‘I Got Bored of My Opulence’

Karan Johar is tired of playing it safe. He talks to Open on what age has to do with his new approach and why Bollywood is looking beyond its own gene pool.

With one film playing in theatres and two more on the way, this is the busiest Karan Johar has ever been. “I prefer it this way,” he says. He has just returned from shooting the final schedule of My Name is Khan. In his office in a Mumbai suburb, he explains what age has to do with his new approach, why he apologised to Raj Thackeray and why Bollywood is looking beyond its own gene pool.

Q Kurbaan (about terrorism) and My Name is Khan (about Islamic identity) are very different from the movies we’ve come to associate with you. Why?

A I don’t know. I would love to intellectualise my answer, but there really is no answer to the question, barring the fact that Kurbaan is a story I’ve had for many years. I met Rensil D’Silva and developed a rapport with him. I told him about it, he developed a ten-liner, came to me. I really liked it. He developed a ten-pager then and I loved it. I said why don’t you direct this film for me, because I’ve had it for years. His take on it interested me, the way he slanted it on an emotional thriller base. My Name is Khan is a thought I’ve had always. In my years of travel, just the perception of Islam is something that has bothered me. Even in intellectual circles, in more evolved circles, in circles where you think an education will give you a far more evolved way of thinking, I get surprised with people time and again.

Post Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, where I took on extra-marital relationships, I felt more liberated. I felt like I needed to break away from playing it safe, break away from the norms of mainstream cinema that had held some of us. I think the older you grow, the more mature you get, the more evolved you are. I think you break away from your own self and I think I’m in that zone. The fear of failure is much less in my head now than it was before.

Q At what point did you realise that you were playing it safe?

A Every time. When I was standing and directing Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna which I felt was half brave and half not. Half brave because thematically it was very brave and some sequences were very bold. And then, some item numbers, some kind of opulence, some mainstream elements in the film made me think that I was kind of compromising with what I had started off with. I remember I was shooting this song Rock n Roll Soniye and I was standing by a pillar and watching this opulence and beautiful-looking actors, huge set, great song, everything that I had been attached to, and I was just bored. I think that was for me the beginning of a thought process that made me believe that this was not going to excite me anymore. That if I go into this zone any more, I’m going to get bored and not challenged. And of course if you’re challenged, there’s a risk of running away from your core brand value, but in any case I feel I had been clubbed too soon. I had been given this mush-melodrama-family-bubblegum-various tag. I felt that you can’t judge me in five years or ten years. Give me two decades to make up your mind about what kind of filmmaker I am.

Q Taking on terrorism now. Was it like stepping out of your comfort zone?

A Totally. I haven’t written or directed Kurbaan, but the thought of it has been with me for a while. But My Name is Khan has definitely yanked me out of my comfort zone, which is an internal space. I think every film I’ve directed before, I had internalised because they were people I know, people I had observed, relationships I had observed at very close quarters. But My Name is Khan required me to externalise everything, to go out and research a disorder, research a world environment, research a political environment, an emotional atmosphere in a zone that I don’t know anything about. So Shibani Bathija and I went on a mission to meet people with the Asperger syndrome because my protagonist has a form of autism. A high-functioning autism. And there was the social, political, and emotional climate of the world that the film was based on, which I needed to look at and research. I think the whole process made me feel like a filmmaker for the first time in 12 years. Because everything else seemed easy to me, everything else felt like ‘I know this, I know this stuff, I know these people, I know this emotion, I know this character’. It didn’t require me to do very much.

Q Why have so few Hindi films tackled the subject of domestic terror?

A In India we’re always walking a very tough path of addressing issues. Because if you pick up an issue and address it, you will get this violent reaction that sometimes disillusions you from even going there. So you wonder if taking up a core issue and addressing it on celluloid and being brave about it is going to fructify into something solid, as opposed to it coming in your way and being an impediment. It’s not worth it. What if your film is banned? What if it doesn’t find a release? What if it is yanked out of cinemas after all your blood, sweat and tears? These are some of the fears we have. Over the last two years, there have been so many instances where films have been pulled up for completely unwarranted reasons. I just feel that democracy within the creative world is a myth, because eventually there is no protection. Nobody has passed a law protecting creative people exercising their freedom of speech or any creative platform. I don’t think this is the case in the rest of the world. Films in America and the UK are made freely with a point of view.

Q Does the censor board play a role in this?

A I think the board has been really progressive in the last couple of years. I think post-Sharmilaji’s tenure, things have been very progressive. There’s genuinely a concern for cinema. But of course everyone’s feet are tied. They might be pulled up for progressive decisions. You have to take baby steps in this country. Hopefully, one day we’ll be able to take larger ones.

Q Can you explain your decision to apologise after Raj Thackeray made an issue out of Mumbai being referred to as Bombay in Wake Up Sid?

A I was the first one to say that if I’ve hurt anyone’s sensibilities, I will apologise. At the end of the day, it’s a city we have paid homage to. It’s the third character in the film. It’s been talked about aesthetically, reverentially. When it causes this trouble, you wonder. My father taught me at a very young age that there is no ego in saying sorry or thank you, as long as it moves things ahead. You have to do what you have to. I had no problem. I saw a lady [Shobhaa De] on a national network call me spineless. She said that I was cowardly to have done what I did. But she doesn’t have money riding on this. She doesn’t know the responsibility I have to the distributor of my film. She’s an opinion maker and a social commentator who probably doesn’t know better, so I’ll forgive her for having made ignorant remarks about me.

Q On your blog last year, you advised foreign studios that our film formulae work. What formulae do we still use?

A When I said that, I meant in terms of people as well as creativity. We have a certain kind of beat that’s different from the rest of the world. Our formula as people, how we operate within ourselves and how we have inter-relationships within the fraternity, no one else will understand. Of course, no one really loves each other here, but there’s an organic interaction that’s in-built. So when you put contracts, legalities on that, you’re bound to go through some issues. Because to the western world, contracts and legalities are a given. To us, it’s a threat. To us, it’s a lack of trust and belief and faith. We are like that. We’re emotional people. Even our formulae on screen. We have an interval point, and that’s different from the rest of the world. We have songs that don’t necessarily move the narrative ahead. Often, they stop it. But no one should change that, because that’s what makes us different from the rest of the world. Within this domain if we manage to come up with a plausible piece of work, that’s our brilliance. If not, then so be it, because that’s the way we make our movies.

Q From your perspective, what effect did the introduction of international studios have on this industry?

A Well, I think it began with over-corporatisation. There was no form and they were trying to make a structure. First, we were a scattered unit and they immediately tried to sectionalise it. Then of course, they put too much money in the market and created this imbalance. When they initially came, they had no understanding of the game. Inadequate human resources were employed. As a result, people from corporate backgrounds were speaking films, and people who really knew films were demoted to levels that were not fair. All of this created a stir for no reason, and there was a paradigm shift that helped no one.

But all those mistakes have now been corrected. Now every corporate knows the game. They understand the business. Today, we understand what the balance of Indian cinema and Indian corporatisation can be. Earlier, there was all kinds of banter. People were just throwing money into the industry and being anal about it. People were doing three-film contracts with actors, renumeration was hitting the sky.

Q Why do we have such little acting talent rising to the top?

A This is true. I think all that will change in the next decade, because the dependency on stars is reaching a saturation point. I think everyone is feeling it. There are a few people who have addressed it, and a large number who haven’t. Big production houses and studios have to get together to launch a talent pool. Because even the DNA stock of the industry is dying now. I think we’re running out of nephews, nieces, granddaughters, grandsons.

Q Why do you think that happened?  That the same actors were around for so long?

A Because it was a safety zone. We just got stuck. As I said, it’s an incestuous film fraternity, because you have just one group of people doing stuff. And it’s this fear of failure. Now we’ve understood that if you take new talent, pitch it right, market it well, you can make money out of it. If credible people do it, there is an audience. That’ll start a ripple effect that will touch other people. In fact, I’m looking to launch new talent within the organisation.

Q So what have you actually done about it?

A Nothing. I’m looking. I’m spotting faces as we speak. 

BollywoodKaran Johar