Is Imtiaz Ali the real story-teller of 'Rockstar'?

Stories of reputed directors getting ‘inspired’ by newcomers and then completely forgetting about them abound in Bollywood. But when it involves a filmmaker like Imtiaz Ali and his film Rockstar with Ranbir Kapoor in it, it is a little hard to digest.

Apparently, when Imtiaz visited filmmaker Subhash Ghai’s acting institute some years back, he met a struggling scriptwriter called Muazzam Beg, who was working with Ghai. Everyone was aware that he had written a great script and was looking out for a director turn into a film. Imtiaz, apparently, called Muazzam to listen to the story. It was over several cups of coffee and hours that the struggling writer narrated the story, most of which were his personal experiences. Imtiaz, apparently, said that the story must be turned into a film.

“Rockstar is the first story I ever wrote. I believe that every writer starts writing something based on his own personal experiences, Rockstar is the birth of my own experiences of heart break. It is the interpretation of my own journey when I was studying film making in Jamia Milia. I got an opportunity to narrate this story to Imtiaz Ali when I was working with as an in-house writer for Subhash Ghai’s production. Nothing much happened that time, but later a production house decided to make the film with John Abraham playing the lead protagonist 'Rockstar' in it. Unfortunately, the project got shelved. I reworked on the story and decided that I will not allow it to get shelved and make a movie on it in the future,” says Muazzam.

“Before the release of Love Aaj Kal, Imtiaz called me for a meeting. He said that ‘if you are not making Rockstar, I will make it. Because this story is so close to my heart.’  He wanted to write the screenplay on his own and said that he didn’t want to hear my version of the screenplay… Imitaz is one of my favourite directors and a person who understands the emotion of love so well that I gave the story to him and sacrificed my own wish to make the film on it.”

So what is it that Muazzam wants now? He says that he only wants ‘due credits.’ He wants people to know that he had written and conceived the story.

“Even now my friends call me up and say ‘Arrey yeh tera college wala kahani hai na? Tera naam kidhaar hai?’ I keep quiet as I want Imtiaz to answer to them,” says the writer.