Gully Boy was loosely inspired by the lives of Mumbai rappers Divine and Naezy — the keyword here being ‘loosely’. After all, it was a Bollywood film. To introduce audiences to the real life of Vivian Fernandes, Redbull roped in filmmaker Akshat Gupt to make a documentary on the rapper’s life. “We started in January last year when Redbull approached us with the idea. The first meeting I had with Vivian was on January 31, we just met in the studio and did an audio interview where I started learning about his life,” recalls Gupt.
He shares how working on Gully Life was a long drawn challenge. “First, I had to go through a discovery process to understand the artist. The first interaction is important for this because people are candid about who they are and where they’re from. Because I wanted this to be organic, I kept my phone on record near him and we talked for an hour about everything — where he grew up, what was his relationship with his parents, when he first listened to hip-hop, when he started rapping, what his ambitions and goals are,” says Gupt, continuing, “After that, we had a 12-15 month plan on how we would follow Vivian’s story because he had so much going on with Zoya Akhtar’s film and all of that. We broke it down into segments like family, live performances, his propriety festival called Gully Fest, and so on.
The film tells his tale in chronological order. “Most natural stories have to be told chronologically. I looked at major turning points of his life and wanted the audience to go through the journey that way. You get to know about his relationship with his father, and then how his grandmother died when he was 15 and he was left alone with his mother working abroad,how poverty and drugs affected him, and how he got out of drugs to concentrate on his ambition,” says Gupt.
Interestingly, the director feels that Divine’s only goal was to bring his mother back from abroad, and just somewhere along the way he happened to start a hip-hop revolution. “The hip-hop movement was something that he did but his main focus was getting his mom back, and that is the focus of the film as well. I introduce the mother in the third or fourth segment because I wanted to talk about her and make the audience feel the separation that Vivian felt as a child. Make them think where’s the mom, where’s the mom, and finally she comes,” he says.
An entire schedule was shot with the rapper and his family in Mumbai. “We wanted the film to be as inclusive and raw as possible. “When audiences watch a documentary about someone, they want to see how that person is naturally. I didn’t want any scenes in the documentary to look like it was set up. The interviews in the film include his mom, his friend and business partner JD, his current manager Chaitanya, his music producer Pinaki, Ranveer and Zoya who have given him mainstream exposure, Nucleya who is a major collaborator and instrumental in pushing Divine ahead in pop culture, the head of Sony Music Shridhar who signed him on his first label, the Mumbai rap group Ace who allowed Divine to be a part of them and have a taste of the hip-hop culture, and all the people who have sorted this guy out,” says Gupt.
Apart from all the people that have influenced him, the film also features the city of Mumbai, which has played an integral role in the rapper’s career. “Because he was in the gully, he learnt things that shaped who he is and that adds to his story. The fearless ambition he exudes, you can only get it from the gully. The city represents the types of audiences he reaches out to. There a line he says in the film about how in the gully it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Hindu, Muslim or Christian. The only religion is the gully. If you go to the gully, you’ll see they don’t really care what religion you are, what they really care about is that you’re a friend. But if you’re not from the gully, you look like an alien there. So that’s quite interesting,” says he.
Gupt feels that it is a great advantage that this 50-minute documentary comes after the nation has watched Gully Boy. “People are more aware about what hip hop is and what gully rap is. It would be an interesting time to realise the real story behind the movement. There is a movement taking place in our lifetime and I’ve got the opportunity to trace it through Divine. People would like to know how he revolutionised the entire industry. Kids should know that they can forget about what society expects of them and follow their dreams,” he says.
While the trailer is already available online, the film will have a digital release on Red Bull TV on July 15 and Divine’s YouTube channel on July 17.
