Action! From a director’s chair

Seema Sachdeva

Rakesh Anand Bakshi’s Directors’ Diaries is an account of how 12 iconic Indian filmmakers of our time overcame their fears and struggles to reach the heights of success. From the first day of the shoot to the challenges these ace directors faced and the mistakes they made, the book tries to capture it all.

At one level, the conversations between the author and the filmmakers raise questions about the technical aspects of direction, such as whether they shoot from near the camera or use a video-assist monitor, besides the skills required as a first-time director or what goes in a director’s mind while auditioning their actors. However, at another level, it looks at the influences and experiences that changed their lives.

In a way, it is an account of their courage and the ability to survive adversities and the lessons they learnt from their failures. As the author says, the idea is to reveal that they are as human and vulnerable as any of us.

While the set of questions remain more or less the same, each interview brings forth a whole new experience. Every interview is followed by a cinematographer’s take on the director. This is important because only a cinematographer brings alive the picture conceived in the mind of the director.

Conversations in the book bring to fore the personality of the director, who usually remains behind the camera. From the experiences of these 12 directors — Anurag Basu, Ashutosh Gowariker, Farah Khan, Govind Nihalani, Imtiaz Ali, Mahesh Bhatt, Prakash Jha, Santosh Sivan (ASC), Subhash Ghai, Tigmanshu Dhulia, Vishal Bhardwaj and Zoya Akhtar — the book studies the changing face of cinema.

What comes across quite distinctly through the conversations is that it hasn’t been an easy ride for any of them. They all struggled. Be it Vishal Bhardwaj, who had to play harmonium at food festivals or Anurag Basu, who became a background dancer to earn money, or Imtiaz Ali and Tigmanshu Dhulia, who had to face innumerable rejections before they were able to crack the code and make it big.

Various influences and experiences helped them as well. For instance, Santosh Sivan shares how a childhood game of looking at the sky for rain while playing hockey with friends in his village helped him later with his cinematography skills, while Govind Nihalani tells how the wounds of Partition remain etched in his memory and later influenced his Tamas. Similarly, it reveals how cinema became a medium for Subhash Ghai to escape the sad reality he was living. For Vishal Bhardwaj, music came to his rescue when he learnt his history lessons by composing these into songs. Tigmanshu Dhulia reveals that he was so frustrated at not being able to make his own film that he kept a dog whom he named ‘Action’. So he could say ‘Action at least a hundred times a day.’

Through these interviews, son of legendary lyricist Anand Bakshi also attempts to understand his personal failure as a filmmaker.

Each of them has an interesting story. And they tell it well. The message that these directors give to aspiring filmmakers is as Imtiaz Ali says, ‘Please go out into the world and make your own mistakes.’ The book gives a chance to live many lifetimes.