With 'Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny' just around the corner, we thought it might be a good idea to get up to scratch on the life and times of Sudhir Mishra. Kvltsite has gone the whole hog right from his early days in the film industry to his future projects with this audio interview conducted in the studios of the Mumbai University Students' Transmission.  

Sudhir Mishra's background is an intriguing mix of politics and cinema. The political bent is evident in his movies and so we spoke about his political and creative influences. Many of his early films have been lost in obscurity. Among the most acclaimed of these was 'Dharavi' with its unforgettable opening sequence. 

His themes are wide-ranging and thus, audience expectations are varied. We discussed 'Khoya Khoya Chand' in particular and why it wasn't well-received by audiences and critics. While on the subject of themes, we also discussed the backdrop of emergency against which 'Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi' was set.

Being a veteran of the Hindi Film Industry, we asked for his take on the changing scenario of the Hindi Film Industry as also the emergence of Niche Cinema.

We spoke about his favourites and how, as a filmmaker, he preceives Fellini's 8 and a 1/2. We also spoke about his working equation with Shiney Ahuja. We discussed his future projects— Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny, his take on Devdas, Piyush Jha's Footsoldier and put to rest any rumours of him remaking 'Is Raat Ki Subaah Nahin'.  

The zipped version of the audio interview can also be downloaded here.

Text transcipts of the interview on the following pages:

Question: What are your influences, particularly since some of your films have political themes?

Sudhir Mishra: I have a very complicated background. I grew up in a university campus, my father was a film society founder in Lucknow and I grew up watching all sorts of films when I was 4, sitting in his lap, films that my mother didn't want me to see. My father was a very ecletic sort of guy. He never had the view that a certain kind of film was good or bad. So I got to see Dara Singh, Charlie Chaplin, some Czech films, French films and a lot of Hollywood classics together.

I guess the feeling of wanting to be in films got ingrained there and later there's been an influence of Marxism, the Student Movement, of growing up in a university with all sorts of people - Palestinians, Israelis, Malaysians, Africans etc. I have a political background thanks to my family and I have known mainstream politics enough to get a little put off by it. I grew up in a small town called Sagar. My family was in Lucknow, then came to Delhi and then to Bombay. I have been in Bombay for more than 25 years and am as "Mumbaikar" as anyone else.

Question: Most people know you as the director of Hazaron Khwaishen Aisi and Khoya Khoya Chand. Very few people know that you started off as a scriptwriter for Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. Whoever I spoke to was very surprised when I told them this. You started your directorial career with Yeh Woh Manzil Toh Nahin. Can you tell us something about your early films, since we don't get to see them these days?

Sudhir Mishra: My first film as an assistant was Sazaa-e-Maut which was made in 1981. It was Vinod Chopra's first film, starring Naseeruddin Shah and a film much ahead of its time and rather good. Then I met Kundan Shah who was, at that time, working on Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron. When you write scripts, you often stare at the wall and I think his family thought he wasn't doing much. So he started writing in my house. I was 23 at the time when Kundan asked me to work with him and must have done something for him to have given me credit for the script of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron.

But ultimately it's Kundan's film. It was wonderful working on that film with a great group of actors, people like Satish Kaushik and Ranjit Kapoor writing dialogue. It was a learning school for me and I am very fond of that film because for the first time, I realized that I could be a filmmaker and that this community and process was something that I loved. It was a fantastic time when 30 people were sitting together, not shooting. People like Naseer entered my life and taught me about film acting. I met Saeed Mirza there and he asked me to join him as an assistant on "Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho" and I became its scriptwriter. So there was this great family that I had found at that time, including those that were not directly involved like Ketan Mehta and Shekhar Kapur who are still good friends.

I made my first film "Yeh Woh Manzil Toh Nahin" with a lot of help from all these people. In those days, these kind of films were not released very widely but the Doordarshan premiere was very important and was seen by a lot of people. It was quite a cult film of its time and a lot of people still tell me that it is my best film. It is about 3 old men who go back to the town they studied in where there's an agitation going on in the university and that agitation reminds them of their past and it is intercut with their revolution, much like Rang De Basanti. I cut between the student movements happening in two different times. The 3 old men had betrayed their fellow revolutionaries in their time and they are now faced with an activism of a different kind. The last line of the film became pretty famous and is still quoted in north India. When they say - "What's the difference? The person who is a revolutionary now and who was a revolutionary then. Both died", Habib Tanvir who's the lead actor of the film says - "Koshish Toh Ki" (At least we tried).

Question: Most of the people who have seen Dharavi were swept away by the first 5 minutes of the film. Could you tell us how you came up with that scene?

Sudhir Mishra: I used to live in Sion which is in Bombay (Mumbai now). A lot of people who live in Dharavi say they live in Sion because there's a stigma attached to that. I used to walk around a lot in those areas and those days, we used to drink too much (laughs). We went into those places and "knew" people, not for research purposes because I think you make a film well when you know your subject well and not because you decide to make a film and then do research. You make films on things you have already researched in life. So it all comes from that.

I remember the image of a camel running on a Dharavi street and suddenly the camel is shot and it falls in slow motion. A lot of people like that shot. I think the problem of a migrant is that, there's a line in Dharavi which says, "Yeh reth ka jaanwar idhar samandar ke paas kaiko marne aaya hai" (Why has this desert animal come to die by the sea?). So it was this idea of people who bring camels to the beaches of Mumbai and just leave them to die. These camels used to wander around sometimes in the dark of the night, a still camel that no one could see . Once I remember my autorickshaw banging into one and it was really tragic to see a noble animal treated like that. Whoever's responsible for stopping camels from coming into the city deserves congratulations from me.

Dharavi was the problem of a migrant. I was a migrant. A migrant treates the city more roughly than the original inhabitant. So Shabana portrayed a woman for whom Mumbai was her "gaon" (village). She has nowhere to go but a migrant has nowhere to go either. The place that he has left has changed because home is a place in time, it's your memory. So what does a person in Dharavi, a taxidriver who has lost his roots,do? He's influenced by Hindi films and Madhuri Dixit agreed to spoof herself which was very kind of her. Amongst all my films, I still like Dharavi the best.

Question: Now you've gained a lot of reputation with Hazaaron Khwaishen Aisi...

Sudhir Mishra: You know, every stage you gain some recognition. People don't remember certain things because we're moving so fast. I'd made Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin 2 years before Satya. I made it in 1996 and it was the first time a gangster thriller was made like that. It won 7 Screen nominations and a lot of people still love that film. It introduced a lot of new actors and was a very contemporary film of its time.

I've made different types of films. So while some people prefer Hazaaron, others may love something like Main Zinda Hoon more. Some would say good things about Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, that M M Kreem's music is great or that they haven't seen such a thriller before. So everyone has their own favourites and sometimes you have to disappoint them because the lovers of Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin may not like Hazaaron and those who like Hazaaron may not like the direction I took with Khoya Khoya Chand.

Question: So you do think that public expectations have coloured the way Khoya Khoya Chand was received.

Sudhir Mishra: I think so. I think people didn't get it at all. They thought that because Khoya Khoya Chand was a film set in the 50s, it's a replication of life back then. But films are not replications or history lessons. Khoya Khoya Chand was about how people can get stereotyped and categorised into "types".

50s film was something that had a lot of "types". There was a structure of film where you had a hero, a villain, a comedian, a friend, a vamp and a heroine. So Shiney was a hero but he was not actually heroic. There was a problem there and he had darker shades. It's like how we all are, for ambition's sake. The heroine? She was not virginal pure. There was a problem. Vinay Pathak played the friend but the friend rebelled. He wanted to be the hero and not just the hero's friend. He wanted the heroine. The villain, along with the moustache and everything, was Rajat Kapoor. But he was not that villainous and had compassion in the end. The vamp was not just a vamp who was not just a bitch. She had some aesthetic idea and helped the hero at one point.

So it was a film about people and the psychology of ambition, how it breaks you and how you try to come together at the end of it as a composite unit and how relationships are redefined. How, in the first burst of idealism or ambition, you are so cruel. And youth is very cruel. It was more about the in-betweens and the nuances of relationships than the film industry.

Question: What drove you to make a film about the period of the Emergency, [since] you were mentioning that you weren't part of that period?

Sudhir Mishra: I grew up in the late 70's and 80's but you know, I was around at that time. I was in school, I'd just come into the University...so it wasn't that I didn't know anything. These were people [I knew], that's why I say in the beginning of the film that I've made a film about my elder brothers...in their idealism, in their beauty, in their dreams, in their idea that the world is not such a perfect place and that we can change it, in their irreverence...you know, life is not about only loving your parents; life can be about other things, that there is beauty that you can find everywhere, that relationships are not that stereotyped, you can love someone else besides your wife...all these things, the basic human nature was being explored and I think there was a lot of beauty in that exploration, and I found their failure also...you know, some people's failures are greater than other people's success[es], because they died trying something, and that's what is the theme or idea that fascinates me most. That's what I found in that generation and I thought it was interesting to tell a story about ALL of us, about our views also, but telling it through that time, because the contrasts were more defined and you could tell a more dramatic tale.

Question: You're a veteran in the industry, you've been here for more than about 20 years. What sort of changes do you perceive happening to the Indian cinematic industry, for better or for worse?

Sudhir Mishra: Well, the change that is good is that there's a lot of talent, a lot of cinema-literate people with their own ideas, and the younger are fascinating, so when I see a guy like Anurag Kashyap, I get really impressed and I find him very good and I think everybody should go see Dev D. I don't know if I'm supposed to plug this, but it's not my film. It's wonderful that people like Anurag and [other] younger film-makers, and even the ones in the mainstream, a lot of them are very interesting: I think Farhan [Akhtar] is very interesting, I think Ashutosh Gowariker is very interesting, I think a boy like Dibakar [Banerjee]...I don't know if you know him, he made Khosla ka Ghosla and now Oye Lucky... he's very interesting, Navdeep [Singh] who made Manorama Six Feet Under is very interesting.

There are a lot of very good film-makers today and I hope that the industry gives them an opportunity. Also I see the new digital revolution is very good: I think when cinema becomes as cheap as pen and paper, when people will make films just because they have the idea and any kid will be able to make a film, that's when it'll really explode. I think the Net and a lot of other ways of seeing or receiving films, of taking them to a viewership community is also a very good idea along with the mainstream way.

I think it can only get better, though the people who finance should have more adventure and should back [the non-mainstream]...and I think the State needs to see [this]. The Government cannot abdicate its place in culture. There can be a hundred channels that are commercially driven but there should be one public broadcasting system. There can be a hundred theaters / multiplexes which are only concerned about popcorn, but there should be a place where all sorts of other films can be seen.

I think it's a pity we're so short-sighted and the only we have of looking at profit is money. What is profitable for a society is not necessarily only money. We've seen that when winner takes all, greed takes all is the philosophy of a world, where it has come to, and today the West is reconsidering it. We're talking about very great changes and I think it very necessary that the state retain its intervention in culture.

Question: There's a new category of cinema emerging, a niche between art-house and commercial cinema, Oye Lucky...for instance. Could you tell us a little on how this came about?

Sudhir Mishra: Well, everything that is good comes about in an organic way. It comes about because there a lot of these younger film-makers who are very interested in engaging an audience. They don't want to make very esoteric 'art' films, they get very bored with slow-moving cameras and all that. But they're [also] not totally impressed with popular clichéd and formulaic cinema, they want to tell their own stories and tell them their own way. From that people like this emerge and they make films which are middle-of-the-road.

There were a lot of people like this in the past: How would you explain a film like Guide, somebody like Vijay Anand? There are people who are modern in every era. Modernity is not some monopoly of the 'Now', and one thing also you have to understand, which the young don't understand, is that what is present is not necessarily modern; there's a difference, somebody in the past may be more modern than somebody in the present. Modernity is an ideal and not a time or place. I think that's something, but that said they're wonderful young boys AND girls...that's another interesting thing to reckon, I'm really waiting for Zoya Akhtar's film Luck by Chance. A lot of young women will [now] make films. The industry was not very receptive to women directors, and I think a lot of them will now barge their way in, make films and tell their stories; and that will also be very interesting.

Question: Let's discuss your favorite books and films.

Sudhir Mishra: I love Sahib, Bibi Aur Ghulam (Guru Dutt), I love everything by [Satyajit] Ray, I love a film by [Frederico] Fellini called Amarcord and another called 8 ½; I think Fellini is wonderfully warm, compassionate, simultaneously dispassionate; very Italian, but very universal views of life. I think Amarcord and 8 ½ are films I would carry with me on an island - whenever I feel unhappy I look at Amarcord, actually. It revives my faith in life.

Martin Scorsese's films have been very important to me. I think Taxi Driver and Raging Bull are great films, and Mean Streets. I think everybody should see them. Again, he's Italian, but Italian-American, and talks about people in the fringe – the loneliness of a taxi driver, people who are abdicated or left out by society, somebody who is away from the norm. And he tells tales of his own community and own life and his own people really well. So I think Scorsese is very important to me.

I think a book in Hindi called Raag Darbari has been very important to me*, I think if anybody wants to understand an Indian small town Casbah or whatever, should read this book. I love a Western author called E.L. Doctorow; he wrote a book which has influenced me very deeply. It's called The Book of Daniel. He also wrote Ragtime. I think his sense of, you know, moving in history, and time and place, and yet telling a very personal story in the context of that time is wonderful and has influenced me a lot.

I wanted to be actually a writer, I copped out because [it was] too lonely. But I would love to be a novelist and I have great admiration for those who can finish a whole novel, because film is nice and social, and there's no loneliness in the cinema.

Much of Iranian cinema and novelist[s] in Latin American fiction, Llosa and Marquez have been very important in my growing up. Munshi Premchand has been very important in my growing up. I grew up in a small town called Sagar so a lot of Hindi poetry has been very influential. Poets like Faiz Ahmed Faiz and Ghalib have been very [important] because I originate or my family comes from Lucknow and that's where my home was. Urdu poetry has had that kind of influence on me. If you are talking about influences and what I love, [then] I love Ghalib. I think he's one of the most modern artists; a lot of Ghalib's poetry is a lot more modern than even the so-called progressives'.
I really love Scorsese, I really love Fellini, I love Guru Dutt.

Question: On the subject of 8 ½, do you see it as the crisis of a film-maker?

Sudhir Mishra: It's the crisis of a film-maker and it's also the crisis of a man getting intimations of mortality. It's about a human being and he's reflecting back on his own life, and what forms him as a human being also forms him as a film-maker. There [sic] is this crazy influences in his childhood, and all those things that are provoking him and creating scenes for him which he is not comprehending totally. He's simultaneously involved in a relationship and yet he's upset with his wife, so it's a bit male in that sense, but outstanding, and it's how he reconciles the various things in his life and then forms the film in that closing scene, and tries to understand it.

Because you grow up in an accident, you know, where you're born. What will impact you, you don't know. So much of your life is an accident, I mean, it's chaos. Those of us who think that we govern our lives...that's why I want to form a company and call it A Dog Called Chance, because I have a dog called Chance.

Question: Tell us about the equation that you have with Shiney Ahuja— he’s been with you in two movies that you’ve directed and one that you’ve produced. He’ll also be seen in future projects. What’s your working equation like with him?

Sudhir Mishra: Well, you know, I’ve always believed that a film is written and the role walks to the guy who plays it, that’s the ideal. Sometimes, the guy who should play it doesn’t play it and then, that’s a problem. I remember that Zoya Akhtar had sent Shiney to us when we were auditioning for ‘Hazaaron’. When he walked in, we were auditioning him for Siddharth’s role and suddenly, when he started auditioning, I saw Vikram. I had already cast Vikram but I changed the casting and took Shiney because he was perfect.

It was similar to the feeling that I had when I saw Chitrangadha. Here was this girl who had never acted before, who had never done theatre and she walks into an audition and it looks as if that the character that you’ve written is there in front of you. She is, at that moment, not tuned as an actor. She’s never thought about acting seriously and so you wonder whether somebody that fresh, who has never even done theatre or never had any experience of acting— how would she manage? But you were compelled to take her because of something that is in her. You have to work with your instinct. It’s such a wonderful thing that happens when a film is correctly cast and when the right person is in front of you, like Chitrangadha is. Then, you’re compelled to work with her again or with somebody because of what she brings to the screen.

[I like] what Shiney brings to the screen or what Chitrangadha brings to the screen or what many other people bring to the screen. Kay Kay Menon with whom I’ve worked with on ‘Hazaaron’ and with whom I’m working with again in ‘Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny?’, which was an amazing experience because I’m working with Kay Kay again after Five or Six years. He’s one of the great actors of our time. Tomorrow, I’ll want to work with Neil Nitin Mukesh again. I’ve worked with him in ‘Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny?’ now. That film has not released yet. Shahana Goswami, Soha Ali Khan I’ve worked with in ‘Khoya Khoya Chand’ and ‘Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny?’, I even did a short film called ‘The Ball’ with Soha.

So, actors you form a bond with, you share similar views on cinema, you want to tell similar stories— they have faith in you, you have faith in them. It’s like life, you make friends with some people and you don’t make friends with some people. So whatever the chemistry that happens between actors and directors and a community of film people, it’s interesting. And you want to repeat the experience. In fact, I want to make a film again with the same people in who were in ‘Hazaaron’, every one, each one of them should be the same because I so enjoyed all of them and working with them and I’m so grateful for what they brought into that film.

Question: You’ve been talking about ‘Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny?’ Could you tell us a little more about what it is about. And we’ve also heard that you’re planning to make another ‘Devdas’. Is that true?

Sudhir Mishra: ‘Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny?’ is a Mumbai film. I’ve made these Mumbai films— ‘Dharavi’ was a Mumbai film, ‘Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin’ was a Mumbai film, ‘Chameli’ was a Mumbai film and now, ‘Tera Kya Hoga, Johnny?’ In a Mumbai wanting to be a Shanghai, who gives a damn about a boy who sells coffee on the roads of Bombay? So, you see these coffee boys at night in Bombay, those that have lived here and he wonders, a lot of people wonder, “What is going to become of Johnny?” Some people who care for him, who use him, who are more fortunate than him. Neil Mukesh, Soha, Kay Kay all wonder what’s going to become of this kid and this kid wonders what’s going to become of them because if they make it, he’ll make it. He’s latching on to them, they’re more fortunate because he’s been totally abdicated. None of us give a damn. He’s in some other fringe of society. At night, we buy a cigarette from him and we forget about him the next day but he thinks about himself and he’s hoping that those around him, who are using him will help him get away and make it. And the Mumbai magic is that maybe, he can!

Question: What about ‘Devdas’? In the last decade, there have been at least three remakes of ‘Devdas’ and we’re going to see one from Anurag Kashyap. Also, the plot of ‘Devdas’ is fairly confined. How do you intend working around that plot?

Sudhir Mishra: I have seen Anurag’s latest version of ‘Devdas’, ‘Dev D’ and I loved it but I’m not making ‘Devdas’. I’m admitting my debt to the characters from Sarat Chandra’s novel which I read when I was 20. Now, when I was 20, I read a novel by a guy who was 20 years old when he wrote it, a man called Sarat Chandra. So, that novel has stuck with me. It’s a pulp novel of its time and it has become a kind of metaphor. So, I’m taking those three characters and putting them into a political context. So, my Devdas is an heir to a political legacy, much like the children of leaders today who are becoming Chief Ministers or whatever. He comes from somewhere and becomes part of the legacy when his family is in trouble. Paro is the daughter of a normal human being, a bureaucrat. When Paro and Devdas have a rift, Paro joins another political party. Now, what happens? So, it’s a very, very political film and the story is totally different. Nobody should go to my film wanting to see ‘Devdas’. I’m admitting that there are three characters that are borrowed and roughly, the nature of their relationship from Sarat Chandra’s book.

Question: But this will have deeper political connotations.

Sudhir Mishra: Totally.

Question: Are you producing a film called ‘Footsoldier’?

Sudhir Mishra: I’m producing the film of a young film-maker called Piyush Jha which is called ‘Footsoldier’/’Sikander’. It’s called ‘Sikander, the Footsoldier’, maybe and ‘Sikander’ is a film which is a thriller and a kind of suspense film set in Kashmir and it’s a very, very interesting look at Kashmir. The other ramifications of making a film in Kashmir is all there but it’s a fantastic film and I liked the script so much that I helped to produce it.

Question: One last question, is it true that you’re planning to remake ‘Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin’?

Sudhir Mishra: No. I’m planning to make a film similar to ‘Is Raat ki Subah Nahin’. It’s a film which is tentatively called “Who’s Speaking?” But it’s a film in the same structure of two people getting in and like a roller coaster ride, it is an event which spins out of control. So, it’s a film like that, it’s a non-stop thriller but it’s also not ‘Is Raat’.

Transcribers Notes

Balaji: Khoya Khoya Chand IMO is the most accomplished film he's made to date. It's a film I'd thought of reviewing many a time for kvltsite but never felt upto it (one of the very few times not because of laziness/overdose of work) because I thought it impossible for me to adequately convey the sheer magnitude of his canvas here. Every character in the film is sublimely ambiguous and flawed. He may not have intended it as a history lesson but it incorporates many aspects of the history of that era, many known personalities and stories within the stories of its characters. How'd he manage to shoot so many set pieces with so little?

The more one watches the film the more discoveries one makes and the more one feels that it's a masterpiece that really hasn't got its due. It's rightly compared to 8 ½ and Amarcord in terms of its scope and style but (again IMHO) it surpasses both as I feel it's more emotionally resonant and makes one identify with the characters and the milieu despite their flaws— Lovely, lovely film. And a great response from the man which makes me want to go back to it immediately.

Suresh: There was a tele-series called Raag Darbari on Doordarshan, with Om Puri and Manohar Singh playing pivotal roles. As I recall it focused on a ruthless and venal small-town political machinery. Though I was a kid at the time and couldn't really grasp the detailed plot aspects, I remember a grim and somewhat scary experience.

Nivedita: Having recently watched Anurag Kashyap’s ‘Dev D’, I’m quite curious to watch how much farther Sudhir Mishra can push the envelope. ‘Devdas’ isn’t just a movie or a questionable work of pulp fiction but is a concept that is deeply rooted in the Indian conscience and a playground of values that people hold dear. Although I’m sure that his take will be “modern”, I wonder how Chandramukhi will be portrayed. I suppose it’s just a matter of time before we know.