Indian director Anurag Kashyap on ‘Bombay Talkies,’ Bachchan

As India celebrates 100 years of cinema, Anurag Kashyap is one of four leading filmmakers collaborating on a Bollywood project that shows what the movies have meant to them.
“Bombay Talkies,” which opens in cinemas on Friday, also features the work of Dibakar Banerjee, Zoya Akhtar and Karan Johar. It will be shown at the Cannes Film Festival this month.
Kashyap’s segment focuses on fan adoration for Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan whose house is often surrounded by crowds waiting for a glimpse of the 70-year-old actor.
Bachchan first became popular in the 1970s as the “angry young man” of Hindi cinema and has since appeared in more than 180 films, becoming one of the most influential actors in India.
Kashyap is known for films such as “Black Friday” about the 1993 Bombay bombings, “Gulaal,” and recently “Gangs of Wasseypur.”
Asked if “Bombay Talkies” is a tribute to Indian cinema, he said: “Four filmmakers have made a film about what they think cinema is in their lives. My impact is about the impact of cinema when I was growing up in Benares and when I came here (Mumbai) and saw people standing outside Mr. Bachchan’s house. So it’s about Indian cinema and (how) the stardom of certain heroes affects the north Indian middle-class boy. That was what Amitabh Bachchan did to them and that is what Salman Khan does to them now.”
Asked how this stardom affects these boys, Kashyap said: “When we were growing up, Amitabh Bachchan brought us out of our small-town existence. Bachchan gave us a lot more options in life — he showed us you can be a cop, you can be this, you can be that. He was an embodiment of middle-class aspirations in tandem with (writers) Salim-Javed. He taught us to fight against injustice, which we took so seriously. All the fights I have had in the industry, you can blame it on him. He taught us to stand up against the system and be a rebel. He wasn’t called the angry young man for nothing.”
He said it’s the aura of the man that has made his star appeal last. “A man is endured by people who adore him, admire him, love him and worship him. He’s endured so long because of his hardcore fans. For me ‘Bombay Talkies’ is a film about fans and audiences. It’s about what has endured our cinema for long — it’s the audiences.”
Asked about a tiff between him and Bachchan, he said: “It wasn’t a fight, it was a silence. A 14-year long silence. It started a long time back  We never spoke but it is all those people in the middle who tell you that he is upset. It was just a lot of silence. But you start to hesitate and that silence becomes so much larger. At the end of it, you realize it was just a bubble which nobody tried to burst. The smaller man always has the larger ego. I never made an attempt to reach out to him. It was his magnanimity that this film was made. He saw ‘Udaan,’ then he saw ‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ and praised it. I didn’t respond the first Later, Kashap sent him a message. “I kept checking my phone every second to see if he had replied. And the reply came. Then it all changed.”