I am not competing with porn

Over a chilled out coffee session at the YRF canteen, we caught up with the Bang Baaja Baraat Director, Anand Tiwari. He earnestly spoke about his much-awaited venture until Mr. Ranveer Singh joined the gang. Not only did he entertain us but also played, host, comedian, super star, Bang Baja Baraat brand ambassador and also celebrity photographer and interviewer for Pandolin. Read right till the end to know how the grand entry happened wearing what looked like Adidas’s Govinda collection. Pado, suno aur haso! In Ranveer’s words, ‘This is some out-there stuff.’

Bang Baaja Baaraat is your first full-fledged project as a director right? What is the emotion of the moment?

I am quite nervous to be honest. I have directed a lot of ads and fiction short films. This is almost like a full-length feature film. Though the constraints of a web-series are all there but one tried to pull of casting with the help of friends. Then of course, some great YRF talent joined us. In my head, I always thought that if something like Game of Thrones, which is essentially for the web could happen, why can’t we attempt the same. The budgets, of course, do not match up to anywhere close. Our entire show was probably made in the budget of one costume of theirs but the ambition was always high. I was really excited to see the reactions at MAMI because we will see the first three episodes together. The who’s who of the web world were there.

It is almost like a premiere. It is a probably the first time something like this is being done for a web series.

It is very much a premiere and credit to MAMI for having a vision on this. They are not just looking at films any more. They are looking at entertainment as a bigger form.

Where did the idea for BBB germinate from?

Sumeet Vyas and I had this idea about a year ago. At that point it was supposed to be a three-minute gag-based video, which we had planned to do ourselves. I have written 3 short films with Sumeet and his wife playing themselves. It was originally called Crappily Married and was about relationship problems.

Was it inspired by their lives?

Not just theirs but all the fucked up relationships that we’ve had, and we’ve had quite a few. We had been talking about this idea for a while when Nikhil Taneja and Ashish Patil met us. I happened to share the idea with them and it was Ashish’s vision to turn it into a fiction series. Sumeet and I love writing fiction and immediately got on the job. The idea was to keep it between 10 and 16 minutes each which is how it has panned out. Amritpal Bindra, my co-producer also joined us. Luckily YRF loved it.

How much of yourself and your life have you brought into the series?

A lot of the characters are actually a take on people we know. There is a lot of both Sumeet and me in the lead character. We are both Bombay boys but our mentalities are small-town-like. We have ended up dating women who were more educated and more Anglicized than us. So you’ll see a lot of that in Pavan. The mothers are a combination of Sumeet’s mom and my mom and so are the fathers. The character of Sarang is based on a very dear friend. I always like fiction when it comes out of real life.

What fun it will be when all these people watch the show.

I am just worried about what’ll happen when my mother watches it. There is a lot of content that she may not approve of.

How involved were you in the casting process?

All through. Apart from Angira I cast the entire show. One gets spoilt being a part of Mumbai theatre because we have such a great pool of actors. I have done so much work for almost-no-money for a lot of people and this was payback time. A lot of them very sweetly agreed. I have worked with Shehnaz, Rajit, Ali and Gajraj Sir before.

Did they eventually get paid? 

They did but nothing compared to what they would have been if this was a proper film. They definitely didn’t do this for money. They did it for the love of the script and for us, of course.

When Y Films came on board, it changed the dynamics of the whole idea, right?

Yashraj was part of the conception itself. Ashish was the one who said we should make a larger fiction story so they have been part of the DNA of the idea. Ever since we spoke about it, the scale was always a focus. We wanted to do something that wasn’t just about two people talking. We didn’t want to compete with others web content, which is doing well right now. We wanted to do it the way we envisioned it. The show has its episodic hook points and structured in a suitable way but our writing, the approach and sensibility is cinematic.

The series looks like a movie and people are also mistaking it for one. Do you feel you could have waited until you took it to the full-fledged feature zone?

No. I don’t think so.

What are the advantages of doing a web series over a feature?

Every format has its own advantages. Web gives us the freedom to do things we cannot do on film. We’ve seen bachelors in our films as well as American films but a bachelorette is not something we talk about. We’ve been witness to quite a few and we couldn’t have done it on film. The way we wanted our characters to talk would not have happened. The dildo scene that everyone has seen and loved in the trailer came from a real life incident. You can never show these things on film because then your market shrinks because it becomes an A certificate film etc. To Aditya Chopra’s credit, he was more than happy to incorporate all of this. After all it is Yashraj Films who are the baaps of knowing the grand and right way of doing things. At the same time they are never doing anything with the sentiment of – Oh since we are on web, let’s add a few cuss words or bikini shots.

That was one of my questions. Since this is a web format and there is so much information that one is bombarded with while scrolling or surfing, was making it over the top intentional to get views?

I am not competing with porn, which is more easily available and has a better buffering system too. I am competing with good story telling. There is a lot of madness as far as youth, energy and sexuality goes. That is purely because it is part of our lives and not because we want to get attention. I can never compete with a Sunny Leone video and neither is that the intention.

Do you have to think differently when you are doing a web-series?

Yes. Though there are some liberties that we cannot take on other media, one needs to keep in mind that the attention span on the web is even smaller than it is for television. That is something we have incorporated in the structuring. At the same time, we have let the story organically develop in its own way and not timed, forced or formulated anything. It may not be as amazing as one may have hoped it to be but I am not worried about it as long as I am happy with it.

How would you define your audience?

Everybody. I would like my mom to see it. We are already watching recaps of serials that are on Hotstar and other VOD platforms. The internet is a personal medium of consumption rather than television which is mostly collective viewing. People will be more comfortable watching it alone. The meat of the story is a dysfunctional wedding and not a bachelorette or a few cuss words here and there. I am hoping to get people excited about how weddings really are. It is also my own point of view on weddings.

You are also an actor. What do you enjoy more – acting or direction?

It is the most cliché answer but I enjoy both. I don’t know who said this but the quote goes like, ‘I would rather be a verb and direct and act than be just a director or an actor.’ I just did some foley so I am also a foley artist.

Once you get on to the production side of it, I guess you end up doing a little bit of everything.

Especially when you have such little money too.

What is your take on the current boom in digital content?

I am excited about how the web is developing as I can only see more of web series coming our way. Major studios are getting into launching their own VOD platforms. I would also look at pushing the envelope as far as genres go. I don’t want to get stuck doing one kind of thing. I would love to do a horror series. I am working on a thriller for another web series. The world is our oyster as far as the web goes. They are still figuring how to sort the monetary part of it but until it’s all going upward, I am just a production house, waiting to get that money and tell my stories.

Since you are an actor and a director, what are the learnings you take from one craft to another?

There are many. Editing has helped me immensely as an actor since I have learnt how to pace myself differently. Theatre is another ball game altogether where you are the master of the ceremony, you anticipate laughter and react accordingly. As a cinema actor one has to understand the joke and how the editor will plan to do it. At times when the scene doesn’t ride on your dialogues, you need to be smart enough to know how to react in it. I have become more disciplined as an actor since one starts empathizing with the production when they can’t get the right coffee for you or there are no vanity vans. The biggest problem off late is that I have become terrible at negotiations as an actor. I feel bad for the production and don’t negotiate enough. On a serious note, I enjoy every bit of cinema. One should keep one’s eyes and ears open and take learnings from space to another. And as a…. (distracted) I will just join you in a bit because Bajirao is here.

All of a sudden Anand is pleasantly distracted and smiling, he leaves the table to welcome an intruder and soon-to-be Co-Interviewer – Mr. Ranveer Singh!! After a few minutes of introductions (ours, of course), the man of the moment keeps talking and jumping around, praising Anand’s work in Bang Baaja Baraat. What followed was half an hour of madness, mindless banter and some serious unplanned promotion of Bang Baaja Baraat, initiated, written, directed, performed and shot by the star himself. You have to hear it to believe it.

 

And then he made a video too.  ( Copyright Pandolin.com though 😉 )