Arjun Rampal has wanted to be part of a gangster film for so long that when he chanced about a subject, he not only wrote the script but also produced the film. It won’t be a stretch to describe Ashim Ahluwalia’s Daddy, releasing September 8, as Arjun’s passion project. He’s spent over four years bringing to celluloid the life of Arun Gawli, the Mumbai gangster who rose to prominence in the ’80s and ’90s to counterbalance Dawood Ibrahim. Gawli, called ‘Daddy’ by his followers, later turned to politics. He is currently in jail serving out his sentence for the murder of a Shiv Sena politician.

t2 met Arjun in his sparsely decorated office in Khar, Mumbai, to talk about the film that’s consumed him for the last few years.

What drew you to Arun Gawli when you first heard about this film?

My first reaction was, ‘How can I play him?’ I had heard about him but I didn’t know his life’s story. When I read the script, it didn’t excite me. It wasn’t a bad script but it just didn’t work for me. The only thing was that I love this genre... films like The Godfather, The Goodfellas, Scarface and Carlito’s Way. I always wanted to make a gangster film. I felt like we’ve never made a proper biopic on a gangster. Our films have always sat on a fence while portraying gangsters. Either names have changed or the story is fictitious but you kind of know who the gangster is. So, I started doing research on him. There isn’t much online so I started meeting people from Dagdi Chawl.

This was before you even decided to do the movie?

Yeah. I told the people who had brought the film to me that I wanted to explore the story to see if there was anything more that could be done. This was after I had finished Roy. I didn’t have anything in hand, so I locked myself in a hotel room and I started meeting people from Dagdi Chawl, his extended family, his rivals and cops. I gathered a lot of wonderful stories and insights into a very fascinating man. I wrote a script and took it to Ashim (Ahluwalia). He loved it but he was very clear that he didn’t want to make a ‘Bollywood’ gangster film.

The problem now was that the producer who had originally come to me said that the new script didn’t work for him. So, he backed out of the film but he was okay with us doing the film. When we asked him for the rights to make a film on Gawli’s life, he didn’t have the rights. We had hired a crew but we had no producer and no rights to make the film.

This is when you stepped in to produce the film?

Yeah. It took me two months to get the money in place. And to get the rights from the family. I had to convince the family that this was the only way to tell his life’s story. They had to be okay with us not just showing the political side or the good side. The film’s called Daddy and not Robin Hood. We had to show the good, the bad and the ugly. It took a lot of courage from Gawli to agree to what we were asking for. He could have easily refused.

Is it true that you started shooting the film before he signed the contract giving you the movie rights to his life?

We had been meeting him but the paperwork wasn’t done. I was busy with my mom’s illness and was travelling between New York and Mumbai. He was supposed to sign it when he came out on parole but we had got the whole crew together earlier and I didn’t want to lose them. So we started shooting in Dagdi Chawl and it was quite disconcerting because there were a lot of people there who weren’t happy that we were making this movie. On the last day of that schedule, I got a call saying ‘Daddy’s got parole’.

I went to his house to meet him and the first question was ‘Why did you start?’ I explained to him that I had no choice. I told him that I had the contract but then we realised that it was in English and he can’t read English. He stared at me for what seemed like a really long time and then said, ‘I trust you’, and signed it. That’s the kind of person he is.

What’s your sense of Gawli?

I met him about three-four times when he was out on parole. As an actor, those meetings were priceless for me. I got to observe him at close quarters. This was also when he gave his inputs to the film. He is a very hard person to read. His face or body language doesn’t give anything away. He is a very quiet person. He is an observer. He has a sense of humour. The audience will discover who Arun Gawli is through the film.

Was there anything about him that surprised you?

His humility, for one. He is such a humble and simple person. He is very god-fearing. The walls of his house are covered with pictures of gods. There is aarti and bhajan playing all the time. His wife is very religious and philosophical. He is very well read, especially Maratha history. There’s a cowshed in his house and all the milk from there is distributed in Dagdi Chawl for free every day.

When you are making the biopic of a gangster, there is a danger of glorifying him. Most biopics we’ve seen in Bollywood have veered towards hagiography...

Absolutely! One of the first things Ashim said to me when I sent him the script was that the only way you can avoid making it a propaganda film is by telling the story from multiple points of view. This film doesn’t tell you what to think about Gawli. We tell you the life story of a simple man who became an accidental don and then a politician. It’s up to the audience to decide whether he’s a good guy or not.

It took me almost three years to convince him and his family to give us the permission. I had to explain to him that we couldn’t make a superficial film because he and we would lose credibility. We needed permission not just from him but also his family because this is their story as well. I think what he reacted to was our honesty and persistence.

Your physical transformation to look like Gawli has been incredible!

It was Ashim who said that I should try and look as much like Gawli as possible. And I completely agreed with him. I knew that if I didn’t pass the look-test, I wouldn’t act in the film. I would have produced it but not acted. So the first step was to shrink. I lost about 11kg. Then we got make-up artists from Italy to do the prosthetics. I was very nervous about the look-test because we had the script, the money and the director in place but if I failed, we would have to look for another actor to play Gawli. Thankfully, everything fell in place.   

You are producing after a very long gap (He last produced I See You in 2006). Do you enjoy being a producer?

Some days are fun and others not so much! (Laughs) It is a very difficult job. You need a different headspace to be a producer. I was quite surprised with how well I managed. I am producing after a long time and this is a great film to produce. It required me to be really hands-on. It was important to know what the film wants to say and be able to say it without it getting corrupted. I also wanted to do it independently so there was no pressure to add an item song or do anything else. We wanted to make an authentic biopic. This is a period film that needed a lot of authentic locations. We wanted to shoot at the Mumbai police headquarters. So, I went there and waited outside someone’s office to get the requisite permission. I didn’t let my ego get in the way.

As a producer, you have to be very hands-on otherwise it’s very easy for money to be wasted on a film set. Hypothetically, if someone doesn’t get the proper permission, you could lose a day’s shoot, which means that ‘X’ amount of money gets wasted. A smart producer minimises this kind of wastage as much as possible. It’s a very stressful job... I think it was helping my character as well because I am sure someone like Gawli also has to multitask.

Karishma Upadhyay