We need a brains trust to create better scripts: Rohan Sippy

Rohan Sippy’s office is like any other filmmaker’s. There’s the usual buzz just before the release of a new film. Posters are everywhere, many of films made by his banner, like Kuch Naa Kaho, Bluffmaster, Taxi No 9211 etc.

The sitting room has the almost-mandatory ones of Taxi Driver and Pulp Fiction. But there’s one other poster that differentiates Sippy’s work space from those of other producer-directors — a sprawling one of Sholay plastered across a window, light shining through for effect.

Sippy’s legacy is not to be taken lightly. Grandson of prolific producer GP Sippy and son of Ramesh — director of arguably Hindi cinema’s biggest hit, Sholay — Sippy, you would think, is your usual Bollywood scion.

But far from cashing in on his lineage, he’s adopted a different route from Aditya Chopra, Karan Johar, or to an extent even Farhan Akhtar, who have been building empires and announcing slates of movies in consecutive years.

“Rather than taking on a multiple-film making policy, I’d like to put in place a process of developing scripts. The guys at [20th Century] Fox tell me they commission anything around 300 scripts every year in Hollywood, out of which only 20-25 get converted into films. Forget making films, will we ever be able to produce as many different stories per year? I’d rather utilise my energies in putting together a brains trust that can create better scripts,” says Sippy, settling down with a cup of green tea.

Doing his ‘own thing’
The last time Sippy tried something similar to his illustrious contemporaries mentioned above, it met with disastrous results. Kuch Naa Kaho, Rohan’s debut film, was a box-office dud.

A love story starring Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai when they were not yet a couple, the film suffered from a hackneyed plot and came across as a desperate attempt at replicating the success of first films by Sooraj Barjatya, Mansoor Khan, Chopra and Johar. Critics didn’t waste time in bringing down the debutant who got everything in his first film — stars, a big budget, a wide release — yet failed to deliver.

“It was disappointing to know your film didn’t connect with the audience. But there was no real pressure from being a Sippy,” he pauses, before continuing. “As a filmmaker, the pressure’s anyway there. When your film’s a hit, even more so. There was tremendous pressure on dad to deliver with Shaan, because it was his next film after Sholay,” he says of his father, who now plays producer to Sippy’s films. “It feels like cheating sometimes, to have a man like him to bounce ideas off at any point of time,” he says with a smile.

While admitting to have been slightly frazzled by the failure of Kuch Naa Kaho, Sippy says it gave him more freedom to do his “own thing” in Bluffmaster, his second film.

To begin with, the film was more smartly-budgeted — in his words — which meant recovery of investment was less daunting. Instead of spending a bomb on getting one music director to work on the entire album, Sippy purchased individual songs from indie musicians like Trickbaby and Arash. Additionally, he bought the rights to old songs, ‘Taqdeer se bigdi hui’, ‘Do aur do paanch’, and the catchy Kishore Kumar number, ‘Sabse bada  rupaiya’, which lent a different sound to the film.

“Today, music shoulders a film’s promotion more than ever before. Reproducing an already popular song — as long as it fits well in the film — makes a lot of sense.” In his new film too, Rohan purchased the rights of ‘Dum maaro dum’ from Dev Anand’s Hare Rama Hare Krishna — a song every Indian knows — and sprinkled it with new lyrics by Jaideep Sahni to give it a more contemporary feel.

With lyrics like ‘potty pe baitha nanga’, the track has earned its share of criticism, yet it continues to be popular on the airwaves. “See, the idea was to shock; to grab attention. The original lyrics that represented the angst of the youth in the ’70s wouldn’t have had the same impact today. Flower Power, Tune In Drop Out, Free Love won’t work now, right?”

Rohan shares an anecdote his grandfather told him years ago to substantiate his point about how lyrics have undergone a drastic change over time. During a song sitting with the legendary lyricist, Majrooh Sultanpuri, GP Sippy suggested using the words, “laal laal gaal (red red cheeks)” in one of the songs. “Majrooh saab was aghast. ‘How can you even suggest such vulgar lyrics?’ he said,” laughs Sippy.

Experimenting with craft
For someone growing up in south Bombay, Sippy  was far from all the filmi activity confined mainly to the suburbs.  “Out of around 200 shooting days of Shaan, I think I attended only 2-3. I was only four when Sholay released, so I have even fewer memories of that,” says Sippy. “One incident stands out though,” he says as an afterthought. “It was of meeting this giant of a man, with a bloodstained back, joking and humouring the kids on set,” says Sippy of the first time he ran into Amitabh Bachchan.

The scene being shot that day was the iconic climax where Bachchan faces a barrage of Gabbar’s men on a bridge before dying in the arms of his best friend, Veeru. “I was in the same school as Abhishek (Bachchan), in Switzerland, he was almost five years my junior. All of us kids got super-excited every time Mr Bachchan came to meet him there,” says Sippy, sounding as animated as a child narrating the story of how he met Santa Claus.

With Dum Maaro Dum, Sippy has finally got to experiment with the kind of film he most enjoyed growing up — the quintessential thriller that has a cop character, one-liners and twists-and-turns. “There’s something intrinsically seductive about making a thriller — it’s cinematically more exhilarating. There’s very little dialogue, you get to play with visuals and music; it’s perfect for someone looking to experiment with his craft.”

He says he’s lucky to have got a team made up of writer Sridhar Raghavan, cinematographer Amit Roy, editor Aarif Shaikh and others. “I don’t believe in the auteur theory. Filmmaking is about team work.”