It was worth the seven-year wait: 'Udaan' director Vikramaditya Motwane

He had to wait seven years before a producer would take up Udaan, but this was a blessing in disguise because it’s only in today’s multiplex culture that a film like this could have got a big release, Vikramaditya Motwane tells DNA.

Thirty four-year-old Vikramaditya Motwane knew he wanted to be a director the minute he stepped into the industry fourteen years back. “People presume I did sound design, assisting and choreography to find out what my true calling was. But the truth is, as a director-in-waiting, you have no other option, so you do these things and you write,” says Motwane, referring to the many hats he donned before shooting to sudden visibility in 2010 as the director of Udaan.

Motwane, who has a handful of finished scripts lying around, knew Udaan had to be his debut film. “I wanted it to be my voice. History has shown that it doesn’t matter if your first film is a flop or a hit. Sanjay Leela Bhansali made Khamoshi, which was a commercial failure, but people noticed him for his completely original voice.”

Motwane wrote the script for Udaan in 2003, spending the next seven years hunting for a producer. But in hindsight, he feels the wait was well worth it. “I would never have got the release I did now. In 2004, there wasn’t yet a strong multiplex culture. I would have got ten prints released. Today, I was able to get 200 prints. And for a small film like Udaan, that’s unheard of.”

Udaan, in addition to being a coming-of-age drama, is a love story too, asserts Motwane, a concept he had a difficult time explaining to producers. “If you look deeper, the relationship between the two brothers works in a classic love story track. Boy meets girl, boy and girl are forced to share the same space, boy bullies girl, girl lands in trouble, boy saves girl and they walk away together. If I had worked in a girl into the script, I would have lost that core emotion and in essence, lost the film.”

But desperation can hijack even the best of intentions, admits the filmmaker. The closest he got to compromising, he says, was agreeing to show a girl in one of the bar scenes, on the suggestion of a producer who wanted to come on board. “It wasn’t authentic. You don’t see girls go out drinking in Jamshedpur. Fortunately, the producer backed out and I didn’t go ahead with that scene,” says Motwane.

It was finally Anurag Kashyap, along with UTV, who produced the film. But interestingly, Motwane credits not Kashyap, but filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor for laying the foundation for his generation of indie filmmakers. “Anurag was in the scene but he had a major film release only in 2007. It was Nagesh, right from Hyderabad Blues in 1998 to Teen Deewarein and Iqbal, who very gently opened up the market for us.”

Motwane, who names Tere Bin Laden, Love Sex Aur Dhoka and Ishqiya as his three favourite films this year, sees the arrival of a new set of filmmakers as incidental to a more palpable change taking place in Bollywood. “It’s simply been a year where content rules and the audience has shown a need for something genuinely different. Films made on the basis of just star power have bombed,” says Motwane, pointing to the exception of Salman Khan in Dabbang. “But that film also had content,” he adds.

For Motwane, 2010 has certainly brought a positive shift in his career but personally, he says his life has changed very little. “I’m still broke, I still live in the same house, drink the same coffee,” he quips. And the success of Udaan, while it might have opened doors, has also raised expectations from the filmmaker not just from all quarters but from his own self. He explains, “The industry loves to typecast. If I make another Udaan, I’m stuck the rest of my life making these kinds of films. If I go bigger, will I have to compromise? These are issues I have to deal with.”