Team Cafe
Rajeev Masand: Few years ago, you produced
‘Student of the Year’(SOTY) and launched three new actors (Alia Bhatt, Varun
Dhawan and Siddharth Malhotra). Was this a story that you wanted to tell that
required new actors, or did you feel that you needed to make a young film and
take a break after ‘My Name is Khan’?
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Karan Johar: No filmmaker would ever say
that this is the story I want to tell because there clearly isn’t any. I had
made two heavy films prior to SOTY and I felt I had lost connect with the
youth. So I needed to make my version of a Disney film like ‘High School
Musical’ which would be nothing but fun and frivolous. I wanted songs, glamour
and good-looking people going to a university that doesn’t exist and many
people said this is completely unreal. I never claimed that I was the brand
ambassador of reality. If you want reality, go to Anurag (Kashyap), don’t come
to me (laughs).
RM: Dharma Productions has tapped into
Germany and you have distribution in Poland as well. How important is that to
push films into unexplored areas?
KJ: I think it is film-specific. A film
like 3 Idiots did immensely well in China. Perhaps because the emotional ethos
is common between India and China about the education system, parenting, etc.
Not every film will do well abroad. But the good thing is that the markets are
opening up. Someone has to be clever to analyse and understand, ‘this film will
do well here’. It is like the Rajinikant phenomenon in Japan – it just suddenly
came out of nowhere and went on to assume larger proportions. I think you need
to understand the ethos of the country and take your film there.
RM: In the last few years, there has been a
revival of Marathi cinema. Bengali films are breaking out. Are you open to
putting your weight behind producing regional films?
KJ: You know I’m not a public listed
studio. For me, I don’t want to do anything that I don’t understand. I
understand the ethos of Hindi cinema. I know what I can do with it, platform it
and position it. So I don’t want to produce even an English film, for example.
Similarly I wouldn’t want to produce a Marathi, Bengali or a Tamil film because
I’m not good with number crunching. I need to do things that I believe in as a
filmmaker. I don’t understand the ethos of Marathi cinema. How can I put my
money or expect a return if I don’t know what the demand of the audience of
that belt is.
RM: Are you interested in producing films
that are not necessarily blockbusters? Would you produce a film, like an
‘Udaan’ that Anurag produced or Dibakar Bannerjee’s Byomkesh Bakshi which is
being produced by YRF?
KJ: I’m a wannabe studio production house.
I don’t have the infrastructure and I don’t have public money. I can’t take a
chance. I need recovery on satellite, on music, a tiny bit from overseas and a
potential for the domestic business to put my money on. If I see a tiny film,
which maybe a great screenplay which I wouldn’t be able to put out there, then
I won’t touch it. I immensely appreciate films like Udaan and Love Sex aur
Dhokha. Ekta (Kapoor) is a public listed big entity…she can take that chance, I
cannot. I don’t necessarily support only a blockbuster, but I’d like to support
a film where there is some kind of a return on investment or even equal my
investment if the film is really good.
