VIDHU VINOD CHOPRA does not like shoes, chappals and sandals. The maverick director of modern classics like Parinda, 1942—A Love Story and Mission Kashmir is happy walking barefoot in his posh Santacruz home in Mumbai and expects you to do/feel the same. It’s not a rule, just the way Chopra likes it. Somehow you expect something like this from a man who’s always taken the other path. There was a time in the mid-’80s, when Chopra, fresh out of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) could not find a financier for his first movie Khamosh. But that was another life. These days he is about to embark on his Hollywood film Move 5, is finalising his Hindi script Yagna which will star Amitabh Bachchan and, what’s more, he is also launching a new director, Rajkumar Hirani, with the film Munnabhai MBBS. Chopra points to a framed black and white photograph of a group of children peering through a bioscope. ‘‘This is how it began. I was in class VIII in Amira Kadal School in Srinagar when I saw through the bioscope for the first time and life was never the same again.’’ A peep was all it took to alter Chopra’s destiny. Talking about his passion for cinema, he narrates a scene from Akira Kurusowa’s Dreams about the life of Vincent Van Gogh. ‘‘There’s a scene where Van Gogh, played by Martin Scorsese, is painting and a character comes to meet him. The painter turns to see him and the character says, ‘What are you doing? Paint, paint.’’’ Chopra says that’s his philosophy: don’t look back, just make movies. With such passion, perhaps it’s understandable that he’s developed a reputation of being a hard taskmaster. There are innumerable stories about his famous temper and of teary actors leaving the sets. In trademark Chopra style, he counters: ‘‘Our industry is so deeply seeped in mediocrity that when someone strives for excellence, he’s a tough taskmaster or a difficult person to work with. If I ask my actors to report on the sets on time, does that make me a taskmaster?’’ ‘Difficult’ reputation notwithstanding, every actor wants to work with him. Recently, Amitabh Bachchan publicly pleaded with Chopra to cast him in his next film on Zee TV’s show Jeena Isi Ka Naam Hai. Chopra looks visibly embarrassed: ‘‘I think Amit overdid himself. I was shocked, surprised and flabbergasted. But now I have to make sure that Yagna is the best film that Bachchan has ever worked in. It’s my responsibility towards Amit.’’ Responsibility is something Chopra’s familiar with. He’s a man who stands by his beliefs. Everyone knows how passionate he is about his home state Kashmir. Recently, two college students from Pune who are making a documentary on Kashmir met him, and Chopra gave them free use of his studio to edit and mix their work. He is also producing Hirani’s film because he believes in the debutant director’s cinema.‘‘One has to give back something at all times. I am amazed why everybody is not doing what I do. This is how it should be.’’ For all his convictions and beliefs, he still maintains that he’s an outsider in Bollywood. ‘‘How many people know that I bought Dolby digital sound in India for 1942. I bought the equipment for Rs 4.5 lakh but Metro cinema refused to install it so I put in the wires personally the night before the premiere,’’ he narrates. As for getting his due in Bollywood, Chopra couldn’t care less, ‘‘Who will give me my due, these so-called third rate bubblegum critics who know nothing about cinema?’’ In fact the only time you can get him to talk is if a film is due for release. Even then, he’ll probably give you 10 minutes, unless he likes your questions. Then he might just kick back and grant you an hour. He refers to a book by the British Film Institute titled Cinema of Interruptions and says, ‘‘There’s an article on Parinda which is written by a writer who actually understood the film. I woke up my wife Anupama at 3 am and told her that my fears that I will probably be understood only when I am dead and gone will not come true.’’
