As a four week special, today we bring a writer par excellence - Kamlesh Pandey, who talks about his most ambitious film to arrive in the near future because he believes, "Good writing can change minds, and great writing can change the world."
Writer/Story: Kamlesh Pandey
Film (tentatively titled): Mr. India 2
Producers: Shekhar Kapur and Manmohan Shetty
The Concept:
"Shekhar and I have been meeting forever. He has directed many advertisements for me while I was into advertising. Ads like the Lux commercial with Aamir Khan, Chocobix commercial, etc. Now this was more than a decade back. I was writing Shekhar's film called Champion which was going to launch Bobby Deol as an actor.
But somehow the project never conceptualized. After that, he went to Hollywood and got busy filming in the West. But every time he used to visit India, we both often met for lunches at my place.
After watching Rang De Basanti, he came home one day when we had the delicious Sarson Da Saag and Maake Di Roti. After RDB, he started staying back in India a lot more because his daughter was also growing up. Shekhar has this habit of keeping in touch with what I am doing.
Time went by and just six months ago I got a call from Manmohan Shetty's office saying that Shekhar wanted to meet me. I went to meet him and he asked me the golden question, "Would you like to do a sequel to Mr. India?" I replied, "Why not?"
Now not many know that after getting inspired by Sridevi's role in Mr. India, I had written Chalbaaz for Pankaj Parashar."
Casting of Mogambo:
"If you go to see, Mr. India, back then, was considered to be a superhero film in a way. My first question to Shekhar was, "The soul of Mr. India was Amrish Puri. He is the guy who made the film what it is today.
Sridevi has always been good. There is no doubt about that. She has been dependable and reliable. But where do we get the soul of the film from?" I am not going to detail how we've replaced Amrish Puri. Today there is no one of the stature of Amrish.
I don't think any media knows how Shekhar explained the role of Mogambo to Amrish Puri. Shekhar told him, "Imagine you're doing King Lear on the stage". Amrish caught it immediately back then as he had done a lot of theatre in Mumbai and Delhi.
The whole flamboyance you see in Mogambo was that of a typical Shakespearean actor. So our worst nightmare was not writing Mr. India 2, but to decide who would bring back the same as Amrish Puri did in the sequel.
The most obvious option now was to take a big hero today and make him a villain, which is not unusual in today's time."
The Story:
"Shekhar believes that the first draft is the best draft because at least there is something to react to on paper. I mean, you cannot react to a blank paper, can you? So I wrote the story and he reacted instantaneously. He then added a few ideas and finally the story was complete.
I will not be letting the story out but will brief you a bit on the problem we faced while scripting. Mr. India was released in 1987. We are bringing him back after almost 23 years now. So where was he all this while? What did he do? These were the questions which we had to find answers to.
By the way, the original Mr. India was highly inspired by the old classic Kishore Kumar film Mr. X in Bombay. That was the first film in India to bring the invisibility aspect into films.
Mr. India was a novelty then but now the invisible aspect isn't going to be the USP of Mr. India 2. It has to be something else. Speaking of the earlier story of Mr. India, more than a superhero film, which it was, it also tackled the issues of common people of India and those issues were very real.
So now in the sequel, we need to tackle the real problems what we are facing today."
The Director:
The next big question after the casting of Mogambo was - Who will direct Mr. India 2 because Shekhar himself does not want to direct as he is to busy with his dream project, Paani. He really wants to get Paani out of the way. Shekhar's Paani is very much a Mumbai film set out of India.
It's a science fiction story located in the future. The film tells the story of a city divided into two. Those few who can afford water and, those who cannot and have to fight for it. And those who can afford it protect it with armed might. It tells the story of one year in the life of this city.
From one Harvest festival of Holi to the next. So now you can imagine how busy Mr. Kapur is with the film. Shekhar met many directors till he roped in one but at the last moment, he opted out. Can't name him.
Now that we had the script and the story in place, I wanted the director in place because it makes sense to do the screenplay along with the director as I didn't want to bother Shekhar all the time.
Right now we are without a director and we are desperately looking for one. We have many good directors who are technically very sound but we need someone who has the spirit of directing something like Mr. India 2. Shekhar is in search for that spirit."
Anil Kapoor, Satish Kaushik and the Kids:
"Anil is very excited to be a part of the sequel to Mr. India, and in order to do justice to the sequel, we have also kept some of the characters real and have roped them in from the previous film.
Like Satish Kaushik as Calendar, Ahmed Khan, etc. Mr. India still exists, Anil Kapoor still exists. Whether his appearance has changed or not, is something for which you'll have to wait and watch. What's funny is that he has even got the same cap and the same old coat which still fits him.
Anil is the only actor who still looks the same as he used to while he was in Mr. India. In the last decade, many people have seen Mr. India on television channels and they all must've already set a mental block for the film. So bearing in mind all these things, the characters also have to be designed.
Anil has now become fantastic and a brand name after Slumdog Millionaire. My second film as a writer was Tezaab. So we know each other since then.
In fact, he was not the hero of Tezaab initially. It was Aditya Panscholi who was to do the lead role. He is definitely going to bring a lot of maturity to the sequel of Mr. India 2."
