The smooth-talking yet boisterous Arjun Kapoor tells Pratishtha Malhotra that there’s no getting the ‘filmikeeda’ out of his system…
Superstar? Not there yet!
I do not believe that everybody cares about me yet. It’s not like, ‘Arrey Arjun ki picture lagi hai jaake dekhni hai’. It takes a lot of time to get there. That is when you become a star – when your films are second and you are first. Our generation is not going to reach that stardom any which way because now we are very accessible. That quality of stardom is very reduced. We are very normal, we are the boys next door.
The audiences are like, ‘Aye, yeh toh apne jaisa hai’ and that is what has made us successful. I don’t think we have that larger than life persona; we are so affable and regular. The three Khans for example, we talk about them because 25 years of surviving… that means there is constant love and adulation. They have a certain aura about them because they come from a different era when stars were not so accessible and these three are still not… nor is an Akshay (Kumar) or Ajay (Devgn). They have survived the test of time in that sense. It takes a lot of time to reach out to the masses.
Tweeting much…
‘Tevar’ is the first film I am promoting on Twitter. I have just been on Twitter for six months so I couldn’t promote my earlier films but had I been, I surely would have gone out and done it my own way. Since right now I am jobless, I am taking advantage of it and taking a lot more interest. I love cutting trailers so that is one aspect which I have been involved in because I enjoy it.
The proud father: Boney Kapoor
Where my father is coming from is not just about ‘Tevar’. Any father wants to feel proud of his son especially in his own profession, to whatever degree. The motivation was that I had worked hard enough to be an asset to him that would give encouragement to him to make his kind of cinema. I never wanted him to curtail his style because he is a flamboyant filmmaker. There is a saying about Boney Kapoor, ‘You ask for an Ambassador, you’ll get a Mercedes.’
He is that large-hearted in terms of being a producer. He likes spending money on style, scale. I didn’t want my first film to be with him. Woh paise toh itne hi kharch karte, par stress bahut hota, na? He would feel a burden and I didn’t want that. And as for this being a home production, I am just doing what a producer, an EP, an assistant would do, yaar. You know, if tomorrow I am sitting in the marketing meeting, I would take everyone’s points and take it to Dad and would say, this is what we all feel. So rather than him being in every meeting, he just gets to take a final call so I am like a middle man in between so he can do things easily rather than him going through the everyday stress. I am sure any son would do this to ease the stress. He is touching 60 now, so he should enjoy the process rather than taking stress.
Filmi & fine with it
I have grown up watching cinema – that is my passion, that is my excitement, my hobby. My passion has become my profession. I don’t sit there and watch it as a producer. See, those are things that subconsciously happen because you have grown up in the profession. But I love watching films. I still watch a film every night. I love story-telling and that will never change.
When I was a kid, around 8 years of age, I loved films as much as I do now. I wasn’t a producer then. I still loved ‘Ram Lakhan’, ‘Mr. India’ and as I grew up I loved DDLJ, ‘Kuch Kuch Hota Hai’, ‘Lagaan’, ‘Company’. So you know, I have enjoyed cinema, Hindi and international, whatever I have seen. I am not one of those who doesn’t watch films. You know, I remember instances of where and how I have seen films, I can tell you all of it.
Sometimes I remember visuals of which theatre I saw it in. Ab main kya karoon, main hoon filmi keeda…nahin nikalta mere andar se. I went to shoot a magazine cover at Liberty, where I remember watching ‘Dil Toh Pagal Hai’ on a Saturday at a 9:30 show on November 1 in the year in which the film had released and Anand Bakshi the lyrist of the film was sitting behind me and watching the film! I have that kind of clarity about certain films which I have seen. I am filmi, I am okay with it.
