Anurag Kashyap, Director, That Girl in Yellow Boots

BY RAJ S. RANGARAJAN

“I cast actors who don’t like to act” - Anurag Kashyap

Ruth (Kalki) massaging Diwakar (Naseeruddin Shah)

NEW YORK: In a candid talk in a New York hotel room, Kalki Koechlin (Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara, Dev D) and Anurag Kashyap (Dev D, Black Friday, and now director and co-writer for Yellow Boots) opened up about their latest film. The fact that these two stage actors are married to each other is incidental.

Ruth and boy friend Prashant Prakash


The obvious question: How difficult was it to direct your wife? Anurag shot back: Demanding. She (referring to Kalki, the co-writer) was the constant writer, demanding answers for everything. In what could be termed half-hearted jest, Kalki vowed “not to act in a movie where I am also the writer”. She added, “he doesn’t like to direct, he lets me be.”

At movie's premiere, the lead players and director, Kashyap


Any specific challenges you faced in shooting in Mumbai with constant traffic and crowds?

Anurag: “I had to hide cameras and shoot whenever and wherever – all in 13 days. We had no alternative, were in debt, we had to complete fast.”

Yellow Boots is a dark film about Mumbai’s underworld, about bribes, meaningful winks and nods. Ruth Edscer (Kalki) is desperately trying to locate her father. She is stubborn, an “illegal” in the country, is uncomfortable in her own sexuality and works for cash as a masseuse and one of her clients is Diwakar (Naseeruddin Shah). Relating to her real life, Kalki said, since she was born in India, she had to personally go through the hassles of obtaining her visas with its concomitant problems.

Gulshan Devaiah as the villain

Debutant Prashant Prakash (Prashant), who plays Ruth’s boy friend has the junkie role pat. Interestingly, Prashant and Kalki, the male and female leads in this film were co-winners in 2009 of the MetroPlus Playwright Award – a prize of Rs. 1 lakh for their entry ‘Skeleton Woman’ that was instituted by The Hindu for the best original, unpublished and unperformed English script.

Anurag elaborates: “An organic story with participation from all actors, with humor in the mundane in everyday life. All the actors are part of one theater group and generally hang out together. For most of them, this was their first film. I asked all of them to come over to my house (Versova in Mumbai), and just start talking, and all of them landed up in the film. I tell them what not to do, NOT what to do.”

Kalki, co-writer says, “I had no idea how to write cinematic writing and envision a movie, so I just wrote separate scenes and had conversations between the characters – people I have seen in my life, growing up in Bangalore – have seen uneducated gangsters with wads of money, who try to be sophisticated, or receptionists at corporate offices.” Bangalore-born Gulshan Devaiah (Chittiappa) is the gangster who has problems handling money and women. His previous film was Shaitaan. Puja Sarup, another stage actor who plays Maya, the talkative receptionist at the massage parlour is thoroughly in character all the time and keeps the film moving.

How Naseeruddin Shah became a supporter of Anurag’s is an interesting anecdote. “Initially when I approached him for acting in Black Friday he turned me down. He had known me as a theater person – not as a filmmaker. Later in a New York interview he had given to MTV, he had expressed a desire to work with me.” So, I promptly called him: “I have this film and I want you to act in Yellow Boots. We did all the shots in one day, and he was very generous.”

Kalki confessed that the first time I met him “I was star-struck. I went blank, I couldn’t remember my lines, it took me three takes; he’s so focused that he doesn’t shift his gaze off you, and that was unnerving. Once we got past that I was happy.”
Kalki Koechlin

Why the name? Kalki explained, “when we were writing the script, we were in London, we saw the yellow boots in a showroom: there were red, orange and yellow boots and the yellow stood out: less stereotypical than others, so…we thought of Ruth’s character, her existing displacement in a city such as Bombay and her persona in India, and we thought the yellow boots will go with the theme. They stand out in any scenario.”

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[Raj S. Rangarajan is a New York based freelance writer. He covers trend stories on art, reviews books and films for media based in New York; Toronto, Canada; Seoul, Republic of Korea; and India. He can be reached at raj.rangarajan@gmail.com]