Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

The Ganesh Talkies trailer opens to a hip-swinging item song that goes Tomar jhaal legechhe amar bhal legechhe, followed by heightened drama, action, punchlines! How are your friends and fans taking to this new avatar of Anjan Dutt?

After the first look was unveiled, my phone was filled with SMSes like ‘hey buddy’, ‘oh dada’, ‘so you’ve also sold your soul to the devil?’ There was this kid who grew up on my music and was so disturbed with the Jhaal legechhe song that he kept bombarding me with messages and calls about what had happened to his idol. ‘Ki, bhoy peye gelen? Don’t you have the balls to reply?’ So I finally took his call and told him a story that wasn’t about me. It was about Bob Dylan who people thought had sold himself to popular art when he switched from protest music to rock ‘’ roll, but had he not done that in ’64 then The Beatles would not have written magic. Dylan made rock ‘’ roll intelligent. Why should I also miss out on the audience that wants to have fun? How can I make them understand that I’m growing, I’m changing.

At the risk of upsetting your fans?

I see a lot of people raising eyebrows but I’m sure they’ll feel as warm about it as Bong Connection. Any creative person after a certain point falls into this trap of repeating oneself and needs to change and explore other possibilities. I feel that I’ve reached a point where I need to break grounds as a filmmaker. I need to address a larger audience and change my attitude towards filmmaking. Some great men have stuck to their kind of cinema but I am 59 now and I don’t have much time, especially when I see much younger colleagues suddenly leaving the world. I feel my time is running out. During that span of time I’d like to go into the suburbs to address a bigger audience. My music has but my films have not. My cinema has been restricted very much to Calcutta. For that I needed a more populist approach.

But The Bong Connection, Chalo Let’s Go, Madly Bangalee or Ranjana Ami Ar Ashbona have always touched a populist chord…

My music has been populist so have been my films but as an actor I was never approached by Tollywood mainstream cinema. I realised I could never be a star. Only a handful of directors would call me to act in their films. I couldn’t sustain that so I went into music and direction. Now I feel limited and need to go more mainstream, more populist. There is a gap between the urban and suburban. My films still don’t run well in Burdwan, Midnapore, Asansol, Siliguri and Bolpur as much as they do in Calcutta. There are educated people but the halls aren’t in good shape and because of that certain kinds of cinema work in those regions and some don’t. I can’t wait to see when that will change but what I can do is alter my thinking and change my attitude and do something more mainstream in the Indian context.

You mean a masala mix of the Raj Chakraborty-Ravi Kinagi kind?

Not at all. Rather Ganesh Talkies might remind you of some good ol’ Bangla cinema of the Sixties, which still works, at least on television. When I’m saying I’m entering commercial cinema, I’m not going to do Tamil and Telugu remakes. I will do my own stories but with slightly larger-than-life emotions and situations that are believable. My whole point of argument or reservation with current commercial cinema is that it is not believable whereas Bengali cinema has had a huge history of commercial cinema which was so believable and real. They weren’t about false fights and impossible dance sequences yet they were so popular. My father and mother were full of admiration for Satyajit Ray but after a Pather Panchali, they looked bored. They had no intellectual pretensions and they loved to watch a Nishipadma or an Uttar Phalguni. They would dress up to go and see those. Despite that legacy, where did we go wrong, is my question. That’s the problem with today’s mainstream commercial cinema barring Raj Chakraborty’s recent works where he’s slowly moving towards believability. Bollywood has been able to blur that line because starting with 1942: A Love Story to Black and then a Rockstar, Wake Up Sid or Paa, they’ve made it all believable. When I’m moving away, I’m very careful about slowly moving away to something distinctly different.

Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya

How did you switch to that headspace?

I grew up with great populist films and started watching great European cinema when I was around 23. I have been open to cinema so I see a lot of films. I’ve been watching Mani Ratnam for a long long time. The greatness of Mani Ratnam is in the way he makes larger-than-life characters and situations believable. Vijay Anand and Guru Dutt I know like the back of my hand. But all of that was never Anjan Dutt. Now when I decided to consciously make an effort to change myself in order to reach out to a larger audience I started watching certain films, mainly Kanti Shah. I’m an addict of new-wave American pulp so I started watching Hindi pulp.

Where does Ganesh Talkies figure on the ‘pulp’ scale?

The acting is slightly more dramatic. The dialogues are full of repartees and punchlines. The film moves into a situation where the hero has to have a fight with the villain and the clash of emotions is on the higher side. We purposely put in the item song picturised on Koneenica and a newcomer called Taranga. I specifically told my choreographer that I wanted a Govinda song and a lot of people thought I’d gone mad! But I was thoroughly enjoying it. While it has all kinds of populist elements, there’s also the north Calcutta milieu and old buildings, Bangali carrying his maachh, kite-flying, the hero and heroine talking in English because you can’t switch off your existing audience completely. So there’s a winding up song as well called Que sera sera. I’m looking at having comedy, dialoguebazi, the hero almost dying... but making it very believable and real. It won’t be mindless, idiotic.... That’s my intention.

Raima Sen and Chandan Roy Sanyal make for an unusual pairing. If you’re consciously moving into commercial cinema wouldn’t a star cast like Jeet, Dev, Mithun, Prosenjit, Koel... have helped you make that instant connect with the larger audience you’re trying to reach?

Because it is my first attempt moving out, I wanted to first prove to myself and to my audience that it is working. I wanted to make it work as a writer and director. Or else, for this romcom bindaas loverboy role of Chandan’s, any other commercial director would have gone for Dev. I consciously didn’t want to put my gun on the shoulder of a star. When I use a star I’d like to use their star power. Once I know I’m capable of doing it, I’ll ask them to come and help me out. I do want to work with the stars and take their tantrums!

So you’re sure about making a clean break and a fresh start?

Yes. I’m 59 and by the time I’m 69, I think I’ll manage another nine or ten films. A bulk of that will be such films with five or six such stars. These are scripts I’m writing now, unlike Bong Connection that was written ages ago. Now it is a conscious effort that I’m making to write a script for Prosenjit, a spy thriller. For Mithun I’ll go to him with a role where I can use his larger-than-life persona which could be about an elderly failed alcoholic choreographer who was a dynamic dance director at some point and decides to train a young dancer. To Koel I’ll go with a revenge drama like Kill Bill or The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo that’ll demand a funky change in look and attire. At the end of the day why am I doing this? Am I out of my head or what? No! I’m doing this because it’s required. I’m consciously seeing that remakes will not continue as the mainstay of commercial cinema for too long. It will undergo a change. Looking at the entire gamut of entertainment I don’t mind doing masala films because that also requires skills. It’s exciting!

And why do you think people would want to watch a commercial masala flick by the cerebral yet populist filmmaker Anjan Dutt whose forte has been urbane middle-class Bangaliana?

Because I have the capacity to make it and be good at it. I have some real good stories to tell and I’ll tell my stories in the garb of a musical or an action thriller. It takes a lot of craft and I know I would pull off an action film, with some real good action in it that would be stylish and people would want to watch. Yes, I realise, ‘where is the original idea?’ Finally it’s romance, comedy, revenge or a family story and somehow they’ve already been made. I’m picking those up and trying to transform them into something more modern and believable. To take what is dated and change that around and do it one more time brilliantly.

Bengali commercial films haven’t been doing too well of late. Doesn’t that worry you?

It doesn’t. In fact, it excites me because commercial cinema cannot fade out. Commercial cinema has been ignored because most of us have turned away from mindless films. But a Godfather, Sholay and Satya were commercial films too and great cinema. Something new is bound to happen in the next two years. New guys will come in, I have faith in a Raj Chakraborty to change things and that will be new-age commercial cinema that will be believable, original, exciting and demand a lot of craft. I want to be a part of that new thing. I’ve always wanted to be a part of anything that’s new. That is why I picked up the guitar and started singing after Suman brought in the new wave of Bengali songs. Now I see the future changing like it has in Hindi films with Munnabhai, Vicky Donor and Kahaani. We will also head that way soon and I want to be a part of that interesting change.

How would you measure your success?

I am in an art, after all, which is commercial art. It’s not classical music or fine art. Cinema is populist art and I want my movies to go where my music has gone. I’m a far bigger star today as a musician than a director because my music sells more than my films. I want my films to sell well now and so the measure will of course have to be the box office. But there will be my signature to that. I want to go back and make the films that I watched as a young boy. Those are the kind of films I want to do as I’m getting old and into the very last leg of my career.

You’re only 59, you still rock and roll and have a long way to go given that many directors have continued making films right through their 70s. Then why have you got into this phase of brooding about old age, dying and doom?

What do I do? A guy who’s 10 years younger than me dies in his sleep and goes away [Rituparno Ghosh]. Life is uncertain and time is running out; 59 is not easy. It takes a lot of physical strength to make a movie. If I was a painter or a writer I would have said, ‘Oh I’m at the prime of my life’. But why do we lament the fact, why isn’t Mrinal Sen making a movie? It’s not physically possible for him anymore although he must be making movies in his mind all the time. Look at the last works of Satyajit Ray. They do look shoddy and I say this with honesty and lots of love for Pather Panchali or Aranyer Din Ratri. The energy needs to be there and I don’t think I’m Aparna Sen nor do I have her stamina. By mid-60s I think I’ll be gone. So much of smoking, whisky, rock and roll…. Look at my lifestyle. Do you think I’ll last long after 60?

But hasn’t that realisation made you change the way you lead your life?

No, I can’t, but I’m consciously trying to work with and surround myself with young people — young executive producer, young cinematographer, young assistants.... The amount of senility and mediocrity I’m seeing around me, I fear that I’ll fall into that trap. I was at a certain point falling into the trap. Not liking other people’s success, getting worked up when others were more successful. I’ve never been that way. I’ve grown up knowing that life isn’t about successes; it’s about what you believe in. But why is it that over the last one year I’ve been thinking ‘O kichhu pare na’, ‘ baajey, ‘ota kharap’? When I was being critical of Srijit (Mukherji) or Kaushik (Ganguly), I wasn’t seeing myself as a father figure. I wanted to be part of them. And my cinema has to be as old as them. I take them as competitors, not my younger brother or son. But what bugged me later on is ‘Was I being critical or was I just bad-mouthing?’ The line is very thin. That made me wonder, ‘Am I becoming senile?’ And I thought ‘Okay, age is catching up, I have to again change because if I don’t, I’ll end up making very bad copies of Ranjana, Bong Connection or a Bela Bose. My cinema will become old and so will my music.

MY 6 SUPER REMAKES

KILL BILL

[Quentin Tarantino’s crazy adaptation of Truffaut’s Bride Wore Black] I have already written a script called Dirty Deepa, with Koel Mallick in the lead. Her family is slaughtered in the first scene, including a baby son. She herself is almost dead. She recovers, changes her look (looking like Rooney Mara in The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo), is trained under an alcoholic, ex-military colonel (Mithun Chakraborty) in martial arts, kick-boxing and guns and goes about killing the four men responsible for her disaster. The climax takes place on the rooftop of a high-rise in Bangkok.

WEST SIDE STORY

[Robert Wise’s musical adaptation of Romeo And Juliet] I have a script called Paati Premer Galpo. A full-fledged musical. Set in Asansol, between a Christian street gang (Munshigunge) and a Hindu street gang (Bosepukur) with choreographed knife fights, chains, hockey sticks. I want Prosenjit to play Tybalt (Tony), Dev to play Romeo (Rana). Indraneil Sengupta, Mercutio (Rabi), Shrabanti (Juliet, to be called Julie), Sabyasachi Chakrabarty (Frier, as Farooq a frustrated cop)

A STAR IS BORN

I have done Ranjana… but I want to outdo it with Mithun Chakraborty and Konkona Sensharma. Instead of singers, this time it will be dance. Kris Kristofferson will be Mithun as the old, alcoholic, debauched choreographer and Barbra Streisand will be Konkona, an aspiring actress. Mithun’s character will do a Bengali version of Yaad aa raha hai before he dies.

JHINDER BANDI

[Remake of Prisoner Of Zenda] More action. Horses. Final climax would follow the original Zenda and have a long sword-fencing sequence. Raja Shankar Singh and Gauri Shankar will be Jeet. Mayurbahan, the villain, will be Prosenjit. Raani will be Koel.

PARINDA

I started on the script with Siliguri as the backdrop. Jeet will play Jackie’s role, Dev will do Anil Kapoor’s, Tanusree will do Madhuri, Mithun as Nana Patekar and Prosenjit as Anupam Kher. Neel has already scored a Bengali version of Tumse milke.

FALLING IN LOVE

The script is already written by me with Aparna Sen. Director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury wants to place it in London. I would do Robert De Nero’s role, Aparna Sen Meryl Streep’s. My wife will be Mamata Shankar and Aparna Sen’s husband would be Dipankar De.