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Image courtesy: Akshay Kulkarni
Instead of basking in the success of his own film,
Kai Po Che!, Abhishek Kapoor is raving about
Beasts of The Southern Wild (2012). He felt bad when its nine-year-old star, Quvenzhan Wallis, the youngest to be nominated in the Best Actress category didn't win an Oscar. Director Benh Zeitlin found the actress after doing thousands of auditions. Maybe Kapoor connects so much with the film and its director because, like Benh, he has made a film, which revolves around a community. While
Beasts... is set in a fictional New Orleans suburb,
Kai Po Che! (
KPC) revolved around a group of friends based in Ahmedabad. Like Zeitlin, he held many auditions to find Ali (Digvijay Deshmukh), the cricket prodigy. Another common theme is that nature, in both its human and elemental forms, plays an important role in the outcome of both films.
The dreamer
Kapoor laughs at the comparisons and says one thing both Zeitlin and he have in common is that they believed in their dream. "I wanted to start afresh after
Rock On!! So I took this offbeat story, offbeat actors and stayed true to its spirit. People ask me what took me so long to make another film. Well, it took me two-and-a-half years just to write the screenplay. Then, I spent my time on pre-production, casting, etc. I started filming only when I had everything in place," says he.
KPC was supposed to be produced by Excel Entertainment, the production arm of his buddies Farhan Akhtar and Ritesh Sidhwani. According to some reports, the company had problems with the film's controversial tone and wanted Kapoor to trim some scenes. He doesn't confirm or deny this: "They had their set of issues. Let's leave it at that. I'm happy that UTV came on board because Siddharth (Roy Kapur, MD, Studios, Disney UTV) and others had no problem with my script and gave me all the support I wanted."
Restart and revive
Kapoor doesn't want to play favourites between his former and latter partners because
Rock On!! 2 may be on cards. "You might think that the protagonists of the first film have reached closure in their lives but there are different strands that can be explored. I have a script in place and we're in the process of thrashing it out," says Kapoor.
Looks like he has reached a closure vis-a-vis Akhtar who was given all the credit for the success of
Rock On!! by the media while Kapoor was relegated to the sidelines. In hindsight, maybe Kapoor shouldn't have cast an accomplished director in the lead role. He slowly exhales while answering this. "Yes, I did feel bitter about not getting due credit. Yes, I was hurt and angry. I went into a shell but I have come out of it today."
Fighting false impressions
Kapoor maintains that he cast Akhtar because he was apt for the role and not because he needed directorial guidance. "Why can't people remember that
Rock On!! was Akhtar's debut film as an actor? Common sense indicates that he would have been more concerned about his own performance than mine. I was more naive back then and less media-savvy. I had no friends in the press. I couldn't fight the misconceptions. I had written and directed the film and put too much heart in the process. I just couldn't believe all that hard work was being attributed to someone else. I was more baffled than angry," he says.
So one reason he stayed away from casting known names for
KPC was that he wanted a clean break from the past. He concurs, but adds, "I cast Sushant Singh Rajput, Amit Sadh and Raj Kumar Yadav because they were apt for the role. And being newcomers, they didn't have a tied-up diary. Also, they didn't need all the luxuries that a star expects on an outdoor shoot. We shot in 40-degree-plus temperatures. My artistes braved sunstrokes but never complained. They took all kinds of risks for me. The scene where they jump off the fort's ledge was real. Which star would have given me that kind of commitment?"
Adapting a book
KPC was based on
3 Mistakes Of My Life by bestselling author Chetan Bhagat who was part of the writing team as well. Kapoor was happy with Bhagat's inputs but says the film is completely different from the book. "Fiction changes form when it gets translated onto celluloid and becomes another entity. We made some subtle and some not-so-subtle changes to the film's plotline to make it a more dramatic and visual experience. For example, Ishaan doesn't die in the book but we killed him off to deepen the emotional impact."
The film makes clever use of CGI when it came to depicting the after-effects of the earthquake. Kapoor says he collected actual archival footage of the Gujarat earthquake and told his technical team to recreate it. The vivid crowd scenes were inspired from a documentary he'd seen on another natural calamity. "It was a logistical nightmare to handle crowds of such large proportions. You have to take care of their markings, of camera placements, of their health, shelter and food. But thanks to my team, I was able to pull it off."
The film talks about Hindu-Muslim divide and makes pungent statements about the then-ruling party in Gujarat. It takes guts to take such a stand and to go on location to make such a film. But the director insists that he didn't feel threatened while shooting the film in Gujarat. "The key riot scenes were shot in the Sambhar Lake area of Rajasthan. But the rest of it was in Gujarat. People helped us because they knew we weren't tampering with history. Whatever is shown in the film really did happen. I wasn't trying to malign anyone. I was reiterating some well-known facts and the truth protected us."
Defining friendship
Friendship is a recurrent theme in his films. Kapoor says his friends came to his rescue whenever he was down and out. And by this, he doesn't mean his industry friends. "Industry friendships are fickle and rest on your turning fortunes every Friday. Currently, I have lots of friends who keep calling me. I'm sure they'll remain my friends till I hit the next rough patch. Thankfully, I have friends outside the industry, school and college chums with whom I grew up, who don't give a damn about my box-office status. They are all talented individuals who keep me grounded. Their inputs help me to write real-life characters."
The ghost of the quiet phone doesn't haunt him anymore because of his family connection as well. He's related to Jeetendra (the veteran actor is his uncle) and he knows enough of his uncle's ups and downs to understand that one has to keep a steady head during both, success and failure. "My uncle is just one call away. He called me up after watching
KPCand was crying over the phone as he was overcome by emotion. That call made my day."
To hell and back
'Second chances' seems to be Kapoor's mantra for life. "My first film as an actor,
Uff Yeh Mohabbat (1996) bombed at the box-office. I thought my career was over. I decided to become a director and my first film as a director,
Aryan, went into development hell and found no takers. My hit
Rock On!! was attributed to someone else — I went through hell and back each time with the firm belief that life would definitely take a turn for the better. I wouldn't have survived without this positive attitude. It would have been easy for me to turn my money and energies to some other business. But movie-making means more to me than a means of earning my bread and butter. It's my passion and I'll never give up on it, come what may."
Ask him whether he'll take to acting again, and he grins. "I have kept myself fit. Today, times are changing and the audience doesn't only want the chocolate-y hero anymore. So, if there is a good role in the offing, I'm game."
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- Abhishek Kapoor,
- director,
- movies,
- Bollywood,
- celebrities,
- Rock On,
- Kai Po Che
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