One Lucky Break to Stardom

With Aditya Chopra announcing earlier this week that he’s cast Ranveer Singh in his next directorial venture Befikre, the race to the Number One spot—between Ranbir Kapoor and Ranveer—just got a little bit more thrilling. If Ranbir has films with Karan Johar and Rajkumar Hirani in the pipeline, Ranveer has a Sanjay Leela Bhansali release lined up, and now a film with the Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge filmmaker.

Bollywood insiders say Chopra is keen to turn Ranveer into a homegrown YRF superstar, much in the way that the banner had solidified Shah Rukh Khan’s Numero Uno status in the 1990s with such blockbusters as Darr, DDLJ and Dil To Pagal Hai. With Ranveer, however, the Chopras have a stronger ownership claim, since they launched his acting career with Band Baaja Baaraat in 2010.

It’s ironic that BBB was originally offered to Ranbir, who reportedly didn’t think much of the script, leading Chopra to cast Ranveer. More than likely RK’s kicking himself for that decision!

Time to Get Serious?

Arjun Kapoor doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he’s okay with it if you don’t either. The actor, who travelled to New York recently as part of the UN’s Global Goals initiative, has revealed that he was sitting right across from Leonardo DiCaprio in the make-up trailer, but had to stop himself from asking the Departed star for a selfie. He did however meet with Malala Yousafzai, Chris Martin and others.

He has said he’s often stopped in the streets by desi and NRI fans while he’s travelling abroad, for pictures. “Loved your performance on Comedy Nights with Kapil,” is a frequent compliment that comes his way, or even: “My wife thought you were so funny on Koffee with Karan”.

Arjun says he’s learnt to take it in his stride that appearances on talk shows and comedy shows tend to have more recall value, but he jokes that it would be nice if at least some people would talk about one of the six films he’s made. A cousin of Malala Yousafzai (who was in New York with her) happened to be a fan of Gunday, and Arjun says he was both pleased and a little surprised.

What he’s most frequently singled out and recognised for—surprise, surprise—is the AIB Roast he participated in with Ranveer Singh and Karan Johar in December last year. “Invariably, someone at an airport– often non-Indians— will come up to me and say, ‘Hats off, you were great in that.’ But frankly, I don’t know how to respond, given how things turned out with that.”

Two Filmmakers in the Dumps

A prominent maker of mostly art-house films has decided he will keep a low profile these days, particularly in the media. No interviews, no television appearances, limited interactions on social media too. Not surprisingly, he’s still reeling from the failure of his ambitious passion project from earlier this year.

However, his disappointment and disillusionment isn’t reserved for the fourth estate alone: he’s no less upset with film industry folk who, he is convinced, revelled in his film’s abysmal performance. He has specifically pointed out the example of one well-known director—the maker of lengthy period films— who made it a point to seek him out after watching his film so he could give him a piece of his mind. He says the filmmaker told him flat out that he was “thrilled” that he’d delivered a turkey and insisted that others in the film trade were too. “You needed to be brought down a few notches. You’d become too big for your boots,” the director proceeded to add. He says the filmmaker further pulled him up for his tendency to speak out brazenly against Bollywood’s ‘sacred cows’ in the past, and assured him that his fall was imminent.

Ironically, the churlish filmmaker himself had a massive fall from grace when his last two films flopped miserably, thereby ending a winning streak at the box-office. He’s currently in production on another major project with a popular A-lister in the lead. You think he’d pay a little more attention to what they say about those who live in glass houses…but no. Hell, who listens to anything or anyone in Bollywood?

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Rajeev Masand

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