Let’s talk about the industry. Everybody seems to be churning out the same cinema.
Well, what’s wrong with making films people want to see.

But there’s no imagination.
I feel that this is the oldest flogging stick used against mainstream cinema, that it doesn’t make interesting films. Whenever entertainment has unpretentiously said it is a business house, a bunch of businessmen out to make money, there is this kind of attitude that you cater to the Lowest Common Denominator. Obviously they do. It is a numbers game. And if someone chooses to see a film, why question that. But there’s no getting away from the fact that the narrative and basic story has remained what it was.

Why?
They have found evidence it has not delivered. Whenever they dared to make anything new it has not been backed by box office economic success. And since they’re a bunch businessman unpretentiously making films to make money, they say we’d rather make a film to make money. Rather than get accolades and applause of a handful of people who slot us as sort of creative artists, out to improve the creative lot of nation.

But are we creative?
The quality of the product rightly should be decided by the consumer, they say if the product is good or wrong. If the target consumer is (points to a worker in his office) then I have to cater to his taste buds, but if the target is some evolved NRI, then I have to use different reference points and sensibilities. I don’t think the Bombay film industry has said it’s ever interested in anything else but raking in money, counting the number of heads. After you get economic success, you get aspirations, want to be in exalted company, and in course of interviews and conversations, there’s a group of people, may be a ruling class, who want to impose on you a label of social responsibility. These are phrases that are handed out to you.

Do you think the audience hasn’t evolved?
They’re evolved enough to choose your prime minister, evolved enough to buy your magazine. Why aren’t they evolved enough to decide kind of film they will watch.

Does cinema progress?
There is technical progress.

Yes, but not in the story.
Well, you have Titanic which is still wedded to the age-old boy meets girl story.

At least they use a different vehicle.
Yes, the disaster vehicle. But the biggest hit of all time is still shackled to what was being done in the 1920s. It’s just because they have a veneer of technical gloss which titillates a sophisticated lot, it is perceived as a quantum leap. Now The English Patient is a kind of film which was a box office success and also in terms of narrative a major breakthrough. But it is nowhere close to what Titanic achieved internationally and now that becomes the aspiration of every living film-maker and producer all over the world. But yes, I’d agree, there’s no getting away from the fact that we lack skilled writers, screenwriters.

I’ve heard you suck your toe. Is this true?
No. I remember seeing Pooja when growing up doing that, you know suck her toe. I can still do it. But I don’t , you know, suck my toe. It’s good to unwind.

You’re also known for working 22 hours a day.
I’ve unconventional working hours. I’m a workaholic. Workaholicism is now pigeonholed as an illness. I was an alcoholic once and gave up drinking years go. And I’ve substituted that with work. Work in my painkiller.

What do you think of Amitabh Bachchan now?
The man is a giant who lived amongst us but even the sun gets eclipsed. It’s a resounding reminder to all of us that we make our impact in a time frame and any attempt to extend that results in only anguish. Every hero becomes a bore. Every icon gets pushed into the background. Human beings have got this perverse desire to break icons; they love making gods and breaking gods.

So is he a broken god?
I don’t think so. I think man like him can rise on the steam he has generated. I think he has to reinvent himself.

You said that your stopping was like a streetwalker whose time is up.
Well, directing doesn’t turn me on enough. I want to enlarge my role. Like the head of a company, overseeing directors and writers.

What turned you on about film-making?
Economic need. I was the son of a middle-class family, my father, a film-maker, fell on bad times and I went out to supplement the family income. I was out there to make a living. I have no pretensions. I wasn’t good in studies, I dropped out, and I couldn’t get a job anywhere except in the world of movies. So by trial and error I learnt.

Is there now an attraction to playing God?
May be there is. They call it the Pygmalion complex, my friends say so. I think if that is true I wouldn’t shun it. I would say why not get a high from seeing people coming into their own. I can boast of perhaps having the maximum number of people who have come into contact with me and benefited from that interaction. Though the potential that was there was entirely their own I can only take the credit for fanning it. Like Anupam Kher, Anu Malik, Nadeem-Shravan, Mukesh Bhatt, Tanuja Chandra, Vikram Bhatt, Pooja... I don’t take credit for anything but pushing them into areas of their own strength. It’s a unique kind of a high.

Talking about Kher, he was splendid in Saaransh, yet this fine actor does so many ridiculous roles. Does that bother you?
No, I think it’s one of the earliest things I taught him. Don’t take this business too seriously. You’re an actor, you have a talent, you have skills, if you can play a very serious Brahmin struggling for certain set values you can also be a ridiculous buffoon in next film. Don’t feel burdened by the illusion of your own sensitivity. One of the things I find amusing is seeing people walk burdened by their own sensitivity... all the time they’ve got their eyes on posterity as if someone’s keeping a scoreboard.

But you don’t feel Kher could have been like Om Puri or Naseeruddin Shah?
Shah himself debunked the whole pretentious detour he took. As you grow up you discover if you are an actor and you may like to do a film which is called cinema of concern, that doesn’t necessarily cancel out your other options. I can talk in one breath to a person about Jean Paul Satre and the next about Govinda. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t oscillate between the two and I don’t see one as superior to the other.

What about you? You were once quoted as saying, "I don’t have the money, inclination or talent to make serious cinema".
I don’t know what you mean by serious films. There is a kind of tyranny of a section that wants to straight-jacket me to only films like Arth and Saraansh what they call as meaningful cinema. I say, that you guys talk about creative freedom, I’ve learnt to have the freedom to make a film which has nine songs and is absolutely mainstream. But why when I do that is it viewed as a deterioration. Why does an entire section of the audience, which for the first time discovers me when I make a film called Sadak, applaud it and see it and perhaps make it one of the biggest hits of all time of my career. While Saaransh was a box office disaster and viewed perhaps by the only those handful of people who have the pen in their hand and control of the columns. Why is the taste of a handful of people viewed as to outweigh the tastes of the other people. I have categorically said I have never deluded myself that I’m anything else than a man who makes films to make a living.

What about your own aesthetics?
It’s there. I’m also a man who makes a violent scene and also films an angst ridden scene in Saaransh.

You’ve also been quoted as saying you have outgrown cinema because you have militant views which you have had to suppress.
For example, I feel Saaransh questions theory of reincarnation. It was a box office disaster and only critically applauded. There was a clear writing on the wall if you want to make films that really reflect the concerns of life... when you air those views they do not necessarily get a supportive audience. For example, a film called Kaash which dealt with the life of a has-been actor and his wife’s adultery, which clearly articulates that ultimately we all end up as failures. Because when it comes to the nitty-gritty, when you have to keep your near and dear ones alive, all your wealth, all your fame, cannot do it. So ultimately man fails. Now it was liked by a section of people but at the end it was a disaster. So I felt that cinema is group participation, like a circus. It requires comfortability. You can’t suddenly go out in a country like this and say I question the very existence of God. To me God, going to the temple, going to church, going to the bordello is one of the same, take your pick. But you can’t have these kind of views and expect to recover Rs 3 crore from the cinema hall. You have to have vehicles that perpetuate a line of thinking which says good prevails. You can’t question every holy cow that cinema has created. I have multiple views on everything from disease to divinity. (But) if I put them into the mouth of the my central character I will not have finances.

Is money a problem.
A major problem. The most important thing I would like to demystify is this world of glamour. There is no glamour. It’s in the heads of the people and the magazines.

If not glamorous, then what?
It is a sick industry. There is no money, there is a lot of posturing. People are victim of their own hype, they start believing the hype they create for marketing purposes. I should know that because the last box office success in the industry was made by my group, my brothers group, which is Ghulam. And I know how at the hour of delivery it was my personal, self-earned, self-generated finance that ultimately bailed out my company from the economic deadlock that had hit. Because there is no money that the distributors have. They all talk about deferred payments. Even after the movie is declared a hit you have people’s checks bouncing. There are people whose salaries not being paid. Most films, like Kareeb, are released by the producer themselves with no support from the distributor or funded by the personal assets of the producer.

What’s gone wrong?
Exhibitors saying we do not have the resources. You see, the urgency is lost. The control the movie pictures had over minds has gone. Television and cable has become an alternative medium. Today a soccer match demands the centrestage of our attention, much more than a movie does. There are alternate peddlers of pleasure coming to your doorstep.

How do you rejuvenate this?
It has to realign itself to the current fact that we are bankrupt. The cure to any sickness first lies in owning up that you’re sick.

Is there a big extent of underworld finance?
I think it’s one of things that the media initially wrote for its own sake and politicians used to their own advantage to pass the buck. I say its very mild, I think major bulk of the industry never signed with the bad boys.

Is extortion continuing?
I have a gunman here whose guarding my brother. I’ve also been getting extortion calls... well about a month ago. They want money. Urban terrorism is here to stay if you have this kind of lopsided economic growth... (where) a section is not going to have access to a piece of the cake that it supposedly created.

But the Gulshan Kumar killing, did that surprise you?
What was painted last year was that the entire industry had some kind of nexus with the underworld. That is not true. If there was a nexus how can the same people be victims of extortion. I don’t understand, if you’re my friend how can I be frightened of you. It made an interesting story. Outlook magazine started it first... a lazy mind, let’s do a story that sells.

What bothers you about Indian cinema--say the censorship?
I have no illusion. I have never deluded myself that I have complete freedom. It’s all freedom within a prison. No matter which society you want to get into, there will be an invisible straight jacket or a leash... it’s going to be there. I would say that the censor board has evolved with time, come of age, you have films like Satya which are passed.

But there’s vulgarity there too.
Vulgarity sells. I don’t make it but I don’t have anything against it. I want to know in a free India do I have a choice as an adult individual to go and buy a Penthouse.

No.
If you say that is not allowed, then don’t make these claims of being free, don’t give this nonsense of freedom.

You were also renowned for making films based on your own life.
I would say Zakhm, the last film I’m directing is a work of fiction. It’s based on an incident which is supposed to have taken place in 1992-93 after the post-Babri Masjid riots. But the flashback story has been built on the emotional memory of my mother and me. But to say that every character is a replay of my life is absurd.

But you know Janam was about an illegitimate son which you say you were, and Arth was about a director having an affair...
Arth was a kind of film which was based on my personal experience of what you would call an adulterous relationship. It was the media, one magazine, which suddenly did a kind of sensational scoop that said, oh that this is Mahesh Bhatt’s thing. And having done that, they wanted me to be on the defensive. First they did what you call a Peeping Tom’s job, (saying) this is what he’s making. When I didn’t deny it, they said oh you’re an exhibitionist.

Do we have good actors, are we producing good actors?
We are. I think actors are as good as writers and directors. I have yet to see an actor not rising to the occasion when I’ve had a good scene or a good story. Whenever I have not been able to touch a chord in somebody, then it’s easy to blame them. Too easy. It’s me as director who has no vision, who is bankrupt, so I pass it on and say the actor is not good.

What would you change about the industry?
The leaders amongst us must all wake up and see the current reality and realign (the industry) to the economic realities out there. Second thing, we need to wake up to the need of writers. The Hindi film industry has not woken up to the importance of screenwriters. Even if you read an interview with Shyam Benegal who comes from what is called parallel cinema, he talks about the need for a writer in India. Third, if the industry has got a nod from the present government of an industry status, it’s a watershed event. We have to be perceived by the institutional financing agencies as worthy of being financed. The kind of chaos we have...

What sort of chaos.
There’s nothing like time frames, no proper budgeting. Films go shamelessly out of budget. We can’t go out of budget and hope that some God from heaven will solve your problems. It’s not going to happen, the bubble has burst. With industry status being given to you, it just means that the government and bureaucrats are saying ‘okay guys you’re worthy of being looked at as business’. But the tough job begins here. As a group we have to discipline ourselves and re-articulate what we are really offering.

What else?
The last thing is: to be in sync with time, is to be in sync with the guys in the wings. They say the tree begins to rot from the top. I say that when you are there riding high in the forefront, you mustn’t forget that it was you 25 years ago who had the energy, who were lean and hungry, and had the drive to elbow guys who were riding high out of the way. Basically, you have to use youngsters as an asset, because this is a medium of the youth. The consumer is between 15 and 25 and you have to have someone living that kind of life. Otherwise you’re isolated, locked up, moving from your air-conditioned bungalow to an air-conditioned car to the studio. Someone has to bring you the fragrance of life. Unless you use him as an asset, unless you blow away the cobwebs from your head and expand your blinkered vision, you are going to be obsolete. I had the sanity to understand that as a leader of a group and director of so many films, that times have changed, tastes have changed. So if I have to be in sync with the times I have to have some contact with people like this. It is there in that age group that the real talent is. This country has no lack of talent, there’s just a lack of talent to spot talent. You can give them your worldly wisdom, which may be of use for them, but the drive, the passion, the concerns, have to be of a younger lot.

Never Say Die     From Vagabond to VIP