Don’t fix what isn’t broke: 'Soundtrack' director Neerav Ghosh

In an era when we could get away with not buying the rights before remaking a film, Bollywood produced many illegitimate remakes, some where filmmakers took plot points from the original and inculcated them in their films, or others where they copied shots, frame-by-frame. If you would have asked me five years ago if I would debut with the remake of a film, I would have vehemently denied it. As a creative person, you fancy making a film with your own original idea.

But when I saw It’s All Gone Pete Tong three years ago, I found that it had a story I already wanted to tell. It just happened that another filmmaker had already made a film about it. I used to perform with a rockband in the ’90s, when I would wake up with a buzz every now and then. Many musicians I have spoken to over the years told me that their hearing was somewhat affected from performing on stage. The ear is quite simply the most sensitive part of your body, and if abused it can lose its functions. That was the basic idea I was working on, and reading up on the lives of Beethoven, Beach Boys singer Bryan Wilson and Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich, when I came across this Canadian indie film, It’s All Gone Pete Tong, about a DJ who lost his hearing.

Then it became a process of writing from what I remembered of the film; I had seen the film three years ago, twice back-to-back, and never went back to it afterwards. While making an official remake, the rule you generally follow is that you don’t fix what isn’t broke. So, I left many things about the film intact. But certain things, like the cultural space of the film, had to be altered. While writing the first draft itself, I introduced the protagonist’s relationship with his deceased father, and the character of his mother, because I needed those emotional bonds to connect with our audience. As I started making the film, the confidence grew; and I tried to do things differently.

The only other film I’ll ever want to remake is Pushpak. Now, there’s nothing about the film you can change much really; there’s no element of dialogue involved, and I can write the film from memory. But I’d like to adapt the film, which is more than 25 years old now, and make it more contemporary. I’d set it in a social networking space, may be, and do away with some of the gimmicks.

—Neerav Ghosh spoke to Aniruddha Guha