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Anurag Kashyap

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Anurag Kashyap
Occupation(s)film director, producer, screenwriter and actor
Years active1996–present
SpouseAarti Bajaj (divorced)
AwardsStar Screen Award for Best Screenplay
1998 Satya
Star Screen Awards - Special Jury Award
1999 Last Train to Mahakali
Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles - Grand Jury Prize
2004 Black Friday

Anurag Kashyap (born 10 September 1972) is a critically acclaimed[1] Indian film director and screenwriter. As a director, he is known for Black Friday (2004), a controversial[2][3][4] and award-winning Hindi film about the 1993 Bombay bombings, followed by No Smoking (2007), Dev D (2009) and Gulaal (2009). As a screenwriter, he wrote the scripts for the Filmfare Award winning Satya (1998) and the Academy Award nominated Canadian film Water (2005). He is considered one of the most versatile and prolific filmmakers in contemporary Hindi cinema.[5]

In 1999, Kashyap won the Best Screenplay award for Satya at the Star Screen Awards. The next year, his short film Last Train to Mahakali won the Special Jury Award at the same awards.[6] His feature film debut Black Friday won the Grand Jury Prize at the 3rd Annual Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles (2005),[7] and was a nominee for the Golden Leopard (Best Film) at the 57th Locarno International Film Festival (2004).[8]

Early life and background

Anurag Kashyap was born in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh, where his father worked for the state electricity board, though he grew up in several cities, including Varanasi, Saharanpur. He did his early schooling in Dehradun, and age eight onwards, at the Scindia School in Gwalior.[9][10][11]

He was fascinated with films right from childhood, and even at age five, would watch Hindi films like Kora Kagaz and Aandhi at a nearby film club and open-air theater. This came to an end once he began his schooling.[12]

Due to Kashyap's desire to become a scientist, he went to Delhi for his higher studies and enrolled himself into a Zoology course at the Hansraj College (University of Delhi); he graduated in 1993.[13][14][15] During his college days, he started watching films again, and also got involved with drugs and alcohol. He was confused and depressed, and had joined a street theater group, Jana Natya Manch; he ended up doing a lot of street plays.[10][12][15] The same year, a couple of friends introduced him to world cinema; they "urged [him] to catch a de Sica retrospective" at the International Film Festival of India.[9][10] In ten days, he ended up seeing a total of 55 films at the festival,[15][16] and de Sica's Bicycle Thieves was the film that influenced him the most; watching it "was an epiphany."[13]

Movies from all different perspectives and in a way you can say that these films changed my life and it’s meaning completely for me. Just that one film festival and I decided that this is what I want to be a part of - in next five months I was in Mumbai.[15]

Career

The film festival and de Sica made a deep impact on Kashyap - he wanted to do something with films - and so he landed in Mumbai in June 1993 with INR 5,000-6,000 in his pocket.[17][12] The money ran out after he stayed for a couple of days in a "good hotel." He spent the next eight months on the streets, staying in lofts, "sleeping on beaches," "under a water tank and in the St Xavier's [college] boys hostel."[10] He managed to find work at Prithvi Theatre, but his first play remained incomplete because the director passed away. He then joined Makrand Deshpande's troupe - Samrangan - but left because he "could not face life. [He] wanted to act but [he] couldn't act with all that frustration."[14]

Kashyap then wrote an "eight-page drama" - Main (I) - which did well at college drama festivals, and people advised him to pursue a career in writing. Kashyap's play was appreciated by directors like Govind Nihalani and Saeed Mirza. Nihalani was working on a television series based on classic works, and he gave Kashyap a couple of books - a play by Henrik Ibsen, and Franz Kafka's The Trial - so that he could write scripts based on them. Kashyap read The Trial and told Nihalani that the book could only be made into an animation film, not a regular one. Nihalani asked him to reconsider. But the books had "confused [Kashyap] so much that [he] started thinking that [he] didn't know anything!" Kashyap started avoiding Nihalani; he went into "hibernation for a year and a half, and kept reading."[14][12]

In 1995, an acquaintance introduced Kashyap to Shivam Nair, director of the 2006 film Ahista Ahista. The day they met, Kashyap watched Scorsese's Taxi Driver at Nair's place - on a "bad vcr" and using a "mutilated tape;" the film fascinated him. "I want to write something," Kashyap told Nair, and spent the next few days sitting in a corner as people like Sriram Raghavan, Sridhar Raghavan and Shiv Subramaniam discussed things. Sridhar introduced him to the world of books - authors like James M. Cain.[12] The team was working on two projects, one of which was a docu-drama, Auto Narayan, based on the life of serial killer Auto Shankar; the second one was a film scripted by Kashyap.[15][18] Auto Narayan got delayed because the script penned by Subramaniam was not "working." Kashyap rewrote the script, and got credit for the same, and the second film was scrapped. But Kashyap had now proved himself, and so got access to a vcr and television set. He starting bringing in video tapes and spent many days watching films.[12] Kashyap got his first major break when actor Manoj Bajpai, who was working on Daud showed Auto Narayan to producer-director Ramgopal Varma. Varma liked Kashyap's work and hired him to write the script for Satya.[12][14]

In September 1993, while Kashyap stayed at the St. Xavier's Boys Hostel, he used to hang out with the members of a band - Greek (later Pralay). He took copious notes on how they lead their lives - forty pages of a small notebook, and began writing the script - "in bits and pieces" - for a film that he called Mirage but which would later become Paanch. Kashyap had seen ex-VJ Luke Kenny in a Vikram Kapadia play, and approached him with an incomplete script, but nothing came out of it.[15][16][12] Later on, while working with Nair, he came across files related to the Joshi-Abhyankar murders that took place in Pune in 1976.[19]

"Five very ordinary college kids viciously murdered nine people. I got what I needed to finish my script then."[16]

He had also seen a film, Fun, about two mentally unstable girls murdering an elderly woman. And Paanch was ready to be made into a film. Kashyap says-

"There was a structuring in Fun, which you will also see in Paanch. There was something in Fun. When I began looking for it, I saw a pattern in Last Train to Mahakali, in my own film Paanch and in Auto Narayan. All three films had a similar formula. I am able to analyze it because I have.[12]

Satya was a commercial and critical success and Kashyap collaborated with Varma on a few more films writing the screenplay and dialogues for Kaun? (1999) and the dialogues for Shool (1999). He also wrote the dialogues for Mani Ratnam's Yuva (2004). Kashyap made his directorial debut with Paanch, with Kay Kay Menon as the lead in 2000. However, the film ran into trouble with the Indian censor board and hasn't been released to date.[20] In 2007, he adapted Stephen King's 1978 short story Quitters, Inc. as No Smoking, which despite being received well by critics, didn't do well at the box-office.[21]

In March 2009, while announcing steering away from screenwriting, after his current assignments to concentrate on direction, Kashyap also announced two new film projects, Bombay Velvet, a thriller based on real incidents in 1960s, to be produced by Danny Boyle starring Aamir Khan, Shahrukh Khan and John Abraham, followed by Doga, based on the Raj Comics super hero.[22][23]

Filmography

Director

Writer

Producer

Actor

References

  1. ^ Prithwish Ganguly (2008-01-01). "Black Friday ordeal haunts Anurag Kashyap". Hindustan Times. Reuters. Retrieved 2009-02-10.
  2. ^ Somini Sengupta (2007-02-20). "In India, Showing Sectarian Pain to Eyes That Are Closed". The New York Times. Retrieved 2009-02-10.
  3. ^ Hiren Kotwani (2007-02-23). "I just can't be politically correct: Anurag Kashyap". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 2009-02-10.
  4. ^ "No Black Friday till blasts case verdict". Rediff.com. Press Trust of India. 2005-03-31. Retrieved 2009-02-10.
  5. ^ Laxmi Birajdar (2009-03-24). "Breaking the Mould". The Times of India. Retrieved 2009-06-19.
  6. ^ "8th Annual Asian Paints STAR SCREEN Weekly Awards". Screen Weekly. 2000. Retrieved 2009-02-10. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  7. ^ "The Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles Announces Winners". Indian Film Festival of Los Angeles. 2005-04-24. Retrieved 2009-02-10.
  8. ^ "57th Locarno International Film Festival - International Competition". Locarno International Film Festival. 2004. Retrieved 2009-02-10. {{cite web}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help)
  9. ^ a b Sushmita Biswas (2009-01-25). "Moving beyond art". The Telegraph. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
  10. ^ a b c d Anurag Kashyap and Shoma Chaudhury (2006-10-07). "Catcher In The Rye". Tehelka. Retrieved 2009-06-23.
  11. ^ Why can't I question Modi or Manmohan CNN IBN, April 27, 2009.
  12. ^ a b c d e f g h i The 'Pahli Seedi' Anurag Kashyap Interview Excerpts from the interview (in Hindi) conducted by Pravesh Bhardwaj and Ajay Brahmatmaj
  13. ^ a b Why Sica Moved Patna
  14. ^ a b c d 'Black Friday is based on facts!'
  15. ^ a b c d e f Interview Anurag Kashyap (Part 1) : A Man With A Vision
  16. ^ a b c Anurag Kashyap is jinxed no more
  17. ^ Audacious, irreverent, yet refreshingly original
  18. ^ 'Ahista Ahista is inspired from real life'
  19. ^ Total Knockout: A Censor Punch For Paanch
  20. ^ On the making of Paanch - Interview
  21. ^ You might need a second seating to fully appreciate Anurag Kashyap’s new film Mint, Sat, Oct 27, 2007.
  22. ^ Anurag Kashyap to stop writing entertainment.oneindia.in. Wednesday, March 11, 2009.
  23. ^ Anurag Kashyap Teams Up With John Abraham Again thaindian.com, 27th March, 2009.

Further reading

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