Anurag Basu in a freewheeling chat with Roopa Ganguly and Ina Puri, with audience members chipping in. Pictures by Rashbehari Das

Roopa: Anurag is very unpredictable. Those of us who have worked with Anurag... like Jisshu (Sengupta) and me, we know a little more about him. Breakfast, lunch, dinner… I won’t call that Anurag’s main focus! (Laughs)

Anurag: No, you can call it my main focus!

Jisshu: That keeps him going!

Anurag: I take a couple of shots between breaks... (Laughs)

Ina: That’s why ‘Barfi’!?

Roopa: Exactly! Why did you bring Barfi! to Calcutta?

Anurag: When I conceived the story, Calcutta wasn’t there. I started writing it in Darjeeling. Naturally, Darjeeling became a part of the story. I had shot a lot for television in Calcutta but I could never do a film. I had tried to base Life In A… Metro in Calcutta, but then I thought Bombay was a better place. I was looking for an opportunity and Barfi! gave me that opportunity. I could have based it anywhere… Punjab, Delhi. But I don’t like researching much. Understanding someone else’s culture, food, clothing when I know the culture I grew up in.... I don’t want to rack my brains to make a film. I just want to enjoy films. So I came to Calcutta because I was lazy!

Roopa: He came to Calcutta because he is lazy! Jisshu, want to say something?

Jisshu: I have known Anurag through Barfi!. When I asked him for the script, what came to me was a kind of a one-liner! When I met him at his office, he said, ‘Listen, I don’t have dialogues. I don’t write dialogues.’... It is very good for an actor that you give him a situation and ask him to do what’s coming to his mind. Why do you do that?

Anurag: I started this practice with Gangster. When you are writing in your drawing room, in air-conditioning… you will never get the feel of the place where the scene will be set. Coming from a theatre background, I thought it would be better if I improvised on set. I always try to keep an assistant who is an actor. Say, I become Kangana (Ranaut) and the other one becomes Shiney (Ahuja) and we do the scene… not the kissing scene... (The audience laughs out loud)... the ambience does something to you and the dialogues that come, you can never write in your bedroom or your study. I thought it was very organic and that’s why I continued with it. The whole of Metro was shot like that!

Roopa: There was not a single page! Have you ever thought about it from the artiste’s point of view?

Anurag: What happens is that actors prepare. In India, there’s a tendency to prepare very well. They will give 100 per cent in every shot, which irritates you sometimes.... There is a rough draft in the mind. I don’t change the screenplay. It is very risky to change the screenplay.

Jisshu: How do you convince your producers?

Anurag: I give them a narration. Only the people who put in money get a narration! (Laughs) PC (Priyanka Chopra) often complains that she wasn’t given a narration… she did not know what was happening. It’s because Jhilmil (who is autistic) wasn’t supposed to know what was happening.

Jisshu: I still remember my first shot... with Ileana (D’Cruz). Anurag was playing Ileana and I was playing myself. He came out with a matka and explained the whole thing in Bengali! I understood, but Ileana didn’t. She was stunned.... Why can’t you be serious?!

Anurag: There is a reason behind everything I do. That was Ileana’s first day, first shot and she was very nervous. I had to break the ice and I played a prank. I told her, ‘Matke ko aisa lena aur thumak thumak ke chalke aana.’ And she did exactly what I said. Everybody started laughing. That’s it. She became a part of the unit.... When I met Priyanka, I was narrating the story and while narrating I had doubts if she would be able to do it!

Jisshu: What are you saying?!

Anurag: Yeah… I just told her, ‘PC, I am not sure...’ It is a very difficult character. Priyanka is always Priyanka… the way she will come and sit and talk… to visualise her as Jhilmil becomes tough for anybody. I asked her, ‘Can you just give me three days? Let’s do some workshop in my office.’ No one else would have done that but she gave me those three days. Again, there was a big wall between PC and me. She would call me ‘sir’ and would try to intellectualise everything…. I told her to get inside their heads. Reading up on autism wasn’t helping. I thought, maybe she doesn’t trust me that much. I had to get her trust. The next day I asked her to hold me by my collar and abuse me! First she refused and then she did it. At that moment, we connected. We also did a small theatre exercise…. If she didn’t trust, she would not have been able to do Jhilmil. Jhilmil is all about trusting....

Ina: Why did you think of her?

Anurag: My wife thought of her, actually! The credit goes to Tani.

Roopa: We don’t get to know till an actress gets a chance.

Ina: And you had done your homework very well… this is how (special) children behave.

Anurag: I could have put in a lot more detail… I had to write the story through Jhilmil’s eyes.

Oindrilla Dutt: There were details like the unfocused eyes…

Anurag: We did workshops with special kids and I would always wonder about what they were looking at, why they were squinting. They are very sensitive....

Dev: It was a big risk, considering mainstream cinema is all about dialogues and your main characters don’t talk!

Anurag: I have expressed my philosophy through a dialogue in my film… “Life mein sabsa bada risk hota hai koi risk na lena”…. There are some safe films, in the business lingo, and some unsafe ones. I think most of the safe films are the unsafe ones. For me, after Kites bombed at the box office, most of my well-wishers asked me not to go into this zone now. But, you know, you are spending one-and-a-half years going to the sets, if you are not in love with it, you cannot just make a project! You have to fall in love with that film. Otherwise it’s a boring process. I was so much in love with that story that I couldn’t have made anything else.

Roopa: Since you have a theatre background, do you realise that a prepared artiste can also become non-prepared if he wants to?

Anurag: He will try… it gets stale when one is prepared. I want it fresh. In Metro, there is this scene between Shilpa (Shetty) and Kay Kay (Menon)… Shilpa was like, how are we going to do that scene? There was just one line written that Kay Kay comes and confesses about his love for Kangana and when Shilpa does the same (about Shiney), he cannot take it.... Actors really crib when the film is being made, after that they don’t! (Audience laughs out loud) Before they went for make-up, I had asked them to come to the set. I became Kay Kay and an assistant became Shilpa. There was a guy recording it on the Dictaphone. While doing the scene, I just said, ‘Tu soyee uskey saath (Did you sleep with him)?’ That scene happened because we did it that way.... I have developed my own way of making films. I did not go to a film school.

Roopa: This isn’t actually new. Directors of the old school, they also did a lot of things on the sets. We have seen this in Ritu’s (Rituparno Ghosh) films too. We never really mugged up our dialogues and go to the sets.

Anurag: You know, after Life In A… Metro released, (producer) Ronnie Screwvala called me to say that the script would be kept in the Oscar library (Margaret Herrick Library). So he wanted the script! (Laughs) We had to see the DVD and write the whole film!

Dev: Did you have Ranbir (Kapoor) in mind from the beginning?

Anurag: Not from the beginning, but when I started writing Barfi!…

Dev: Do you think the casting of a popular actor in a film like this helps reach a larger audience?

Anurag: Business-wise, yes. It did a business of Rs 140 crore. Without Ranbir, it would have made Rs 75-80 crore… it is a star-driven industry.

Roopa: Ranbir is so sincere, like an obedient student.

Anurag: He is genuinely very nice… very well-brought up. All credit goes to his mom (Neetu Singh). It is fun to work with the young generation. Also, every unit has a nature. In Raj Kumar Hirani’s unit, everyone is very well-behaved! In Imtiaz’s (Ali) unit, you will see a lot of spiked hair. In our unit, everyone is munching paan! Ranbir gels with every unit.

Jisshu: Barfi!’s music, the background score by Pritam, has fetched 60 per cent of its success.

Anurag: I am glad you noticed it. Pritam first said yes, then no… He asked me what I wanted. I said I wanted Celtic rock, French cinema… that was the reference.

t2: Will you ever make a film in Bengali?

Anurag: I will. My Dida keeps reminding me every month.... I have to do one. Most of Barfi! was conceived in Bengali. It was written in Bengali… all the songs were done in Bengali first. But I will make a bilingual film. I am very greedy and every artiste is… they want more people to see their work.

Ina: Are you planning a sequel to Life In A… Metro?

Anurag: I have written it… most probably it will happen next year. One of my director friends will be directing it. I will produce it.

Nil: To go back to the beginning, why did choose Korea for Gangster?

Anurag: Unfortunately, Gangster was the first and last film that was shot there. My producer insisted I go to Melbourne and the usual locations… it was actually the Korean tourism site that was attractive… I told Mukesh Bhatt that I wanted to go to Korea. He said, ‘Tu Honolulu jaa… budget sirf Rs 3.5 crore hai. Tu kar lega?’ I was there for four days, three days I spent looking for cheap hotels. But I fell in love with that place.

Ina: There are certain parts of Barfi! which are inspired by Chaplin films...

Anurag: It is very simple. Nowadays we have become very cynical. Can you copy Sholay’s Kitney aadmi thhe? Or pay homage to Raj Kapoor… chhatri mein Nargis and Raj Kapoor… these are iconic shots from cinema. How can you copy them? I have created the same door, paying homage.

Ina: Even in Life is Beautiful, Roberto Benigni was influenced by Charlie Chaplin…

Anurag: In The Artist, the plot is Singin’ In The Rain. People who know about cinema aren’t saying it… people who are cynical are saying this! I am not bothered. There is a scene where it is being said that it is like The Notebook. One of my assistants said that it was a lot like The Notebook. I said yeah, but I did not see it and copy it. When you are watching a film, it is in your mind and you are borrowing from your mind. I could have changed it, but there was no drama. Roopadi’s shoot was cancelled twice. Then I said let it be. It came organically from me.

George Kuruvilla with wife Ritu, Oindrilla Dutt, Nil and Dev

Ina: Walk us through the beginning. Did Mahesh Bhatt play a pivotal role?

Anurag: I grew up in theatre, actually. My father had a group called Abhiyaan in Bhilai, he was in the steel plant. But like a typical middle-class Bengali family, I was preparing for a lot of entrance examinations. After I got through engineering, I realised I didn’t want to do this. I went to Bombay to study physics honours. I also started visiting sets. I entered the set as a background dancer! Then I realised that the director is the boss... toh director hotey hobey. I did a lot of things before that, like camera…. I was very fortunate that I became a director at a very young age. After graduating, I assisted only for about seven-eight months before directing Tara. Ekta (Kapoor) gave me my first film. We did not get along and I thought my film career was over. I went back to television till Mahesh Bhatt called me and sent me a script (Saaya). The music and casting was done. I would not take much credit for the film. I was the last person to get on board. So, yes, he played a very important role.

Dev: What sort of a producer does a director make?

Anurag: I would like to be a producer like Mahesh Bhatt, not like the others I have worked with. He gives you complete freedom. When I was making Gangster, Mahesh Bhatt said, ‘Ek sher suno. Mujhe mere yaar ke paas jaane do… mujhe shama pe jal jaane do… get this in the climax somewhere.’ He said that and left! I made that into a song where Kangana jumps off the terrace.... If you need him, he is there.

Dev: Your films are centred around love and there seems to be deep-rooted pain…

Anurag: Maybe because that’s the kind of life you are leading at that point in time, such stories attract you. I was going through affairs, break-ups, heartbreaks…. Post-Murder, I was diagnosed with cancer, but I did not allow it to affect my work. I wanted to make a film that my kids would enjoy watching. My elder daughter loved Barfi! and my younger one came out yawning! She said, ‘Baba, eta bhishon boring story.’

Ina: Whose films do you watch?

Anurag: I’d watch any film! There is hardly any film that I don’t like. I regret not going to FTII. My knowledge of world cinema, I am still acquiring it. Several famous films, I feel sleepy watching them. I really try to understand why they are so famous.

Ina: As far as Bengali films are concerned, what do you like?

Anurag: I like Srijit’s (Mukherji) films, Rituda’s (Rituparno Ghosh) films, Q’s films, Bappaditya’s (Bandopadhyay) films… from the earlier generation, Tarunda (Majumdar), Ritwik Ghatak.

Nita Bajoria: What do you think is lacking in Bengali cinema?

Anurag: The audience has started going back to cinema halls. There was a time when Hindi films were only made for multiplexes and overseas. There was a void. That’s when Jeet and Dev came in. Now that kind of film is in danger again because Salman Khan is doing it.

t2: You don’t want to work with any of the Khans?

Anurag: You cannot have an actor in mind and then write stories. I am very close to Aamir (Khan)… not Salman (Khan)… but Aamir and Shah Rukh (Khan)… we keep talking. Shah Rukh has already announced one film with me! I have to Google!

t2: Given that you don’t work with a script, how do you think Aamir Khan would react to that?

Anurag: He knows it. He took a break from Dhoom 3 and saw Barfi! in Chicago.

t2: Finally, what is your message for Yuvraj Singh who too has battled cancer and made such a comeback?

Anurag: The day Yuvraj walked in at Visakhapatnam (against New Zealand in a 20:20 in September), I had tears in my eyes. I know how it feels. I remembered the day I went back to the sets and called my first shot after my illness because till a few months back, you did not know that you were going to do it.... And lungs, my god? Sports is all about breathing. Hats off. He is a great inspiration. I have never been a fan of a sports personality as much as Yuvraj.

Jisshu: why do you do that (improvise on the sets and keep a script)?

Anurag: I started this practice with Gangster. When you are writing in your drawing room, you will never get the feel of the place where the scene will be set. Coming from a theatre background, I thought it would be better if I improvised on the set. I always try to keep an assistant who is an actor. Say, I become Kangana and the other one becomes Shiney and we do the scene… I thought it was very organic and that’s why I continued with it. The whole of Metro was shot like that!

It was fun listening to a Bengali filmmaker working in Mumbai so successfully. Listening to his process was like a relief... knowing that no matter which part of the world you are in, making films has to be a labour of love. And the fact that he turns his sets into a fun zone is admirable. No point doing something if you are not having fun.

— Mainak Bhaumik

It’s great to know that Anurag also works with his actors like in a theatre workshop.… There’s method to his madness. He came across as a very relaxed person and very passionate about his work.

--    Parno Mittra

 The chat was marvellous! All our guests thoroughly enjoyed the event. I found him full of life. What really stood out was his simplicity and humility. He reaches out to everybody. What a great quality.

— George Kuruvilla, GM, The Oberoi Grand, Calcutta

He is very smart. I would have liked to ask him if he would like to act. His pause acting is superb!

— Gargi Roy chowdhury

I enjoyed the session thoroughly. Meeting Anurag Basu face-to-face and listening to the story of how he made Barfi! was an enriching experience.

--  Arjun Chakrabarty

The idea of this series is to provide a platform for the people of Calcutta to interact with successful people from different walks of life.

—Sundeep Bhutoria, Managing Trustee, Prabha Khaitan Foundation