Published by: Anurag Kashyap
Published: on Dec 30 2008 @ 10:20 am @ 10:20 am
I was always told i can not make a love story and it always bothered me. But there wasn’t a love story i related to. Not the ones they referred to. I enjoyed QSQT, DDLJ, Maine Pyaar Kiya and then i grew up. Later I enjoyed Dil Chahta Hai, Metro and Jab We Met. One was about growing up and friendships, second was about relationships the latter was fun. But could i make something like that without killing it, the very thing that made it. Impossible. But yes i did want to make a love story. The love story that i have enjoyed the most, Head On by fatih akin(in recent times) and “love me if you dare”, these were the one’s i wished i made them. Chungking express and Happy Together and In the mood for Love. Breathless. Jules et Jim. Will I ever get to make something like them. No. I wasn’t that good . So i never attempted to make one. Only once I got any closer to write a love story was Gulaal, but was it a love story?
There was a love story or many unrequited ones in it amongst others. So why could i never make a love story? Because i had set myself very high standards and that blocked me from even attempting one. I was also too scared of my own darkness. Failure of NS scared me even further.
Abhay had started it and i was excited but NS came and bombed, filling me with severe self doubts. We were set to go on the shoot, I lost courage. I could not write, Vikram’s draft was done, I had to add my bits to it, and my ideas were formed but i lost courage. I sank. I disappeared, went through some really indescribable things. And it suddenly came back. It came because of a lot of people judging me on the basis of that one film. A NS which i am extremely proud of and because i kept refusing to say that,”i m sorry, i made a mistake with it”. And the failure of people to get it and my failure to reach out to them with it, made them write off “black friday” and all else. I felt judged and that gave me the idea to what to do with Dev.D. Write a story about the young people who were judged by the society and were given no chance to come back. That is what Dev.D is. It’s the story of the outcasts. People we give up on, because they are stubborn, because they refuse to confirm and they don’t listen. they want to do their own shit, take their time figuring the rights from wrongs and in the process discover themselves. Like i always said, Dev.D is the story of self realization, self discovery , self destruction being one of the routes to it or the result of it.
The another thing that happened at the same time was the first cut of Aamir. It blew me. I was completely taken by surprise by what Rajkumar had achieved. I remember refusing to come to the edit suite to see it, i was depressed and asked him to put it on a dvd and sent it home. I started watching it, midway through it my depression was gone, i called him. I asked him to come over, he came. I had not finished watching it when he arrived, i made him sit down and finished watching it. I hugged him. It challenged me. I told him now you see what I do. What he did with Aamir breathed a new life into me.
I wrote it then on. All the ideas incidents used borrowed from real life. From the headline stories, newspaper front pages. Idea being , take devdas and find parallels to it in todays world. Be unapologetic, real and weave it together with music. Amit was already done with the tracks. Listening to them we, me and Vik kept rewriting, fighting, lots of things he disagreed on but we continued, I borrowed from my life, his life , Abhay’s life. Something was still missing, could not figure out what. We started shooting. We started shooting in london. On the way back , i don’t know what happened, i felt we needed to see chandramukhi’s story separately, what makes that girl Leni, to end up doing what she does. I wrote on the flight. Final draft of it on the flight from london to bombay. Got back and got it printed, The new development completely altered the film. A new song had to be included. The nature of the songs in the film being that, either they are used as states of mind of various characters or their journeys. None of them lip synched by the main characters. Either background or happening around.
It became a completely different movie.
Then we started shooting the Paro’s story in Punjab and I got a call from Kalki. She said she was not sure she could pull it off, on being asked why she said, everyone is in punjab and i don’t know who to rehearse with, and i need to keep doing that and i am not sure i will be as good in front of the camera. I asked my line producer ajay, can we get her here, even though she is not needed. He said yeah, so she flew down. Next day when we were shooting at the railway station when Paro leaves for the city, it was chaos and kalki was also standing there. I don’t know what happened to me , I asked her to get in there. “Get in where”, she asked.
In the shot with Mahi. This is where Paro and Chanda cross each other.
But they don’t.
Well in SLB’s version they meet and dance together. He has already taken the original one step further, lets take it up from there. Get in the train is about to leave.
And my costumes?
What you are wearing is ok, just give it to the costumes department after the shoot.
She got in and we took the shot and the film changed even further. That one day if Kalki wasn’t there, Dev.d would have been another film. From then on, strands kept emerging and without rewriting much we just kept creating shots, thrice actually, which made the film what it is today. I call them happy accidents.
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Cool Info.
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and Anurag I’ve send you a mail on your gmail account,
Regarding “Doga”
shekharshimpi@kriyastudios.com
Awesome back story
I wonder what a Director who is not the writer does if he has an idea on set… nothing? that would be unfortunate, but then who’d tie the pieces together later? What would you have done if you hadn’t written the script and you had an idea like this?
BTW, How u discover Delhi, those neon areas and stuff? And did u again shoot guerilla style?
Ohh… the bloody indulgence!
Love Me If You Dare - great film. Maybe someday I’ll understand why bade logon ko Chungking Express pasand aati hai
And do tell us more about Mahi. Have her write a post if she would like to. She and Richa are the two great new discoveries in my book this year. I especially want to hear about how the tubewell scene came out
THAT IS AK !!!
GK
bohat naan insaafi hai yeh
Are chanda , paro aur devD ho gaye , ye Chunni laal ka kya suspense hai ? kaun hai ye chupa rustam ? Hope he adds a unique flavour in the movie,eager to see the characterisation of Chunni !
AK, have you also written the screenplay of Dev D?
very inspiring.
Thanks for sharing the thought process AK!
OLLO was sadly the case of wrong timing (with all those terrorsit attack )
IMO abahy is the most unique new actor we have after long time
I shall check out the movies you have listed here.
“Days of Being Wild ” should not be missed when you are talking of “In the Mood for Love”
I felt that Wong Kar Wai was inspired from Jean-Luc-Godard’s “Breathless” for manking “Chungking Express”..
It was good to learn about Happy Accidents
breathless was a post modern film with all the homages. so pulp fiction is our breathless.
n wong kar wai is inspired by the new wave of hongkong. specially Patrick Tam who was also the editor of his film Days of being wild.
still Wong Kar Wai is very under-rated. all most all of his films are box office flops. so AK don’t worry. you are not alone
i think if you are auteur then you are always gonna have a niche market and your films going to be cult hit. which i guess NO Smoking is. people actually need time to understand the magnitude of NS. it’s like Scarface. after 10 years everyone will talk about NS. afrerall it’s path breaking
neways in present cinema which directors are visually stunning or disturbing?
my list
WONG KAR WAI
Gaspar Noé
Darren Aronfsky
Kim Ki Duk
Park Chan Wook
Kim Ji Woon
Hou Hsiao Hsien
Chris Cunnigham
AK please comment on this. please tell us about the directors u think are making visually stunning/shocking/disturbing pictures? and also about major inspirations in case of visual because we all know you also have introduced a new visual in hindi cinema!
EXCELLENT LIST !!!
GK
But you know what is more interesting?
If I were in your shoes, would have felt the same depression, same self doubts, same hug to buddy Rajkumar, same reinforcement. So everytime I read you posts, They bring a big smile on my face. Thanks
BTW, I tried that Requiem-for-a-dream/DevD (pole cam) shot.
It was much easier than I thought. Mind if I say I myself is holding the bare camera. No tripod, no clamps nothing. Just stiff hand.
It’s here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x77q0pWzv_I
Wasn’t the same theme explored in “Clockwork Orange”, though that involved intervention of the state and I assume in your movie it would be the rejection by the state/collective. But by in large there do seem to be some parallels in the two premises. I hope your movie turns our to be as great as some of all time favourites books and movies that have explored “the individual versus the collective” conflict.
best wishes for the new year and the movie.
How does one borrow books from you?
One doesn’t
On the door of AK’s library is a colourful sign which says “Do NOT touch any of the books/DVDs. There is a hidden camera. You will be ELECTROCUTED.”
That was heartfelt once again & I admire you for the way you are being honest about the genesis of the movie.Wish more & more filmmakers could connect to us filmi’s over here in the same manner here.Please keep the thoughts pouring.We are keen to know more.
Joe Eczterhas had written in his book ‘Hollywood animal’ that during the shooting of ‘Betrayed’ the producer used to roam around the sets every day fearing that ‘the director get any new brilliant ideas.’ What Eczterhas was implying is that such sudden ideas destroy doesnt sync with the over all tone of the script. His sentiment is understandable. Because he had never directed any of his scripts. Naturally he would feel powerless and violated.
But I think that a person who can give a real picture regarding this is someone who directs his own scripts.
Best Hindi film of 2008?
My pick: Oye Lucky Lucky Oye… probably the best in last decade if you ask me. Our own “Mean Streets”… hopefully an Indian New Wave will follow
.
If I am not late to the party, is it possible to make a separate blog just for Dev D which contains all the posts by the makers of Dev D. This will help in consolidating the information and also help in marketing the movie better.
.
I know there is the official web site. But that’s darn slow just to know daily or frequent updates.
Of course, you can diss the idea
like u said a good film like aamir does more than enrich the repertoire of cinema. all the best to u. for our sake.
From an old thread -
‘Anurag Kashyap on December 26th, 2008 6:33 am
you can borrow all of maya deren from me..’
Just thought this was an offer open to all
Am willing to surrender my passport if need be :p
1st on the list is Mr “on a whole”
but anwyway i m quite sure movie is very well made and seem quite diffrent than usual bollywood stuff which has taglines like extraordinary love story ordinary love story or whatever
bestof luck to mr anurag
Don’t calculate anything at this time buddy,
Especially things like ‘negative comments from critics’, they will rip the film and all .
Cause “The Word becomes flesh” as Jesus said.
Do u have a link to the Maya Deren article ?
you are also shooting the RGV way..i believe he also constantly makes last minute changes while shooting and improvises mostly depending on his state of mind! a new scipt starts to develop in his head along with the films edit and the actual script just remains on paper - a memorabilia for the writer!
I have 2 questions for you-
1.You had told that you wanted to have a certain kind of styling for No Smoking but you could not able to do it due to non availability of cameras and stuff like that.
Were you able to do it this time?
2.What made you to have twilight players in the movie.How are they used in the narrative? They are seen in the deleted scene also if I am not wrong.
I just fell in love with what they do and film being a musical , i wanted to use them as some kind of a witness to the unfolding story ..
gives us an insight into how this shit goes down… i’m not even remotely connected to your world, but am mighty interested, so this is great!
you should have some kind of interaction section face to face with your fans… would be great to hear you .. speak about your influences etc. Or else you can have a chat room too … i don’t know if you do that already!!
All the best
Do that pls, it’ll only rev up the publicity.
should i post it here??
All the best for the film! really liked the promo and the music is growing on me
i don’t know if you remember me (i’m the hack from delhi who interviewed you near india gate while you were shooting for tigmanshu’s film, or to be more direct…anjalika’s colleague)…i really enjoyed no smoking…in fact i watched it twice on consecutive days in the theatre when it released…am really looking forward to watching dev.d…the music is really great…read my review at http://twentyonwards.blogs.com/twenty_onwards/2009/01/raved-review.html
would like to meet you again if you’re coming down to delhi
Do we get to talk to Amit Trivedi on PFC sometime ?
here is the text:(I couldn’t find the link)
In the first scene we were shooting, this guy comes to Satya for hafta and Satya slashes a knife on his face. In my mind the time he slashes I thought that would be the cutting point. Now Sushant played the goon’s role. Sushant was someone my department had got. I didn’t even know that he as an actor as I thought he was some junior artiste. But since Sushant is a good actor, he improvised and after Satya slashes him before I could say ‘cut’ he screamed, and his scream startled me because I wasn’t expecting him to do that so I forgot to say ‘cut’. Because I didn’t say ‘cut’ this guy who was showing him the koli had improvised saying, “Oh ho pani lao paani lao”. That is when it finally struck my mind as to what Satya should be about. While capturing a scene, all the Directors have a tendency, this is how it starts and this is how it ends. I thought this film should be made in the style of what happened before and what happens after. All realistic performances came in because I stopped restricting actors after that scene. I just wanted them to improvise whatever they feel like. Actors were instructed not to follow written lines but just say whatever they feel like, so most of the times the content was told to them and they kept on improvising and I controlled it on the editing. That’s as far as the shooting part of Satya goes.
The interesting thing to note here is that the style of Satya is largely due to Sushant’s unexpected scream. If he had not screamed or if I had told him before itself that shot will cut on the slash, Satya would not have been the same.
hope you did keep in mind that Devdas is not much of a witty character as opposed to the kinda roles Abhay deol generally plays.
And as for abhay being an under-rated actor… thats a bit of a fallacy i think, cuz whoever i talk to unanimously agrees that he is a great actor.
And that these kinda movies dont work that well is also a bit of a fallacy: we, at our college went to see OLLO three times.
And we only talk about these contemporary kind of films at our sutta point. So, we needn’t worry- future of our kinda cinema is secure… it will catch up surely, if slowly.
@vinod thanks very much for sharing that. that was great.
@Glaeronius 6 feb
devdas has been adapted times before.