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.....