When did you decide to become a writer?
I was a boy who was a daydreamer. I used to imagine stories and scenarios, I used to imagine myself in alternate lives, which probably still continues, but there was no desire to be a writer back then. When I did my mass media course, we had to write stories as part of it and then I started enjoying doing that and I also realised that I was good at it. However, what actually changed the trajectory of my life, was when I was working with Anurag Kashyap, who I had met outside St Andrew’s Theatre in Bandra and had told him I wanted to work in films. He asked me to join the team on the film he was working on then. At this point, I was only 19. I started assisting him on a film called Alwyn Kalicharan. I was an intern and my job basically was to get printouts of the scripts. But while working in that office for two months, I had read the script of the film, and I thought this was something I could probably do. That film, however, got shelved. Then, in the following summer vacation, I converted a short story that I had in my mind into a screenplay. I took the screenplay to Anurag. He read it and to my utter surprise, he really liked it. At that time, I had mentioned to him that my mother was a little worried that I was thinking of getting into films. Then he did something which I will never forget. He called up my mother and told her, “Your son is a talented writer, and he will do well for himself in life so please do not worry.” That was a huge boost of encouragement for me. After that, Anurag gave me a few screenplay books and referred me to Sudhir Mishra. So then I assisted Sudhir Mishra for six months. I used to work in his office and occasionally carry out some small production tasks too. There, I learnt the craft of writing. I learnt a lot about writing working with Anurag and Sudhir. That one year changed my life.
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How important is the role of a screenwriter in the larger context of a film and how has that role changed in India over the years?
Well, I have been a professional writer for about 18 years now. The first writing job for which I got paid was in 2006. It was on a TV show called The Great Indian Comedy Show. There, I used to write standup comedy. I thought that since I had learnt something by then, why not go out there and apply that skill and earn some money! I was put in a Writers’ Room, which had all these people who are now big names such as Amit Masurkar, Varun Grover, etc. They all started from that show. At that point, writing was lucrative in TV because TV demanded a certain discipline. You had to write quality scripts in a very short period of time. Writers in TV were getting paid very well even back then; writers in films, not so much. But over the years, a lot of writers have made their names and now charge a lot for films. I think the OTT boom has been a blessing for writers. Because earlier, in films, you always needed a star to say “yes”. But in OTT, it is your script, your concept that is approved. After OTT came in, since the last seven or eight years, it has been a great period for writers.
Unlike a mobile app or a toothbrush, where there are established methods to arrive at a cost, it is difficult to come up with a cost for scripts. What, according to you, is the best way to cost for a script or for creative work?
It’s a good question and it is difficult to answer. I think we should first arrive at a bare minimum cost, which is what the SWA (Screen Writers’ Association) is trying to establish. For instance, if any writer is writing a whole script, then he should get at least 12 to 15 lakh rupees for it. In Hollywood, it’s fixed. There, the script has to be at least 3% of your total budget. So, if the cost of your project is a hundred dollars then at least 3 dollars have to go towards your script. Over here, in India, it all depends on who needs whom at a point in time. For instance, if you are an upcoming writer, and if it’s a small film, then chances are that you will get a very small amount. But if you have done well, if you are an established screenwriter, then you could get a good number. So, the way to cost for a script does not depend on the number of hours but on the number of hits that you have given and your body of work. A lot of people don’t recognize good writing so they prefer to go by past achievements. Now, this is the way it is cost for by non-creative people or the business people. And the whole attempt of the SWA is to protect young writers. I think if a young writer has written a good script that people are willing to produce then he should ask for enough money that would help him survive for at least two years. For instance, assuming that the writer’s monthly expense is 1 lakh rupees then he should charge at least ₹25 lakhs for a script. This is what I think because the writer’s payments come in tranches. The last tranche comes in after the shoot is completed. Sometimes, the producers may hold back the last tranche until after dubbing is completed. Taking all of that into account, I think the two-year survival money is a handy calculation to go by.
OTT has clearly opened up new and more avenues. But a young writer with no contacts in the industry is unlikely to even get a meeting with Netflix or Amazon. So how does he or she go about business?
Tricky question but then, if you are young and new, why should anybody hire you? Today, almost every producer’s office has a script department, where you can submit your sample script. And what I do know is that it may take three months, six months, one year, but good writing does get recognized. If you have written well, someone is going to read it and get back to you. It happened in my case. I was young and new and I had worked on The Great Indian Comedy Show. So what I did was I called up a certain production house and told them that I wanted to work with them on a particular show. They gave me a test. I sent it out to them within 24 hours and they called me back and said that they loved my gag and wanted me to join them. If you are a writer of a particular calibre, I think, sooner or later, you will get work but if you are not a good writer, you may not.
How does someone know that they are not good enough as a writer?
I think if you are constantly putting in effort for one, two, five years and nothing is working out, that should be a sign. Let’s say I meet somebody and work with him because he has come with a reference. After working with him for about six months, I realize it’s not working out. And then everywhere else that he goes, they tell him that it’s not working out. Then, that could be an issue. How does a carpenter know that he is not good enough? He stops getting work.
Having said that, I recognize that a lot of artists don’t get recognition in their lifetime and then get celebrated eventually. But what we do, or at least what I do, is commercial writing. It is commissioned work. In commercial writing, you are catering to the needs of the market. Yes, you could be a great writer and some people in your circle may appreciate your work but, at a point, it may not have any commercial value. In which case, it may be difficult for you to earn a living from it. There’s the famous example of Shonda Rhimes, who was the writer of Grey’s Anatomy. It was her first show and a huge success. She had wanted to do a love story so she approached a network, which told her they didn’t like what she had in mind. They told her they were looking for something in the medical space. So, she thought why not do a love story in the medical space? She worked on it and called it Grey’s Anatomy. The network loved it and the rest is history. Now, one might say that it was not what she originally wanted to do. But the fact is that she got to do what she wanted to do while also doing what the network wanted to do. That is what commercial writing is about. Right now, everybody is looking for an action film script because that’s what is working. Now, if I go to a network with, say, a coming-of-age script, it won’t cut it because nobody is looking for a coming-of-age script. But if I manage to write a coming of age story within an action film, that might fly! And it would serve everyone’s purpose. The writer has to be smart in that way. One has to know that the first reader is the producer and you need to treat the producer as a customer. A writer needs to be able to give the customer what he wants.
Tell me about writing Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji.
It’s a funny story. Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji is probably the only romantic comedy Madhur Bhandarkar has made. Before that, he was making very serious hard-hitting films like Chandni Bar, Corporate, Jail, Signal and all those. So, when I went to meet him at his office, I took three-four stories of very hard-hitting, women-oriented films. He heard me out and said, “Serious subjects toh mere paas pachas hai. I wanted to meet you because you have done comedy before. Tu mereko kuch comedy mein suna.” I had no reference of what kind of comedy he might like. He told me he wanted something in the Hrishikesh Mukherjee space. In a couple of days, I went back with two ideas. He loved one and said we should work on it. He introduced me to another writer, Anil (Pandey), and asked the two of us to develop it further. He put us in his apartment in Oshiwara where, for two months, we thrashed out the script. Then, we took it to Ajay Devgn who instantly said “yes” and that’s how Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji happened. It was a remarkably quick turnaround time. We started writing it in January and by June, we were shooting.
Tell me about working with Yashraj and writing Mere Dad Ki Maruti.
One day, I met Ashish Patil, who told me that a new studio called Y-Films had been set up at Yashraj that was working in the young-adult space. He asked me if I had anything in that space. A week later, I went back to him with two stories. One was about a band of college kids and a murder and the other was about a boy who loses his father’s car. He didn’t like the first one but he quite liked the other, and asked me to develop it. I told him that if I had to develop a full script, I needed to have some money and he agreed to pay me a lakh rupees regardless of whether the film was made or not. It was a fair deal since I was going to put in four to six weeks of work. I locked myself in a room and wrote the whole first draft of the film in five weeks. I sent it to him and within a week, he paid me a lakh. With that money, I went on a holiday to Bangkok with my cousin. By the time I came back, I got an email from him saying that they loved it and they wanted to make it. So, as I said earlier, you ask a producer what they want, you cater to that need to the best of your ability and if you have done it well, you have a career!
I understand your point about commercial writing but are there any stories that you wanted to tell anyway from the bottom of your heart?
Yes, there are stories that all of us have that we really want to tell. For example, Maska was a film that I wanted to make. I had come across self-help books that usually tell us, “Keep dreaming. Dreams come true.” I thought it couldn’t be that simple. Everyone dreams but not all dreams come true. So then how does one differentiate? What is the difference between a dream and delusion? With that thought in mind, I wrote the script of Maska. It’s about a boy who dreams of becoming an actor. He does not end up becoming one. And then he realizes it’s a good thing he did not become an actor. Pop-culture often tells us to leave our corporate jobs and become an actor or a musician or something creative. But what if someone is not meant to be creative? What if one is made for that corporate job that others say is boring? I wanted to tell the other story, the opposite of what is commonly told. So Maska is about a boy whose mother wants him to work at an Irani Café because he makes the greatest bun maska, but he wants to be an actor. It follows his journey of going through acting auditions, failing at them and eventually making peace with it. Maska took a long time to make. I tried to work it out with two-three different producers but it didn’t happen. Finally, Netflix came to India and I sent it to them. They really liked it and made it. So, yes, there are a couple of such stories. I believe, they will get made when the right time comes.
In the last few years, you have not had many releases. Have you chosen to take it slow?
No, it’s never a choice. With films, it is usually that when releases happen, they happen back to back and then there is a lull. But I am not a writer who writes only films. I write across formats. So, what many people don’t know is that even when I was writing Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji and all that, I was working on a very successful TV show called Gumraah. It was Vikas Gupta’s idea and Balaji produced it. I started writing the show very early. I wrote the first two-three seasons in fact and wrote many, many episodes. So that continued till 2014. Then I was also writing a show called Yeh Hai Ashiqi, which were these one-hour love stories. It used to run on Bindas and that’s when I started directing also. Then, while I was doing that, digital came in so I also wrote a show called Home for Alt Balaji. It was my first web series. Then, once I finished that, I wrote Inside Edge Season 2 and Season 3. So, it’s true that after Mere Dad Ki Maruti and till Maska happened, I did not have a film release. But I had many shows that released. When it comes to films, a lot of factors need to come together. It’s not that I wasn’t writing films in that duration. I was writing a script with Pradeep Sarkar, for instance, but for some reason those films did not get made. So, it’s important for a writer to constantly have three-four things in the pipeline, so one of them materializes. I also directed Tripling for TVF.
How do you juggle among the various formats that you write in?
The fundamentals of storytelling remain the same. They don’t change depending on the format. But what changes is the craft of it. You have to write a story in 120 minutes on film whereas on TV, you have to tell a story in 45 minutes. In Gumrah, for example, every episode was a new story. So, you had to introduce the character, show its journey and culminate its story -- all in 45 minutes. At the back of your mind, you also know that if something is made for TV, it will have a certain pace, even the budget would be a certain kind so you won’t write something that you know won’t be executed. A lot of it happens subconsciously. Once you work for a while, you start understanding the demands of different formats.
How do you look back at projects that did not do well? For instance, Maska did not do too well.
Yes, Maska did not do as well as I thought it would. When I did it with Netflix, everybody involved was happy with what it had become. Everybody thought we had made a good film. But on OTT, a lot of stuff becomes successful because it has a particular name, a big name, attached to it, which Maska did not have. So there are some beautiful films on Netflix that people have not seen because they did not make a noise unlike some other films with big stars. So, for instance, there is a film called Yeh Ballet directed by Sooni Taraporevala, which, I think, is the most beautiful film to have come out on Netflix India. But nobody has seen it. Another aspect to this is the reviews. Some films get good reviews so people watch them. I have realized is that nobody can predict the fate of a film. Nobody can tell if something will work or not so, for me, it is important to enjoy the process. Yes, you could be a bit heartbroken when one of your films doesn’t do well, but I guess that’s okay. You have to learn to live with that. It’s all part of the process.
Which films and filmmakers have influenced you?
The very first influence was Mani Ratnam. I realised that I wanted to become a filmmaker in my 10th standard itself. That is when I went to watch Dil Se at Arora Cinema in Matunga. I remember it was August, 1998. That film made me realise that a film could be so many things! For the first time, I noticed cinematography and background score. The story was great, the dialogues were very different. It made me notice a film as something that is beyond just entertainment. I went back and saw all of Mani Ratnam’s films. Roja, of course. But even his Tamil films like Iruvar and Mouna Ragam left a huge impact on me. In fact, I tried really hard to assist Mani Ratnam on Guru but unfortunately, I did not get a chance because he was in Madras, I was in Bombay and all that.
Then, the next big influence is the cinema of Raj Kapoor and that of Yash Chopra. Raj Kapoor still is a huge influence. The way Raj Kapoor executed climaxes was just mesmerising. Look at the climax of Shri 420, for example. The protagonist is a con man, but his ultimate test is to con the girl he loves. That is the climax of Shri 420. Or the climax of Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai. The dacoits are going to surrender but there’s some confusion and the police are about to open fire on them and the dacoits too decide to fire back but suddenly their wives come in and they stop it from happening. Great climax! Also, the way he picturized songs and romance was just amazing.
Then, of course, Yash Chopra for his sheer versatility and range. His first film, Dhool Ka Phool was so brave that nobody can make it even today. It’s about a boy and a girl who have a child out of wedlock and abandon the kid. His stories were always so different and yet commercial. Or look at films like Daag, Waqt and Ittefaq. He was a master.
In Hollywood, I like Spielberg and Jameson Cameron. Recently, I have started liking David Fincher. I think The Social Network is one of my all-time favourite films.
Then, of course, Scorsese, Sai Parajpye, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee. I think I learnt a lot of my comedy style from Hrishikesh Mukherjee and Basu Chatterjee.
If there’s one thing you would like to change about the film industry, what would it be?
I just wish people at production houses and OTTs, who approve scripts, were writers or had at least done a course in screenwriting so they understand the craft. All of us together can then come up with better content. I think everybody involved in the process of filmmaking should learn the craft of writing.
Mihir Chitre is the author of two books of poetry, ‘School of Age’ and ‘Hyphenated’. He is the brain behind the advertising campaigns ‘#LaughAtDeath’ and ‘#HarBhashaEqual’ and has made the short film ‘Hello Brick Road’
