Filmmakers take a page out of their own book

These new breed professionals feel true to life stories is often more interesting than fiction

A new breed of filmmakers who have veered into the profession from other vocations are drawing inspiration from their past calling. Kookie Gulati’s upcoming Abhishek Bachchan-starrer “The Big Bull” is an instance. The film draws its plot from the securities scam of 1992, and is broadly based on stockbroker Harshad Mehta’s life and his involvement in financial crimes over a period of 10 years from 1980 to 1990. Gulati reveals how his stint working at the stock market in the past helped him.

“I have worked at the stock market in 1990 and 1991, so I immediately related to this story and idea. From there, we started researching and working on it. Those times were so different,” says Gulati. Gulati had other references from his own life in the script. “It’s basically the struggle of a guy who starts from the beginning and a lot of it actually happened with my father when he came to Mumbai from Ahmednagar. So, I have actually borrowed a lot from his life to put into this film. The concept was brought to me by my co-writer Arjun Dhawan,” he added.

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Another example is that of director Danish Renzu, whose Hollywood film “The Illegal” recently released on an OTT platform. The film talks about the journey of an Indian boy who goes to the US to study filmmaking. However, due to financial burden, he is forced to take up a part-time job at an Indian restaurant in Los Angeles, as a waiter. Danish has stated in various interviews how he, too, was trying to live up to his big American dream when he shifted there from Srinagar 15 years ago. The LA-based filmmaker has revealed how he worked at a restaurant and doubled up as a Math tutor to sustain himself.

Sports biopics have always received a lot of attention from the audience. Telugu filmmaker Venu KC, who is making a biopic on National kabaddi player Arjun Chakravarthy, was himself a state-level sportsperson at the junior level. The director has revealed that he heard about Arjun Chakravarthy’s struggle from his coach.

“I have been a sportsman who participated at state level junior meet and at that point of time my coach used to tell a story about his coach to motivate us. That story inspired me to write a script. After several years I developed an interest in writing scripts. Ever since, I have written 25 scripts but none of them excited me as that coach’s story. So, I decided to turn his story into a film,” he says, about how his real-life experience turned into his film.

True life can often be more interesting than fiction, as they say — and lucrative, too.