Anurag Kashyap on Dobaaraa: Sent the script to many directors but nobody responded

“Vijay Maurya came to sell me a credit card.” You’ll find many such revelations from Anurag Kashyap if you dig his interviews from the past. This reveal was reserved for an exclusive interview with Firstpost. For someone who begins his journey in Hindi Cinema with a filmmaker like Ram Gopal Varma , the peak Ram Gopal Varma, nearly infallible at one point, the faith to disrupt is very much guaranteed. Kashyap, who nears three decades in Mumbai, has created a palette of unconventional cinema that’s hard to ignore. His fearless statements of calling spade a spade are just as explosive as his films. He may suffer the repercussions but boldly chooses not to suffer in silence.

He’s now making his next film as a director called Dobaaraa. He reunites with Taapsee Pannu after the volcanic Manmarziyaan in 2018. This time, it’s the genre of time travel that’s seldom attempted in India, of course aesthetically. In an exclusive interview with Firstpost, Kashyap opens up on the idea of seeking inspiration for the first time (it’s inspired by the script of the Spanish film Mirage), picking actors from theatre and Shekhar Kapur’s Bandit Queen, and also answers on the ongoing debate on social media about the failure and fall of Hindi films off late.

How did the journey of Dobaaraa begin?

Taapsee reached out to me. She sent me a script by Oriol Paulo and asked me to suggest her a director. Oriol Paulo I know. He makes genre films so I started looking for directors who make thrillers. Nobody responded. Then one day, I went to the shooting of Saand Ki Aankh . Taapsee said I couldn’t do one thing, get a director for her. I told her I sent the script to many directors but nobody responded. She was like, “This is such a nice script, it has a parallel universe." It took me two weeks to read and understand. Saand Ki Aankh was being shot in Meerut and I was on my way to the airport in Delhi. I started reading the script, I was reading in the lounge. I read the entire script in 3-4 hours, had a drink, called Taapsee and said, “Main kar raha hoon.” That’s how it started, I got Nihit Bhave to write it. The original wasn’t made till then. There was only the script. I called him and he read the script. We were working on Choked then, and Nihit said he would attempt it and wrote a draft. If you look at the film, it’s very different. Nihit is from Ahmedabad, middle-class, so he brought in his own experiences into the script. So it became very different, became more humane. This is how Nihit is.

Taapsee gave one of her career’s best performances in Manmarziyaan, it was such an explosive character. What do you have to say about her role in Dobaaraa?

These are two different people but the same people in two different universe. It’s pretty complicated to deliver this kind of a performance. You’ll get to know slowly and gradually. You will tell how the performance is. For me, my focus is always that actors stick to the characters as per the requirement. More than being a good performance or a bad performance, I think whether it’s believable and real or not. The audience decides whether the performance breaks through or not.

You have seen so many films across so many languages, you never wanted to remake any of them in your own style?

I never wanted to do remakes. The reason Dobaaraa happened was because there was only a script, not a film. You can interpret the script in your own ways. In this interpretation, you’ll see the difference between this character and the other.

The one word people often use for your film is Noir. What does that exactly mean?

In the correct way if you go, the films of the night. In the true sense, “Andheri raaton mein jo hota hai.” That’s what noir means (smiles).

It’s always great to see filmmakers giving their own touch to films that inspired them or they liked. Subhash Ghai did that with Karz, Mansoor Khan did that with Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar. Even you did that with Gangs of Wasseypur because nobody can say this is similar to City of God, you made it in such a way it became your film.

No but Wasseypur is an original story. Whenever I do a film, I have to find relevance to it. City of God came to me in a definite shape. If you see Infernal Affairs, it’s a three-part film, Martin Scorsese made The Departed out of it as a singular film and look what magic he did to it. The film is the same yet different, and he got an Oscar for that. I’m saying that world is over. Our film Dobaaraa is based on someone else’s script. It’s based on the script, not based on the film. Despite that, the film is traveling to different film festivals because remakes usually don’t go. So this for us is a sign of strength.

The one actor you’ve repeatedly worked with is Aditya Srivastava whom we all know as Inspector Abhijeet from CID. You both have worked in Satya Paanch Gulaal Black Friday. How did you discover him ?

Bandit Queen. And stage. All the actors I worked with initially, I discovered them either on stage or in Bandit Queen. Manoj Bajpayee  Bandit Queen, Aditya Srivastava Bandit Queen, Saurabh Shukla Bandit Queen, Kay Kay Menon theater, Makarand Deshpande stage. I have worked with everyone. Vijay Maurya came to sell me a credit card before he became an actor and then he became a friend (smiles). I’ve known him forever. Half of the world doesn’t know I used to go to Vijay Maurya for the Bambaiya tone. People discovered him after Gully Boy, I’ve been using him for this for the last 20 years.

Another great choice you made as a filmmaker was casting Abhimanyu Singh in Gulaal as Ransa. How did you conceive that character and think of this actor for the part?

Ransa’s character was written long time back, 2001. A different actor was supposed to play the role. He was Rahul Singh, the actor who played the Daaku in Thar . By the time we started the film, he didn’t look like a college student and I was looking for a newer actor, and was also doing a play with Abhimanyu Singh. So I knew him and his acting potential. It was not a very pleasant process and we never worked together after that. Everyone wants to be a hero inside, that I am Amitabh Bachchan, this and that. And due to this, some people are unable to become the characters. He’s a very good actor, but he wants to be something else and he’s getting something else. So it became very difficult to take that character of Ransa out from him. But now I see how his career is growing, he’s a much more responsible actor now. He was young then, he had a certain josh, never listened to anyone. I see him do good work in many things so it feels good.

You said in an interview that our films are not rooted and that’s why they aren’t doing well. How would you define the word ‘rooted’?

Rooted means you’re making a film of your own milieu. Your mythology is yours. When you see films of the south, when you watch RRR , the mythological references are ours. Our films are not ours, they want to be something else.

How would Anurag Kashyap define a commercial, masala film and a niche film?

Every time I make a film, it’s a masala film. A niche film is something that’s only for a small segment of the audience, something only that understands, a film like That Girl In Yellow Boots. Raman Raghav was a genre film. Otherwise I consider all my films masala films.

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