Varun Grover is currently receiving praise for his work as a script writer in Reema Kagti’s highly acclaimed Superboys Of Malegaon. He talks to us about his experience of writing the film and other interesting bits.

Varun Grover on “Writer baap hota hai” dialogue from Superboys Of Malegaon, “This is not true yet, it should be”

Work started from zero in Superboys Of Malegaon. It was a fun experience to capture. That aside, I saw a documentary Superman Of Malegaon that Faisa Ahmed Khan made in 2012, and I was really impressed. I was introduced to the writer Farogh Jafri (played by Viineet Kumar Siingh in the film). Then during this time, I met Zoya Akhtar, Farhan Akhtar and Nasir (played by Adarsh Gourav). Zoya asked me what I would write.

I really wanted to know that apart from the story told in the documentary, there are many other stories of those people and their origin story, how they made the first film and why they made it, and what were their relationships with each other, and in those relationships, it happens in every film making process that relationships are formed and broken. So, I thought that the story has not been told, the story should be told.

When I spoke to Zoya and decided that I will write it, then I was very sure that I won’t go back to the documentary. I wanted to start my research from scratch, and the three of us together started the research again, went to his city for interviews, went to Malegaon, met every character, met every member of Nasir Shaikh’s s team, met his family, and we watched all the films of his. We had long discussions about them, how he made them, why he made them. I did a thorough research and I was determined to focus on certain themes which we haven't talked about before.

What is art and who decides it? So, in this segment of the story, Farogh tries to become a Bollywood writer and he also understands that here nobody even knows what they want to make, so who are these people to tell us that this is art and this isn't?

This line was not written. It was improvised. But it sits in the context of the movie. But is it true? I don't think so, not in today's industry. This is not true yet, it should be. There should be this much respect and there should be space for the writer. But it is not there now. It gets built up slowly, then it gets cancelled. There was a time in-between when Salim-Javed Sahab came when people started believing that the writer was indeed the baap. I hope that gradually writers will get that recognition as the star of the project. Yes, there are many films which get made even without a big star. They are made well and they also ran gradually. How many such stars have we seen? In the era before Rajkumar Rao, there was Irrfan Khan sahab.

Whoever is the star today, be it Shah Rukh Khan, how did he become a star? On the first day of his screen appearance, he was not a star. There must have been something in that film he did early in his career, due to which that film was a success.

The casting directors of Superboys Of Malegaon Nandini Shrikent and Karan Mally have done a really good job. We needed good actors from the beginning who could get into the character. I did a short film with Adarsh Gourav. I had a very good experience with that film, so I recommended him and then I had a very good audition with Adarsh. I wanted to spread my net a little wider and I got other good actors.

I think those films, which could never reach you, twenty-thirty years ago… Foreign films were not available, so I watched all those films from pirated CDs because I had no other option at that time. It was not possible that a Martin Scorsese film would be released in any theatre in India and I would go there and watch it twenty years ago, when there was no screening, no streaming, nothing. There was no way to get the original CD-DVD film, so piracy in that era made films accessible to all of us. And I think it still does the same thing: it brings the films to people who can't access.

Ethically it's okay or not I think it's a grey area, something like… If I am capable of supporting cinema, capable of buying CDs and DVDs then I must stop buying pirated films. I can now watch the films after buying them. When I was not able to do so, I too was dependent on piracy and now that I am able buy legitimate copies, I don't buy pirated copies. So, I would say that if you can pay and watch it, then you actually support good cinema.

We wanted to have strong female characters with agency. The footage for the female characters is very less, the screen time is less. But we didn’t want to completely erase their valuable contribution in the lives of people around them and that was something that we wrote in the script from the beginning right from the first draft of the script.

This is my first dream. I wanted to make a film. There is a journey that you think you will undertake and work on. I always had a passion for films.

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