Experiments in black and white — in cinema & art

Subhash Ghai on his offbeat film ‘Black and White’, the star system and his reputation with women

I can’t afford huge stars
Anurag Sinha was my first choice for Black and White. I’ve been making films for the last 30 years and I have realised that once actors become stars, they also become too big. So if you cast a star, you have to listen to their terms and you end up messing the film. So, it is better to take the risk and take a newcomer. Today’s scene is crazy. Stars are demanding almost 65% of the film’s budget.

I am not such a wonderful person. I am brave enough to make my own films. Whenever I reached the lowest point in my career, stars were suddenly unavailable for me. I have managed to come up on my own, without their help. Black and White is a film that I am proud of. It doesn’t matter if it works or doesn’t. I have made this film with a lot of passion and it has given me great creative satisfaction.

Anil Kapoor has total faith in me
I don’t even have to read the script to him. He simply agrees. He is a very pricey man otherwise. He rejects most films that come to him. But look at his faith in me. In such a situation I have to live up to it. When Govinda  refused Taal,  I just  had to tell Anil and he agreed. Anil is an underrated actor, because he is not street-smart and is not adept at the politics of the trade. I can’t play it too. I try but fall flat.

I love women
You can learn a lot from a woman, as compared to a man. Every woman teaches you something. Even my five-year-old daughter can teach me things. So I love the company of women. My wife Rehana knows this and she perfectly understands. Yes, I did manage to gain the reputation of this guy who loved exploiting women, but that doesn’t matter to me at all. Thankfully, such stories have stopped, even though I still have mostly women as my friends. I might have taken some actresses under my wings to train them but it has always been misconstrued. Today, when I do the same with Anurag, such rumours are not making the rounds thankfully!
 
Critics are ruthless sometimes
I feel critics get a high when they hit big names. Sanjay Leela Bansali and Vidhu Vinod Chopra have proved their mettle as film-makers. But if a critic doesn’t like one film, the film-maker is totally written off. How can you do that? They have also been saying ‘Ghai has lost his magic’, every time a film of mine has not done well. But the moment I give a hit, they say ‘the magic is back’! I think the most clichéd line now is ‘Mr Ghai should stop making films’.

As told to Shubha Shetty-Saha