The man called acting

His first film sank without a trace, but Abhinay Deo has hit the jackpot with Delhi Belly. He will choose scripts carefully from now on.

Abhinay Deo, 40, is the new poster boy of Bollywood. Delhi Belly, which he has directed, is all set to become a cult film. Viewers can expect many lookalikes and inspirations in the days to come, complete with in-your-face attitude, expletives and provocative lyrics. But then, Deo has celluloid in his DNA. His name means acting in Hindi. His parents, Ramesh and Seema Deo, are well-known Marathi actors, who did a number of Hindi films too, always together, in the 1970s. Remember the couple in Anand, friends of Rajesh Khanna and Amitabh Bachchan? That’s them. Ramesh Deo Productions is a well-known name in the world of ad films. Deo has made over 250 advertisements, which include Cadburys (girl in the stadium), Nike (cricket on top of vehicles on a busy street) and Pepsi (with Deepika Padukone, Ranbir Kapoor and Shah Rukh Khan). And, till Delhi Belly happened, he was an unsuccessful director because his first film, Game, had sunk without a trace.

“Aamir [Khan, the producer of Delhi Belly] believed that I could pull off a Hindi film purely on the basis of my ad work, and got me interested in Delhi Belly’s script, a move that I don’t regret,” Deo confesses. Khan, who experiments with scripts, directors and actors and leaves not one marketing tool unused, seems to have got the combination right this time too. Delhi Belly, made for about Rs 30 crore with only one star actor, Imran Khan, earned Rs 25 crore in its opening weekend. It dwarfed Amitabh Bachchan’s Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap, which had an opening weekend of Rs 7.35 crore.

No wonder then that even his peers are raving. Nikhil Advani, the director of Kal Ho Naa Ho, calls Delhi Belly “a path-breaking film”. “Abhinay has used his craft to perfection and deserves a standing ovation,” he says.

Khan had signed him for Delhi Belly three years ago, but Deo had to back out of the project due to his prior commitment to Farhan Akhtar’s Game. “So Khan went ahead with Swedish director Robert Nylund. There were some issues with the director and Delhi Belly was put on the backburner,” says Deo.

The film got delayed further as Khan got involved with Peepli Live first and then Dhobi Ghat, but Deo reached out to Khan as Game got underway.

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Deo, like Khan, strongly believes in working on select projects at any time. “Delhi Belly was completed about two years back and we moved to editing the first cut,” he lets on. Taking a break, Deo got on with wrapping up Game. “You have to be involved and interested through the years your film takes to release. It’s a task that you can accomplish only when you have full faith in your script,” Deo insists.

Ignoring the disappointing box office run of the Abhishek Bachchan-starrer Game (collection: about Rs 10-15 crore, cost: Rs 27 crore), Deo began work on Delhi Belly. The debacle of Game helped in a way. “I started Delhi Belly with no expectations to live up to,” says Deo.

What about expectations after Delhi Belly? Deo chooses his words carefully, “I am now attached with a film like Delhi Belly which was a deviation from the mainstream cinema we see. I would rather stick out my head by choosing my scripts carefully than try to live up to expectations.”

Although Deo graduated as an architect, he knew story-telling was his calling. After almost 14 years of directing ad-films, he hopes to bring the visual sense and detailing that he mastered in the advertising world to his films. “I am taking time out till August and will then begin work on ad films and film scripts,” Deo says. He is a workaholic, he says, and finds it hard to stay away from work. “The last three years that I have been working on Delhi Belly have been intensive — with shooting, editing and recording in full vigour — but it has been a fun ride.” Filmmaking, he believes, is incredibly consuming. “With shifts running up to 18 hours a day, you just cannot stop. There is no time for anything else,” Deo adds.

But he isn’t bidding adieu to ad films just yet. They were his original love and will always be, he emphasises.

Deo, like other ad-film-maker-turned-feature-film directors such as R Balki, John Mathew Mathan, Dibakar Banerjee and Pradeep Sarkar, believes that the real art lies in telling a story in 10-seconds. Some ad-men have made the transition to films successfully; many others have failed. The criticism is that these directors lacked the skill to give soul to a feature film. Deo will have to do more than Delhi Belly to prove the detractors wrong. Bollywood is full of directors who turned out to be one-film wonders.

Undeterred by his exhausting schedule, Deo makes sure to watch a film every night at whatever time he goes to bed. “I simply love David Dhawan films, slapstick comedies like Golmaal or even films like Schindler’s List. I may not make films like that but I enjoy every bit of them just as audiences would,” he says.

And what is Deo’s favourite genre of films? “Something like Delhi Belly which has subtle humour in the background. I am not saying I won’t make a family entertainer or a romantic film, but my treatment to the script will be starkly different from what you see,” he holds forth.