The Front Row:Anil+ Arjun K, Bombay Talkies, pg 2.

• facebook
• twitter
• google plus
• linked in

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• inShare0

• Email
• Print

On "The Front Row" this week Anil Kapoor and his nephew Arjun Kapoor talk about being relatives in Bollywood, how to survive in showbiz and making money having fun.

Edited excerpts:

Anupama Chopra: Arjun, what's it like to have Anil Kapoor as your uncle? The last time you were on the show, you had said, 'If anyone can give me a run for my money, it's Anil chacha' [uncle]. So is he inspiring or intimidating?

Arjun Kapoor: For me to sit here and talk with him on the same set is overwhelming because I have always been the guy who has grown up watching him do his work and have this energy and excitement to go on set and be the best actor he possibly can. To grow up watching that, you get inspired. You never get intimidated. He never came as an over-bearing uncle and said that you must do this and you must be like this. In our family, thankfully, we have been allowed to pursue our dreams and they have all been supportive, including him. The only little bit of advice that I have got from him is that 'Give hundred percent. Don't be dishonest with your work.' And I think I have held onto those values. He doesn't have to say it because I have experienced it being around him.

Anupama: Do you, Anil, see a bit of yourself in Arjun?

Anil Kapoor: Yeah, as a matter of fact I was telling Boney [Kapoor], 'It's very strange that he is so much like me.' There is so much of me I see in him. And what I have come to know from everybody is that he is very committed, hard-working, sincere and dedicated and more than anything else, he enjoys his work, he is having fun! And that's what I feel. I say you should just have fun and not take it too seriously in the sense that success and failures are not in your hand, it's not in your control. But, whatever you do, do it to your best capacity and just have fun. And, he is having a lot of fun. I can see that. He is having a blast.

Anupama: Are you having fun Arjun?

Arjun: Yes, I am. I am living the dream. I did it my way, my journey, my struggle and I got this opportunity and I will be a fool not to make the most of it. It is the most wonderful job to have in the world. And I am just learning the ropes now. I keep telling Ranveer [Singh] that 'Dude, don't tell anyone but they are paying us to do this! They are paying us to do all this masti' [fun].

Anupama: Anil, like wine, does an actor improve over time? Or does a certain fatigue or boredom set in?

Anil: I think it depends on actor to actor. For me, when I see my past work, I feel that somewhere I have learnt more, I know more about it. My process is that every film I have tried to improve my craft, improve myself as a person and always kept superior people around me. I have met some really great people who are far more successful and their achievements have been far more than anyone connected in films over here. For example, I am doing '24' here, and it has been such a wonderful experience shooting for it, this exchange of talent is absolutely tremendous. I feel these last five [or] six years have been a great learning curve for me.

Anupama: Arjun, what's your process? You are playing two characters Vishal and Ajay in Aurangzeb ' how did you keep them different from each other?

Arjun: I got to play very two different characters like chalk and cheese. A double role sounds easy. But I had to prepare for two characters and I had to always keep another in mind while playing one. When I am playing Ajay, I can't do anything like Vishal. There is nothing overlapping. Anil chacha [uncle] had said one very interesting thing. He had said 'You should prepare enough to leave yourself open on set.' It's always stuck in my head. It's a very interesting thing. Prepare so much that you know your character, so when you come on set, in that boundary, you can do anything and everything the director and the other actors are giving you. I don't know whether he remembers saying this.

Anil: Yes, I completely believe that. Obviously, when I used to do films earlier and when I used to prepare so much that it became a minus point. But I used to do it. I was known as this odd man. Of course this was about 27 to 28 years back.

Anupama: So, Arjun, was he ahead of his time?

Arjun: Hundred percent. Today people are doing exactly what he was doing back then. There is a value they see to what he started. We can take it forward.

Anupama: Anil what is the one thing that his generation has that yours didn't?

Anil: Today the generation is much more fortunate, there are much more like-minded filmmakers, directors and writers. Things have changed now. People are much more professional, they know their value. We always undervalued ourselves, sold ourselves free. Not even cheap. What do I envy? I think they have most obviously the Internet which we didn't have. So, from the click of the finger, they can get any information, any research they want to do. And of course, they have these kinds of filmmakers, production houses, studio and the money is available.

Anupama: Anil, do you think Arjun's struggle is very different from yours?

Anil: People think that Yashraj films and Aditya Chopra gave him the first break. People do not know actually how he reached utill there. His struggle has been tremendous. He has really worked hard. Most of all I feel for a person who has been slightly heavier from the childhood and suddenly has to transform himself. I feel an actor is not only about acting. It's all about everything else. It's your professionalism, your timing and how you look.

Anupama: Over three decades in showbiz, Anil what have you learned about the film industry. What is the key to survival? What is the key to preserving your sanity and enduring?

Anil: I have stopped giving advice. Because Boney and me have decided 'Let's not give advice to people'. Sab ki life bana di hum logo ne [We have made everyone prosper with our advice]. So, now it's time for us to take advice.

Arjun: I think what everybody should do is go and watch Anil Kapoor on set one day. I think anybody who wants to be an actor should do that. You would get to see a dedicated man, after 30 years, still coming like a child excited, full of happiness, exuberance, ready to give the best shot.

The Front Row celebrates its first anniversary this week with an one hour special featuring highlights from the year and conversations with Anil Kapoor & Arjun Kapoor and the directors of "Bombay Talkies" ' Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar.

On the second installment of "The Front Row" this week, directors Anurag Kashyap, Dibakar Banerjee, Karan Johar and Zoya Akhtar talk about their "Bombay Talkies" project and the state of the Indian movie industry.

Edited excerpts:

Anupama Chopra: In 'Bombay Talkies,' you celebrate 100 years of Indian cinema through four short films. What was the hardest part of capturing this grand Indian passion?

Zoya Akhtar: I don't think you can even attempt to capture 100 years in a 25 minute film. It is attempting to celebrate. I think what inadvertently happened is that each one of us has made a fiction piece about an Indian audience member… I don't think you can be Indian and escape movies. It's part of our DNA; it's part of our lives. So I would actually say it's an ode to the audience.

Anupama: How do four directors who are in a sense rivals work together? Did you share scripts? Did you know what the other guys were making?

Zoya: We knew. Anurag told me his story, Dibakar had told me his story and I had told them what I was doing. Karan knew my story. So we knew what everyone was doing. But beyond that, everyone shot separately.

Dibakar: There was an interesting period right at the beginning where we were actually thinking of swapping stories. Anurag originally wrote a story which he thought somebody else would direct but then he fell in love with his own story so much that he directed, and I actually pitched a story to Karan.

Anupama: Karan, what did you learn working with directors who have such different voices than you?

Karan: I'm very rarely surround with people who have just unadulterated passion for cinema. We are always surrounded by people who talk shop, who talk money – we talk commercial expectations, box office numbers. But this is the first time in very many years I found a group — I would like to call them friends — who feel just one thing, and that is the passion to make movies.

In over a decade I haven't experienced that at all. I am completely illiterate about so much to do with cinema… I feel I have learnt more than they have learnt from me. What can I teach about cinema? Possibly I am in the commercial zone so I can talk about things like marketing, projections and film promotions. But let me tell you, cinematically I am a big fat zero compared to any of them.

Anupama: What do you see as the biggest challenge facing Hindi cinema right now? What is our biggest soft spot?

Karan: The herd mentality. One thing works and there are 20 others of the same thing. Everybody who has a perspective and you feel they are intelligent, they suddenly become dumb fools. I have been a victim of this.

Anurag: A lot of new filmmakers are coming in and they are really making these great films. There is complete lack of exhibition space for those films. Even the multiplexes we have will not put those films out.

Zoya: There are very few producers that are film buffs who love movies, watch movies, know movies and understand a good script… To me, the problem with this industry is as a fraternity, there is no unity. There is no common love because they are not there for films. They are there to make money, they are there to be on Page 3, they are there to hang out with the stars. They are there for every reason except the fact that we love the movies.

Dibakar: Number one, too many films are chasing too few weekends. The weekends can't go up. What can go up? Cinema halls. Because we have less points of presence, a number of sales are being pushed out by big productions and by big films because in a situation like that monopolistic environments thrive. We need more cinema halls. Number two, we all accept that cinema is a technical medium. If it's a technical medium, our technicians are the most ignored, the least paid and more or less exploited. We need to pay them more money so they do better work. One of the reasons why Indian films look shoddy and badly crafted in comparison to even the lowest common denominator of films from the rest of the world is because we don't respect labor. In this case, I mean technical labor.

Anupama: Zoya, what is your dream for Indian cinema? Where do you see us going in the next decade?

Zoya: I want to see Indian films being made that will reach a wider audience than just a diaspora or the NRI (non-resident Indians.) I want to see a space for filmmakers who can tell stories that needn't be concerned with catering to just the Indian market and the Indian palette. I would like those kinds of films to be made because we have many stories. Every time you express that in the industry, they are like, 'We don't need the West!' What does that mean? If I am an athlete, at some point I want to run in the Olympics. We need to get onto that world stage. We need to be able to compete and we will increase our business twofold. Hopefully distribution, producers of a particular mind will start focusing on that and try to see how we can break that barrier because we have tons of filmmakers who can do that.