Journalism of Courage
Ask actress Lara Dutta,about life after marriage with Mahesh Bhupathi and she chuckles. Its the same. I see so little of Mahesh as was the case even before our marriage. Ever since they got married in February this year,Bhupathi has been busy with tennis tournaments,while Lara has been overseeing the post-production of Chalo Dilli. This film,scheduled to release on April 29,marks the debut of both Lara and Mahesh as producers. Mahesh has no aspirations to act,but he is definitely going to make films. His company Big Daddy Productions is co-producing Chalo Dilli along with my production house Bheegi Basanti Entertainment, the actress says.
Lara has been dreaming of turning producer for long. However,life has a way of putting things in perspective and thats exactly what happened with her. The script of Chalo Dilli was offered to Dutta by director Shashant Shah purely as an acting assignment. Shashant approached me to play the role of Mihika Banerjee,which I readily accepted. At that time,Shashant was looking for a producer and he wanted somebody established to come on board, reminisces Lara. Shashant approached several big production houses with the script,but none of them paid attention to this medium-budget film. Thats when Mahesh suggested that he and I produce the film together. Mahesh and I complement each other well. He has a wonderful business sense while I am familiar with the functioning of the industry. And having producer-distributor Eros Entertainment on their side definitely proved to be a huge advantage.
The final product has made Lara happy,but being the actor-producer on the sets of Chalo Dilli was exhausting she claims. To begin with they had to wrap the shoot in 33 days keeping the budget in mind. I wish we had the extravagance of shooting for 68 days. Every time I was giving a shot,I knew at the back of my mind that my unit hadnt dispersed for dinner or I knew the sun would set in two hours and we had four hours of shoot left. There were so many wonderful moments during the course of filming,but I was too exhausted to enjoy any of those, explains Lara,a self-proclaimed hard taskmaster. I want things to be done in a certain manner. Like most women,I see to it that they are done efficiently.
Do statements like: only out-of-work actresses turn producers bother her? These statements are coming from people who havent done anything in life. These myth like statements should just be banned, she says,adding. We will soon start the pre-production of the next film from our banners. Meanwhile,I have Don 2 to look forward to.
