Director Abhinay Deo marked 10 years of his debut film ‘Delhi Belly’ on July 1.
To mark the occasion, the director sat down for a chat with ETimes and spoke his mind about pushing boundaries in storytelling, which is often met with resistance, contemplating the changing face of cinema with the rise of OTT platforms, and the proposed change in the Cinematograph Act that could curtail democratic rights.
Excerpts:
It has been 10 years since the release of ‘Delhi Belly’.
How does it feel to have made such a cult film?
‘Delhi Belly’ never started off as a cult film.
I just wanted to have a lot of fun and that is what I did.
It is amazing that what started as a fun film ended up achieving cult status today.
Looking back, what were some of your best experiences and memories from the sets?
The whole shoot was an experience in itself because it was my debut film.
I was experiencing new things.
I had never shot for 365 days at a stretch and that too for an Aamir Khan production.
Beyond that, there were multiple things that happened on sets.
I remember being unwell while shooting for a night schedule in Delhi and was relieved that the action director was going to shoot that night.
But, he fell ill and had to be admitted to hospital.
We couldn’t postpone the shoot as we had got permission to block off a 2 km stretch of the road.
In my first film as a director, I also had to be an action director, so that was a crazy experience.
Not only had I not shot a film before, but I had never even done an action sequence.
So that became a first-of-its-kind for me.
Do you and your lead cast still keep in touch? Have you all discussed possibly working together again?
Yes! On different occasions, different members of the cast have come together.
Kunal (Roy Kapur) and I, even Vir (Das) have thought of doing something together.
All the four of us even thought of working together.
But, you know how the industry is.
Things will happen when they are supposed to happen.
The whole ‘Delhi Belly’ team is definitely looking forward to working together.
Are there any anecdotes from the shoot that still manage to make you smile?
The ‘loondary’ scene was actually never scripted.
He was supposed to say laundry, but while filming he said “loondary”.
I laughed out loud when I heard it and told him, ‘From now, you are going to say loondary and not laundry’.” At the time, we just found it funny and didn’t think the dialogue would become so iconic.
There were many controversies surrounding the film–from the song to the foul language.
Do you think that releasing it in today’s time would have been better?
The film did well when it released.
So, I don’t think it would have done any better now.
Maybe it would have done much better, but that doesn’t change the fact that it did very well when it came out a decade ago.
The controversies actually helped rather than harmed the film.
When we made it, we were not using the language to be controversial.
We were genuinely making the film that had to be made.
We genuinely believed that this was how the youth of our country thought in college, so why aren’t we showing that in cinema? I think it was the honesty and earthiness in which the film was made was the reason why people liked the film.
In your opinion, would a film like ‘Delhi Belly’ face more restrictions and CBFC cuts if it were released today?
We faced a lot of problems then and would have probably faced the same problems today.
But, the nature of the problems may have been slightly different.
Anything you set out to do differently, will always be met with some kind of backlash and you have to be prepared to accept it all.
So, I feel whenever a film like this would have released, we would have had some or the other problem.
As a director who has faced many hurdles when it comes to getting your vision and story out to the public, what are your views on the new draft to amend the Cinematograph Act of 1952 that will give the Centre “revisionary powers” already cleared by the CBFC?
I personally feel that a lot of changes are happening in our country because of various factors.
With this change comes responsibility and pressures, be it on the filmmakers or the government.
And, as a country, we have gone through different phases and adjustments.
This is one of the adjustments happening right now.
I think between the government and film industry, we are trying to get this right balance.
Somewhere the government has to give in a little and other times the film industry has to do the same.
Eventually, I believe we will arrive at something good.
Right now, with the Act, as filmmakers, we believe it is a direct infringement of our democratic rights to make the films we want to make.
At the same time, you can’t shy away from the fact that there is a certain responsibility that the government has as well.
There is a lot of content that can be considered harmful for certain communities or certain kinds of people.
I am trying to say that this is a phase and in a few months or weeks or years, the film industry and the establishment (government) will come to some kind of ‘mandavli (middle ground)’.
I’m sure we will come up with a solution that is good for all of us.
As a filmmaker who is pushing the boundaries through films, what are some of the big changes you have noticed in Bollywood and the film industry over the past decade?
With my first film itself I pushed boundaries.
I feel that time and again we all need to push boundaries because every decade Bollywood gets into a rut or a rat race where, if something works, everyone runs after it.
So, someone needs to come in and break those norms, reinvent some paths, push the envelope and try something new.
Over the past decade, I am very happy to see that multiple people are trying to do that.
‘Delhi Belly’ did that, the same was with ’24’.
In the recent past, there was ‘AK vs SK’ which was very interesting.
Anurag Kashyap has tried a few experiments which have worked.
There are a bunch of filmmakers, Vikramaditya Motwane is one who is trying to do very interesting things.
While I feel that there is a big chunk in Bollywood who keep producing the same kind of thing over and over again, there are filmmakers who are taking chances, particularly in the South.
In Malayalam, Bengali, Telugu, and Kannada cinema, there are so many filmmakers doing pathbreaking work.
I think that is what is healthy for our industry as a whole.
It is amazing to see that so many more people are starting to take risks.
Did the lockdown derail your film schedules?
Yes.
Some of the projects I was working on, got derailed because of the pandemic.
One big project that I was supposed to shoot completely in Europe, had to be pushed.
In the recent past, there have been some incredible projects in the genre of ‘Delhi Belly’ that I have been working on and which I am sure in the coming year will be able to put on the floors.
If not ambitious, they are quite crazy as ideas to put out there.
Thanks to the 16-18 months of the pandemic, it has given us filmmakers the opportunity to write a lot of stuff and reset and rethink all the things that are happening.
‘Delhi Belly’ is now available on an OTT platform.
As a filmmaker, what are your views on the rise of OTT over traditional cinema?
As I am one of those people who welcome very strange things openly, I don’t have a problem.
As the world changes, so should we.
Similarly, there is a paradigm shift in the consumption pattern of people.
Some things that OTT has brought to us are great and some things are damaged – because traditional cinema has been affected and theatres have come under some amount of stress.
At the same time, it has opened doors, windows and cracks into things we never thought would be possible.
To add to it, we had the pandemic that taught us that we don’t have to go to the theatre, we can just sit at home and watch something new every day.
It has allowed us to be more experimental because the content is there, but whether you want to watch it or not, is up to you.
It is a very interesting shift in the consumption pattern and I think we should all welcome it.
I agree that there is an experience called the ‘cinema experience’ and that is probably something that is missing.
I just hope time will give us the opportunity to experience both of these.
Are you working on any OTT projects or web series that you can share with us?
I am working on multiple OTT projects.
There are a bunch of films that I have developed over the last 18-19 months and in a short time, we will reveal more about what these projects are.
