Not Just Bollywood | Shekhar Kapur: ‘It’s getting really tough to make films these days’

Not many know that Shekhar Kapur was a Chartered Accountant who had come back to India and had never studied film, or never assisted anybody before making Masoom. So, probably it was destiny that helped him to pull off a movie like Masoom. In an interview with Firstpost’s Lachmi Deb Roy, Shekhar Kapu r talks on the making of What’s Love Got To Do With It? with British scriptwriter Jemima Khan. In the interview he mentions how difficult it is getting to make independent films and how hard it is to raise money for what one really wants to do.

 Edited excerpts from the interview:

 You have had this huge range of films that you had made in your career and then there was this gap and there were these projects like Paani which didn’t get released. Tell us how What’s Love Got To Do With It? come to you besides the fact that you had Jemima Khan as a script writer?

 It’s getting really tough to make films these days. It is either you make a Marvel film then you are considered to be on the right track. But if you want to make something very real, then it becomes really difficult. But when I read the script of What’s Love Got To Do With It?  I jumped into it. It was during the pre-pandemic that we started working on it. I said, any way it’s COVID, we are all going to die. So, let’s just do it.

 On making a rom-com?

When I first read the script of What’s Love Got To Do With It?  everybody said, it’s a rom-come. But I don’t really like or understand the meaning of a rom-com. But there was something that was deeply emotional about our modern day society which I liked about the script written by Jemima Khan

Why is it hard to raise money to make an independent film that is closer to reality?

I would put it this way, it is hard to raise money for what you really want to do. And it is easy to raise money for what everybody else wants to do.

On assisted marriages and not arranged marriages and fundamental learning in love…

The fundamental learning in love along with the excitement and adventure, but also within yourself there is a search within both the main leads. Love is always a mystery and for that you don’t need to reject any system. The choice is yours and only yours. There is also another thing that one needs to emphasize on as to what kind of love he or she wants. There is some love which are just based on passion and chemistry and on there is again the pragmatic love that we talk about in this movie, What’s Love Got To Do With It? The important part is what kind of love that you are looking for that will take you on a happier long term path**.**

On cinema changing and getting close to reality and you have always been doing that back in the nineties look at the Bandit Queen and Masoom…

I feel if you spend ten times the money marketing a film than spending it in making the film, then you can sell anything. But if you want a film to actually reach out to the audience and touch their emotional chords that is the film which actually stays in not just in the memory, but in the hearts of the audiences. If you don’t touch the emotions, how are you going to reach the audiences that’s what I have always felt and believed. And that is what has always been my fundamental idea of film making.

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