The 29th Kolkata International Film Festival, like every year, made the Nandan premises even more animated, with cinema enthusiasts gathering outside its various halls from morning to evening to see cinema from all over the world. However, what made the festival more interesting for aspirants in the field of cinema was the ample opportunities of learning, listening and finding inspiration from actors and directors and other movie- makers through various workshops held throughout the festival. The acting and direction workshop by Manoj Bajpayee and Sudhir Mishra on December 11 was one such, attended by hundreds of filmmaking enthusiasts.
Director and actor Arindam Sil, who moderated the workshop, started the conversation with veteran director Sudhir Mishra’s take on adapting as a director to create OTT content. “I just feel blessed that I am still working. The age of patronage is over and you have to find out things to do. Almost like writing a novel… I am a film novelist. I thought novel writing is too lonely and I will become an alcoholic,” said Mishra. Talking about finding inspiration from other directors, he said: “After a time we are not senior to each other. We are all inspired by each other. When I watched Goutam Ghose’s Paar, I thought it is possible to make films.”
Manoj Bajpayee
He further spoke about working with actors of various generations and how OTT felicitates the connection between actors and directors at present. “Someone like Irrfan (Khan). When he used to give a shot, you would think he was hardly doing anything but when you saw the camera there was so much. You put a camera on Naseeruddin Shah’s face and it tells so much more than an ordinary face. Two things OTT has done — firstly, it has helped to discover so many actors, and secondly, the stories of one region are available to another region,” said Mishra. As Manoj Bajpayee joined the conversation, Mishra said: “I am quite scared of him (Manoj Bajpayee) because I have not managed to cast him yet. There are some actors who are co-writers. When they act, they write. They will find the word underneath and what’s going on between the dialogues. Manoj is one of them. They are writers. They co-write the film.”
Bajpayee continued the discussion with how Mishra described him as an actor. “There are few directors who have always given me that freedom. One is his (Sudhir Mishra) prodigy Anurag Kashyap. Ramu (Ram Gopal Varma) used to give me a lot of space. They all know I work very hard when I am preparing for it. So, I am in a better situation to look at any scene or shot from an actor’s perspective. The director gets the confidence that he understands the script and that he is enhancing it. In our country, improvisation is misunderstood. It is used by an actor to either overpower the scene or overpower the other actors, and it always backfires. Improvisation is always to do with enhancing and adding and contributing to the scene or the shot. In a shot, both actors are playing their parts, so it cannot be a wrestling match. Together it can be collaborative. If the director makes the atmosphere collaborative, it is good for everyone,” said Bajpayee.
Manoj Bajpayee, Goutam Ghose and Sudhir Mishra shared a hug on stage
Acting is a never-ending love for him. Explaining why he is not directing a film and how he stays relevant as an actor, he said: “I am in love with acting. The craft. So many times people ask me why don’t you direct but this story is not ending. When a role comes to me, I don’t look right or left, I just start preparing myself, and I try to do it well. In front of me, there is nothing else. I think of it for 24 hours. So, I am a little mental in this regard. I have never thought that I would be relevant. I kept on focusing on the job at hand and I always surrender myself completely when I prepare.”
His reason for working with new directors? “What I have realised is this industry never knew what to do with me, Kay Kay Menon or Nawaz (Nawazuddin Siddiqui). So, we were left with no option but to look for the talents outside, look for the script, the directors for Manoj Bajpayee to be a part of. I found such great talents,” said Bajpayee in his conversation and also stressed on learning the craft and revealed how Calcutta is connected to his days of training. “Training is the most important thing but sadly there are only few institutes that teach acting as a craft and it has very limited seats. But you should do theatre. People are not doing theatre continuously. Calcutta! We used to come here to Rabindra Sadan… I have performed here so many times. But because of the digital explosion, immediate exposure and fame… people are making reels and they think they are acting. That’s the irony of the time that we are living in. Training requires passionate preparation. We have done 10 years of theatre before going to Bombay. How many people who want to do it will give five years now? Now, with digital they can always make a podcast or a video blog and put it out there on YouTube and start counting the likes they are having. This is a pure distraction. In the future, you will have very few good actors and directors for not having time and patience to do good acting and good theatre,” said Bajpayee.
Does he still require preparation as an actor? “I still prepare. Now I prepare much more. The older you get… this thought keeps coming to me that somewhere I am losing the edge. Initially, I used to have a lot of energy but I didn’t know what to do with that energy. But now, I know how to channelise it. Why should I stand when there’s a chair to sit? Earlier it used to be a complete reverse — let the chair be there, I am not going to sit. I am going to keep standing. Life becomes predictable but you have to be unpredictable and for that you have to stay fit,” said Bajpayee.
Explaining why the waiting time is important for an actor, Bajpayee explained, “Prepare yourself for the opportunity that you might get in future. You can’t expect your director to do a workshop before every film. There was an exercise. I used to find a news item in the newspaper, create a story out of it and give myself one role and keep working on that role every day. And when people used to come home… all my actor friends to drink or party, I used to tell them, ‘First you see how I have prepared, only then I will serve you what you want to be served’. People talk about my improvisation because I have worked a lot on that aspect. I would prepare myself in my own aloneness. When I am travelling in a bus, I would think about it, make a scene out of it in my head and only keep thinking about it. In your free time, when you are not acting, that is when you are working. People don’t understand... because if you work on yourself today, you get one opportunity by Sudhir Mishra, you will hit it out of the park. But if you are not working on yourself, like any machine, you are rusted. You will not leave any impression on your director’s mind. I personally feel you have to work very hard when there’s no work.”
He concluded the session by giving an insight to the audience on how he chooses a script. “We need more middle-of-the-road cinema to bridge the gap between commercial and independent filmmakers because middle-of-the-road cinema will create audiences for independent films. When I am choosing a script, I first choose a script that is engaging, and secondly, unique,” said Bajpayee.
