Did you know that Anurag Kashyap, poster-boy for all that is edgy and experimental in Hindi cinema, has watched rom-coms like Pretty Woman and Runaway Bride at the insistence of his wife Kalki Koechlin? Gems like this emerged through an hour-long conversation I had with Anurag at the launch of the Jameson Empire Award’s Done in 60 Seconds contest. The contest requires participants to distill the essence of an iconic film into one minute. Anurag will judge the contest and the Indian winners will travel with Anurag to the glitzy award ceremony in March. Before that, Anurag will also launch the Jameson Cult Film Club in February.
I enjoy interviewing Anurag – he speaks honestly, passionately and without the faux diplomacy that makes many Bollywood conversations plastic. So he described himself as a ‘break-even director.’ ‘I’m not competing with anyone in breaking box office records,’ he said, ‘my brother is in charge of that. Our father gave us different
responsibilities.’ Anurag is often described as a cult director but he said that he never intended to be one. He wanted to make box office hits but when his debut film Paanch didn’t release, his second film Black Friday was delayed and his third film No Smoking soundly trashed by critics and audiences, he was given the cult moniker. Anurag and I debated the definition of a cult movie. The Oxford dictionary describes the cult film as one that has ‘an enduring appeal to a relatively small audience that should be non-mainstream.’ Anurag said that a cult film is a film that inspires people to fight for it, ‘like fighting a war for a country.’ Which movies would you fight for? I would defend Sholay till my last breath but since the film is an iconic blockbuster, I’m not sure that it fits the definition of cult. My favorite cult movies are the so-bad-that-its-good variety. It’s impossible to adequately describe the pleasures of deliriously bad movies – you just have to be there.
I hope the Done in 60 seconds contest and the Cult Film Club inspires movie-making and conversation. All fueled by a certain Irish whiskey of course!
Cult movies that Anurag recommends: Roger Corman’s films, all the early films of Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, John Landis’ An American Werewolf in London.
So bad-that-they-are-good-cult-movies that I recommend: Sheetal’s Honey, Dunno Y…Na Jaane Kyun, Clerk, Jimmy, parts of Karma aur Holi and Shakalaka Boom Boom, a laugh-out-loud remake of Amadeus with dialogues written by a certain Anurag Kashyap.