Bombay Velvet’s budget went from Rs 28 cr to Rs 90 cr, I was told not to cast ‘treadmill’ Ranveer Singh: Anurag Kashyap on how Ranbir Kapoor came onboard

“To make a film reach the lowest common denominator and make it massy, it has to be dumbed down. And if you don’t want to dumb it down then reduce the budget. Don’t do unnecessary expenses and live in 5-star hotels. Make the film you want to, but don’t cause anyone else a loss. The biggest problem with the art of filmmaking is you’re making it at somebody else’s expense,” he added.

Anurag Kashyap said that as a producer, how he keeps his budget on check is by shooting films guerrilla-style. “All you need to make a film is a camera. I learnt this while making Black Friday (2004, directorial debut). I didn’t have the money to erect a set. But as per the laws of the country, you can shoot in public places as long as you don’t keep the camera on ground. I kept it in the car or kept it hidden, then I didn’t need any permissions. The whole city was my set,” recalled Kashyap.

He also argued that if budgets get inflated, like they did in the case of Bombay Velvet, it also leads to bigger box office losses. “The original budget was quite low. But as soon as the studio entered, I got surrounded by ambition. The budget went from Rs 28 crore to Rs 90 crore. Then to justify that, I had to erect a set. The recce I did across Mumbai, keeping the Rs 28 crore budget in mind, went out of the window. Suddenly, we went from rickshaws to Mercedes for going to set. Suddenly, a resort was made in Sri Lanka near the set. We also began believing that we may not be thinking on those lines, but we can make it like this. I still believe money should be spent on the film. Whatever amount you’ve spent, three times of that should reflect on the screen,” argued the filmmaker.

Anurag Kashyap even delayed starting Bombay Velvet for one and a half years in order to process the inflated budget. He went on to direct a much smaller film, Ugly (2013), in between. In order to process it, he talked to every big name in the Hindi film industry, including fellow filmmakers Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar. “They told me you’ve gone mad. They said just try it out, and do it with a big actor,” revealed Kashyap.

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He’d initially signed Ranveer Singh for the lead role, but the actor wasn’t that big by then. “Nobody had faith in him. Big directors like these used to call him ‘treadmill’ because he had so much energy. They said they don’t know how he’d fare out, but this (Ranbir) is better. Ranbir is also a fantastic actor. So I took me a year to go mentally from Ranveer to Ranbir. The whole industry told me the studio is experienced, it’s just me who’s afraid to work with a big star. I also bought into that,” confessed Kashyap.