Riding high on 'Shootout' success

By now everyone knows that Manohar Arjun Surve aka Manya was the first gangster to be gunned down in an encounter by the Mumbai police. But what happened to Vidya, the woman who put him in the line of fire believing that she was giving him a new life? “She disappeared,” says Sanjay Gupta, producer-director of the bio-pic, Shootout at Wadala.

“Some say she was murdered, others believe she left the city heartbroken, Vidya remains mystery.”

Meanwhile, the actress who played Vidya, National Award winner Kangna Ranaut, is reportedly miffed with Gupta for a truncated role and keeping her out of the promotions to focus on item girls Priyanka Chopra and Sunny Leone. He laughs off the rumours, insisting Vidya’s one of his strongest characters, moving from a bubbly schoolgirl to a widow helplessly in love with the wayward Manya. “Yes, Kangna was upset about the others being promoted till I reasoned that she was the heroine of my film,” Gupta asserts.

So, will we see Vidya/Kangna returning in a sequel? “I’m not planning a sequel, but the Shootout franchise will go on. There were 850 encounters by the Mumbai police so there are lots of muses. The next one too is an epic gangster saga,” Gupta promises.

He is gratified by the way John Abraham surrendered himself completely and re-invented himself, Manoj Bajpayee, he describes as his “only friend in the industry”. He recalls how after the first shot was okayed, Sonu Sood and he laughed, knowing this was the beginning of a new relationship. “And Anil stood by me when the world walked out. I’d love to work with all of them again. I’ve already written another fantastic role for Manoj, I can’t think of making a film without him,” he admits.

And what about Ekta Kapoor? Says Gupta, “There can be no Shootout without Ekta. Her Balaji Telefilms and my White Feather Films co-own the franchise. “We know our parameters in marketing, Ekta’s the boss, but on the creative, she let me decide,” he smiles. Interestingly, though Shootout At Wadala is set in a man’s world, it’s co-produced by three woman — Ekta, her mother Shobhaa Kapoor, and Gupta’s wife Anuradha. The filmmaker admits that while he was expecting a captive male audience, he’s surprised by the positive way women have reacted to it. What about the cops? “Nothing so far except one retired cop lashed out at us on the opening Friday without even seeing the film,” he sighs.

And D-Company? “Nothing so far,” he repeats. So there was no reason to not call his characters by their real names, including Dawood? “We decided to use fictitious names because one of the officers (Anil Kapoor’s Afaaque Baaghran) who’d given us a NOC and been a part of our journey, suddenly chickened out. Given our fragile legal system, I didn’t want anyone getting a restraining order against two-and-a-half years of work. So I changed the names, as this would not take away from the story,” Gupta explains.

Reacting to statements about censor leniency, he insists that he had to take many audio cuts on provocative dialogue. The ones that remained were necessary to explain why the shootout happened. “In the late ’70s and early ’80s, gangs were chopping up people on the streets. That’s why I had to keep certain scenes like the bomb in a child’s lunch box, even though I wasn’t comfortable,” Gupta says.

Speaking of children, Shootout marks a new beginning for Gupta, who dedicated it to his son who ironically has yet to see the film since it’s ‘A’. “It’s not a film for kids,” Gupta says, but insists that his two infants will be proud of daddy. “In the early days, you’re trying to establish yourself, buy a flat and a car. Those milestones are behind me and now I can make the movies I believe in,” he smiles.

The smile disappears when you remind him that comparisons with Hollywood filmmaker Quentin Tarantino continue and he’s still called a copy cat. “Yeah, one critic who believed Shootout at Wadala didn’t deserve any stars wrote that Manoj’s death scene was copied from The Godfather. Anyone will tell you this was one of the city’s most infamous murders. I’ve spoken to the guy who pumped the bullets into him and has been in jail for 18 years, the petrol pump attendants, the cops on the crime scene and the doctor who performed the autopsy. There was nothing copied about this true-to-life scene, but you can’t please everybody,” he shrugs. “I couldn’t care less.”

At one time, actor Sanjay Dutt’s name was synonymous with Sanjay Gupta’s before they went their divergent ways. Any chance of the two getting together for a film? “We will work together again,” Gupta asserts. “Sanjay is a friend and this is show business. Never say never.”