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Why Pooja Bhatt doesn't want to be the new hot thing
Page 3 mentions just don't cut it for the actress-producer
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Vivek Fernandes
The husky peals bounce off the bright orange walls and the frosted glass partitions, echoing through the art deco interiors of the Fish Eye Productions office in suburban Khar, Mumbai. Pooja Bhatt's infectious laughter is a trait she has inherited from her father, noted filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt.
That and the proclivity to speak her mind. A characteristic that has, more often than not, got her into troubled waters.
Seated in her plush swivel chair, pulling at the wisps of a curl that has strayed away from her neatly tied ponytail, she seems removed from that reality. In response to my "Where have you been?", her nonchalant reply is, "Oh, around."
As she says, she has a Tamanna, Dushman, Zakm and a national award to show for it. "I have always been here. It is just that I now no longer choose to be a Page Three item.
The same parties, the same faces, same places, same music; we all say we have had enough. I did not want to be in the news for what I was wearing or whom I was seeing. So I moved on. Now I would not bother getting out of bed for a party unless it is for a close friend."
"My time now is completely devoted to Fish Eye Productions; we have Sur (starring musician Lucky Ali and newcomer Gauri Karnik), and another project that goes on the floors in August called Jism with John Abraham."
Has acting taken a back seat then? "No, no. I will always be an actress, " she says with an air of finality. "It is just that I have not found too many interesting projects and people to work with. From the time I did Daddy to Zakhm, I always had the luxury of being able to choose my roles. Fortunately, I never had to work for money. It has always been about the character; someone I have not played before, someone who can teach me more about emoting or about myself as an actress.
"Acting must be a cathartic experience," she says. "And I thank God that I have moved from being cast as the new hot thing to an actress who can lend something to a film."
Precisely why, she says, she chose to be part of Rahul Bose's directorial debut Everybody Says I'm Fine, that releases next month. She plays Tanya, a small-town woman married to a big city name. But her marriage is in shambles; and the wealth and materialistic trappings that she holds dear, that define her, are no longer part of her life.
"The film deals with how she has to let that go to be her own person again. Rahul is a close friend and I loved the script. It is so intelligent of him to use a salon as the backdrop of a film, where the protagonist reads people's minds. Have you realised that a salon is the only place where you would probably reveal your most intimate secrets?
"Ask any woman. She will admit to telling her hairdresser her most private thoughts. Anyway, so after I read the script, Rahul came over and said I was to play a part. I said, 'Of course not'.
"But he used our friendship to blackmail me into doing Tanya. And he said I did not have to lose any weight, which was the most appealing part of the project," she laughs aloud again.
"What also prompted me to take on the project was the opportunity to work in English. English is the language I think in. Though I can emote better in Hindi, my grasp over the language has never been as good as Manoj Bajpai or Naseeruddin Shah, who can do impromptu improvisations with the script. I wanted to test myself and see if I could do that with an English film. Rahul is intelligent enough to know why he cast you; he trusts you as an actor and he is there, silently guiding you through till the end of the scene."
But ESIF was over a year ago. Her most recent baby is Sur -- The Melody of Life. It has Pritish Nandy Communications as its producers, but Pooja who worked as the online producer, says it is her baby. "We were involved from scratch -- from casting to post-production. We were responsible for roping in M M Kreem, one of the country's most underrated music directors, for the project. And it was a privilege for us to introduce Lucky Ali and Gauri Karnik as actors."
She is all praise for the lead pair. "Sur would not have been the same without Lucky. I cannot picture another 45-year-old in his role. For the part of Tina Marie, we wanted someone untouched. All the young women we auditioned seemed to come out of a factory line with their short skirts and straight hair. It was so distressing. When Gauri first came over to the office, she tripped over some equipment and fell flat on her face. But she did not let that get to her. She was not afraid to let her expression show... she would crinkle her nose, look idiotic if need be. And most important, she was not concerned about her costume being colour coordinated."
Back to turning producer, Pooja says, "Fish Eye Network was established to cater to the small-medium budget film market. I want to prove that you cannot go wrong with a small-budget film. I succeeded to some extent with Dushman, but people said that was just a flash in the pan. We shot Sur at Rs 40 million. How can anyone go wrong with a film like that?
"Maybe you will not make a profit, but you will never be at a loss. Money, to us, is of prime importance. The onus lies with us if we exceed budgets; that amount is deducted from our fee. That means I have to be on the sets.
"Though Sur is set in Goa, we never once shot there. The school we used was the Light and Life Academy, a professional photography school in Ooty [in the Southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu]. We did not have the budget to shoot even the songs in Goa, so Madh Island had to do."
Pooja is also charged up about Jism, in its final stages of scripting. The film's story has been penned by her father Mahesh Bhatt with dialogues by Niranjan Iyengar, who earlier authored The Making Of Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham. M M Kreem will score the music and Pooja hopes to sign on Bipasha Basu for the film set in Pondicherry. "It is a noir film about murder, love, illicit relationships, deception, drama and revenge. It is about how a young lawyer's life changes when he meets this woman; how far he will go to win her and how he must come to terms with the fact that she never really loved him, but used him as a means to an end."
Rumour mills worked overtime hinting that Pooja was considering turning to direction. She is aghast. "So what if my father is a good director? How and why does that mean I am going to become one? It is too demanding a task. For Jism, we have Amit Saxena, who edited Raaz, as director. Who knows? I may direct one day. I have always thought that today, a story about middle-aged people looking for love would be suitable. But I am not too sure.
"But one thing is sure --- the subject must move me. See, I hated Spider-Man; I liked Ice Age and absolutely adored Monster's Ball. I was touched by the concept that although everything is not hunky dory in the end, it is still okay; that message of hope touches me, the resilience of the human spirit to rise above oneself motivates me."
"I would never date a guy with a pretty face and no soul; so you can be sure that I'd never make a film with those kind of people," she smiles.
RELATED FEATURES:
Everyone Says I'm Fine -- A preview
Sur -- The Story In Pictures