant struggle to find an audience and a kind of commercial viability in my own film. It has to come from within you. I cannot just adapt something just because I need, I desperately need success. I’m constantly struggling with my films to keep it real, keep it within the zone and yet find commerce in it. And the more I’m able to do that, the more it will also translate internationally. And the idea is simultaneously looking for audiences. Because my logic has been that main teen saal se film bana raha hoon, and if a lot of people are very conservative about my films  they think it’s too dark — and for me darkness has always been relevant. In the sense that we’re so conditioned, that my film seems dark. And my logic to that is Paanch was considered so dark 12 years ago, today everybody sees it they’re like yeh kya tha issme, why did they ban it. It is because cinema has got real in 12 years. So the assumed darkness of Paanch has reduced, and as cinema will get more real, my films will stop seeming dark. Because when I go aboard, people don’t think that they’re dark. They think they’re too mellow.
Also, what is this fascination for exploring or tapping into the relative darker side…

I like things real. I’ve grown up in Varanasi and my only companions were books like Manohar Kahaniyan and Satya Katha. I’ve grown up reading all this. And five days back I was travelling somewhere, I think to Delhi and I saw Manohar Kahaniyan at the airport, and after a long time I picked it up and I found three more stories that I can turn into films (smiles). They’re more rooted, they’re more about us and they are very real, they’re happing around us. And for me that always make more for interesting films than anything else. it’s not like main chaah raha hoon ki main kisi ko daraunga, ya kissi ko sone nahin dunga, kissi ke sapnon main bhoot banke aaunga. That’s not the intention.  I watch a certain kind of cinema and I like a certain kind of cinema, there’s a certain kind of make-up. I’m not a psychopath.

Abhinav (brother, director Abhinav Kashyap) must be a more popular name than you in Varanasi?
Abhinav is the pillar of pride in my family. Pehli baar in my 20 years, my extended family in the village knows my film is releasing. We shot Wasseypur telling everybody I’m Abhinav Kahyap, film director’s brother. People gave us their houses, we had to constantly use Dabangg and his name to get our work done.

There was a time when Ram Gopal Varma was considered the face of a new wave of cinema. Now, you are at the centre of it, either introducing or being a source of inspiration…
There are definitely some parallels because I learned everything from Ramu. Till date, I still follow what I learnt on Satya. One way to look at it is, I never grew from there.