What the remakes of old classic films like Chashme Baddoor miss out on is an ingredient called innocence because you can’t ever recapture what is lost. Or fake the sense of wonder conveyed by Farooque Sheikh and Dipti Naval on their first date as they ordered a Tutti Fruity ice cream in a leafy Delhi restaurant with a benign waiter looking on. Or bring back the cluttered bonhomie of a barsaati where three broke friends shared a cigarette with Mehdi Hassan’s Yeh Dhuaan Saa Kahan Se Uthta hai playing in the background. That was a different time and comes back only when you open time capsules and listen to a forgotten song or dust your cassette collections and watch an old TV show on YouTube. And then it all comes back. The cities we grew up in, the family dinners, the ice cream treats that came once in a way, the deep, unalloyed joy.
When I watched Sanjivan Lal’s film Bubble Gum in 2011, something shifted and I remember writing this, “Sanjivan Lal’s Bubble Gum revisits the template of The Wonder Years, placing a simple teenage infatuation in the context of the 80s and in a middle class colony in Jamshedpur. The home where the story is rooted has no luxuries but just about enough for a family of four and is reminiscent of Hrishikesh Mukerji’s cinema spun out of the golden threads of unfussy love, little epiphanies and heart-warming moments that in retrospect define life. In this house, lives our hero Vedant (Delzad Sanjay Hirale), a skinny, hyper-sensitive, 14-year old who has just discovered that he is in love with Jenny (Apoorva Arora). She like the moonlit, pretty Winnie Cooper of The Wonder Years has a fringe, long hair and a face that can spark a million confusing emotions in a young boy’s throbbing heart. And there are two (hearts, that is) beating restlessly for her. Apart from Vedant, there is Ratan (Suraj Singh), the “villain” of the piece who chews on Phantom cigarettes, buys an occasional Debonair, steals love letters, blackmails his rival and spies on him with a pair of binoculars.”
What struck me was the simplicity of the story and the way it was told and the detailing of a time when, “In the absence of coffee shops and malls, the hero and the heroine met in a common friend’s house and talked awkwardly. He sometimes craned his neck to look into the sprawling police bungalow she lived in and cycled behind her auto to catch her eye, with a rose dangling from his teeth. She just smiled, not giving anything away.” Yes the detailing of what it was to have a close-knit family, a sense of youth uninterrupted by video games and social networking. More on the film here..
http://unboxedwriters.com/2011/07/the-bubble-gum-of-memories/.
I heard from Sanjivan Lal, the director of the film after the above review was posted and this is the long delayed chat with him about why he made a film like Bubble Gum and why it is a hard for original narratives to find their space in a clutter of derivation and noise.
When did your journey as a film maker begin and what were the early influences?
For me it all began way back in mid 70’s when my elder brother – who is hearing impaired, was then studying in a boarding school at Lucknow. He used to come home for his vacations with whole lot of stories of latest movies he would see there and loads of film magazines that he was allowed by my folks to read. He was given the freedom for my folks believed (in the absence of any alternative visual medium like TV) that films were the best way to educate him about the ways of the world. Jamshedpur then being a small town used to get latest movies quite late. Then Friday releases were not a norm. My brother’s stories in sign language used to have great effect on me. Film magazines like Mayapuri , Filmcity, Stardust, Madhuri, Sushma, Filmfare, etc became my first ‘introductry’ literature to film industry. I was occasionally allowed to watch films like Haathi Mere Saathi, Mera Naam Joker, Enter the Dragon and others.
With no knowledge or understanding of filmmaking- actors were the most visible elements that caught my fascination. I began seeing myself as an actor and decided to become one. But since nobody was giving me a chance to act in school plays, I went on to form my own group and started doing plays from Hindi text books. Next I started performing at my residential locality too. Gradually found myself writing stories and poems for the school’s magazine. But soon I realized I had started hating a lot of Hindi films that came my way in late 70s and early 80s. They had started hurting my sensibilities and my intelligence. I realized I was losing interest in acting and was getting caught up with the intricacies of storytelling and filmmaking.
I moved to Delhi for further studies. In between – was lucky to get an opportunity to act in a ballet for Doordarshan and for the first time got to see a camera, the studio and the shooting floor. I continued watching movies in the theatre and also at Shakuntalam at Pragati Maidan where I got exposed to world cinema. That’s where I saw some of the best movies that left a lasting impact on me – among them was Kurosawa’s Ran, Shaji N Karun’s Piravi, Shekhar Kapoor’s Masoom….I was hooked for life. That was also a time when so called parallel cinema was happening – which was the other extreme of larger-than- life fantasies being churned out in Bollywood. They were raw, realistic and mostly depressing! I hated both kinds of cinema. Then I joined a six month documentary filmmaking workshop. Got to make two documentaries and by the end of the workshop – I got selected for a three year course in Film Direction at FTII, Pune. I was born again!
Nostalgia defined a large part of Bubblegum..was it drawn from your life…a story you lived or knew?
Bubble Gum was not the first script I wrote. I had written two more script earlier. One I wanted to make with people like Manoj Bajpai, Irrfan and Kaykay Menon but unfortunately nobody backed it then. Second I wrote again for Irrfan, Kay kay and Vidya Balan but that too could not materialize. I had no access to stars. Out of frustration – I decided to write a script where no one would feel the need of stars and hence no budget would be required. I started toying with this idea of Bubble Gum. I realized- my script had to be strongly content driven, high on emotions and entertainment – so that people connect.
Thus I began looking around for a story and observed that most loved talking about their past- especially their childhood. I decided to look into my own childhood and realized- yes – I had a fantastic childhood, with a lot of song and dance, parties, love and romance (infatuations actually), fights and adventure. I remembered some interesting incidents and characters from my childhood but still no story. I suddenly realized – that almost everybody goes through this phase of adolescence especially when they are in academically critical years and love happens at the same time sending their world upside down…the idea was taking shape but still there was no conflict / no drama.
I was missing something terribly – till I happened to see Sanjay Bhansali’s Black. There was a scene where Nandana Sen’s character tells Rani Mukherjee – the younger sister that she is to get married and a lunch is to be hosted at home. She says that it’s going to be a big day for her and requests her younger sister not to create any scene that day and spoil the occasion for her. And something struck me and I realized this whole story could have been from Nandana’s view-point too. Of how a normal sibling feels neglected and left out in spite of having her family around. I instantly understood what she was trying to say- for I too had a brother about whom my parents were always worried. I decided to put myself in Nandana’s character and went on to work out the story which turned out to be Bubble Gum.
Many feel the film is biographical but it’s not. I did however visit my childhood, took some incidents and some characters, twisted them around to make it all appear authentic and credible. Yes, it has some shades of my growing up but then every work is an extension of your personality and you can only write about the world you have known!
Tell us about the struggle of being an independent film maker in a country where promotional budgets of big productions are sometimes bigger than the budget of independent films.
The word ‘ independent’ for me stands for people who raise their own funds and literally do everything alone– right from the scripting to funding to handling production, marketing and release of the film – some even go to the extent of finding their own audience with their own projectors– in that sense I am NOT an Independent filmmaker – nor do I want to be one. Though I respect the spirit and the talent of those filmmakers but my priorities are different.
I prefer staying within the system and better it. I would rather struggle to tell the stories that others are not telling and take them to the same mainstream audience that the system caters to. I would rather tell fresh stories or stories not considered mainstream enough and present them within the mainstream format than struggle against the system. When a film made in Hollywood / France / China / Iran / Italy can work with us here in India then why can not our films work there? Why not make a film in the universal language so as to reach out to the local as well as the global audience and widen our market?.
Bubble Gum has all the ingredients that goes into a mainstream Hindi cinema– love / romance, fight, parties, rebellion, drama, song and dance etc…and it’s a story that could have been situated in even Timbuktu or Honolulu. It was treated realistically, logically with a certain sensibility within the mainstream parameters that doesn’t hurt anybody’s intelligence and that’s the reason why it has worked well with most who have seen the movie. It’s a film that got made with corporate funding and released through conventional / traditional channels which is not a route Indie makers follow. I do not think films –like Vicky Donor, Pan Singh Tomar, Kahani, etc are independent films. They are all original content driven mainstream films made with modern sensibilities and style.
How tough was it to make Bubblegum? To bring it to theatres?
Once the script was ready –the funding problems gripped me. I realized since it was going to be a unstarry film – the risk had to be divided / shared by different people – so co-production would be the answer to my problem.
Luckily for me – as I was completing my first draft – I came to know of NFDC inviting scripts for co-production. It was their first edition. I submitted. Within three months I got a call that they selected mine out of 65 scripts they received from all over India and mine was the only one in Hindi they selected. It was a tremendous boost to my confidence and my decision to work out such a script.Now with NFDC coming on board – I went looking for other co-producers but it proved to be a good roller coaster ride with almost 10 producers – walking in and out of my project – for one or the other reason. Last to leave me stranded was NFDC! Their policy underwent a change and they decided to opt out. Then Sushma Kaul Ravi of Koncept Infotenment Ltd decided to go solo.. By then it was almost three years since I had finished my first draft.
Once the funding was in place – everything fell in place too. Shooting started on December 2010 in Jamshedpur and the married print came out of the lab on July 15, 2011. In seven months flat the film was ready. We had our premier on July 26 and on July 29, the film released! And then things went out of control…..we realized the world outside the lab was a world that has its own set of rules by which they play their games. Both the producer and I were first timers. We lost out. Everything went wrong right from the timing of the release of the film to marketing to promotion to distribution to exhibition! Even the way the DVDs got released taught us a few things. All this has taught us so much that today I feel better prepared for the next!
Also what is your opinion about the manner in which Indian cinema is represented in foreign forums? Are we choosing the right films? The right stories?
Well, I see certain desperation amongst us to be accepted and recognized abroad through film festivals and awards which anyway are rare to come by. To begin with we don’t make films for them and yet want to be recognized by them. This is wrong. If you really want them to recognize you, you need to understand what appeals to them, what their sensibilities are and what they look for…and even when we make good films – our selection committee most of the time chooses wrong films to represent us. That’s one of the reasons why we keep getting humiliated every year- after year! Somewhere between the Western sensibilities and the mainstream Indian sensibilities – lies a huge global sensibility which Indian filmmakers have begun understanding and exploring and am sure very soon – one of the Indian filmmakers will make a mark internationally.
What are you most nostalgic about? What do you miss most in cinema, life, music, television?
I remember my craze for Bruce Lee and I even joined Judo classes but my infatuation faded! There were those life size posters from the Sun magazine, that I used to plaster my bedroom walls with, then the Junior Statesman magazine which talked of all the latest pop stars from the West. I remember how crazy I was over Nazia Hassan– Biddu’s Disco Dewaane songs, the Hum Kissi Se Kam Nahin – competition songs. Miss those TV shows from the golden era of Doordarshan– Buniyaad, Sawera, Yeh Jo Hai Zindagi, Nukkad. Avis jeans, North Star shoes! Movies like Bobby, Haathi Mera Saathi, Love Story, Amar Akbar Anthony, Don, Adalat. Michael Jackson’s Thriller. I guess everybody misses what they experience for the first time while growing up.
Are you working in something else?
Yes. There are three scripts I am ready with and will make an announcement as soon as a star is finalized. The other too is matter of time and convenience. Which I hope will follow soon after the other. Both are original and relevant stories to be made within the mainstream parameters but with the sensibility and the sensitivity required. After Bubble Gum – I am through with that desperation to make my film somehow. Now I have become careful about choosing the right producer / the banner and other things that need to be taken care of. As a director I have realized, it is my responsibility to also make sure that my film reaches the right audience.- as I know there are a lot of incompetent people in the industry calling the shots and ruining things for others – I need to be wary of them!
Reema Moudgil has been writing for magazines and newspapers on art, cinema, issues, architecture and more since 1994, is an RJ, hosts a daily Ghazal show, runs unboxed writers, is the editor of Chicken Soup for The Indian Woman’s soul, the author of Perfect Eight (http://www.flipkart.com/perfect-eight-9380032870/p/itmdf87fpkhszfkb?pid=9789380032870&_l=A0vO9n9FWsBsMJKAKw47rw–&_r=dyRavyz2qKxOF7Yuc ) and an artist.