Still Before Movie Making Became Tough

I feel blessed to have been directing actively through three entirely different eras of movie making. I suspect and hope soon I will see a fourth one. Which will be far more organic and ‘film friendly’ than what it is today.

Those were the days when one of the important questions a Producer asked a Director before he signed him on was “How many cans will you shoot?” A can used to be 400 ft of film and could cost Rs 8000 to Rs 12000. Good and efficient Directors would finish shooting a film in 500 cans. Number of cans weighed heavily on the budget of the film and was watched keenly every day by the Producer. I distinctly remember two Directors who did not think much of this tradition. Shashi Lal Nair, on the sets of ANGAAR once shouted ‘Raw stock is the cheapest commodity in film making’. He was right in a lot of ways. And then one Director, who has only made masterpieces, well mostly, Rajkumar Santoshi, came to be known as a Director who redefined raw stock consumption. But he only delivered blockbusters so the Producers were fine. Those were the days. There were some lucky Directors who started Directing on a video format called LOW BAND. It did not have much depth, just enough to capture the depth of the story. We did fine with those. I think the legendary TV shows Ramayan and Mahabharat were shot on Low Band. I remember there used to be a curfew like situation countrywide every time those shows aired. Early nineties they created Hi Band. It was virtually upper class Low Band. This was the time when Doordarshan briefly went commercial and started something called DD Metro. It did well until they shut it down. Personally I got my break as a Director on that channel. Today it sounds cheesy and corny but the show I was assisting on flopped right after it started. It was called AB AAYEGA MAZAA. Of course the MAZAA never came and then we were left with six more episodes to be shot just to honor the contract. A fall guy was needed. I begged to be one and became one. I Directed those six episodes and put in my papers to my Boss Pankuj Parashar. That is the cleverest thing I have done in my life.

By then they had started a new format called Betacam.  Right then a friend with fifty thousand Rupees to spare, developed some sort of confidence in me. Those were the days of TV pilots. A pilot was typically the first episode of a TV show that you had in your head or at best on paper. The system was to ‘make’ the first pilot episode and do the rounds of various channels to get commissioned for the rest of the episodes. 90% of the pilots then, did not make it to the ‘silicon screen’. SHIKAST was the name of the serial we invested in. Sourabh Shukla and I wrote it. The first phone call I made was to Mr. Shammi Kapoor. I was an audacious man. Audacity, to me, is the most precious virtue. You should be smart enough to tell between audacity and stupidity. There is a very thin line between the two. So think before you jump the gun. Shammi Ji was a great admirer of this virtue and chose to be a part of my adventure. Rest of the cast was friends. Later they would be big shining stars of the silver screen. Manoj Bajpayee, Ashish Vidyarthi, Milind Gunajee, Ashutosh Rana, Kittu Gidwani, Raj Zutshi  and many more. I was friends with this shy, quiet composer from Delhi who had done some advertising work for me. We would hang out together, drink and eat and think of working together. Vishal Bhardwaj was just a composer then with no ambition to Direct that I knew or he shared. He was close to Gulzar Sahab even then. In my audacious pursuits I wanted a published poem by him to be in the Credit sequence of the Pilot. Vishal took me to him thinking we will convince him on a good price. Bhai told me to come back after making the pilot. He would see it and decide if he would let me use the poem. I made the pilot and the audacious instincts were still alive and kicking. I went to Naseer bhai. Yes, Nseeruddin Shah. I honestly do not remember how I ever met him first. But I do remember I used to hang out on his sets. Those days sets were less professional and more personal. Today sets are compartmentalized in to vanity vans. The first Vanity van was created by well deserving Mr Bachchan followed by Anil Kapoor. They get vanity vans even for Assistant Directors these days. Call me old fashioned but these vanity vans do more harm than they serve.  A set is a place where you get to spend time with people with amazing skill sets. It could be acting, art direction, lighting, costume designing or whatever. These days it is way more professional. People come and do their jobs on the shot and go back to their vanity vans. However it is not besides the point that now we take way more number of days to complete a film.

I wanted Naseer Bhai to recite the poem for the title sequence of my pilot. He enquired about Bhai’s permission and I honestly told him I would use it only if Bhai approved it. Look at this naïve boy who didn’t realize he was talking about dumping Naseeruddin Shah’s Narration to Naseeruddin Shah. Look at the love for work, that Naseer Bhai Still chose to dub it.  Gulzar bhai left Rekha and me on the ground floor of Boskiyana and went upstairs to watch the pilot on a VHS not before sending Kiyani biscuits and Tea for Rekha and me. Kiyani Bisuits from Pune still used to be as good. I am a foodie and I loved those biscuits but Rakha and I were only discussing how much will bhai ask for. He finally came back, gave me a hug and said “Very well done. This is your struggle, and this poem is my contribution to it”. This is the most wonderful sentence anybody has ever said to me. As wonderful as my son saying ‘I love you’.

Honestly I didn’t think of Naseer bhai at that point at all. Now I do. What a gesture to drive down from Perry Cross Road to Khar on a Sunday morning to dub a poem for almost a stranger without knowing if the stranger will ever make anything out of it. I did. My love and gratitude to Naseer Bhai.  Little late but nevertheless. 

The pilot was screened for friends that I loved and respected. We had a wonderful response. I have never told Tishu (Tigmanshu Dhulia) that the hug he gave me after watching that pilot was the most satisfying feelings that year.  Actually there was another one that ran close. I had an assistant called Govind and the protagonist of SHIKAST was Vinit. I know this sounds disjointed but wait. Vinit epitomizes everything that describes Bihar. There was no Jharkhand then. Vinit called me one Sunday morning on my home number. There were no Cell Phones then. Groggily I answered the phone and Vinit announced “Haan… Vinit bol rahe hain, lo baat karo’. Another man took the phone and said ‘Haan Anubhav Govind bol raha hun’. It woke me up. How come Govind my assistant called me by my first name?  Now you see the connection? It wasn’t that Govind I soon realized “Govind Nihlani. What a wonderful pilot you have made. I love it”. Some sentences you can vividly hear years after they are spoken. This was one of those. The pilot got a buyer and just then world had upgraded Beta cam to Digibeta and my Producers decided to let me shoot on Digibeta.

There used to be a TV software company called UTV. They made small game shows like ‘Snakes and ladders’ etc. One ex theater guy named Ronnie Screwwalla ran the company. This was the fastest growing TV Production company in town. Ronnie was this suave, smooth, visionary entrepreneur. They called me once to direct a show for them. They wanted me to go meet them. I wasn’t an arrogant man. May be I was. I said I didn’t want to do game shows. Those were the days when you didn’t give a damn and did what you wanted to do. The man on the other side convinced me for the meeting saying they wanted to discuss a big fiction show with me. 

To Be Continued.....

Making Films In Bollywood Was So Easy Then

Making Films In Bollywood Was So Easy Then

When I came to Bombay Dec 4, 1990 I didn’t know Andheri East from West. Did not have a telephone number that I could call, besides my friend Virendra Saxena (The Actor) who was kind enough to allow me to share his roof. I wanted to make films. Those days the only man who made films in the city was Mr. Mahesh Bhatt. His cream color Maruti 800 number BLN 50 (Pl excuse my fetish for numbers) would travel  from ‘Dil hai Ke manta nahin’  to ‘Sadak’ to ‘Saathi’ during a single day. Vikram Bhatt was first aide on one film Salil Verghese on another one and so on.  Pooja Bhatt would sometimes show up riding pillion on Hamara Bajaj with Robin Bhatt. Yes she was still the heroine of the film. His sets would have more visitors than the crew itself. I was one of those, for months. Four months. For sure, until I got a job elsewhere.  Not to forget a great meeting with just Mr. Bhatt and me at his house. That meeting in another blog though. I remember Mr. Bhatt telling someone one day, ‘People don’t come to see me; there is a rare white pigeon on my shoulder. They come to meet that pigeon. Some day this pigeon will be on another shoulder then these same very people will go there. Fortunately for Mr. Bhatt that white pigeon continues to sit there. On his terms. 

Working in Bollywood was tough then. There was only Bollywood in Bombay. There was No ZEE TV then forget SONY or STAR. Internet was almost Sci-Fi. So if you had to work it had to be the movies. No Less.  Those were the days when people cried when they said roll camera the first time. I did. It was tough to make movies then. You had to be an assistant first. I know of people who worked as assistants for two decades and still never got to make a film. These days kids get restless in six months. After being an assistant for so long you had to have a story and once you had a story you needed to have an appointment. An appointment with a person who would believe in you. It could be a Star or a Producer. Yes Stars were this powerful even then, just that the Producers had a little more say in the film.  The bad news was that Bollywood didn’t make as many films every year then, so the chances of making a film were even slimmer. It was tough. Damn tough.

There were no video assists. You would see what you shot only a couple of days later. Until then? Nothing. Every time a shot got over, the Director looked at the cameraman. When he said okay the Director would move on to the next. Such was the trust. Such were the relationships. These days it is simpler; you see the shot on a monitor as it is canned. The bad news is that there are a number of people sitting behind you. The number of people of course depends on how big your movie is and how many stars are in it and of course each one has an opinion. At least one. Even worse, you can’t reject them.

It was the 1991 Iraq war that brought Cable TV to India. Cable News Network it was called, rightfully. CNN. Until then it was only DD and Krishi Darshan. Then came ZEE, then SONY then STAR and then a plethora of entertainment software ran through a weird maze of white cables that suspended from one rooftop to the other. These cables were the arteries of so many careers that would be built over the next two decades. TARA was the first Super Hit show on ZeeTV. Navnit Nishan, a very dear friend from NSD became the first Satellite TV celebrity in India. She didn’t know what hit her. From various film assignments to appearances to endorsements to a wide range of new career avenues. That was the beginning of the ease of making movies. Not movies necessarily but yes, thereabouts.  

Personally I started my Directing career with some episodes of Yule Love Stories on ZEE TV in 1993.  Around the year 1995 the world of music videos were opening up. A beautiful Boutique Music Label and Sonu Nigam gave me my break in to the world of music videos with ‘Tu”. Of course a few videos later I was virtually bought over by Bhushan Kumar at T-series who turned me in to what media called a Music Video Mughal.  Yes I did over a hundred music videos over a period of three years. It was one of those video shoots that I received a call from Bhushan asking me if I wanted to make a film. It was that simple. The only condition was that the film should have ten plus songs. I loved music. I still do. I agreed but for reasons still unknown to me I wanted to make my debut with rank new comers. Tum Bin released on the same Friday with a magnum opus AKS that features the great Mr. Bachchan (Who I still yearn to work with) and my dear dear friend, and then a new star on the horizon Manoj Bajpayee. Tum Bin received great acclaim and success for a film with five debutants including your truly. A year later at his house Salman Khan with his inimitable sniff asked me the names of the stars that refused to be a part of Tum Bin. It was his way of saying he had loved the film. It was that simple. Eleven years after I came to Bombay I had managed to make the film that even Salman Khan had seen and liked. It was that simple.

Twenty-four years since I came to Bombay it is tough again. Very Very tough.

To be continued…..