A struggling actress has an affair with a high-ranked executive working in a production house, using him to get a foothold in the industry. Blinded by love, the executive doesn’t know that the actress has another lover, a navy officer. The jealous officer, in a fit of rage, stabs the boyfriend to death. Then, the actress and officer cut her lover’s body into pieces and stuff them into bags before burning them in a nearby forest.
Before you point out that this is a retelling of how Neeraj Grover was allegedly murdered by his lover Maria Susairaj’s boyfriend, Emile Jerome Matthew, let it be known that this is also the plot of Ram Gopal Varma’s next film, A Love Story.
While every filmmaker maintains ‘content is king’, good stories are in short supply. For those looking for a fresh subject, real life can throw up interesting stories. We’ve had films “based on true events” in the past, but filmmakers, of late, have been venturing into the fact-meets-fiction area with renewed vigour. And these are not just films based on the independence struggle or about national leaders, but those which tell quirky stories of a wide range.
Like filmmaker Sushen Bhatnagar’s Monica, which released in theatres two Fridays ago. Starring Divya Dutta in the title role as the mistress of telecom minister Chandrakant Pandit (played by Ashutosh Rana), the film originated not in the brainstorming room of a film production house but in newspaper articles.
“I wrote the story way back in 2003 and shot it last year. At that time, the telecom scam hadn’t even come to light,” says Sushen. However, he had found his inspiration in the murder of a journalist in the ’90s, which got a lot of media coverage at the time.
“Every thing in the film is based on facts — the way Monica is murdered, the weapon used, her relationship with the said politician; all of it was well-documented, I just had to include that into a film script,” says Sushen, adding that the politician being presented in a negative light may not be new to Hindi films, but the politician-media nexus made fodder for an interesting story.
Investigative filmmaking
Anurag Kashyap’s Black Friday took a look at the Bombay bomb blasts and the planning that went into it. It helped that the film found its bearings in S Hussain Zaidi’s book of the same name, which lent it credibility. For Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai — about underworld don Haji Mastan’s rivalry with Dawood Ibrahim — director Milan Luthria is said to have taken the help of crime journalists who operated at the time.
Earlier this year, No One Killed Jessica — based on the famous Jessica Lall murder — made a mark at the box office. Director Rajkumar Gupta had lengthy consultations with Lall’s sister Sabrina to get his facts right. Surfing through archives of news organisations, collecting information from journalists, and interviewing those who are closely involved with an incident or person is part of the ‘pre-production’ phase of these films.
In the coming months, a number of filmmakers plan to venture into movies that retell real stories.
Neeraj Pandey’s Special Chhabis will take a look at the famous jewellery heist of 1987 when 26 men, pretending to be income tax officials, walked into Tribhovandas Bhimji Zaveri’s Opera House store and took away jewels worth lakhs of rupees. Rakeysh Mehra is set to make Bhaag Milkha Bhaag, a biopic of the legendary Milkha Singh. Luthria’s next, Dirty Picture will narrate the life story of south siren Silk Smitha, while Tigmanshu Dhulia is ready with Paan Singh Tomar, about an athlete who picked up the gun to lash out against the establishment.
“If you think about it, Tomar’s life is not much different from those of heroes we’ve seen donning the roles of dacoits in films through the ’70s and ’80s. But the fact that a national level sportsperson had to pick a gun to fight for his honour is fascinating,” says Dhulia of his film that has Irrfan in the title role.
Dhulia came across Tomar’s story while doing research on Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, which Dhulia worked on as casting director. A farmer who joined the army in order to make money, Tomar volunteered to join the army’s sports team because sportsmen were given a higher quota of food and Tomar had quite the appetite.
For seven years in a row, Tomar won the steeplechase event at the Indian National Games. But when he got involved in a land dispute, Tomar tried convincing the government and police that he had been wronged, but all pleas fell on deaf years. Finally, Tomar turned into a dacoit to avenge the wrong done to him.
Who cares about research?
“Making a biopic in India is tricky. If you try to portray a freedom fighter in a different light, for example, you end up offending half the country. We look at them with such reverence that there is no scope for a conflict, which is a must in a good script,” says Dhulia, adding that Tomar did what he did because he was compelled to — there was no black or white to his personality, which made his story interesting.
Offending people is a constant worry for filmmakers trying to tell true stories. Haji Mastan’s family, for example, had issues with the don’s portrayal in Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai; Black Friday was stuck for years because the court restricted Kashyap from releasing the film till the bomb blast case was resolved. To add to it, we don’t exactly have a budget for ‘research’ in our films.
“In Hollywood, even a rom-com is made after extensive research. If a filmmaker there makes a movie about a couple that has to deal with divorce, for example, he will talk to a 100 couples who have divorced to get his facts right,” says Dhulia, adding that he was fortunate to have found a backer in UTV Motion Pictures, who was willing to fund his research.
It included going to places Tomar had been to, talking to family members, interviewing cops, going through records etc.
Sushen says that people involved in real-life cases make for interesting characters. He cites the example of Radia, who he says may have got media coverage in the aftermath of the 2G scam, but who unwittingly exposed a nexus hitherto unknown. But the challenge lies in portraying characters — and their stories — that don’t always hit national headlines.
It’s this challenge Dhulia has taken up with Paan Singh Tomar. And with good reason too.
“As a filmmaker, I find it difficult to find a heroic character in today’s society,” he says. “It’s good I found one where I least expected to.”
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