Two writers — best friends and roommates — trying to get a break in Bollywood, fall out because they want different things. Meaning and money. Every romantic comedy cliché is cleverly turned on its head, the larger-than-life territory mined for laughs and the humour, totally rooted in realism.
Sulemani Keeda is the kind of film Nagesh Kukunoor used to make in the nineties.
No wonder then Kukunoor was all praise for the young indie filmmaker Amit Masurkar. “Outstanding,” he told Amit as he walked out of a special preview. The indie comedy, released through PVR’s Director’s Rare, is indeed one of those rare indie films to have not only recovered money, but is set to make a neat profit through a strategically planned phased out nationwide release. The film that has enjoyed a three-week run will next release in Chennai and Manipal.
Yes, Manipal. Because that’s where Masurkar’s tryst with cinema really began. So did mine. Manipal has a culture of video parlours and you could just walk into any of these halls if you had Rs. 20 and catch a film played through DVD.
“My introduction to cinema began in Manipal with so many movies playing illegally,” recalls young Masurkar, settling into my couch. I’ve invited him over chai , quite impressed with his film that I have already seen twice.
“ TheGodfather, Taxi Driver … I had never heard of these films. While I began with good Hollywood films, I later moved on to Chinese, Iranian…,” continues the filmmaker who dropped out of engineering from MIT in Manipal after realising that he didn’t quite fit there. “I would look for scripts online. I remember downloading Pulp Fiction online and being baffled. I used to spend hours reading interviews.”
He soon got obsessed with age. “Scorsese made it at 28. I was like I HAVE to make a film at 21. I came back to Bombay, wrote for JAM magazine and tried to get access to filmmakers by interviewing them.”
Masurkar soon started assisting a filmmaker he met at the Mumbai International Film Festival and started making small films for MTV. He soon got into writing The Great Indian Comedy Show . “At 23-24, I started doing well writing sketches for comedy shows. I forgot I was here to make films. For three years, I was just trying to make money. Then suddenly, I realised in 2007. It was like I woke up from a deep slumber and decided to chart out a five-year plan. I decided I would write films and started writing films on spec.”
He signed six different projects, directed corporate films, documentaries and survived on signing amounts. “I got signed on by good directors, but the films would never take off and I’ve never been good with contracts or dealing with money. Those scripts are still floating around.”
It was around 2009 that he realised nothing was happening. “I remember watching El Mariachi and reading up on the making. He (the director Robert Rodriguez) had made El Mariachi with just friends. I had more friends than Rodriguez. I had a lot more things at my disposal. I had been here in Bombay for ten years. My family and friends were also eager. So it was easier to put together a team. I wrote a script about two writers. Jai and Veeru kind of characters. My low-budget Sholay .”
The first person Masurkar showed it to was Naveen Kasturia who plays Dulal, one of the two leads, in the film. He said he wanted to do it and I said ‘Yes’. “I am somebody who keeps promises. I always had Naveen and Mayank (Tewari) in mind when I worked on the drafts. Mayank told me he’s never acted. We sat together and jammed a lot. A lot of his lines were written by him.”
They shot two scenes for Rs. 4,000 and showed it to Datta Dave and Chaitanya Hegde who came on board as producers. “Ten lakhs didn’t seem like too big an investment. It was an experiment. I could have raised that kind of money myself, but I didn’t want to produce it simply because I didn’t want to involve myself in production. Chaitanya did a great job, he physically line-produced it. For a film like this, you have to be inventive and keep people together. We didn’t have make-up budgets and our AD Omar confiscated clothes from the actors and gave it back to them only after the shoot.”
The only thing Masurkar insisted on was the right to final cut. “It was in the cans for a year, despite Channel 4 buying it for the U.K. We were trying to get a financier to release it when Sailesh Dave, who was my colleague at The Great Indian Comedy Show , saw it and said he was coming on board. Sailesh is responsible for the release because he really arranged for the funds we needed to get a decent limited release through PVR.”
“When I first showed my cut around, people had strong opinions about the film. My editor Khushbu told me not to get swayed and not to waver. Today, criticism doesn’t affect me. Praise doesn’t affect me. I have stopped caring for opinions because people live in a bubble. Step outside Versova and it’s a different world outside.”
I remember his reaction to Kukunoor’s praise. Just a hint of a smile to acknowledge it. And a soft “Thanks.”
