The Pioneer converses with filmmaker Manish Gupta, who has just made a fresh film with Raveena Tandon, Milind Soman, and Vidhi Chitalia, to know more details about the project, and more
SHIKHA DUGGAL
The sorcerer behind cult films like Sarkar and Section 375 — Manish Gupta —is so satisfied with his conscience, perhaps helping all? Our lengthy conversation with the filmmaker, who has just made a fresh film with Raveena Tandon, Milind Soman, and Vidhi Chitalia, made us realise how he doesn’t lie! Let us explain to you: such a straightforward person who is ashamed of nothing in his career. He’s not here to be a people-pleaser, though he would love to win the hearts of others through his impartial perspectives shown in the movies. He said so! One Friday Night is his second attempt at even-handedness that critics hail as not beating around the bush, and that’s how he’s in his real life too.
“I thrive in this industry on the fact that I am one of those few filmmakers who only go for the originals! Until now, all the scripts I have written and ideated have originally sprouted from my mind; I didn’t have to look for any remakes or adaptations. There is a reason for it: my films should hold a mirror to society. I can recall my camaraderie with Shiney Ahuja, which led me to conceptualise Section 375. I know him personally. My latest film is based on the homebreaker phenomenon because this is such a prevalent phenomenon in our society these days. Young, good-looking girls are going for older men! It’s so rampant in our industry, and some really famous celebrity women are on the receiving end. Unknown girls are invading their space! After doing heavy research, what I inferred was that these young girls are looking for financial security for the rest of their lives. What I wished to analyse from my latest stint was how an older man is biologically attracted to a younger woman, but how is a woman attracted to an extremely older man? Being mature is fine, but a man who’s on the brink of losing his hair? That didn’t occur naturally to me!” adds the director.
When he spoke to a number of girls like this, they found nothing wrong with doing this. Their justification to the director was that the celebrity or random man was coming to us of his own free will! He’s not happy with his marriage. The director felt they were trying to comfort themselves. This is the conflict that he has shown in the film between the two leading ladies! He continued, “Milind Soman was the perfect fit for it — he’s touching sixty yet he has sex appeal! He’s so sophisticated and part of the urban elite. He’s still so desirable among younger women. He played his role with so much conviction, and that helped our younger actress on the set too. They were in tandem. Since Milind is in a supporting role, I couldn’t have cast an A-lister opposite Raveena Tandon because they would have refused. Speaking of the leading lady, she’s a director’s actor, even if she’s doing it grudgingly or not supporting the statement coming from the film’s perspective. She doesn’t have any input on the script! She comes from the glamour world; she’s not a methodical actress, so she was fully focused on her physical appearance. A beautiful woman in this film industry for so many years, she’s so conscious about how she looks on-screen.”
He does not make any remakes, nor are they based on any books. All of his projects are heavily researched! His stories are an extension of this social phenomenon. But he does not give a judgement because he is nobody; there is a difference! He knew Shiney Ahuja, and in spite of that, he struck a striking balance in the movie. As filmmakers, he claims that they are not allowed to be feminists or male chauvinists. Sadly, in our country, whenever you switch on the television, read the headlines, or just check Twitter, there is only negativity. For example, Aarushi’s murder case was screaming across the country, and that led him to make Rahasya. That little girl was wrecked by our national media. This leads to a revelation: “I was supposed to do a film with Shiney when his case was vandalised in the media. My film got scrapped because of his case! I rushed to the police station and tried helping him. His case was so in the face that I had to make a film on it. I so wanted to express myself in regards to his case! There’s a research team, and I instructed them to collect evidence from the internet. But this is still very superficial to me as a filmmaker who is about to touch on a sensitive subject, so I approached the legal team, who provided us with insights on the court proceedings. Then I approached the police for charge sheets! I read the maid’s statement about being raped, and her statement sent a chill down my spine. Then I extracted the court judgement! The nail in the coffin is to always meet the abuser and victim for an overview, or else my film is not supposed to go on floors. When I met them, a personal realisation hit me: sometimes a judge’s decision may or may not be true. Perhaps the cops fabricated the story just to win the case?”
It takes him years to do this research, which is painstaking work that he is used to doing. The director asserted so openly that “Other filmmakers, except for the cult ones, do not do any of this. Nowadays, filmmakers in the industry are going out and buying the book rights! And they do extensive research, which the author hasn’t even mentioned. Everything is fictionalised, even if based on true events. A disclaimer is mentioned. Everything is so filmy! Mainstream Bollywood filmmakers are like this; they are amateurs. They are childish; they have a low IQ; they are lazy. They come from a culture of ass-licking the actors’ and the studio heads’ preferences! “Actor ko khush karo” agenda Rajkumar Hirani, Vishal Bhardwaj, Anurag Kashyap, to some, Anubhav Sinha, obviously Prakash Jha, who brought a political atmosphere to the films, then Dibakar Banerjee and Vivek Agnihotri—these are the filmmakers who have asked the studios to go to hell if their real vision is not given preference, and that’s why I like them. Their films have always stood out!” Sharing his own instance, he narrated how, for One Friday Night, he wanted to have an exotic location. He was looking for an isolated villa on top of a hill surrounded by a lake to give the feel of a thriller at the same time!
These locations are very tricky to find for a filmmaker, and now he insists on shooting in monsoon season for the obvious natural feel. The skies are overcast, and the lake is overflowing because he shot in the heart of the monsoon.
