Q. How did 'Badmaash Company' take birth?
A. 'Badmaash Company' actually happened all of a sudden in my life. Mein ek aur film likh rahaa tha Adi Chopra ke liye. That film was approved but had to be put on the back burner due to some events that happened in Mumbai and we couldn’t shoot that film. Adi told me you will have to wait a minimum of six months to make this film. Now I had stopped acting. I didn’t want to act on TV anymore. I had told all my producers and directors. All of a sudden I just thought of one idea and I gave myself 20 days to get a rough structure of the film. It came to me so fast that in about 1.5 hours I had the whole screen play in mind. And the next day I started writing the dialogues. Luckily my wife and kids were all gone on a holiday and I was alone and I worked on the script for nearly 18-19 hours a day. I just kept writing and didn’t stop and realized that in six days time I had my first draft of the film so that’s how suddenly and beautifully it happened.
Q. Is the script any reflection of your life?
A. Yes it is. A lot of it is a reflection of my real life actually...some characters are autobiographical and for some I have brought to life my friends. It’s like Karan is half me and half somebody I know, Zing is my darker side, Chandu is based on my friend Chandu - his name is actually Chandu. There is Bulbul who resembles Archana a bit and another girl I know in Delhi who is similar. So a lot of it has been brought from real life including the scams. These scams have happened also. They're scams I have read through the years in papers and have been stuck in my head, I got so inspired.
Q. How was the experience of being a director on a film set than being an actor?
A. For me it felt like I had come home. I had found my true calling. I was completely satisfied everyday that I went home. Of course there are problems, it’s raining or things are not finishing on time but when I went home and looked at myself in the mirror I used to feel I have done some very good work. It was very satisfying. I never got this satisfaction in acting and that’s why I felt this is my true calling and that’s why I am here.
Q. The film is set in the 90s. Why that decade?
A. There is one scam initially which is based on custom duty and this was prevalent in the 90s. Custom duty was in almost everything that was imported in the 80s and 90s - today it is more relaxed. Now you can get a lot of things without paying any duty or no duty, so given the technical aspects of custom duty I had to choose a time period in which duty was very high so the scam would look bigger and something could happen during that time and was feasible. So 90’s was chosen as that was a time just before liberalization happened. So to make the movie more interesting more real and more believable we stuck to the 90’s timeline.
Q. How did you go about the casting?
A. Adi loved the script and within an hour he gave me an OK. When I met Adi he said "Okay superb, who do you want?" So I said I want the best actor since he asked me with so much confidence and to me the best actor is Shahid Kapoor in the younger category who fit the role perfectly. He’s very versatile and can look an unassuming kind of guy to a dashing and flamboyant guy. He can look like a boy and can look like a man which is his journey in the film. Also I just love him as an actor. So Adi called Shahid but didn’t tell him who wrote the script as he didn’t want to pre condition his mind with someone who has never directed. Anushka ki casting dehej mein aayi hai, she’s fresh. Although she has a very Indian image, we wanted to make her look very hot and I think we’ve managed that in the film.
I had written the role for Chang. He doesn’t know it but if he didn’t do this movie I would have to take out the character. I had only seen some of his stuff on Indian Idol and I thought he had a lovely screen presence. His Hindi is very good and he impressed me a lot. I was stuck on two people for Chandu’s character as it needs a peculiar kind of humor and I needed a peculiar kind of actor. An assistant of mine suggested Vir Das for the role. When I saw him I felt "Yeah his look is correct".
Q. Which is your favorite song?
A. "Fakeera" is very close to my heart. It is something that has a lot of emotion and depth in it. The writing is brilliant. Anvita has done a superb job, the music is superb and it is sung very beautifully so that song I love. Another song I have started liking the more I hear it is 'Badmaash Company' the title song.
Q. You did not eat any non veg or oily food throughout the shoot, why?
A. I have a problem with my intestines and ulcers and I didn’t want to end up in the hospital while shooting. I know with shooting ka khana I could end up in hospital if I did any kind of excess or not turn up for shoot for a day and that would be very expensive for a producer. So I was petrified about something like this happening. If you are an actor it is okay because you are not the only one shooting and you know somebody else can shoot on that day but as a director you have to be there for every shot. People thought I was doing it for a religious purpose but it was nothing religious.
Q. How was it directing the actors?
A. Directing the actors was actually just an extension of what I am. It was actually like acting with them. It came very naturally. I have acted for 15 years of my life and I know when a person is not sincere with their shots. For close shots I used be next to my actors and I used to just know whether they have done that shot truthfully or not . My actors are such a young team I did feel old, outdated and felt "Yeh bacche aa gaye" and it was like eating with my own kids. I felt like a father on the set but I enjoyed it.
Q. Tell us about the first day of shoot.
A. My first day never happened as it started raining on the set so my second day which was 2 July, became my first shoot. I started shooting on the road and then I had to go inside a restaurant for a scene with Anushka. So as luck would have it, it started raining and the outdoor shoot got messed up and it was an inauspicious start to my film but once we went inside and started shooting indoors it slowly warmed up.
Q. Do you prefer being an actor or a director?
A. Any day director there is no comparison and I am not saying I didn’t enjoy my journey as an actor. I did enjoy my stint as an actor and even today I am not opposed to acting. I would act one off kind of things but the satisfaction one gets in directing is way ahead of acting atleast for me. For other people it may differ but I have found my true space in life.
Q. You first started acting with YRF and now your first directorial venture is with YRF too. How does it feel?
A. I had to fight for my first acting stint. I remember I had to actually fight for my role for DDLJ with Adi as he had signed someone else for that and I convinced him that I was the better candidate. As a director I also thought the best company to direct for would be Yash Raj. So I called up Adi and said I have a script. The frist draft he said the idea was very good and eventually I worked on it for a year and made some changes on it. Eventually it was ready to shoot.
Q. What's the one moment you will cherish the most in this film?
A. I don’t know if it’s something I should tell you guys but I will tell you anyways. When I was doing my last shot of the film where the film ends with the big crane shot we were shooting in Bangkok. When I left for the shoot, I started crying. I just got so emotional about the fact that I was taking the last shot of the film. It was a long drive of 2.5 hours and for about 2 hours tears just kept rolling down. I was lucky that nobody was with me in the car. I didn’t know why I was crying. I think it was more of a release like I was putting an end to my first film - my dream of so many years.
Q. How did the title 'Badmaash Company' come about?
A. The title really troubled us! We came up with a lot of titles for the film. The film ended, the shoot ended and we still didn’t have anything, it was embarrassing since I am a writer and Adi is a writer. We thought we will get it from the songs as usually we get some interesting words but here was nothing that came. For one year we were looking for the title and we couldn’t get it and when we did it was so obvious and so easy 'Badmaash Company' and we both looked at each other and said it and started laughing.
'Badmaash Company' releases this week on May 7.
Click here to view more movie stills from 'Badmaash Company' in our GALLERY.
