Published by: Anurag Kashyap
Published on: November 25, 2006 11:56 am
There never was a bound script..i did not write the whole film..nobody did..there is a whole lot of myth surrounding the film..it happened..like every other great film..like sholay happened..no individual created Satya..passion did..most of which came from ramu..his being open to moments, ideas, to instincts, created it..it was a different time..it was a different Ramu..
How it began..Ramu was making Daud..there was a new actor he was working with..it was manoj bajpai..i was there when he took that shot of Paresh going crazy and Manoj appearing from behind the door..Ramu fell in love with the shot..he fell in love with the actor..he fell in love with his intensity..he wanted to make an underworld film with him..he wanted to put Howard Roark in the underworld..thats how Satya started..
I met him..Manoj introduced him to me..i was supposed to be writing a film for Mahesh Bhatt which never got made..it was called GIRVI..Ramu asked me “have i read fountainhead..i had..i was an ayn rand fanatic then..i was twenty three..i said “yeah”..he said lets put him in the underworld..i said “wow”..he also had an ending in mind which he remembered from some James Hadley Chase novel..that ending remained..Howard Roark didn’t..
i started working on it ..he asked me how much money i wanted..i didn’t give a fuck about money..then..so i said “whatever’..we began work..whatever we wrote was not ther in the final film..anyways..after we started work Ramu left for Newzealand to shoot songs for DAUD..he disappeared from my life for two months..i thought this is not going nto happen..it was november 1996..February i got a call from him.. no mobile phones at that time..i had a pager..he paged me..he was serious..we made a one line order..Ramu has always worked with an one line order..never a script..this time he wanted a script..i still remember that first one line order..the opening scene was to be shot under the Milan subway..it never happened..
after the one line order was locked in..he wanted it to be written..he didn’t trust me with dialogues..he thought i was too young for it..he met vijay tendulkar for it..Ramu has been a fan of his since ardhasatya..
Vijay tendulkar wasn’t well..he wanted someone more mature..those days alot of people were talking about how Saurabh Shukla had done dialogues for ISS RAAT KI SUBAH NAHIN..saurabh has always brushed it off as just rumour..i had heard that too..but i knew him as a sometime playwrite from Delhi..i spoke about him to Ramu..Ramu offered him a double deal..to play Kallu Mama and write dialogues along with me .. he was to be the boss in that department..we were sent to Hyderabad..on his farmhouse..Ramu’s..At the Mumbai airport saurabh arrived late..he had the tickets..we missed the flight..we took the next one..
we worked more than a week ..we wrote something that looked and sounded like a script..we went back..we started shooting..we began in Goregaon with the chase sequence..the beginning chase..Gerard Hooper was the cameraman..i think i am jumping ahead..lets go back to naming the characters and casting..
but later..have a shoot in the morning..imagine doing this in the middle of my shoot..probably because i met Ramu today..later..
________________________________________________________________
9 Responses to “SATYA- the true story PART 1”
1. oz | November 25th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
- Damn!!!!!!!!!! I’m sucked into the story behind Satya and suddenly you end Part I… I liked the dynamics of your relationship with Ramu… you like his passion for cinema, yet disagree on some aspects… interesting…
2. VC | November 25th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
WOW !!! Cant wait for the next part…very very interesting…
3. OM | November 25th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
OMG!!!! Awesome Anurag…Would like to see this series going..ever since had a chat with kartik..i was so eager to know more about Satya and Bang!!!! Very strange…very strange whatever we have been talking off late( Oz, T! and myself) has been turning true….kinda scary sometimes…Saurabh Shukla’s dialouue writing was one of them ..lol!!
4. Pratim D Gupta | November 25th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Dont you feel sad Anurag that Mr Varma has made Satya so many times now? Company, Sarkar… he calls them trilogy but it’s that same brooding feel, same ominous music, same low cam angles… it’s like deja vu really… godfather or apu trilogy each film stands on its own and is completely original… three films cant form a trilogy just stylistically… can it?
5. striker | November 25th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
ramu, anurag, manoj. birth of SATYA. deadly combination. WAITING EAGERLY ANURAG. JALDI!!
if i remember correctly, tina films int’l contributed the camera and equipment for this film?
6. IndianPad | November 25th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
SATYA- the true story PART 1 by Anurag Kashyap…
SATYA- the true story PART 1 by Anurag Kashyap posted at IndianPad.com…
7. Vipin | November 25th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
What a great post anurag.. waiting for 2nd part
Ramu made too many good movies.. once upon time we all waited for his movies and his factory productions too.. but probem happend bcoz he made soooo many movies and many of them fucking horrible movies… now i think he is out of mind.. and more than passion for cinema ..now he has passion for money..but still he is one of the truely talented filmmaker in india
8. striker | November 25th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
“it was a different time..it was a different Ramu..”
:-< :( yes it was… yes… it was.
anurag, be blunt with the answer to this one.. since you know him better than any of us.. do you see any hope of vintage ramu making a return?
9. oz | November 25th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
- striker, I had asked AK the same question. His answer was a resounding YES… :d
10. Honhaar Goonda | November 25th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
(i have been refreshing the pfc blog continuously for last a couple of hours! I don’t wanna go to sleep cos…. taza khabar ka kuch aur hi maza hain )
Excuse me ignorance, but what is one line order?
kya striker.. ramu ka fan hokar bhi.. of course, you will see vintage ramu in Nishabd and Sholay. Always have some faith in the man. ;)
11. Anurag Kashyap | November 25th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
In order to return one has to be aware that he has left..Ramu doesn’t think he ever left..he still is as passionate, but more burdened with expectations, even bigger burden is of his own demi god status..he has lost objectivity..and yes from where i stand he definitely can return..but will he..i don’t know..just saw portions of Nishabd today..i don’t think i am looking forward to any of his films except Nishabd..i liked what i saw..
12. OM | November 25th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Has the shooting been completed for Nishabd?
13. manjeet | November 25th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
wow! Thanks Anurag for sharing your experiences with us. Satya must PFC’s one of the all time favourite film!
Please put the Ram n Shyam part in the 2nd post on Satya!!
14. Vijay | November 25th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Anurag yaar, aise suspense mein na chod. One of the all time greats of Indian cinema, it very thrilling to find out how the film was born. Looking forward to the rest your write-up.
15. striker | November 25th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
OM, yup.. shooting was completed about 3 months back.. they’re in post now.. in fact, have a friend who AD’d on it, and just got news from him last week that they were in dubbing. it should be hitting the screens by feb..
anurag, thx for that..
16. oz | November 25th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
- this has happened time and again and I’ve read in biographies of quite a few people in any film industry… question is how does one remain unaffected by the burden of being a “demi-god” status (adulation, superstardom and whatever we have there) and let the gears of creativity running completely in mesh with each other.
Would RGV ever come here and speak in first person basis? I hope he does rather than talking to the thousands of interviewers who have nothing deep to ask him besides his projects, heroines, heroes yada yada yada…
17. smritivij | November 25th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
reading anurag reading. May nothing in this world or beyond stop u any more. May the force be with u!!!!!
in solidarity!!
18. chaitanya | November 25th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
This is Superrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!The birth of Satya? Hell yes!!
AK: Did you or anyone else want the songs to be a part of Satya? (They were very good but one or two were out of place)
What was your first reaction when you saw a fucking 5 star rating for Satya in the Times of India? I know they say critics dont matter and all, but 5 stars and it’s hard to control your heartbeat, isn’t it?
How do you react now, as a person to the criticism that Satya glorified and sympathised with gangsters?
19. Zero | November 25th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
Anurag,
Wow! Looking forward to this series. Who would not love to hear a first person account on Satya!
20. ricky | November 26th, 2006 at 2:38 am
hi anurag…ver interesting info…can you also tell us how did rgv interact with his assistants then? did he take their suggestions? was he open to their ideas on a creative level? or were they just runners on the sets? heard that now he just interacts very rarely with his assistants on the set and doesnt even know the name of his assistants on the project he’s working on! guess now he’s not in a position to give a “break” to his assistants like he did earlier…by the way how did your short meeting with rgv go? did you also discuss his version of sholay which he had offered you to write at one point!
21. premal | November 26th, 2006 at 3:02 am
sirjee i want the full story. got so engaging..gotta complete it
22. Sash | November 26th, 2006 at 5:28 am
Hi Anurag,
Thkk ur doing a great job….met u at the screenwriters meet at pune ealy this yer.
waiting for your film to release soon….hoping that this one sure getz to see the light of the day…keep us posted…they r extremely exhilirating and in a way inspirational too…
23. george thomas | November 26th, 2006 at 6:22 am
Damn! There goes my Sunday. Now I’m waiting for Part II. Waiting. Waiting.
24. tushar | November 26th, 2006 at 8:39 am
cool food for thought on a sunday, Anurag’s beginning Satya diaries is very apt, looking at where we stand at PFC now in terms of film knowledge and richness of creative inputs of the industry and amateurs alike.
I dont agree that much has gone down with Ramu’s directive strength, he keeps giving a Sarkar n a Naach in face of all the spite-friendly ventures/’failures’.
and ya, Anurag, GURU ke baare mein bhi koi update do yaar :)
25. The truth about Satya at Blogbharti | November 26th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
[…] Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Must read for all Kashyap fans. Posted by Bombay Addict […]
26. Sudha Elavarti | November 27th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Good insight of the making of a master piece. The otehr day i was having a big discussion with my friend about Ramu. I had the same thing to say…he is definetly passionate and has a different vision and dares to try them, but the current Ramu is stuck at “I” “Me” “Myself”. Hope to see him back soon.
27. ricky | December 7th, 2006 at 12:38 am
hi anurag!waiting for your reply regarding my question about rgv and his interaction with his ad’s then and now…
28. Kartik Kothari | December 13th, 2006 at 3:56 am
Satya tops my list of favorite films and I know the film by heart now. It feels great getting behind the scenes of this classic. Waiting for more AK. And keep up the good work.
P.S. I am also waiting to see Black Friday hit the big screen.
29. Apurva | January 14th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
As u ve seen ramu and his passion for film do u think he will strike back with good work. For ramu i think zindagi ka maza khade mein hai and i think ghade mein talent duub raha hain bachaa le usko
Appu
Published on: November 25, 2006 11:56 am
There never was a bound script..i did not write the whole film..nobody did..there is a whole lot of myth surrounding the film..it happened..like every other great film..like sholay happened..no individual created Satya..passion did..most of which came from ramu..his being open to moments, ideas, to instincts, created it..it was a different time..it was a different Ramu..
How it began..Ramu was making Daud..there was a new actor he was working with..it was manoj bajpai..i was there when he took that shot of Paresh going crazy and Manoj appearing from behind the door..Ramu fell in love with the shot..he fell in love with the actor..he fell in love with his intensity..he wanted to make an underworld film with him..he wanted to put Howard Roark in the underworld..thats how Satya started..
I met him..Manoj introduced him to me..i was supposed to be writing a film for Mahesh Bhatt which never got made..it was called GIRVI..Ramu asked me “have i read fountainhead..i had..i was an ayn rand fanatic then..i was twenty three..i said “yeah”..he said lets put him in the underworld..i said “wow”..he also had an ending in mind which he remembered from some James Hadley Chase novel..that ending remained..Howard Roark didn’t..
i started working on it ..he asked me how much money i wanted..i didn’t give a fuck about money..then..so i said “whatever’..we began work..whatever we wrote was not ther in the final film..anyways..after we started work Ramu left for Newzealand to shoot songs for DAUD..he disappeared from my life for two months..i thought this is not going nto happen..it was november 1996..February i got a call from him.. no mobile phones at that time..i had a pager..he paged me..he was serious..we made a one line order..Ramu has always worked with an one line order..never a script..this time he wanted a script..i still remember that first one line order..the opening scene was to be shot under the Milan subway..it never happened..
after the one line order was locked in..he wanted it to be written..he didn’t trust me with dialogues..he thought i was too young for it..he met vijay tendulkar for it..Ramu has been a fan of his since ardhasatya..
Vijay tendulkar wasn’t well..he wanted someone more mature..those days alot of people were talking about how Saurabh Shukla had done dialogues for ISS RAAT KI SUBAH NAHIN..saurabh has always brushed it off as just rumour..i had heard that too..but i knew him as a sometime playwrite from Delhi..i spoke about him to Ramu..Ramu offered him a double deal..to play Kallu Mama and write dialogues along with me .. he was to be the boss in that department..we were sent to Hyderabad..on his farmhouse..Ramu’s..At the Mumbai airport saurabh arrived late..he had the tickets..we missed the flight..we took the next one..
we worked more than a week ..we wrote something that looked and sounded like a script..we went back..we started shooting..we began in Goregaon with the chase sequence..the beginning chase..Gerard Hooper was the cameraman..i think i am jumping ahead..lets go back to naming the characters and casting..
but later..have a shoot in the morning..imagine doing this in the middle of my shoot..probably because i met Ramu today..later..
________________________________________________________________
9 Responses to “SATYA- the true story PART 1”
1. oz | November 25th, 2006 at 12:04 pm
- Damn!!!!!!!!!! I’m sucked into the story behind Satya and suddenly you end Part I… I liked the dynamics of your relationship with Ramu… you like his passion for cinema, yet disagree on some aspects… interesting…
2. VC | November 25th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
WOW !!! Cant wait for the next part…very very interesting…
3. OM | November 25th, 2006 at 12:49 pm
OMG!!!! Awesome Anurag…Would like to see this series going..ever since had a chat with kartik..i was so eager to know more about Satya and Bang!!!! Very strange…very strange whatever we have been talking off late( Oz, T! and myself) has been turning true….kinda scary sometimes…Saurabh Shukla’s dialouue writing was one of them ..lol!!
4. Pratim D Gupta | November 25th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Dont you feel sad Anurag that Mr Varma has made Satya so many times now? Company, Sarkar… he calls them trilogy but it’s that same brooding feel, same ominous music, same low cam angles… it’s like deja vu really… godfather or apu trilogy each film stands on its own and is completely original… three films cant form a trilogy just stylistically… can it?
5. striker | November 25th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
ramu, anurag, manoj. birth of SATYA. deadly combination. WAITING EAGERLY ANURAG. JALDI!!
if i remember correctly, tina films int’l contributed the camera and equipment for this film?
6. IndianPad | November 25th, 2006 at 12:57 pm
SATYA- the true story PART 1 by Anurag Kashyap…
SATYA- the true story PART 1 by Anurag Kashyap posted at IndianPad.com…
7. Vipin | November 25th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
What a great post anurag.. waiting for 2nd part
Ramu made too many good movies.. once upon time we all waited for his movies and his factory productions too.. but probem happend bcoz he made soooo many movies and many of them fucking horrible movies… now i think he is out of mind.. and more than passion for cinema ..now he has passion for money..but still he is one of the truely talented filmmaker in india
8. striker | November 25th, 2006 at 2:03 pm
“it was a different time..it was a different Ramu..”
:-< :( yes it was… yes… it was.
anurag, be blunt with the answer to this one.. since you know him better than any of us.. do you see any hope of vintage ramu making a return?
9. oz | November 25th, 2006 at 2:27 pm
- striker, I had asked AK the same question. His answer was a resounding YES… :d
10. Honhaar Goonda | November 25th, 2006 at 3:14 pm
(i have been refreshing the pfc blog continuously for last a couple of hours! I don’t wanna go to sleep cos…. taza khabar ka kuch aur hi maza hain )
Excuse me ignorance, but what is one line order?
kya striker.. ramu ka fan hokar bhi.. of course, you will see vintage ramu in Nishabd and Sholay. Always have some faith in the man. ;)
11. Anurag Kashyap | November 25th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
In order to return one has to be aware that he has left..Ramu doesn’t think he ever left..he still is as passionate, but more burdened with expectations, even bigger burden is of his own demi god status..he has lost objectivity..and yes from where i stand he definitely can return..but will he..i don’t know..just saw portions of Nishabd today..i don’t think i am looking forward to any of his films except Nishabd..i liked what i saw..
12. OM | November 25th, 2006 at 4:42 pm
Has the shooting been completed for Nishabd?
13. manjeet | November 25th, 2006 at 5:32 pm
wow! Thanks Anurag for sharing your experiences with us. Satya must PFC’s one of the all time favourite film!
Please put the Ram n Shyam part in the 2nd post on Satya!!
14. Vijay | November 25th, 2006 at 7:48 pm
Anurag yaar, aise suspense mein na chod. One of the all time greats of Indian cinema, it very thrilling to find out how the film was born. Looking forward to the rest your write-up.
15. striker | November 25th, 2006 at 7:59 pm
OM, yup.. shooting was completed about 3 months back.. they’re in post now.. in fact, have a friend who AD’d on it, and just got news from him last week that they were in dubbing. it should be hitting the screens by feb..
anurag, thx for that..
16. oz | November 25th, 2006 at 8:07 pm
- this has happened time and again and I’ve read in biographies of quite a few people in any film industry… question is how does one remain unaffected by the burden of being a “demi-god” status (adulation, superstardom and whatever we have there) and let the gears of creativity running completely in mesh with each other.
Would RGV ever come here and speak in first person basis? I hope he does rather than talking to the thousands of interviewers who have nothing deep to ask him besides his projects, heroines, heroes yada yada yada…
17. smritivij | November 25th, 2006 at 11:00 pm
reading anurag reading. May nothing in this world or beyond stop u any more. May the force be with u!!!!!
in solidarity!!
18. chaitanya | November 25th, 2006 at 11:54 pm
This is Superrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!The birth of Satya? Hell yes!!
AK: Did you or anyone else want the songs to be a part of Satya? (They were very good but one or two were out of place)
What was your first reaction when you saw a fucking 5 star rating for Satya in the Times of India? I know they say critics dont matter and all, but 5 stars and it’s hard to control your heartbeat, isn’t it?
How do you react now, as a person to the criticism that Satya glorified and sympathised with gangsters?
19. Zero | November 25th, 2006 at 11:59 pm
Anurag,
Wow! Looking forward to this series. Who would not love to hear a first person account on Satya!
20. ricky | November 26th, 2006 at 2:38 am
hi anurag…ver interesting info…can you also tell us how did rgv interact with his assistants then? did he take their suggestions? was he open to their ideas on a creative level? or were they just runners on the sets? heard that now he just interacts very rarely with his assistants on the set and doesnt even know the name of his assistants on the project he’s working on! guess now he’s not in a position to give a “break” to his assistants like he did earlier…by the way how did your short meeting with rgv go? did you also discuss his version of sholay which he had offered you to write at one point!
21. premal | November 26th, 2006 at 3:02 am
sirjee i want the full story. got so engaging..gotta complete it
22. Sash | November 26th, 2006 at 5:28 am
Hi Anurag,
Thkk ur doing a great job….met u at the screenwriters meet at pune ealy this yer.
waiting for your film to release soon….hoping that this one sure getz to see the light of the day…keep us posted…they r extremely exhilirating and in a way inspirational too…
23. george thomas | November 26th, 2006 at 6:22 am
Damn! There goes my Sunday. Now I’m waiting for Part II. Waiting. Waiting.
24. tushar | November 26th, 2006 at 8:39 am
cool food for thought on a sunday, Anurag’s beginning Satya diaries is very apt, looking at where we stand at PFC now in terms of film knowledge and richness of creative inputs of the industry and amateurs alike.
I dont agree that much has gone down with Ramu’s directive strength, he keeps giving a Sarkar n a Naach in face of all the spite-friendly ventures/’failures’.
and ya, Anurag, GURU ke baare mein bhi koi update do yaar :)
25. The truth about Satya at Blogbharti | November 26th, 2006 at 9:12 pm
[…] Part 1 here and Part 2 here. Must read for all Kashyap fans. Posted by Bombay Addict […]
26. Sudha Elavarti | November 27th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Good insight of the making of a master piece. The otehr day i was having a big discussion with my friend about Ramu. I had the same thing to say…he is definetly passionate and has a different vision and dares to try them, but the current Ramu is stuck at “I” “Me” “Myself”. Hope to see him back soon.
27. ricky | December 7th, 2006 at 12:38 am
hi anurag!waiting for your reply regarding my question about rgv and his interaction with his ad’s then and now…
28. Kartik Kothari | December 13th, 2006 at 3:56 am
Satya tops my list of favorite films and I know the film by heart now. It feels great getting behind the scenes of this classic. Waiting for more AK. And keep up the good work.
P.S. I am also waiting to see Black Friday hit the big screen.
29. Apurva | January 14th, 2007 at 10:49 pm
As u ve seen ramu and his passion for film do u think he will strike back with good work. For ramu i think zindagi ka maza khade mein hai and i think ghade mein talent duub raha hain bachaa le usko
Appu
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