FADE IN
INT. MUMBAI CENTRAL STATION - DAY
SUPERS: 1999
23-year-old Ritesh Shah alights on platform number 1 from a train that’s just rolled in. He’s come from Delhi with a trunk full of dreams and a fistful of change. A stepping stone to realising his dream is a play he’s just written, which has the potential to be turned into a film. Unfortunately that doesn’t happen.
CUT TO
INT. A 5-STAR HOTEL - DAY
SUPERS: 2016
Ritesh is basking in the glory of the success of Pink with the legendary Amitabh Bachchan by his side. And just a couple of months back, he had checked another item off his bucketlist – Ritesh had got Bachchan to autograph his LP of Sholay dialogues on his birthday.
FADE TO BLACK
Ritesh’s journey from being schoolboy in Srinagar to graduating from Hindu College in Delhi and later passing out from Jamia Millia was accompanied by a huge appetite for Salim-Javed films. His early influences inevitably includes Sholay but he also adds that he loves Trishul more than probably both Salim sahab and Javed sahab do.
With that I launch into a list of questions on Ritesh’s latest film Pink.
(Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t watched the film yet, be warned that this interview could have spoilers.)
Q. Shoojit Sircar, Aniruddha Roy Chowdhary and you are credited with the story of Pink. How did the idea germinate? Was it something that you pitched to Shoojit, or was it an idea that Shoojit and Aniruddha came to you with?
Ritesh Shah: First Aniruddha (Tony Da) pitched it to Shoojit Da and he had narrated it to me also and our collaboration started from there.
Q. Was Amitabh Bachchan on your mind while you were writing the screenplay? Had Shoojit sounded him out on the idea or was Bachchan approached only after the script had taken shape?
Ritesh:
During the first seven drafts no, but once Shoojit Da was sure that he was producing this and there is some meat to it, he had sounded Mr. Bachchan out on the theme but not the complete plot or characters. So for the rest of the drafts I knew that Bachchan sahab will be playing Deepak Sehgal.
Q. You’ve been a part of films like Namastey London, Kahaani, D-Day, Airlift among many others. In terms of satisfaction as a writer, would you rate Pink higher than all the films you’ve written so far?
Ritesh: In terms of reaction, yes - this is the most I’ve ever got out of a film honestly but Airlift, D-Day and Namastey London have been deeply satisfying and I am very proud of my contribution to those film and those films to my career. Kahaani, I wish I could take all the credit for but it is really Sujoy Da’s baby.
Q. Though it was just men who were involved in the story and screenplay, who were the women you guys bounced off your early drafts of the script on? And how much did their feedback shape the final script?
Ritesh: But we are not Men from Mars. We have lived around women - our mothers, sisters, cousins, girlfriends, friends, wives - if we wouldn’t know how they feel about this topic already, how could we even think of writing this?
I don’t know if Tony Da or Shoojit Da bounced it off anyone but my wife read draft 11 and she had an opinion about the ending, which I shared with Shoojit Da and Tony.
Q. You had written on your Facebook page that Pink is for your daughter when she grows up. So the script had a lot of heart in it, it had that emotional drive – do you think that explains why the film seems to have connected with the audience?
Ritesh: Absolutely. Sach bade zor ki awaaz karta hai. If deep down you don’t respect or do not acknowledge a woman’s right over her body, you can’t make a film like Pink. Such films can’t be faked. They have to come from conviction. Tony Da, me, Shoojit and Ronnie all have daughters in varied age groups. I hope this makes them proud of their papas.
Q. How much control do you have as a writer over your script once the shooting script is out? Does it vary from project to project depending on who the star or director is and has it changed over the years as you yourself have grown to become a screenwriter of repute?
Ritesh: I have usually worked with very sensible people so I have not been forced to change something against my will . Some of my films are very close to the scripts we wrote. Sometimes when they were drastically altered the film has suffered but sometimes radical changes have benefited the film also.
I don’t seek control. Screenplays are not films. Films are a collaborative effort and it is the director’s medium. I seek emotional, intelligent and lively collaborators instead of control. To the credit of my directors they have given me love and respect even when I was just starting. As far as listening to me a bit more after my becoming a ‘reputed’ writer goes - they are still not going to listen when they don’t want to especially Sujoy Da.
Q. Several reviews of Pink referred to Damini which was a hard-hitting film in it’s time that worked, Sunny played the reluctant lawyer who comes back to court to fight a case. The melodramatic and over the top treatment of Damini versus the more subtle approach to Pink sort of illustrates how much the taste of the average Indian audience has changed over the years, even the whole emphasis on mindset now versus the emphasis on the act itself in Damini. Do you have your own memories of Damini?
Ritesh: Yes, I think I was in my teens then and do remember a lot of clap trap dialogues but the argument of Pink is different - there is no ‘rape’ in Pink.
A film which has a big brutal incident at its core may detach you - rape happens to the other - it may have happened with someone you know but the things in Pink happen to all of us everyday. It might be happening right inside the theatre where the film is being screened. Pink talks about this daily humiliation. The debate is different and far more nuanced.
As you said maybe it is reflective of the changing times and perhaps also because of the fact that a different breed of people have entered the Hindi film industry and are writing and directing films. People who would not be a part of the industry in another time. I wonder is it the society which changes and things get reflected in films or is it the audience’s taste that changes? I wouldn’t know perhaps a sociologist would.
Q. Coming back to Pink, while the film did break new ground in many elements of its narrative, wasn’t the option to go for a perpetrator who is a neta ka bhanja, and has the ‘jaanta hai mera baap kaun hai’ kind of attitude a cliché? As opposed to let’s say if Rajveer had been a professor’s son? Was that a deliberate resort to a cliché?
Ritesh: Honestly didn’t think about it that way. He maybe a cinematic cliche but it is not as if such people don’t exist and one such person came to mind and we put him as the antagonist or as a representative of that exercise of power. We should never try and be different for difference’s sake. We already had a professor Javed in Falak’s life. Did we say is he a better man? There is a dimension of power also involved in certain sexual crimes. We did what came naturally.
Q. You also make a cameo appearance in the film, how did that happen? It must not have been easy to convince you to make your debut as an actor.
Ritesh: Our bunch of enthusiastic assistants and associate directors can be very persuasive and they can easily con you into something like this. In this case they said that the guy they had chosen to play Kirti’s boss looks in awe of her but you would be convincing. They put a jacket on me and underneath I was wearing jeans and chappals and I fired poor Falak. Later I realized they hadn’t even called an actor. What confident con-men these young kids are!
Q. What’s the most memorable compliment that you’ve received for Pink and who was it from?
Ritesh: So far the one I remember clearly has been like a replay of the ending of those court scenes. It wasn’t verbal. It was from my daughter’s friend’s mother. We have spoken quite a number of times before but after a show she held my hand and just looked at me with moist eyes and I understood what she was saying with the way she looked at me and in the manner in which she held my hand.
Q. Looking back at the film now, do you think there’s anything you’d like to change or enhance if given a chance?
Ritesh: It is too soon I feel to think like that and after such a huge emotional response from the audience. The only thing is, film stories have to be told within a duration - had we the luxury of say a mini series, we could have given you a more clear picture of the cumbersome legal process involved in the cases which are heard in the film. For example that it is a fast tracked, combined case etc etc and where it is being heard and why.
Q. And finally, the working title of the film was Eve – how did you guys arrive at the title Pink? Whose choice was it? And was it an attempt to subvert the association of Pink with all things girly, which the film is anything but?
Ritesh: It was my suggestion on a Whatsapp chat between Tony, Ronnie, me and Shoojit and then Shoojit fought for it and won with Mr. Bachchan as an ally who announced it over Twitter. The colour itself represents compassion and this pink for girls, blue for boys is a very late American merchandising thing which we realised when we were finalising the title. Of course we knew our film and realised the subversion of the normal association with pink.