I am so full of movies that if I were hit by a speeding truck, the asphalt will get splattered with movies instead of blood. The spillage that would occur won’t be a pretty sight. It will have stuff half-baked, some things stale, some fermenting. But since I will be dead and won’t be able to explain what this mess is, I thought it would be better to write this out.
A huge part of any filmmaker’s life, something I have never seen documented, is fantasising about movies-that-could-be. There is immense literature on the films that were made or came close to getting made or were at least written as screenplays — Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon, or Sergio Leone’s Leningrad: The 900 Days. To get made, every movie sperm needs to meet a money egg somewhere. Otherwise it’s just a stain on a sheet or on a pad, pick your metaphor. This piece is about those dirty stains.
Imagining one
The trailer of Bhavesh Joshi — Superhero arrived on devices near us recently. We will not talk about it here because it’s a movie and not a movie-that-could-be. A friend and I fantasised about a Bhavesh Joshi - Superhero movie starring Anil Kapoor. A brief part of the conversation went like this:
“Bhavesh Joshi is Anil’s son.”
“Yeah, the son who keeps getting fired by his father for running a radical online blog Insaaf.”
“‘Behe&%#$d do something worthwhile with your life’ Anil keeps telling his son Bhavesh.”
“Then the corrupt system kills the son. Police burns his body to hide the evidence.”
“When Anil goes to police station they tell him they have burnt it as an unidentified body.”
“And cops make him wait, while pretending to clear random passport files.”
“Anil screams, ‘Passport clear karvane nahin aaya hoon main. Apne mare hue bete ki asthiyaan lene aaya hoon ’ (I haven’t come to clear passport papers. I’ve come for my son’s ashes!’)
“Like Anupam Kher in Saraansh. ”
“ Saaransh as a superhero film? F$%#!”
“The ageing Anil becomes a vigilante superhero.”
“Brilliant. And he calls himself by his son’s name.”
“Mind-blowing.”
We went on and on, running the movie in our heads and loving the possibility of it. Whether you like the idea of it or not, it’s not a movie that will get made. And if I thought it were a ₹100 crore idea, I won’t be telling you about it here. But wait, didn’t they just remake Death Wish with Bruce Willis? So, who knows? We even fawned over a movie that could be cast like Rajkumar Santoshi’s ChinaGate with every 80s star — Sanjay Dutt, Mithun, Govinda, Anil Kapoor, Sunny Deol, Jackie Shroff — made like The Expendables franchise.
Why not a remake?
For the last year or so, whenever I get asked in why-so-serious work meetings, ‘What do you want to make next?’ I ask in return, “How about a remake of Mahesh Bhatt’s Naam ?”
“Really?”
“Yes, but not with two brothers. Instead with two sisters. Kangana Ranaut as Sanjay Dutt and Anushka Sharma as Kumar Gaurav. One sister is ambitious, wants to be an international model, much like Kangana’s character in Fashion . The other sister is hard-working, in a 9 to 9 job, like Rekha in JeevanDhara .”
“What’s Jeevan Dha …?”
“On Doordarshan long ago... Doesn’t matter. The hard-working sister spoils the wayward one, saves money, sends her abroad. There, the model sister gets stuck with drug mafia.”
“Like MissBala ?”
“Why not? In fact, great. And the hard-working sister has to travel abroad to save her model sister from drug lords and all.”
The reactions range from — Kangana doesn’t let a hero save her, why would she let another heroine? Or won’t the remake rights be too expensive? That’s about where the discussion gets left at. But for that hour and a half, I get to sniff my heady, self-concocted what-if.
Sometimes I OD too. Parinda as a tale of two sisters? Deepika Padukone with a lighter in her hand, burning Anna’s den, the lighter playing ting-ting ting-ting-ting-ting-ting ting-ting ting-ting ting-ting.
I am not the only one who reimagines popular male-centred films with female protagonists. Somewhere in the ether of time is a movie called SaatBijliyan with Tina Munim. It is The Magnificent Seven with an all-female cast. Both Kajal Kiran and Raj Kiran were in it, who I mistakenly used to think were siblings. Those were the VCR days. Today, how about The Expendables with an all-female star cast? Ocean’s 8 Coming Soon.
Perhaps I am starved of tent-pole narratives helmed by women, young or ageing, and men who can look aged on screen. And what’s short in supply, daydreaming provides. Tarantino had a video library where he worked and stuffed his head with we all know what. With YouTube, we can now revisit, reimagine, and fantasise about movies-that-could-be, which perhaps shall never be. Our small, secret stains. .
I am just talking movies right now. Music is another long story.
The writer directs whatever wicked comes his way and is usually accused of having no sense of humour.
