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Filmmakers Vivek Agnihotri and Anurag Kashyap are on the opposite ends of the political spectrum but there was a time when they worked together in the 2007 film Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal, albeit it wasn’t pleasant. In an earlier interview, when Vivek accused Anurag of being a “drunkard” and passing off his work to Vikramaditya Motwane, Anurag retaliated by calling Vivek a “jhootha aadmi (liar).” Now, Vivek was again asked about the same, and this time, he didn’t criticise Anurag much but wondered out loud about Anurag’s retaliation. He also implied that John Abraham, who starred in that film could not say longer dialogues at once. He also said in Bollywood, the “entire ecosystem is dependent on an incompetent, very mediocre, actor’s intelligence.”
Vivek was asked by Dainik Bhaskar what went wrong with Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal and he said that UTV, the producers of the film, did not think of him as a writer and that the executives at their office were “fascinated” by Anurag even though “this wasn’t Anurag’s subject.” “Anurag’s life had personal issues going on at the time. I read somewhere that he wrote, ‘He (Vivek) didn’t take us to London, how are we the writers? We were shooting in London. The writing was done here for a year and a half,” he said.
Vivek said that this wasn’t “possible” as John became a part of the film solely because of Anurag. “He would only talk to Anurag about the script, not to me. Even the executives at UTV would speak to him. In the end, they could not deliver. Towards the end, I had to get someone to write everything properly because even the dialogues were not written properly. At least, the script should look like a script, should be in the correct format, and not look like a man has scribbled whatever with his pen,” he said and added that he “really respects” Anurag and Vikramaditya as writers.
But, he also mentioned that Anurag’s biggest problem is that he talks a lot. “Anurag ka problem yahi hai ki bak-bak boht karta hai, bakwas boht karta hai. Aur kya bolta hai pee ke use pata hi nahi (Anurag’s problem is that he talks nonsense. And he also doesn’t realise what he says once he is drunk). He has apologised to me at least 3-4 times. If I say something now, he will apologise to me two days later. He tells the truth and I am telling the truth as well,” he said.
Vivek said that while Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal was liked back in 2007, and had hit music, “there were a lot of problems that happened.” He shared that it was during this film’s shoot that John Abraham and Bipasha Basu broke up and that became “very difficult for me to handle.” Vivek then criticised the system of stardom in the film industry without naming John but heavily implied that he was dissatisfied with his work. “The entire ecosystem is dependent on an incompetent, very mediocre actor’s intelligence. How the marketing should be done, who should be on the poster,” he said.
“Everyone was like, ‘Let’s take John, he is a footballer. That’s how he became a part of the film,” he said and added that he had no problem with John’s casting but by the time they shot the film, Vivek observed that actors like Arshad Warsi and Raj Zutshi had become very good at football because of the training they had received, but that wasn’t the case for John. “In all of John’s scenes, we had to shoot his face and feet separately,” he said.
“If someone tells me ‘reduce my dialogues’ Why? Because you can’t say them at once? You can’t say five lines of dialogues in rhythm at once. This is your problem. Then why are you taking so much money?” he asked and said that producers should wonder why they are paying crores to an actor who is not bring value for the money being spent on him.
Vivek Agnihotri is currently promoting his next film The Bengal Files.
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