Cinema is a great way to tell interesting stories. We can all paint a picture about what life can be and not what life is,” said filmmaker R Balki, during the Vijay Tedulkar Memorial Lecture at PIFF, which was moderated by Dr Jabbar Patel. During the session, Balki also shared that he is never again going to do a film based on real life. “Padman was the only exception,” he said.
Working as an ad filmmaker
When asked about getting into films, Balki said that he could only do cinema because he ‘couldn’t do anything else in life’ and his life revolved around cinema. He shared that he had also applied at Film and Television Institute of India but ran away after appearing for the interview. “They asked me weird questions and I didn’t understand their relevance, so I ran away. I would have lost interest in cinema had I gone there,” he added.
The Cheeni Kum, Paa and Shamitabh filmmaker started as an ad filmmaker. “I got into advertising accidentally and was creating stories. Someone asked me, ‘But you wanted to make films, what about that?’ I told the person, ‘I will. Someday, someone will walk up to me with a briefcase full of money.’ On the first day of my stint in an advertising agency, a client did come with a briefcase filled with money to sign up the agency. People kept coming with suitcases. There is lot of money involved in advertising. Slowly, I got into the writing and we forgot the money.”
The filmmaker acknowledged that he has learnt a lot from advertising. “I have done 2000 ads. Advertising teaches you to just cut the crap. It’s not about understanding people or getting into the minds of the people. The funda is simple — if a concept connects with you, it will connect with the people. I learned everything on the job. I still haven't understood what a consumer is. People keep talking about ‘appealing to this audience and that’ but they are talking crap,” said the filmmaker.
He said that advertising people should focus on ‘what is right for the client’ and not ‘what the client will think about it’.
His association with Amitabh Bachchan
As the session moved towards his association with Amitabh Bachchan with whom he has collaborated both in advertising and films on several occasions, Balki said that he had first worked with the actor for a Parker commercial, which was his comeback ad.
“I had an idea for a movie for Bachchan. I messaged him and he asked me to meet him the next day. I had watched a film of his at Metro theatre in Mumbai the previous night and I was angry with him for doing the film. So I sent him a long SMS as a fan saying what I had felt. I wrote about what the brand Amitabh Bachchan is and other stuff. The next day, when I met him, I was telling him his dialogues for my film in his tone and he had this deadpan expression on his face. I suddenly realised that I was imitating him in front of him. I froze and narrated him Tabu’s dialogues,” Balki recalled.
He added that all through the shoot, Amitabh maintained that deadpan expression on his face. “When he watched the film, he told me, ‘Had I known you are a good filmmaker, I would have treated you with little more respect’. He said this with such sarcasm,” Balki said, but added that he had written Cheeni Kum with Bachchan and Tabu in mind. “My desire was not to show what a great actor he is, everyone already knows that. I wanted to show what the brand Bachchan is,” said the director.
Every filmmaker has their share of struggle. For Balki, not to get overpowered by Amitabh Bahchan was a real struggle.
The making of Paa
Sharing an interesting anecdote, Balki said he decided to cast Abhishek as the father and Bachchan as the son in Paa after seeing their role reversal in real life. “Usually, Abhishek is the one who is cracking jokes and Bachchan is talking all serious stuff. One day, I went to their office and Bachchan was in a fun mood and Abhishek was all serious. I thought, why not make a film where Abhishek plays the father and Bachchan the son,” he said.
He added that Vidya agreed to do Paa only after watching Bachchan with makeup.
Sharing the challenges they faced while making the film, he said, “We had blindly gone into shooting the film without thinking about how we were going to make a 6ft tall man look short. We had a limited budget for the film and we couldn’t use VFX. The prosthetics had already cost a lot. It so happened that Bachchan was ready with the make-up and all and suddenly cinematographer PC Sreeram and I realised that we had not thought about making him look like a kid. With the heavy make-up that took him 5 hours, Bachchan was giving me angry looks. All of a sudden, Sreeram climbed up a table and took a shot. It was simple science. We have shot the film, specially Bachchan’s shots, from a top angle. It was by accident and a moment of pure genius.”
His approach to making a film
Balki said that he doesn’t care about genres but only works on stories that are worth giving two years of his life.
When asked if he is planning to work on his next project, he said that he thinks 5000 times before making a film. “With so much to watch today, it’s better to watch than make something. We have to make films which are original and different. That’s the reason why more and more people are working on real stories. The true purpose of cinema is to give back to society,” he said.
The director observed that what is being seen as art today will be dismissed tomorrow. “It’s tougher for filmmakers in today’s times because there is so much being offered.”
Like many people, Balki believes that web series are redefining cinema. “The writing that we see for series is teaching a lesson to filmmakers. When we watch a series, we end up watching three seasons without sleeping for three days. That’s happening everywhere including internationally. The way we make films is therefore changing. For example, with a film like Parasite, you feel at home with the character. It’s based on strong characterisation,” he shared.
His wife Gauri Shinde
Not many know that his wife and filmmaker Gauri Shinde is a Pune girl and the two come from the advertising background. “We had only collaborated on three or four ads but we have kind of grown together. After English Vinglish, I realised that we should be just man and woman and not collaborate. We like to work independently,” said he, adding that sometimes it’s nice to have a partner with similarities but later you wish there weren’t so many similarities between the two of you.
