Posts tagged fees

Anurag Kashyap’s lair in Andheri is a smoking office. As he rolls up a cigarette, Abhinav, 35, walks in, apologising for being late. His brother remarks, “Yeh toh star ban gaya hai.” As they take playful jibes at each other in the haze of twin smokes, older brother Anurag, 38, pokes the bear further, “He’s my budhaape ki laathi.”

Both brothers are brash, opinionated and there’s a testosterone-fuelled camaraderie that keeps the momentum going.

Professionally, it’s a different story.

Abhinav is keyed up for the release of Dabangg, a more commercially viable project than all of Anurag’s films put together. As Anurag jokes, “His fees alone will be the entire budget of one of my films.” Dabangg is a Salman -powered vehicle, as opposed to the niche urban audience that Anurag’s films appeal to. Abhinav has assisted Mani Ratnam and written for Sanjay Gupta, while Anurag trained with Ram Gopal Varma.

Raju Shinde

“For me, the biggest hurdle was being his brother,” Abhinav admits. “Everyone expected a Black Friday or Gulaal from me.” There’s also the prickly rumour that there was no love lost between them for the longest time, which they laugh off saying that they haven’t fought since seven-year-old Anurag ran after his brother with a knife. If there was ever any truth in the conjecture, they do a really good job of not showing it.

What not to do

Anurag says that Abhinav’s had amazing clarity from the beginning, “In fact, I was confused about what I want to do. When I asked Abhinav to work on my film, he said that he doesn’t want to make the kind of films that I do. He knows the zone he wants to be in and wanted to work with Mani Ratnam. Dabangg for me is a high class campy film,” he says. They collaborated once on dialogues for a TV show, but they don’t think it’s important to work together. “We didn’t want to be Abbas-Mustan,” Anurag adds cheekily.

The boys, of course, imbibed a lot from the mentors, but the what-not-to-do list stacked up as well. Abhinav talks about his stint as an assistant on Yuva, “I joined Mani in the middle of my career when I was directing films for TV. I wanted to understand why big things happen for him and not for me. I learnt that when you make a big film with big stars, it’s important that you don’t alienate your junior crew. I’ve hand-picked most of them; I sit and eat and party with them. I have a lot of hands looking out for me.”

Anurag doesn’t have the problem of managing a 350-odd crew and his take-away from Ramu was that he needed to keep his critics close. He says, “Ramu has only yes-men around him. People who criticise me, I hang out more with them.”

Ramu also barely paid Anurag for Satya, so the brothers snapped up the money dangled by Sanjay Gupta for a “terrible” film, Jung. Abhinav says, “Very little of what I wrote showed up on screen. Anurag disappeared beyond the second meeting. Funnily, that film pushed me towards direction. It was such crap when I saw it on screen, I was totally disheartened. I thought that from now on, I should direct my own stuff.”

A still from Dabangg

Directors Inc.

Directing your own stuff comes with its set of challenges. Dabangg’s script went through 13 drafts as producer Arbaaz, Salman and even their dad Salim Khan had their own ideas. Even though the promotional campaign has a Wanted-wannabe aura around it, Anurag says it is a drama with some great, punchy dialogues. And that it reminds him of the kind of films made in the ‘70s with substance and a valid story line like Deewar and Trishul, which we don’t see anymore. But he also says, “I had doubts whether Abhinav could pull off Dabangg. I don’t think I could’ve done it with conviction.”

While the brothers are protective about their scripts, both improvise constantly. Anurag jokes, “RGV has never made a film he has written. The written word is not the law.” ‘

But what Abhinav wrote was inspiring enough for Salman to put on a moustache. After Wanted, the expectations are high, but that doesn’t perturb the debutant director. Abhinav says, “I wanted to take these challenges on, that’s why I’m here. With Salman, you’re expecting a Wanted. I could say it was a trash film, but it worked and people liked it. I want to include the good about Wanted. I’m greedy and want to package everything in one film. If I stop thinking big, I’ll never get there.”

A still from Dev D

My brother, the critic

Thinking big is good, but the brothers are quick to cut each other down to size. Anurag says that Abhinav is a trusted critic. He rubbished the rough cut of That Girl in Yellow Boots, which angered Anurag but now it’s a different film altogether. Anurag says, “Of all my films, he only liked Black Friday. He partly enjoyed Dev D…”

Abhinav continues, “Even my parents were very upset after watching DevD. They didn’t talk to him for three days and then said, ‘Humein toh nahin acchi lagi, par chal rahi hai to accha hai.’ I didn’t enjoy Gulaal either. I liked 80 per cent of it and then I thought all the good things of the film died. I felt a sense of hopelessness. One person I’m really critical of is him. I expect him to do better all the time.”

While he may be vocal about his criticism, he is supportive of Anurag’s brand of cinema. Abhinav adds, “There is a saying that goes: we can’t all be heroes. I’m happy to sit on the curb and watch him breaking boundaries for a lot of filmmakers like me.”

Perhaps it’s the different cinematic sensibilities at work here. Anurag was first inspired by Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves and continues to watch world cinema. For Abhinav, it’s not about good or bad films. He says, “I either like a film or don’t. I’ve enjoyed some films which people said were atrocious.”

Like? “Like Chandni Chowk to China.”

Independently dependant

Anurag’s allergy to commercial cinema and stars has clearly not spilled over to his brother’s vision. Abhinav says, “I have to create my own niche. I can’t be known as so-and-so’s brother. The credit for this sensibility goes to our family. We were brought up to be independent. We’ve never taken money from our parents.”

Anurag adds, “We’re from Benaras, we’re people from the heartland. There is a saying that if the son is laayak, he will earn his own money. You don’t need to save up for him. If he’s nalayak, udaa dega and you don’t need to save up either. My dad never saved. He said you made a decision, go and do it.”

His brother adds an interesting observation: that all the property and money in the family is in the women’s name. The men are on their own.

Anurag says he can afford to be cavalier about money because he has enough to keep him happy. He travels the world and has the largest library of graphic novels, comics and films in the country. “I have money to produce my films. I haven’t bought houses. If I have to pay installments to the bank, I won’t feel free. When we need money, we just ask each other. Abhinav is smarter than me, though. He came to Mumbai with Rs 25,000, unlike the Rs 5,000 that I showed up with! He’s learnt from my mistakes.”

Abhinav makes no bones about wanting more. “The irony is that people who have money get more money and more power. I can take the money and deliver. He has struggled enough for all of us,” he says. “We can survive anywhere. We can live anywhere, live off anything and we can fight with the world. Call us predators, scavengers, call us anything. I want to see some good times.”