Mr Director?

The weekend has seen me getting under movie directors’ skins.

Saturday saw the premiere of (the awful) Dubai Return, an Aditya Bhattacharya film starring Irrfan and Razak Khan. The cast walked in late, and the audience wouldn’t have any of it. They booed as the ’stars’ entered 20-25 minutes late, and this angered the director.

Singling out a member of the crowd, the bald director actually asked the delegate to “Go Home!” The booing didn’t stop, and the lacklustre film led to half the theatre emptying mid-movie.

At the subsequent press conference, I piped up and asked the man what he thought gave him the right to ask a delegate to leave a film festival. Bhattacharya scowled and passed on the question, but was forced to take it again after noone else had anything to ask.

His rebuttal included references to his directorial lineage (he’s the son of Basu Bhattacharya and grandson of Bimal Roy), and a tired metaphor about the theatre being like a temple. But wasn’t this defiled when he walked in late? Was he justifying coming in late? His ‘answer’ was one only by name, and, for the very first time, yours truly was applauded after a press conference.

Was quite a kick.

Today, Sanjay Gupta released the music of his film, Zinda, hijacking the IFFI closing ceremony completely, assaulting it with songs and copied scenes.

At that press conference a few minutes ago, I asked him about his upcoming film’s resemblance to Oldboy. Even a cursory look at the promos showed iconic frames and shots replicated, and an eerily ripped-off background score. So, I asked him, was this film a remake of the Chan-Woon Park great?

The director hemmed and hawed and said, with great (sic) magnanimity that “I acknowledge Korean cinema.”

I asked whether the film is a rip-off, and to what extent, and Gupta claims that there is just one great scene from Oldboy in Zinda, and the rest of the film is entirely different.

So now you know that when the utterly unoriginal film hits theatres (bets, anyone? *wink*), we can hold Gupta to his word.