WORKING TITLE
Selina Sheth
INT. PRODUCER’S OFFICE. DAY
Karan Kamal, known as KK, sits on a brown and silver throne in his brown and gold production office. Papers are strewn around his heavy desk. On the wall behind is a large, platinum-framed picture of a beaming KK with Hollywood star Goldie Hawn. The photograph was taken on her last spiritual trip to India, KK beams, his fingers splayed excitedly. He adds that they “really hit it awwfff” and now Goldie has sent feelers (“not those kinds of feelers, haha!”) about co-producing a venture involving a charismatic Mumbai gangster, a Hawaiian porn starlet, a talking cow and the Holy Ganges as scenic backdrop. Shah Rukh Khan is interested.
Background noise continues – the camera pulls out to reveal LILA, a nervous woman in her 30s, sitting opposite KK’s desk. His iPhone shrieks. KK clicks it off with a nervous, braying laugh, goes silent, sighs, then turns to his desk and contemplates the open script with a deep expression.
LILA (silent): He probably hates it. He’s not into indie cinema. He’s more into that whole Blowing Up Bridges thing. What the hell was I thinking? OK, stay calm. Take your script. Say thank you. Leave. Dignity is everything.
A sharp SNAP as KK cracks the spine of the script. He leans back, throwing a stoned expression at Lila.
KK (emphatically): I LOVE IT. This is exactly what I’ve been looking for. This has…this has…today’s vibe. Edge. Humor. It tells it like it really, really is.
Lila’s pupils dilate in shock.
FADE TO BLACK.
*
January 10, 2011
No, that entry was not a scene from my screenplay. This exchange happened for real a few hours ago, at nine a.m. to be precise. I was hungover and cranky but dragged myself to KK’s production “suite” in the heart of Film City. KK quit drinking in 1998. He claims he woke up one morning on a sidewalk in Bandra, dazed after a night of vodka-rum-whiskey-lime juice, and that was it for him. Besides, now he rises early to pay obeisance to the Mother at Siddhivinayak temple. Today, he was twenty minutes late (“stuck in Mumbai traff, what can you do?”), during which time he checked the trades on his latest App, read the opening and ending pages of my script, charged into his office, ignored me in an amiable kind of way, got on the phone to “Goldie’s guy in LA,” then told me he loved my work, and finally showed me out, with a “Let’s do this thing!” This, I think, was more for the benefit of KK’s beaming memoirist who arrived just then, a former film journalist whose stint in rehab KK has sponsored thrice in the past. KK proclaimed loudly that he has the perfect title for his proposed self-help best-selling extravaganza: How Gut Decisions Connect You to the Heart and Pulse of the Audience – A Guide to Breaking Into 21st Century Bollywood. Tagline: Because if I can make it, so can You!
Harper Collins is publishing.
*
I’ve known KK for years and have always resisted the urge to make fun of him – this self-styled wunderkind producer, who drops showbiz names in every other sentence and chooses to be called only by his initials on the advice of his personal numerologist. But I’ve had this screenplay in my drawer for months now. And I decided it was time to get over my writerly aloofness, my general disdain for the tacky machine that is Bollywood extravaganza. Come on, I’m as guilty of tackiness as anyone else, since my bills get paid courtesy of being Head Writer on Star Plus’s Mothers & Daughters. I got this appointment with KK last week through a colleague on the soap. But I decided to actually keep it when I heard the latest rumor in B-ville. KK is looking for a change of image. No more weepy family dramas, no testosterone-filled action lollapaloozas. He’s been wanting to produce a smart, independent flick on a modest budget, a slice of life of 2000s urban Indian angst.
Enter Lila. Me, with my ten-odd years of churning out hackneyed soap plots and subbing Bollywood Tonight copy. Me, who yearns for that one lucky break. It takes just one film, one credit as screenwriter, and you’re on the map. Or so they say.
If I don’t sound too excited right now, it’s because I can’t believe my project is ON. That it’s all happening so…easily.
*
January 17, 2011
KK and I celebrate our new collaboration today. Four martinis down, I pitch the idea all over again, forgetting that he’s read the whole script just this week. In a nutshell, I think it’s brilliant. A down and out hack – with a failing heart and a penchant for alcohol – wants to leave the world with a swansong of his genuine talent. He pens a screenplay full of pain and sordidness, of the sleazy underbelly of the movie industry that’s masked by the magic arc lights of cinema. His only companion – a drunk just like himself – is his girlfriend, a spectacularly failed actress. The hack creates a script of depth and meaning, which of course, never sees the light of day. And then he dies…of a failing heart? Heartbreak? Or plain cirrhosis of his abused liver?
As of now, there isn’t a working title. But KK and I decide that it should be something in the range of Barfly or Leaving Las Vegas. Indianized, of course, with a weeping widowed mother or a disabled sister. No, not disabled. The sister could be really pretty, innocent, maybe a dancer at a bar? Our hero hates the way she is exploited; this angle gives him a moral center, feels KK. I agree. Ours is a Hindi movie after all, the hero can’t be drunk just for the sake of being drunk.
I’m drunk now on more than the free-flowing booze. I’m high on the fact that KK is a kindred spirit, who, despite his gold chains, actually knows who Ingmar Bergman is. KK tells me that before he decided that he needed to buy a house and feed his family and own a car and a suit and Be Someone, he’d hitch it down to the Pune Film Institute on weekends and devour every indie film that came out of France, Korea, Iran. Those were the days, he sighs, the glint of a tear reflecting on his Rolex.
Then KK mentions the M word. MONEY. He can’t pay me just yet, but he says this very apologetically. What I will get is my script turned into a film, my name in the opening credits. That’s traction. “For you writers,” he says earnestly, “it’s about the art after all. How many people get a shot at that?” And with these words, he speed-dials Maria, his tortured Girl Friday-cum-secretary-cum-general slave and rattles off a list of names she needs to set up meetings with pronto. I choke on my fifth apple mojito when I hear KK mention Nagarajan, the Bruce Willis of Bombay, the one big name who can make this really happen if he decides to star in it.
Joy. Thank you, God.
*
January 30, 2011
Nagarajan (“Call me Nag, babe!”) lives in a mansion that is crumbling heritage on the outside and pure kitsch within. KK and I arrive at noon. A cuckoo clock with a blue bird sent out electrifying squawks every thirty minutes. I see a zebra-skin covered bar in one corner of the living room which chimes out “Jingle Bells” every time Nag pours himself a drink, which is every thirty seconds. Or so it seems.
At first, legendary superstar Nagarajan is as shy as a kitten. He leaves the talking to Rahul, his Personal Assistant. Despite my anxiety, I like Rahul on sight. He’s got wavy dark hair and intelligent eyes. He looks at me with warmth and appreciation. “Good Job,” he whispers. And then Nag sighs dramatically and announces that yes, he’s read my screenplay, and yes, we’ll discuss it. But first he wants to rant about Guns of Revenge, the last action flick he did that was panned by the critics. He whines about the lousy marketing, bitches out the director (a young kid just back from UCLA and clearly not in touch with the native mass audience) and trashes the cheap costume and makeup department that made him look fifty (his real age) instead of thirty-two (which he believes his war-hero character to be).
Mid rant, Yamini joins us. Nag’s current squeeze, a dancer I recognize vaguely from MTV India’s So You Think You Can Groove? She is in yellow shorts and a tiny bustier and holds the ugliest little dog I’ve ever seen. Without a word, or even a glance at us, Yamini flops down on the electric pink sofa and snakes her naked legs over Nag’s lap. Nag carries on talking. Suki, the grotesque canine that she is, licks Nag’s chin and this makes Nag – six feet four, bald and built like a tank – lapse into absurd baby talk. Rahul grins at me covertly. I blush, pull myself together and look away.
More drinks. Nag rolls a joint, shares it with Yamini. Suki starts yapping. KK, who can’t stand cigarette smoke or dogs, for that matter, is so overwhelmed by the company he is in that he shrieks with orgasmic pleasure every time Nag grunts out half a word. Finally, three and a half hours into the meeting – after discussing diets, wigs, former lovers and 9/11 conspiracy theories – Nag goes quiet and fixes me with an intense “I’m actually a serious artist” look.
In a nutshell: Nag loves the screenplay, he just wants a bit of a rewrite. Actually, a ninety-nine per cent rewrite. The protagonist is a writer by day, but at night he trawls the streets, saving the homeless. His girlfriend is rich and is being forced by her family to marry someone else. In his despair, the sensitive writer befriends a lonely baboon at the local zoo. SUBPLOT A: An evil force is planning to blow up the building the heroine works in. SUBPLOT B: The hero’s heart is failing. CLIMAX: The hero gets to know about the plot to blow up the building but his heart is giving out. His friend the baboon makes the ultimate sacrifice. The hero gets the baboon’s heart in a nail-biting transplant operation. Armed with a new heart, the hero storms the building, kills the evil attackers, saves his girl and they live happily ever after.
Working Title: Something like Die Hard – but with a Humanitarian Twist. Or, better, more like Brave Heart sounding. That’s clever! A pun on Heart, get it? Oh, yeah, and Yamini as the girl. She deserves a role of substance after all the C-grade glam gal sidekicks she’s portrayed. So feels the great Nagarajan.
KK jumps up and down, his face flushed with excitement: “This is KILLER! This is a WINNER. What would we do without the genius input of Nagji?”
By then I’m too deep in shock to notice Rahul’s sympathetic, commiserating smile.
*
January 31, 2011
2 am
I’ve drained the last of the second bottle of Sauvignon Blanc. The day’s events seem far away now. The wine warms my blood and frees the shackles on my mind. I feel brave and belligerent. I will Not Back Down. What good is a writer without conviction? And so I decide to give KK a piece of my mind. How can he put us both through this absurdity?
Drunk dialing. Always a bad idea. But what the hell. Oops, wrong number. So I try again. KK answers on the eighth ring.
“Ye-llo! KK here.’’ A pause. Then I hear him again, talking to someone else.
“Tanu, stop that. STOP THAT!” Hysterical giggling followed. Then KK in his straight voice again. “Sorry. She’s…just…Babe, I SAID NO! Laila…sorry, Lila… OK, shoot.”
It all comes tumbling out in a haze of alcohol and indignant pride. I’m an educated person, come on now…I can’t stoop so low as to write this level of tripe. I want to have written a good script, not…
KK cuts me off then. I think I now understand how KK – despite being only on the fringes of this murky town – has survived for as long as he has.
“Here’s what I want, Lila. I want a film that goes from being on paper to reality. OK? Nagarajan can make it happen because he has star power. Clout. Audience pull. That’s what matters in the movies made in this country.”
I go silent. KK took a deep breath.
“So now, I have three bits of real good advice for you. Free of charge. So listen up, if you want to have a career writing movies. One. Forget these notions of high art and sensibility. Two. Never, ever complicate your life by drunk-dialing your producer. Three. Get. On. With. The. Rewrite.”
He clicks off. I feel the beginning of another hangover from hell.
*
March 14, 2011
The rewrite is done. KK is pleased when I go to see him; he tells me what a Good Girl I am and how this work will pay off. I smile and tell him I expect payment for the time I’ve put in rewriting. He stretches languidly and says we’ll discuss terms after meeting today with Nag. I notice for the first time that KK has teeth shaped almost like that Twilight guy’s – that vampire character that pre-teens are all so crazy about these days.
The sharp buzz of an intercom deflates the tension between us. KK answers with a beam and an energetic “Ye…llo!” And then he lapses into his usual silence. “Hmmm…yes…are you sure it can’t happen today? In the evening? Any time you say…Rahulji, I know you can’t help it…but, come on…OK, OK. I understand.”
KK hangs up. The meeting is off. Postponed indefinitely. Suki had a stroke this morning. She flopped down weakly, then got up, ran wildly around the room, had a heart attack, and dropped dead.
Nag is apparently hysterical with grief and has gone into mourning. He won’t see anybody. Not even Yamini.
And so, as I write, the future flutters uncertainly in the air, like the pages of this unbound – and now very mutilated – draft of my script.
*
April 12, 2011
Rahul is incredible. Gorgeous. Principled. Professional. And kind. He’s gotten us a meeting with Nag – the first meeting Nag is having “after the tragedy.”
It’s a different Nag we sit before today. No cuckoo clock. No chiming bar. No haze of marijuana. No Yamini. Zed explains that he’s taking a sabbatical from the movies. He needs to find his spiritual path in order to heal. He’s off to Tibet with his ex-wife, who very kindly called to pay her condolences on dear, departed Suki.
KK and I shuffle out, dazed and confused all over again. But KK being KK is optimistic. As we get into his car, he tells me: “We have a script. We’ll go to someone else. Forget Nagarajan. He’s an old hag now anyway!” he thunders, pounding the wheel of his new Audi.
Rahul joins us as we pull out of Nag’s runway-sized drive. He mutters his apologies and then offers to drive me home. Don’t I live near Versova Beach? That’s where he is headed too.
And so I find myself alone with Rahul in his second-hand Maruti. We drive to the sounds of Junoon, and I feel light-headed. I tell Rahul everything. About the half-hearted rewrite I forced myself to do, and how Nag has actually solved my dilemma by pulling out. I tell Rahul that I have my original screenplay, that I’ll just wait for a better opportunity. That in the meantime, I will add all these new twists to it, really hone the scenes. With the right star-actor and producer, I know it can work. Rahul is wonderful and such a great listener.
He comes up to my apartment. No more industry talk, he says.
A brief bio on Rahul: A talented, but overlooked middle child. Small town, silent dreams of “making it.” No strait-laced engineering or accountant career for him, thank you. Arrived in Mumbai at nineteen with a suitcase and a few bucks (from doting Mum; Dad wasn’t talking to him), put himself through a film production course by night, worked with film crews by day, temped for Nag, became his Golden Boy after smoothly handling an incident involving Yamini, the police, a furious ex-wife, a pusher in drag, and a gram of coke. Today, Rahul is all of twenty-six, but he’s already paying off installments on his very own bachelor pad, and when his proud folks visit (Dad too), he organizes tours to film sets and photo-ops with Nag. But he says it all drily, like he knows he’s meant for better and purer, and he’s going to get there.
A brief bio on me: A talented, but neurotic first-born. A comfortable, big-city life in Delhi, where my teenage room is twice the size of my entire current digs; a hard worker but prone to meltdowns that inevitably cause me to quit good writing gigs “on principle.” Today, at thirty-five, I’m stretching the last of my TV savings. Also, my last relationship ended with my slacker lover choosing to marry a “stable” girl from his hometown and feeling so good about it, that he invited me to the wedding. Worse, I would have gone, except I had nothing suitable to wear.
Bygones. It’s all about the moment, the present, the reason why we – over and over again – choose a life of mercurial adventure over the dull thump of routine. Rahul and I kiss and then make love. For the first time in months, I feel truly alive.
*
April 22, 2011
It’s been a week, and I’m like a cat caught on the proverbial hot tin roof. There’s been no phone call from Rahul. I call him at his office at Nag’s, but he’s quit that job and no one knows where he is. Leaving my cell phone free, should he ring, I use my landline phone to make calls at twenty-second intervals to KK. There’s no film – but I want to be paid something at least for the rewrite. And I’m antsy as hell because there’s never been any kind of contract between us.
KK is out all day. Yesterday morning he was with his wife at a Vipassana Mindfulness Retreat. Then he was in a meeting, followed by another meeting. Today is Tuesday, so he was at the ISKCON temple, after which he went to pick up his son from school. (He is due to give a lecture there on Fathers and Family Values next week.) Maria sounded frazzled each time. (“KK’s cell phone is switched off…sorry dear, KK is driving through a tunnel and can’t take calls…KK has mild tinnitus in his left ear and can’t handle cellular vibration anymore…!”) Etcetera. Etceteraceteraceteracetera.
So I show up at KK’s office, and literally barge my way past the shoebox reception into his grungy cabin. There he is, laughing away with Rahul.
KK politely tells me that there is a check for my efforts with Maria. He’s paying me approximately five thousand rupees for the painstaking rewrite I did. Fair of him, no? Because he has principles, he says. He’s not the sort to cheat anyone, least of all writers. And then he and Rahul get up and slime out to their next meeting.
I stare after them in blind horror. I remember Rahul coming up to my apartment, his eyes locked in mine, his ears primed for all the ideas I had that day that came tumbling out of my passionately, just-kissed lips.
Like a beggar, I sign for my cheque. I debate ripping it up, but then I get practical. It’ll pay the phone bill this month, if nothing else. Maria smiles gently and lets on that Rahul is writing KK’s next script. She suspects that it’s a revised version of my original screenplay. But with fresh twists. And with the assurance that Samar Singh, a rising TV star with a movie future, is going to act in it. He and Rahul were college buddies, so he agreed to a meeting instantly. That’s where Rahul and KK are headed right now.
I stagger out into the glaring sunshine. Drag myself home, draw the curtains, strip off my clothes, drop into bed, pull the covers around me and descend into a deep, dreamless sleep.
*
September 15, 2011
I haven’t had the energy to write an entry in months. I’ve been busy – I got my old job back on Mothers & Daughters (luckily, I didn’t have to grovel for it) and have just been offered a script consultancy gig on a new series, a Hindi remake of Heartbreak Hospital titled Sanjivani. Good old television, the ultimate safety net. There’s also drudge work. Website text work for an oil corporate, and a set of company flyers to type up for my landlord who let me stay on in the apartment despite my rent cheque bouncing back in June.
The buzz is that my erstwhile script is actually being made, though no one knows when production will start. I’m in touch with Maria who tells me Samar Singh is on board to star, but he doesn’t want to play a writer. “It’s boring,” he reportedly told Rahul, “it’s too passive. All writers do is sit in a room and type. Why can’t he be a body builder or a boxer instead? This way he gets to show off his eight-pack abs. Very important for a rising movie star.”
KK of course, fully agrees. So Rahul is rewriting yet again, and now that there’s talk of a British financier entering the picture, further buzz is that the setting will change too. None of this urban angst stuff. This is India, and India sells abroad only when there is poverty and suffering in every frame. Rewrite number twenty-seven coming up. Good luck with that, Rahul.
Still no working title, but it’ll be something on the lines of Slumdog Millionaire. Or if Samar gets his way, Body Builder Billionaire? Whatever sells.
As for the esteemed Nagarajan, I saw him on Spirit TV last week. He’s got a beard now, and looks skinny after a bout of food poisoning that he caught up in the hills of Uttarkashi. But even so, Nag appears to be at peace. He says it’s because he’s quit acting, taken up carpentry and reunited with his former wife and kids.
Yamini – after her unceremonious exit from Nag’s life – has reinvented herself as a reality show star on Sky TV’s Women Who Get Dumped By Famous Men. People think she’s naïve, the classic bimbo with a heart of gold. Her on-screen innocence is as fake as her reconstructed nose, but I don’t grudge her. She’s just another woman trying to survive, I guess.
As for me, I’m doing alright. Plugging along. I’m writing, I’m working. Maybe someday I’ll write another film. It’s important not to get too cynical about things. Keep writing. Keep working. Keep the Faith. What else can you do?
*
