Tuesday, February 20, 2007

When Bollywood shits on Exceptional Talent…

When Bollywood shits on Exceptional Talent…

April 6, 2005 @ 10:40 am

Anurag Kashyap. The usual question shot back on mentioning his name – Who the fuck is he? Well that’s what I’ve been meaning to find. Who is Anurag Kashyap? - and why am I so excited to watch his work and then beat my head on my desk each time his work is pulled back or stopped by actors, producers and wow – the Censor Board – ironically from our democratic country.


Kashyap, originally from Delhi came to Bombay, I suspect attracted to the theater rather than movies. The usual Bombay grind saw him living on the streets before he started working at Prithvi. Writer of television serials like “Auto Narayan”, he got noticed first by Manoj Bajpai and later was introduced to Ram Gopal Varma. And the train was given the green signal to start moving. And Kashyap did move…

It started with one of the most terrific films made in Bollywood on the mafia. “Satya”. Written by Anurag Kashyap. It is what RGV needs. No, not hits. But genuine, intelligent and creative script writers WHO CAN TELL A GOOD STORY. But fuck, does anyone have the time or inclination to pay attention to such a simple thing? Each time RGV or for that matter any other director with quite a few hits in their kitty, has flopped, you will identify the BAD STORY as the real cause of the failure for that movie. RGV had found a good story teller in Kashyap, and I wonder whether its his large ego or bad judgement which has not made RGV use Kashyap more extensively.

I think it may have been the flop of “Kaun?” RGV and Kashyap’s next joint venture which may have put RGV off Kashyap. But how many flops has Ramu given so far that one flop from Kashyap’s writing pad has put RGV off. “Kaun?” was an interesting experiment which failed but it was a step in the right direction. 3 characters all throughout the movie, no songs, no 3 hour length and though it failed, it wasn’t made on a big budget. The team right from day 1 knew it was an experiment and they handled the budget accordingly.

But what I badly, so badly wanted to see was Kashyap’s next creation – Paanch – written and directed by Kashyap himself. “Paanch” was up and ready by 2002/2003 and by the looks of the story and the details which went into defining the 5 characters of the movie, just by reading that, I was gripped, sitting straight, pointing my nose so close to the monitor so that I did not miss a single word of the story and character details in my 15th read of the article. Paanch revolves around 5 wannabe rock stars that get sucked into crime and murder and deception which ultimately destroys each of them. Sadly the movie seems to be too gory and violent for our Censor board to digest. It is stuck in the censors for the last 3 years and the result – quite a few unique elements used in the movie have been lifted and copied into other movies released between 2003 and now. As per Kashyap’s latest interview on Rediff.com, Paanch has now been bought by Sahara and may be released in two to three months.

The other Kashyap project that made me sit up was the announcement of the project “Alvin Kaalicharan”, starring Anil Kapoor. Kashyap gave Kapoor a totally different look. Unfortunately it seems Kapoor didn’t have too much faith in Kashyap and the movie could not take off. Again, the copycats in Bollywood lifted Kapoor’s different look and used it on Kapoor in his last movie “Musafir”. I hate this lifting, especially when the idea was from a highly creative person and for a man – Kapoor – who stops Kashyap’s movie and goes and uses that look and get up in a more commercial movie which he thinks has chances of a bigger success.

WHY THE FUCK KILL THE CREATIVE TALENT AND THEN CRY AND RANT ALL ABOUT IT ON TV AND PRINT MEDIA THAT BOLLYWOOD DOES NOT HAVE CREATIVE WRITERS….YOU FUCK - YOU STRANGLED THAT TALENT AT YOUR FUCKING DOOR STEP BEFORE YOU TOOK OUT YOUR CAR AND WENT TO THE JOURNALIST TO CRY ABOUT LACK OF TALENTED WRITERS, YOU FUCK.

And by the looks of it, many of the “talented super fucking stars” who often speak in bold print that they want to do “INTELLIGENT CINEMA” are the ones who have turned down Kashyap time and again. Kashyap’s latest Rediff.com interview shows some of the hidden frustrations of this talented writer.

Unfortunately Kashyap’s next written and directed movie “Black Friday” on the December riots in Bombay is banned and stuck. WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON? DOES THE COURT AND CENSOR BOARD THINK WE ARE MORONS WITH NO INTELLIGENCE AND CANNOT DIGEST A MOVIE SHOWING THE CAUSES AND AFTER EFFECTS OF THE RIOTS IN BOMBAY.

But Kashyap has his moments to savor too. Like working with Mani Ratnam on Yuva, where Kashyap wrote the dialogues in Hindi. The link to the interview shows you how much Kashyap enjoyed and relished working with Ratnam and how it helped him evolve further as a thinking person and writer.

For one, it is clear this man is creative and has a wide span vision, writing about the mafia in “Satya”, to a suspense murder mystery in “Kaun?”, to writing and directing about the real life Pune killings in “Paanch”, to writing and directing about the aftermath of Bombay riots….here’s a well read guy who loves to research extensively on the subjects he is passionate and wants to write about…unfortunately the Bollywood superstition comes into play now where people in Bollywood look at him as jinxed – what with his directions “Paanch” and “Black Friday” stuck and unreleased.
You can have zero talent and run business on superstitions and have 2% hits in a year (Bollywood hit record for the last many years) or you could bring in exceptionally creative talent and make movies which are appreciated and loved by cinema lovers which increases the hits probability manifold. Unfortunately for Bollywood it has, like always, chosen the former….

source:http://www.desitrain.com/2005/04/06/when-bollywood-shits-on-exceptional-talent%E2%80%A6/

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