Interview: Ashim Ahluwalia: ‘In reality, you never know anyone very well’
You get the credit as well as the blame for being somewhere between mainstream and arthouse and, sometimes, for being too experimental with your work. What’s your stance on that?I personally thrive on the tension between these two worlds. If I worked either in purely mainstream film or remained limited only to arthouse cinema, I think I would be bored. It’s the friction that I love. I try to capture the multiplicity of experiences, complex characters and dense stories. For that, mainstream filmmaking can sometimes be too basic. It usually demands childlike plots and big spectacle, and doesn’t leaves me with enough to think about once the film is done. And yet, I want to be able to reach out to wider audiences and try new things. I guess I need to engage more mainstream distribution at the same time. Those audiences might not always be ready for new forms, so I think that opinion is fair.
What were your childhood and teenage years like? What role did they play in your development as a writer?As I kid, I had a pretty vivid imagination. I would make things out of broken stuff around the house. Like, I turned a broken bed into an imaginary plane when I was about six or seven. I totally imagined and inhabited these worlds that I would create, spending hours sitting there, lost in my own head. So I think filmmaking for me is just an extension of my childhood building worlds for myself. When I write, I find it quite easy to become totally immersed and completely lose track of the real world.
You studied filmmaking in New York. How did that influence your ideas?I’m really grateful to have had that opportunity because I was exposed to all kinds of films, so my vision became very wide. I didn’t need to always look to Hollywood or Bollywood; I was watching all kinds of Japanese or Iranian or Russian cinema, across all eras. I think that had a huge impact on how I see my own work now. I also got to watch Ray and Ghatak for the first time only when I went abroad. This was obviously right before the internet, and there was no way for me to get access to these films in India.
Miss Lovely is a unique film. What was its journey from conception on?In the early 2000s, I wanted to make a documentary on the sex-horror cinema that was still being made at the time, so that was the starting point. It was basically illegal pornography masquerading as feature films with sex scenes being inserted after the censor process. I was mostly fascinated with this industry that nobody talked about. It was hard to get access and I delved into it for over a year, spending time on film sets, drinking and hanging out with some seriously wild actors, directors and casting agents. Half these guys were on the run from the cops and most had fake names. I saw all kinds of mad stuff being filmed, and I was very excited to dive in and start shooting. But when I wanted people to speak on camera and let me document their lives, they all refused. They were worried about being jailed for pornography or other things; I suppose. So eventually I turned all those real stories into a fictional script for a film that I set in the mid 1980s. I just disguised the stories a bit so that people I interviewed wouldn’t get busted for telling me all their dirty secrets. That was the first draft of Miss Lovely.
Of course, in 2008, when I started making Miss Lovely, nobody in India would finance it. One studio I tried to get money from stole the storyline and made a mainstream film “inspired” by this world, which became quite successful. So, it was quite difficult and depressing and took almost four years to finish. I eventually cobbled together French, US and Japanese money and that’s how we made it. I’m just lucky it got into Cannes otherwise my filmmaking career would be over.
What, in retrospect, would you change about your film Daddy, based on Arun Gawli’s life? Or do you think it works just fine?
I like the film; I think it’s a really unconventional biopic in the sense Arun Gawli is at the centre but you never find out much about him. Was he guilty of those crimes? Was he trapped? Was he good or evil? Or somewhere in between? He remains extremely mysterious. Unlike most biopics which claim to be the real story, and you get the inside scoop on Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln or whoever, I think in reality, you never know anyone very well, and certainly not a historical figure. You barely even know yourself. So I wanted Daddy to be a film where you know about Gawli but only through other people in his life – through his family, the cops, his enemies – you get different perspectives on him and they all don’t match. But you never hear from him, so you have to make up your mind; I don’t want to tell you what to think. And after spending time with him when he was out on parole, I can tell you that’s exactly what he’s like.
I think this was a film that was maybe too experimental for the wide mainstream release it got, because it had multiple timelines running together. The same story is sometimes also told from different perspectives. This was sometimes attributed to script problems but I think the real issue was that our audiences are not used to this form of storytelling.
It’s also not very filmi, with clever dialogue or slow-motion action sequences like people were perhaps expecting. It’s grittier and more realistic. But I have to say I’m really proud of the film, and I feel like it may have another life in the near future with newer audiences.
How difficult was it for you to sell your kind of scripts earlier on?
Kind of impossible. I have scripts I’ve written over 10 years ago that are still considered too risky to finance. I don’t give up easily though. I don’t think it makes sense to be afraid of rejection or nothing interesting will ever get made.
What’s your process of writing?
I always start with research. I need to immerse myself in the world, read and get as much real information and detail as possible. Earlier it was through hanging out and talking to people who are like my characters, and now it’s through having a research team. I just need to know enough that I understand what makes this world tick; what are its logic systems; what does it look and smell like; what is its language?
Once I have all this in my head, I need to disconnect. Go away somewhere super remote and disappear until I write a first draft. At that point, I don’t speak to anyone until the draft is completely finished.
Class is a remake of the Spanish show Elite. What attracted you to take up the project?I’ve wanted to make something about teenagers for a while, the strong, conflicted emotions you feel when you’re young
It was just an accident that one day I was offered the Spanish series Elite for a possible adaptation. I had never watched it before. I had also never done a series or even actually considered it. The original show is really different from the films I make. It felt more like a tele-novella, but there was something really unpredictable about the writing – the characters, and the class conflict felt very relevant to India. I wanted freedom to make it my way, which Netflix was quite open to.
When it comes to remaking a European show, what are some rules or conditions that you kept in mind? Could you walk me through the exercise of writing a remake?I wanted the tale to be the same, but the telling to be completely different. I adapted the show through an Indian lens. Here other than class there is also caste – so that makes the conflicts more complex. The way families work, and their involvement in children’s lives is very different from Spain. So the parents here play a much larger role than in the original. The way the ultra-wealthy work in India is also different. They can buy their way through most difficult situations, which raises the stakes in a drama.
This is, of course, because there is also more corruption than in a European scenario. So, in the original the investigation remains only in flashback, but here the cops are actually part of the crime story, in the sense that they are on the payroll of one of the wealthy parents. There are a lot of social and cultural differences like this, which I had to consider. I just used the original series like one uses a source novel, for the bare plot and character arcs. Honestly, once that was down, Class just began to have a life of its own.
How is film writing different from writing for shows?Show writing is more dramatic, there are a number of arcs happening – the arc of each episode, the season arc. You need more hooks to keep audiences engaged for such a long period of time, almost 7 hours in the case of Cla$$. Also characters can’t change as much as they do in films, they have to stay closer to their “personas” so that you can milk them for multiple seasons etc. It’s mostly that their relationships with others change.
In total contrast, in a film, characters change so much by the end that they are sometime transformed beyond recognition.
Series writing tends to be more dialogue and plot heavy, more theatrically written compared to film where a lot can be communicated visually without dialogue. Film closes all the doors on the story whereas series keeps them open so they can continue for many more seasons.
Which filmmakers and films have influenced you across different stages of your life?The Japanese New Wave is probably is the most important single influence, specially the films of Shohei Imamura like Intentions of Murder and Endless Desire. In terms of Indian filmmakers, the one I find most inspiring (other than Ray and Ghatak) is G Aravindan. His films are from some other world.
If Ashim Ahluwalia’s life were a film, which one would it be?The Spirit of the Beehive – Victor Erice
Mihir Chitre is the author of two books of poetry, ‘School of Age’ and ‘Hyphenated’. He is the brain behind the advertising campaigns ‘#LaughAtDeath’ and ‘#HarBhashaEqual’ and has made the short film ‘Hello Brick Road’
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You get the credit as well as the blame for being somewhere between mainstream and arthouse and, sometimes, for being too experimental with your work. What’s your stance on that?I personally thrive on the tension between these two worlds. If I worked either in purely mainstream film or remained limited only to arthouse cinema, I think I would be bored. It’s the friction that I love. I try to capture the multiplicity of experiences, complex characters and dense stories. For that, mainstream filmmaking can sometimes be too basic. It usually demands childlike plots and big spectacle, and doesn’t leaves me with enough to think about once the film is done. And yet, I want to be able to reach out to wider audiences and try new things. I guess I need to engage more mainstream distribution at the same time. Those audiences might not always be ready for new forms, so I think that opinion is fair.
What were your childhood and teenage years like? What role did they play in your development as a writer?As I kid, I had a pretty vivid imagination. I would make things out of broken stuff around the house. Like, I turned a broken bed into an imaginary plane when I was about six or seven. I totally imagined and inhabited these worlds that I would create, spending hours sitting there, lost in my own head. So I think filmmaking for me is just an extension of my childhood building worlds for myself. When I write, I find it quite easy to become totally immersed and completely lose track of the real world.
You studied filmmaking in New York. How did that influence your ideas?I’m really grateful to have had that opportunity because I was exposed to all kinds of films, so my vision became very wide. I didn’t need to always look to Hollywood or Bollywood; I was watching all kinds of Japanese or Iranian or Russian cinema, across all eras. I think that had a huge impact on how I see my own work now. I also got to watch Ray and Ghatak for the first time only when I went abroad. This was obviously right before the internet, and there was no way for me to get access to these films in India.
Miss Lovely is a unique film. What was its journey from conception on?In the early 2000s, I wanted to make a documentary on the sex-horror cinema that was still being made at the time, so that was the starting point. It was basically illegal pornography masquerading as feature films with sex scenes being inserted after the censor process. I was mostly fascinated with this industry that nobody talked about. It was hard to get access and I delved into it for over a year, spending time on film sets, drinking and hanging out with some seriously wild actors, directors and casting agents. Half these guys were on the run from the cops and most had fake names. I saw all kinds of mad stuff being filmed, and I was very excited to dive in and start shooting. But when I wanted people to speak on camera and let me document their lives, they all refused. They were worried about being jailed for pornography or other things; I suppose. So eventually I turned all those real stories into a fictional script for a film that I set in the mid 1980s. I just disguised the stories a bit so that people I interviewed wouldn’t get busted for telling me all their dirty secrets. That was the first draft of Miss Lovely.
Of course, in 2008, when I started making Miss Lovely, nobody in India would finance it. One studio I tried to get money from stole the storyline and made a mainstream film “inspired” by this world, which became quite successful. So, it was quite difficult and depressing and took almost four years to finish. I eventually cobbled together French, US and Japanese money and that’s how we made it. I’m just lucky it got into Cannes otherwise my filmmaking career would be over.
What, in retrospect, would you change about your film Daddy, based on Arun Gawli’s life? Or do you think it works just fine?
I like the film; I think it’s a really unconventional biopic in the sense Arun Gawli is at the centre but you never find out much about him. Was he guilty of those crimes? Was he trapped? Was he good or evil? Or somewhere in between? He remains extremely mysterious. Unlike most biopics which claim to be the real story, and you get the inside scoop on Gandhi or Abraham Lincoln or whoever, I think in reality, you never know anyone very well, and certainly not a historical figure. You barely even know yourself. So I wanted Daddy to be a film where you know about Gawli but only through other people in his life – through his family, the cops, his enemies – you get different perspectives on him and they all don’t match. But you never hear from him, so you have to make up your mind; I don’t want to tell you what to think. And after spending time with him when he was out on parole, I can tell you that’s exactly what he’s like.
I think this was a film that was maybe too experimental for the wide mainstream release it got, because it had multiple timelines running together. The same story is sometimes also told from different perspectives. This was sometimes attributed to script problems but I think the real issue was that our audiences are not used to this form of storytelling.
It’s also not very filmi, with clever dialogue or slow-motion action sequences like people were perhaps expecting. It’s grittier and more realistic. But I have to say I’m really proud of the film, and I feel like it may have another life in the near future with newer audiences.
How difficult was it for you to sell your kind of scripts earlier on?
Kind of impossible. I have scripts I’ve written over 10 years ago that are still considered too risky to finance. I don’t give up easily though. I don’t think it makes sense to be afraid of rejection or nothing interesting will ever get made.
What’s your process of writing?
I always start with research. I need to immerse myself in the world, read and get as much real information and detail as possible. Earlier it was through hanging out and talking to people who are like my characters, and now it’s through having a research team. I just need to know enough that I understand what makes this world tick; what are its logic systems; what does it look and smell like; what is its language?
Once I have all this in my head, I need to disconnect. Go away somewhere super remote and disappear until I write a first draft. At that point, I don’t speak to anyone until the draft is completely finished.
Class is a remake of the Spanish show Elite. What attracted you to take up the project?I’ve wanted to make something about teenagers for a while, the strong, conflicted emotions you feel when you’re young
It was just an accident that one day I was offered the Spanish series Elite for a possible adaptation. I had never watched it before. I had also never done a series or even actually considered it. The original show is really different from the films I make. It felt more like a tele-novella, but there was something really unpredictable about the writing – the characters, and the class conflict felt very relevant to India. I wanted freedom to make it my way, which Netflix was quite open to.
When it comes to remaking a European show, what are some rules or conditions that you kept in mind? Could you walk me through the exercise of writing a remake?I wanted the tale to be the same, but the telling to be completely different. I adapted the show through an Indian lens. Here other than class there is also caste – so that makes the conflicts more complex. The way families work, and their involvement in children’s lives is very different from Spain. So the parents here play a much larger role than in the original. The way the ultra-wealthy work in India is also different. They can buy their way through most difficult situations, which raises the stakes in a drama.
This is, of course, because there is also more corruption than in a European scenario. So, in the original the investigation remains only in flashback, but here the cops are actually part of the crime story, in the sense that they are on the payroll of one of the wealthy parents. There are a lot of social and cultural differences like this, which I had to consider. I just used the original series like one uses a source novel, for the bare plot and character arcs. Honestly, once that was down, Class just began to have a life of its own.
How is film writing different from writing for shows?Show writing is more dramatic, there are a number of arcs happening – the arc of each episode, the season arc. You need more hooks to keep audiences engaged for such a long period of time, almost 7 hours in the case of Cla$$. Also characters can’t change as much as they do in films, they have to stay closer to their “personas” so that you can milk them for multiple seasons etc. It’s mostly that their relationships with others change.
In total contrast, in a film, characters change so much by the end that they are sometime transformed beyond recognition.
Series writing tends to be more dialogue and plot heavy, more theatrically written compared to film where a lot can be communicated visually without dialogue. Film closes all the doors on the story whereas series keeps them open so they can continue for many more seasons.
Which filmmakers and films have influenced you across different stages of your life?The Japanese New Wave is probably is the most important single influence, specially the films of Shohei Imamura like Intentions of Murder and Endless Desire. In terms of Indian filmmakers, the one I find most inspiring (other than Ray and Ghatak) is G Aravindan. His films are from some other world.
If Ashim Ahluwalia’s life were a film, which one would it be?The Spirit of the Beehive – Victor Erice
Mihir Chitre is the author of two books of poetry, ‘School of Age’ and ‘Hyphenated’. He is the brain behind the advertising campaigns ‘#LaughAtDeath’ and ‘#HarBhashaEqual’ and has made the short film ‘Hello Brick Road’
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Subscribe Now to continue reading
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