EXCLUSIVE: Nagesh Kukunoor on ‘Dhanak’, censorship of films and more

Filmmaker Nagesh Kukunoor is back with another gem. If you have followed his past works with fondness, then you know how his films always ride on strong content and familiar emotions. This time, his upcoming release ‘Dhanak’ is a film based on two siblings; where a sister promises his blind younger brother to give back his vision before his 10th birthday. Little artistes Krrish Chhabria and Hetal Gada are donning the shoes of the two siblings.

In an exclusive conversation with Bollywood Bubble, Kukunoor revealed the inspiration behind ‘Dhanak’, his cinematic vision, his take on censorship and more. Read on.

On another sibling-love story after ‘Iqbal’…
Almost everything in a film happens with a fair amount of planning. Nothing happens unconsciously. Coming back to this phase wasn’t an accident. The idea came from a friend who pitched me for an ad. It was an ad for a courier company where a brother and a sister stay in a village and a courier guy comes to them. The ad never happened. But I loved the core concept. It wasn’t even set in Rajasthan. One day I woke up and saw the poster; a brother and a sister walking across the desert. I called my friend and asked him, “What happened to that idea?” He said, “Nothing. That ad never happened.” I asked, “Do you mind if I develop it into a full screen?” He didn’t mind, and I did. It was as random as that.

On incorporating Shah Rukh Khan and Salman Khan’s tiff in the film…
The core of the film is actually a lovely relationship between siblings. It has a nice sense of heroism as to how a sister would go to any extent to get her (blind) brother able to see again. However, there are many layers to it. One is to explore the mythology about Indian superstars; how and what they mean to people and children in India, how people even built temples for them. Then, if you’re talking about a little girl, chances are that she would be gravitated. And if you are talking about a little boy, chances are that he would gravitate towards Salman Khan. In the film, the Salman-Shah Rukh rivalry comes more out of the sibling rivalry. Siblings fight all the time, and one of the things they fight about is Shah Rukh vs Salman. With all the ‘bhaiya, I love you’ or ‘Behna, I love you’, the portrayal of siblings in Indian cinema is very unreal. Siblings do fight all the time and the strongest bond lies in those fights. I needed reasons for them to fight and one of the reasons was that they admire different superstars.

On working with child artistes…
I have always received the best work from kids when I have treated them like adults. When you treat kids like kids, they will start to behave like kids. You have to tell them, “Two of you are not kids. Two of you are actors. There will be long hours of shooting. We might have to shoot in really horrid condition. Be prepared, and there should not be any whining or complaining.” It always works. If they give a bad take, tell them, “It’s a bad take, we need one more.” Rajasthan is really hot, there were days when the temperature crossed 50 degrees.  And honestly, after shooting with these two kids in the desert, shooting with adults was a bigger pain, with all their complaints. Kids never complained.

On not being fond of film marketing…
To everyone’s annoyance, I still stand where I stood. Apart from releases, do you ever see me marketing myself? I market my films because there’s no other choice. That needs to happen. I have been doing it since the beginning of time. When a movie is about to release, I will come and do an interview. Completely reluctantly, but I will. For me, my fun ends the day I finish the film. This is all pain. I don’t find this enjoyable. But I cent percent stand by this because this needs to be done.

Whether less marketing is a threat to small-budget, content-oriented films…
There’s only this much you can do when you have a small film. In my opinion, those films should just have one trailer, and they should have the release date. That is sufficient. Spending 10,15 or 20 crore on marketing, to me, is a personal waste. Marketing is very important. They can pull the crowd, true. But it’s only that much they can do. Occasionally, there will be one ‘Sairat’ that will break out. But how many of them can you go back to, in last five or even ten years?

On his aspiration to make at least one film in every genre…
I absolutely want to do that. As a viewer, I watch all kind of films. I am not one of those who end up watching only the kind of films they make. I have this varied interest in films and as a filmmaker, I want to make at least one film in each genre, if not more. The journey has just begun. I have touched four or five genres, and I clearly have four or five more genres left. Some of them already have the scripts ready.

On making a biopic…
‘Lakshmi’ was sort of a biopic; except  that it was a biopic on someone we don’t know. I almost made one on a famous personality, a year ago. But the project failed. It is a genre which I will gladly attempt. But it has to be on someone whom I admire. I don’t want to make a biopic for the sake of making it.

On Bollywood categorising or stereotyping filmmakers…
I think the entire world categorises filmmakers. But if you see the body of someone’s work, you do tend to draw some lines of similarities. One of the few points where I have worked very hard was to not repeat myself. If you look at the work that I do, they are so varied that you would not find a pattern. For me, as a filmmaker, I constantly want to explore myself, I want to keep pushing myself. No one should watch my film and say, “Hey, that’s a Nagesh Kukunoor film.” That’s the worst thing that could happen to me!

On venturing into regional films…
The only regional language film that I would even attempt is Telugu, because it’s my mother tongue. You have to have some hold on the language if you want to make a film in it. You have to know the rhythm, the texture qualities, the connotations. It is very foolish to make a film in a language that you don’t know.

On content-driven films changing their appearance and gaining wider audience…
There are two aspects. First one is the creative aspect. As everything has gone digital, filmmaking has become cheaper. If you earlier had hundred filmmakers, then now you have some ten thousand filmmakers. Even anyone with an I-phone is a filmmaker these days. The second aspect is, distribution. Over one thousand films are made in Hindi alone. There are films we don’t even know about. Only about three hundred films out of them get released annually. You can draw a conclusion only when a film rich in content gets the opportunity to be released. The audience that goes to cinemas is always younger. Thanks to the internet, they are also exposed to a lot of international cinema. That is one primary reason why different types of content works in theatres, which is great! You can have a small release and still find an audience.

On Hollywood films coming over as a threat to Indian box office…
It certainly is a threat. But in any democratic situation, we should let the audience decide. If they are taking Hollywood films, we have to accept it. In my opinion, we set the game. We offer them such content that they rush to see Hollywood films instead. The ball is in our court.

On censorship of films…
In an ideal world, there should be no censorship. As an artist, I say, no censorship. Only the audience should decide what they want to watch and what they don’t want to. But you know, that’s not really going to happen. If there is no censorship, then it reaches out to all extents and we might have some fanatics who would use this opportunity and preach their own nonsense. You need some kind of laws. Having said that, there’s no clarity in the present system. Filmmakers do not know what to expect. The choice of Censor Boards are very whimsical. I think that’s the battle that was being fought on ‘Udta Punjab’ too. They gave it 89 cuts. On ‘Hyderabad Blues’, we got 91 cuts. So, the Censor Board will always have issues. My opinion categorically is that we should not have censorship. You should just have a rating. Thanks to internet, the audience has actually seen everything. You can’t show any such thing in your film which the audience has not seen earlier. So, you don’t need to worry about it.

On a film’s business being hampered due to multiple releases on the same day…
The truth is, the audience will watch what it wants to watch. A film’s release and success are both very complex entities. The true answer is, no one knows. No one knows why a film works and why a film does not. Everyone postmortems a successful film and finds out reasons why it worked. You apply the same factors in your next film, and it is going to flunk. It is the most useless endeavour to find out a formula why it worked or worked not.

And our beautiful conversation came to an end! We had a good share of time with the entire team of ‘Dhanak’ and it won’t be an exaggeration to say that they are absolutely beaming with assertiveness.

Apart from Krrish and Hetal, renowned actor Vipin Sharma is also a part of the film. ‘Dhanak’ releases worldwide on June 17.

Also Read: 5 REASONS WHY YOU MUST NOT MISS ‘DHANAK

Ranjini Maitra

Journalist. Writer. Reader. Enthu cutlet. Mood-swing machine. Day dreamer. Sandwiched between ‘live life fully’ and ‘lose some weight’. Mantra of life: Love and love more.