Adorable delulu of being VVC

A still from the film Zero Se Restart, a documentary on the making of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 2023 drama 12th Fail

Fans of Ram Gopal Varma's film Rangeela (1995) will instantly recall this hilarious movie-director character Steven Kapur (Gulshan Grover), whose competition isn't local, but with Hollywood.

I asked Varma long ago, if that delulu director was a joke on Vidhu Vinod Chopra, that the character actually looked like, or Shekhar Kapur, who he was named after. Varma laughed - both filmmakers insisted it was them!

Which tells me Chopra, of course, has a sense of humour about himself. He also did eventually make a film in Hollywood, titled Broken Horses (2015).

Which, sadly, seemed more dated than his own pathbreaking, Parinda (1989), that it was a self-remake of. Parinda, in turn, you could argue, was inspired by Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954).

My favourite Chopra film remains the murder mystery, Khamosh (1985). Back in 1979, he picked up an Oscar nomination for his short-documentary, An Encounter With Faces.

That's a lifespan in films fit for a nourishingly in-depth, nostalgic masterclass, that I readily agreed to host, recently, at the India Film Project (IFP; a cinema carnival), in Mumbai.

Also, went through Chopra's book of interviews, Unscripted, by his screenwriter Abhijat Joshi, commissioned by Chopra himself, published by Penguin.

Over the past couple of decades, Chopra, 72, has been best known for films he's produced, chiefly Rajkumar Hirani's two Munnabhais, 3 Idiots, PK, Pradeep Sarkar's Parineeta.

Also, attracting fine talents all along. Given, he says, he learnt from Akira Kurosawa, "Filmmaking is a cooperative workforce, based on individual human talent."

He did make a comeback as director, with the commercially successful, 12th Fail (2023). About his film before that, Shikara (2020), Chopra told the audience at the masterclass: "James Cameron [at the time shooting Avatar], walked up to me to say Shikara reminds him of his favourite film, ever, Dr Zhivago."

At the event, Chopra said he wished to tease the motion poster of his next release, Zero Se Restart. Restart was the catchword/tagline for 12th Fail. Even if the film is a sequel, that's a crazy turnaround time, I thought, to be ready with a release, already!

The motion poster, essentially with Chopra himself on it, and a background score, opened for the audience. Don't know what they made of it. I couldn't tell much from the trailer he'd played for me earlier, either.

Is it a BTS (behind the scenes)/making-of video-feature for 12th Fail? He flatly said no, introducing me to the film's young director, Jaskunwar Kohli. Fully excited onstage, Chopra played that poster again!

By which time, he had already left his chair, with the mic, pacing up and down the stage, eventually descending from it, walking straight into the crowds, looking them in the eyes, answering questions such as: How do you write characters?

"You have to see yourself in them - 12th Fail is me, Rancho (3 Idiots) is me, Munnabhai is me…" A wit remarked to me later, he hoped Circuit wasn't him too.

But the crowds were deliriously lapping this up. At some point he promised, "I'll book this hall, and have you all back. I can do it. I'm successful!"

Self-love is intrinsic to showbiz. I don't say it. I see it. Maybe the boisterousness comes from the mythmaking that movies inherently involve. What good are you gonna be in it, if you don't believe and unabashedly promote your own purpose/myths?

This semi-narcissism also gets sufficiently admired. Politicians, start-up founders, lately, find the same love back from their constituents. As blokes in showbiz, particularly stars, always have.

Also, you also don't mess with Chopra. I know he's chased down a film critic with a knife on the road once. There's a story everybody's heard about him biting the wrist of his female lead, Shabana Raza (screen name: Neha), on the sets of Kareeb (1998).

That was a directorial instruction! Raza is married to actor Manoj Bajpayee, who confirmed this anecdote.

Mid-way through this supposed masterclass, I told Chopra on stage, "I don't wanna get between you and the audience," booking him for a proper chat, for another day (that he'll hopefully honour) - simultaneously saving the date for first-day-first-show of his forthcoming theatrical release (on December 13).

Yup, went. What is Zero Se Restart, with Chopra credited as "consulting editor and director", starring himself as hero? It's not his life story. Just him directing a film.

The Zero, I guess, implies four directors passed up the script, that he then had to direct himself, which he's been doing, all along, anyway, no?

The conflict relates to finding four locations, and working around them, while his assistants label him "genius," delivering a "masterstroke" - one of them from "Hollywood area" says, "Don't know how anyone in Hollywood could shoot this!"

Actually, I love BTS footage, especially director's commentary/cut, etc - you miss that from the DVD era. Sitting alone in a dark hall, big screen, over a pre/post-interval, 115 minutes' feature, I just wondered aloud, "What am I doing in a frickin' theatre?"

Before the movie ends with Chopra winning the ‘IIFA award', it flips to how Chopra was unsure about his moviemaking decisions, still confidently making such decisive moves.

While showing me the trailer of Zero Se Restart, Chopra mentioned to me that Hollywood star Joseph Gordon-Levitt had called it [Federico Fellini's] 8½.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14
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