In this concluding part of his interview journalist turned writer Jai Arjun Singh talks about a range of things, including why ‘Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’ director has not lived up to the promise of his first film.
Q: A lot of the issues and the cynicism that surrounded them have multiplied a million fold since then. Do you think a reenergized/reworked JBDY can work better today in terms of its commercial success considering the apparently higher responsiveness to this kind of humor now?
A: Very difficult to answer. There may be higher responsiveness to this kind of humor today (I'm not sure if there is actually, but since you postulate it...), but in my view today's India also nurtures its sacred cows more carefully than it did 28 years ago. Anything to do with religion, however tangential, becomes inflammatory - and JBDY did have a corrupt Christian municipal commissioner whose corpse ends up "playing" the role of a heroine from a revered Hindu epic in a stage farce that cast the righteous Pandavas as the disrobers and the evil Kauravas as the guys who want to cover up the woman. Lots of potential material for "offence-taking" and "sentiment-hurting" there.
Incidentally, Kundan spent a long time working on the script for his sequel . He's given up on it now after Ravi Baswani's death, I think, but I doubt it would have worked anyway - especially being produced by a big-money producer, which is something that goes against the very essence of a Jaane bhi Do Yaaro.
Q: Its irreverent humor is reminiscent of some of the sketches on America’s signature satirical TV show Saturday Night Live. Why do you think that kind of humor has not taken hold within the popular entertainment landscape? I cannot think of any other Hindi movie since or before. Can you?
A: Can't tell you how long I've spent wrestling with this question, and I don't have a satisfactory answer to it. The only thing I can think of is that this was one of those once-in-a-lifetime, serendipitous moments when a group of struggling artistes, hungry to express their creativity and generally on a similar wavelength, happened to come together to work with a script written by two men who had a genuine knack for exaggeration and zaniness.
It's become something of a cliché to say that Indians lack a sense of humor (at least when it comes to laughing at themselves, which is the building block for all humor), but there's a lot of truth in this. There must be comedians who feel intimidated about expressing themselves (through stand-up acts or whatever) because of the history of protests and censorship. I've been to one or two stand-up comedy acts by Indian comedians, and while some of it was funny in its way, I couldn't help wonder at the lack of genuinely edgy, dangerous humor.
Other such Hindi movies - I thought Pankaj Advani's Sankat City came somewhat close, but can't really think of much else.
Q: How receptive were all the dramatis personae of the film in candidly sharing the tribulations of making a movie on a budget that today would not buy a shirt for Shah Rukh Khan?
A: Generally speaking, very receptive. Kundan was very cautious at first - when I spoke to him on the phone from Delhi, he was a bit short, reluctant and eventually said he needed to meet me in Mumbai for a bit before he would agree that I was the right person to do such a book. But once the ice was broken, he was very helpful and friendly. I can understand his reservations - this film has become a real albatross around his neck, it's become a pretext for people to wonder why he never did anything comparable again, and he's also a bit fed up with the deification of the movie by its fans.
The others were very helpful too, particularly Pawan Malhotra (who worked as production assistant on the film at age 22), Ranjit Kapoor, the late Ravi Baswani, Sudhir Mishra, cinematographer Binod Pradhan, and the art designer Robin Das. Most of them are a little bemused that this little film they made 28 years ago has become such a phenomenon, but they all enjoy talking about the making of it. Unfortunately, try as I might, I just couldn't get in touch with a couple of people - Vidhu Vinod Chopra and Pankaj Kapoor, for example.
Q: In retrospect do you think that the bootstrapping that went into its making gave JBDY that raw, experimental edge that a more settled crew may not have been able to pull off?
A: I think so, yes. Orson Welles said once that "the absence of limitations is the enemy of Art", and I think that applies here. Like I said earlier, the low budget had its disadvantages in the sense that the film looks raw and choppy in places. But the advantage was that you had all these people working in a very intense situation, doing things purely for the sake of their creativity and for the love of what they were doing - no ego hassles, no complaints about money, lots of collaboration, people like Renu Saluja and Sudhir Mishra multi-tasking and consequently becoming more and more involved with the project. A big-budget production by its very nature wouldn't permit that level of camaraderie and personal involvement.
Q: Have you been able to get a sense why Kundan Shah never quite lived up to JBDY? What is his take?
A: There are many theories - my own feeling is that he essentially isn't the sort of person who fits into a commercial film industry. In 1982, he got the once-in-a-lifetime chance to make a low-profile movie in the company of friends who were at his beck and call day and night, and without much interference from producers who wanted something changed here or there. It was a very, very rare experience, and he was never going to get that level of freedom again. (As Ratna Pathak Shah put it in a TV interview, the universe seems to conspire to make things happen for a first-time director. But after that, you're on your own.) I also get the impression that he's a very idealistic man - and idealism can of course make you inflexible when it comes to creating something in collaboration with many other people, with external constraints.
That said, I think Kabhi Haan Kabhi Na was a solid film, in some ways more well-rounded even than JBDY; it's a pity that many people didn't view it on its own terms, choosing instead to compare it to JBDY.
Q: Do you see possibilities monographs like this one becoming a trend since India has quite a tradition of compelling individual pieces of cinema, art and literature?
Hopefully - but more importantly I hope they are done by the right people. I'd really like to see a tradition of rigorous, intelligent (but also accessible) long-form film writing in India.
Financial rewards for writing a book like yours, or for that matter almost any other, in India are generally so small they do not encourage this kind of informed, serious writing. What do you think is the best way to make it both commercially and qualitatively viable?
At risk of sounding foolishly idealistic myself, big publishing houses have to look at quality over quantity; that simply isn't happening now. Editors everywhere have ridiculously high monthly quotas to meet, which means they commission projects and then leave the writers to their own devices. And when it comes to writing narrative non-fiction - which involves research and time - the financial incentives for the author have to be better.I wonder what the solution is.