I\u2019m not drawn to the movies as much as I am to their images. When I look at old B-movie posters and stills, I tend to fantasise about the worlds behind them, they provoke my imagination and start off stories in my head,\u201d says Devraj in an interview with R Krishna. Edited excerpts…<\/p>\n
A lot of your work \u2014 Sudershan, The Art Of Bollywood and Quick Gun Murugun \u2014 has been inspired by films. What is it about cinema that draws you?
\nAs a screenwriter, I\u2019ve tackled many different subjects, from comedy to some fairly serious drama. Frankly, the more difficult, challenging work often does not get funding or a wide release, while it\u2019s relatively easier to find takers for the pop culture stuff.<\/p>\n
Not that I don\u2019t enjoy digging into pop culture, it\u2019s great fun. I\u2019m not drawn to the movies as much as I am to their images. When I look at old B-movie posters and stills, I tend to fantasise about the worlds behind them, they provoke my imagination and start off stories in my head. Then I go wherever that takes me. But with The Art of Bollywood, my book on movie posters, the idea was to stay with the images and discover the real stories behind them.<\/p>\n
What, according to you, are the challenging things about writing spoofs? In a spoof, it\u2019s tough to get the jokes right every time, so how do you do it?
\nWell, I\u2019m not really into spoofs, or the kind of gag film where you lampoon specific movie scenes and cliches. Yes, Quick Gun was partly in that space, but I\u2019ve moved on. The story in Sudershan (Chimpanzee) has elements of parody and satire, but the humour often comes from another place. It\u2019s generally darker, and a bit twisted and absurd.<\/p>\n
My challenge was to take the reader along on this very strange ride. It requires a suspension of disbelief, which I addressed with the very first image. The caption is \u2018Moti the Wonder Dog drives a taxi\u2019 and there\u2019s the dog himself, saying \u2018Diesel ka gaadi best hai\u2019. Either you say \u2018Haan, barobar\u2019 and sit back, or you jump into another cab.<\/p>\n
The other challenge was in the tone of the narrative, which is comic-tragic, turning on a dime from low humour to some fairly bleak subjects like exploitation, paranoia, self-destructive behaviour. It\u2019s definitely not Hot Shots, Part Deux.<\/p>\n
Sudershan looks behind the scene at B-movies. How did you observe this world?
\nThe book is set in a shadow Bollywood where animal stars are marquee names alongside human actors. I had a lot of material to draw on to create this world, since I\u2019d researched the Indian B-movie scene earlier, for TV shows, and also for my poster book.<\/p>\n
Here and there, I\u2019ve also drawn on the filmi characters I\u2019ve met over the years, all their tragic-but-funny stories, and sometimes, their actual words.<\/p>\n
More importantly, I\u2019ve derived my narrative structure from the way these people tell stories, the way they turn their own lives into filmi narratives, where odds are overcome to achieve fame, but then fate intervenes, and commences a downward spiral. There\u2019s a template to these stories, which I\u2019ve followed.<\/p>\n
Do you think that the urban, multiplex audience tends to look down on B-films? Did you write Sudershan with the intention of changing that worldview?
\nWell, you get all kinds of responses to B-films. Some people dismiss them outright, others embrace them with that hipster smirk which says, ya, it\u2019s kitsch, but it\u2019s cool. I don\u2019t agree with either stance. The definition of kitsch is sentimental trash masquerading as art, and to me, that describes Sanjay Leela Bhansali, not Dara Singh. I like B-movie images for the stories they promise, their eccentric worlds. I\u2019m content to explore these narratives and characters, without trying to change any worldview.