Shekhar Kapur unplugged

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India’s Got Talent got over this week. It revealed to us, the sensational group Prince, and the emotional judge Shekhar Kapur. Catch the world-class director on record@café

You burst into tears once as a judge on India’s Got Talent. What sparked it?
It wasn’t sympathy for sure. I was touched by that group’s (Prince Dance Group) performance. They did a splendid job with bhangra and they were all handicapped. To perform it that well, you need something inside you, apart from talent. That moved me to tears.

But one didn’t quite see you getting sharp tongued.
It wasn’t needed. I could politely put things across to contestants instead of rudely rubbing it in. And I did that to so many who did weird things in the name of talent.

Your blogs are quite popular. The one on Heath Ledger got a tremendous response.
It was an unexpected response. People were affected despite not knowing Heath Ledger in person. Some people, who’d never met him or maybe had just managed to see one film of his, left such heart-rending notes for him.

I knew Heath personally and I was taken aback with his death. I didn’t see it coming. He got nominated for Oscars and how many people alive have that kind of following when they’re gone.

Why do you think Mr India has never happened for you in Hollywood?
I would have loved to have a Mr India there. Once, a popular studio was making Alice in Wonderland. Tim Burton and I were in the running to direct it.

They obviously chose him. I almost directed another Hollywood movie too. I also know what went wrong with Four Feathers. The studio wanted me to make an adventure. I suppose I couldn’t sell them the idea correctly. I wanted them to get over their politics.

What’s the status of the Mr India sequel?
I know the story. It’s modern and exciting. I’ve written it but I want someone else to direct it. I’ve always wanted to see someone else direct it with as much passion as I did. And I didn’t see that happening in all these years. I think Koi Mil Gaya was close but Mr India was completely unabashed.

It didn’t have a mother’s part and the question asked to me was how could the hero not have a mother. We shot the whole movie and then came up with Mogambo. There’s a difference between fantasy and farce. That’s why I had the little girl dying. The scene where she was in a coffin had upset a lot of mothers and it was nasty of me to have that scene.
That kid wouldn’t lie in the coffin. I had to plead her mother to help us. She did and what a pristine look she had when she lay in the coffin, she looked dead. All the kids actually cried in that scene.

We’ve been hearing about Paani for so long. What’s happening to it?
You can’t conjure up art. You need to have something running inside you. I was excited when I was doing Mr India. Today, I feel very strongly about the state of our environment and society. Paani will be about injustice though it will be dramatic. I don’t seem to be able to lock that script. That happens when you’re too passionate about the subject.

In Masoom, Naseeruddin Shah modelled himself on you, right?
It’s difficult to write characters. Caricatures like Mogambo are easy but when you sit down to write two lines about yourself, it doesn’t come to you. When I offered Bandit Queen to Seema Biswas, a popular stage actress, she could write lovely lines about Phoolan Devi but she couldn’t write anything about herself.

Naseer modelled himself on me because he would often see Mr Malhotra in me. He even wore my clothes. 

Very little is known about your family.
My dad is a doctor and mum is a journalist. Dev, Vijay and Chetan Anand are my maternal uncles. I was born in Lahore. The Anands moved from Gurudaspur to Lahore. Chetan Anand was an ICES officer then. After partition, we all shifted to Delhi. Dev Anand was employed at a post-office in Mumbai.

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