After his offbeat script was rejected by several producers, director Shashank Ghosh struck gold with Phat Phish’s Anand Surapur. He calls it the “Channel V nexus”.
He launched Channel V as its creative head when the music channel first began its innings in India. He directed Waisa Bhi Hota Hai II in 2003. Now, film director Shashank Ghosh is ready with his new film, Quick Gun Murugun: The Misadventures of an Indian Cowboy. The film will release on August 28 in four languages.
Quick Gun Murugun has been in the making for years. Why did this film take so long?
You won’t believe it, but the film’s special effects alone took one year. Besides, the synopsis is so different and out-of-the-box that producers whom I approached laughed and laughed but refused to back the project till Anand Surapur’s Phat Phish Motion Pictures decided to back it.
How did you and Surapur — who was also behind Rabbi Shergill’s debut album — get together?
We have known each other for a long time, from the days of Channel V, and often joke that the entire film has been possible because there was a complete Channel V nexus.
In your own words, what’s the story of the film?
It’s the story of a sincere south Indian cowboy who considers it his duty to serve and protect people and cows. The hero — who dies early on in the film —wants to encourage vegetarianism. His arch rival — and the villain of the film — is Rice Plate Reddy, a staunch non-vegetarian who wants the world to convert to non-vegetarianism.
Seriously, that’s the storyline?
(Laughs) Go watch it. The script was written in 1995 but we were also involved with Channel V at that time. I’ve been rejected by 20 producers but feel happy that the film will release now, because the film industry has been witnessing a significant change.
I wanted to ask you about that. What changes are we witnessing in the film industry now?
Look at the works of people like Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bharadwaj, for instance. There’s a change in the definition of mainstream cinema. Today, films like Kaminey and Dev D may be very unconventional in their stories, but these are also the films that are getting watched by larger audiences than ever before. That’s the change which we are going through, and while it started in the 1990s, it’s only now that the trend has become so formidable.
