Creativity comes at a cost. There have been zillions of stories on how great film-makers are very different persons behind closed doors. What we see on screen is not how they are off-screen. From Stanley Kubrick and Roman Polanski to Guru Dutt and K. Asif, some of the greatest film directors have often been caught on the wrong foot in their personal lives. And many, repeat many, ordinary souls have found themselves on their wrong side, incurring the wrath of these creators.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali is one maker many love to hate.

Yes, his craft is unquestionable. From the moment he directed Anil Kapoor and Manisha Koirala romancing in all-white in Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 1942: A Love Story, his control over the medium was clear.

His directorial debut Khamoshi — perhaps his only original film — was a dud, forcing Bhansali to shift gears. Out went the significant silences, in came loud melodrama; out went roadside churches, in came opulent havelis; out went melody, in came orchestra...

In all that sound and fury, nobody bothered to look up how Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam was a rip-off from Na Hanyate, a novel by Maitreyee Devi.

The film became a superhit and Bhansali was on song. Devdas — then the costliest Indian film to be made — followed and the man was soon in Cannes getting out of horse carriages on the red carpet. Back home many Bengalis were still mocking the “bondhu”s and “shandesh”s but the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer rocked the box-office and Bhansali’s oppressive opulence continued to find mainstream favour.

The streak would have continued with Bajirao Mastani had Salman and Ash not split, forcing Bhansali to make what he called a “quickie”. That ended up being a Rs 20-crore-plus movie called Black. Bhansali tried to get his original script approved by the Helen Keller Foundation for Research & Education but they rejected it and he had to tweak his script to make the teacher a man and not a lady like Annie Sullivan, who was Helen’s teacher.

Black released on February 4, 2005, and after a thanda start, it started getting hailed as a masterpiece even though many found the film to be melodramatic and over the top. Bhansali’s problems started when it came to the fore that many portions of the film were exact replicas of a Helen Keller movie called The Miracle Worker, directed by Arthur Penn.

From the water scene to the breakfast sequence, large portions of Black were straight lifts from The Miracle Worker. Bhansali still wouldn’t have had a problem with this but then the copy-paste job actually stopped the film from being sent to the Oscars.

One of the jury members that selected Paheli over Black that year says: “Many in the jury weren’t aware of The Miracle Worker but when it was brought to their notice, it was unanimously decided that Black couldn’t be sent as a representative of India.”

And now comes Saawariya. Those who have seen the preview of the two-hour film — snipped from the 165-minute version which had a three-minute sequence of Sonam and Ranbir just looking at each other! — reveal that it’s a copy of Luchino Visconti’s White Nights, which was adapted from a short story by Fyodor Dostoyevsky.

Now with Sony producing the film and Saawariya getting seen internationally, Bhansali has added to the credits of the film — “Based on a short story by Dostoyevsky”. The rights of remaking the Visconti film is with Janus Films while making a movie from the short story is free. So Bhansali took the easy way out but to get a nod at the Rome Film Festival, he (unsuccessfully) convinced the organisers that Saawariya is a film that must be seen in Italy (Visconti’s place), forgetting that Dostoyevsky was Russian!

So maybe, just maybe, there’s a reason Bhansali is not giving any interview and had even kept the premiere cards close to his chest, making sure the wrong (read, right) people did not turn up. But today onwards, the world doesn’t need invitation cards to get to see the new Sanjay Leela Bhansali film.

And maybe call his bluff.