If they are thinking I am taking the 6.30pm flight back, then they are all fools. You can’t come to Calcutta and rush, rush, rush. Why do I come to Calcutta then, spending five hours on a flight? Because this city means something to me,” smiled Vidhu Vinod Chopra, pointing a playful finger at his team, as he settled in for a chat at the t2 office on Monday afternoon. At 62, the man credited with some of the biggest milestones in modern Hindi cinema — Parinda to PK, 1942: A Love Story to the Munna Bhai films — makes his Hollywood debut as director with Broken Horses, releasing today.
Spending over an hour with Team t2 and actor-director Parambrata Chattopadhyay, who had dropped in for the chat, VVC — as he’s popularly known — chatted about his Calcutta connect, his Holly debut and why he doesn’t direct Hindi films anymore — between tucking into his favourite mishti doi and sandesh.
Priyanka Roy: So what are your memories of Calcutta from Parineeta 10 years ago? You were here for quite a while then…
Vidhu Vinod Chopra: When I did Parineeta, Hrishikesh Mukherjee told me: ‘Don’t do Parineeta, it has flopped twice. Bimalda (Roy) and Ashok Kumar had made it and it flopped. Why are you making it?’ I said: ‘I love it’. And I came here and made it in Calcutta, stayed here for a month-and-a-half. But my memories (of Calcutta) go back to Ritwik Ghatak who was my teacher. Ghatak taught me cinema. If you see Broken Horses, you know all that sound… I have learnt from Ghatak. When in the end of Broken Horses the bullets go ‘dhar dhar dhar’ and there’s a pause and the horses run ‘dhakar dhakar’… then, those pauses. That Ritwik Ghatak taught me because he kept saying sound is important. He made Meghe Dhaka Tara, have you guys seen that? (Team t2 says ‘Yes!’) You know when she (Supriya Chowdhury, the protagonist) is up there and she says ‘Dada’ and the camera pans on the hills and then there’s an echo… ‘Dada aami’… something….
Kushali Nag: Aami baanchte chai…
VVC: Aami baanchte chai, I want to live. It’s just so stunning. As a teacher, what he did was very strange with me. I was from Kashmir and he only spoke Bengali with me. He said: ‘Tumi Bangla!’ I said: ‘What the hell?! I don’t understand Bengali’. And it was the funniest relationship a teacher can have with his student.
Kushali: You don’t understand Bangla at all?
VVC: Now I fully understand, thanks to him. He just said you are not Kashmiri, tumi Bangla. He used to call me ‘Bidhu’ and my name Vidhu Vinod Chopra is thanks to Ritwik Ghatak. My name was Vinod Kumar Chopra and he laughed at me: ‘What is Vinod Kumar Chopra? See my name is Ritwik, that’s a name! And he had this thing with Satyajit Ray and always used to say: ‘What is this name, Satyajit Ray? My name is RITWIK GHATAK’, and he said: ‘Therefore, your name has to be Bidhu Vinod Chopra’. He’d say: ‘Who will see your films as Vinod Chopra? Nobody. There are many Vinod Chopras!’
Kushali: So which is your favourite Ritwik Ghatak film?
VVC: I like Meghe Dhaka Tara... I also like Ajantrik. He was completely mad at that time, we looked up to him. And he was very approachable. Unlike Satyajit Ray, who was a great filmmaker but he was a tall man with this deep voice and you couldn’t approach him. If you would say ‘Mr Ray’ and he would turn back and say ‘Yes?’…. hum log chup ho jaate thhe! (Laughs) But Ghatak was like ‘Ei, Bidhu!’ (Laughs)
Chandreyee Chatterjee: So did you come to Calcutta when you were a student?
VVC: Oh, hell of a lot. I have never forgotten and I don’t think I will ever forget where I come from. I come from a small town in Kashmir where I learnt my A-B-C when I was 16… I knew no English. And today, I have written, produced and directed a Hollywood film! You must see it to know what a long journey it’s been. I am 62 and to make a debut at 62 is crazy!
Priyanka: So why did you want to debut in Hollywood with Broken Horses?
VVC: See, the only reason to make a movie for me… whether it’s Parineeta, 3 Idiots, 1942: A Love Story or Parinda... is the script… is this a story you want to tell people? If I don’t have anything to tell, I don’t want to make a film. I make one film in five years. This one I have directed after eight years (Eklavya in 2007). If I have something to say I will say it. If I have nothing to say I sit and listen to music, eat sandesh, have fun. Why bother? I also relate to Calcutta because it’s a laid-back city and I’m really laid-back. Like I have a 6.30 flight and my team is panicking. I said I am not taking it, I don’t want to panic. I want to sit and talk to friends. We guys create stress in our life. We create deadlines and then we die. We die early because we have met all our deadlines! (Laughs) Boom, gone!
Kushali: You’ve missed quite a few deadlines…
VVC: Hell of a lot. Making a debut at 62, just think of it. But did I miss a deadline? Or is this a greater thing to do? Deadlines are ridiculous. We create them.
Priyanka: What was the biggest challenge of making a film in an alien language and a different setup?
VVC: That this was not just a Vidhu Vinod Chopra film. It was the first time anybody from Bollywood was going to Hollywood to make a film. Let’s say you didn’t like PK, then what will you say? ‘Vidhu Vinod Chopra is a fool!’ End of story. If the world did not like Broken Horses… now I know they like it because I had a screening in New York and in Los Angeles and everybody is raving about it... but what would they say? ‘These Bollywood fools, they know nothing about cinema! They do this over-the-top dance, drama, nonsense. They are fools’. For me the challenge was that how do I go out there and make my country proud. We’ve heard from Narendra Modi, I would like Mamata Banerjee to see the film. I would like her and everybody else to see this film because everybody who saw the film said we are proud.
It’s like learning a different art form. When a scientist or mathematician goes to any part of the world he does the same mathematics, the same science. When a filmmaker goes from Bollywood to Hollywood, it’s not the same cinema. It’s a completely different art form. It’s like learning from the primary section all over again. And it’s damn scary.
Priyankar Patra (second-year, mass communication, Asutosh College): How did you keep your Bollywood sensibilities aside while making a Hollywood film?
VVC: It took me five years. One year, I just travelled on the (US-Mexico) border just to get the feel of that land. It is like why did I choose to shoot Parineeta in Calcutta? It would have been cheaper to shoot in Bombay. But all the actors when they walked in that lane in Calcutta, to that house, a bit of Bengal was rubbed on them, whether it was Saif Ali Khan or Vidya Balan. They became Bengali. Vidya Balan is as Bengali as Bengali can be. And she is a girl from Chembur (Mumbai). With Broken Horses, it was like that for me. It was like Steven Spielberg going to Mars. Nobody knows him there! (Laughs) It was like that for me in Hollywood.
Priyanka: Had anyone in Hollywood seen any of your films?
VVC: Luckily, Eklavya was very well received. They really liked that. Nicolas Cage told me that he wept six times during Eklavya. And I jokingly told him: ‘What were you smoking? I want to give it to everybody!’ But he loved it and he told everybody else.
Priyanka: Didn’t you want to cast him in Broken Horses?
VVC: He was cast, actually. I was going to shoot with him and then when we were doing the rehearsals with him and Joel Edgerton, I was not very happy. And luckily, Reliance Entertainment was backing me and they helped me cast the right actors. I believe Vincent D’Onofrio (who plays antagonist Julius Hench) is the right actor. He came to meet me on a cycle! The moment he got off the cycle, I looked at him and said, ‘He is my man’. This film I cast the way I cast Munna Bhai MBBS. I had all the actors, but I looked at Sanjay Dutt and said, ‘He is Munna Bhai!’
Priyanka: Out of all your films, why did you choose Parinda to remake in Hollywood?
VVC: It wasn’t planned that way. It started like a joke between me and my writer Abhijat Joshi ki chal, Parinda karte hain and it took five years to write it. So I don’t plan. Tomorrow, I do a $100million Hollywood film and it makes half a billion dollars, they’ll say he planned to do that. One of my industrialist friends in South Africa asked everybody, ‘What is your
five-year plan?’ Everybody had a plan. I said I could die. They said, ‘Arre, are you not well or something?’ I said, ‘I didn’t say I will, I said I could. I want to have a great time in South Africa. I am here and I am loving this’. I look 45 to the Americans. My mother-in-law didn’t know I am 62! She read in the papers and told me, ‘Tumne saari duniya ko bataa diya!’ (Laughs)
Priyanka: You don’t look 62 at all!
VVC: I don’t feel it. Because I enjoy my rosogollas!
Kushali: How old do you feel?
VVC: Looks-wise, people say I am 42 or 45 or in my early 50s. In my head, I don’t know. When I was making Broken Horses, I was feeling 22. It was very difficult. I remember one day I was running down the hill and there was a little pain in my knee. And that’s when I realised, ‘Oh shit! I’m not 22 anymore!’
Kushali: So what keeps you so young?
VVC: It is a state of mind. I am not sitting here performing for you. I am having a good time. We age because we worry. And we worry about things that may never happen. ‘What happens if Broken Horses flops?’ or ‘How big will it be?’ We’ll know in one week.
Priyanka: Don’t you worry even before the release of a massive film like, say, PK?
VVC: I am not tense. Aamir (Khan) is tense! (Laughs)
Priyankar: You have written, directed and produced different genres of films and also made documentaries. How do you manage to juggle so many genres?
VVC: Somebody said in New York that Broken Horses is like Quentin Tarantino going to India and making a musical! One of the reasons I think that I make all kinds of films is that I never had a formal education. I went to a school which was not a school. There was no bathroom! Then I went to SP College (in Pune) and it did not have English. They mispronounced Jean-Jacques Rousseau. I realise that because I didn’t have a formal education my mind is completely free. Meaning if tomorrow I feel strongly I want to do a Bengali film, there is nothing to stop me. I am not greedy for money.
Chandreyee: Which genre is your personal favourite?
VVC: I love thrillers… I believe that they are the purest form of cinema because of the way they integrate sound and visuals. I also love making comedies because I am a happy man. But I am happiest working with sound and visuals and I believe I have achieved that with Broken Horses.
Parambrata walks in, apologising for being held up in traffic.
Priyanka: Why haven’t you directed a Hindi film in eight years?
VVC: When I was making Broken Horses, I was on location at 4.30am and when I was ready, I said: ‘Call Vincent’. And I heard Vincent say: ‘I am here, Vinod’. I said: ‘The first shot is….’ He said: ‘I know’. I said: ‘Okay, so you say these lines….’ He looks at me and says: ‘I know Vinod’. I said: ‘We are trolleying’. He said: ‘I know’. I was like: ‘How do you know all this?!’ He said: ‘You sent a mail out to the crew last night with all this and so I know…'
Parambrata: He had done his homework…
VVC: I shot this film in 33 days… every film I have made in Bollywood has taken me 130-140 days. Why? In India, actors come late and say there was bad traffic! (Looks at Parambrata and laughs) If Amitabh Bachchan comes and says: ‘Arre yaar, Vinod, such bad traffic’… toh kya bolenge usko? (Laughs) So, this is how it is. We have a lot of warmth, love, affection… that’s why I want to live in this country and die in this country, but in terms of efficiency, zero. That’s why I want to work there. The inefficiency of the Indian film system annoys me. I scream a lot, I have slapped a lot of people… and I don’t like to do that.
Parambrata: As someone who has always looked up to you as a producer-director since his teens, I am intrigued by why you suddenly wanted to make an American film?
VVC: See, it wasn’t sudden. I was nominated for an Oscar in 1979 (for his documentary An Encounter with Faces), and so I have always kind of been there. To be honest, after 3 Idiots, it kind of became boring for me here because what would I do after that… ‘4 Idiots’? 5,6,7?’ Money has never driven me. If money drove me, it would be easy for me… I would buy chartered planes and big cars. What interests me are challenges and making my own mountains and climbing them. Today, I am excited about the mishti doi that you have served me. But if I have to eat it every day, then I wouldn’t be as excited. I am loving Hollywood because it’s different from everything that I have done so far.
We just stumbled upon it. My writer Abhijat Joshi and I were quite drunk and were travelling by train from Boston. We were discussing Martin Scorsese’s (The) Departed which I hadn’t liked as much as its original, Infernal Affairs. We were already down three-four beers and suddenly, Abhijat looked at me and said: ‘Sir, Parinda… let’s make a better Parinda!’ Maine kahaa mushkil hai. He said: ‘Usmein hi toh mazaa hai’. I was like: ‘Chal’. It was first written to be shot in New York, but I realised I didn’t know that city at all and would make a fool of myself. Then, I decided to go with the elements of fire, water and earth and those I found on the US-Mexico border where we eventually shot the film.
Parambrata: All other Indian filmmakers, with the exception of Shekhar Kapur in Elizabeth, have made American films which have, in some way, touched upon the Asian reality. Broken Horses seems to be completely a Hollywood film, rooted in Western sensibilities…
VVC: Broken Horses is a Hollywood film… it has nothing to do with India. Shekhar Kapur had studied chartered accountancy in London… he’s a half-angrez (smiles). In the case of Elizabeth, he was given a script by a production company to direct. We have written Broken Horses, produced it ourselves and then I have directed it. This has never happened before. In fact, I didn’t know it is a first-of-its-kind till about a month ago when we started marketing it. I climbed this mountain because I wanted to climb it… when I got there, I was: ‘Oh shit! Am I the first?’
Parambrata: When you say you don’t like directing films anymore in Bollywood, is it just the inefficiency or also the opulence of our films?
VVC: My films don’t have opulence… look at Munna Bhai… Parineeta. Opulence doesn’t bother me. I don’t like those films, but then, I don’t have to make those films. I don’t care what happens outside VCF… in Vinod Chopra Films, we haven’t done opulence just for the sake of it. We don’t go around making films and then say: ‘This design, that kurta, that sari’. But the mediocrity of our system bothers me. But that doesn’t mean I won’t ever make a film here anymore… I may even make a Bengali film someday.
The one thing I’ve learnt from this Vidhu Vinod Chopra chat is.... Tell t2@abp.in
