Milking success

A documentary (or is it a mockumentary?) on the making of Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s sleeper hit ‘12th Fail’, starring Vikrant Massey, is an interesting idea to begin with. Especially since post-hit book releases on the making of blockbuster films have barely registered with the audience or book lovers. That idea, in fact, died down fast enough after ‘The Making of Lagaan’.

For one, mockumentaries are much more accessible. This one releases in the theatres and is likely to find a life of its own on a major OTT platform. So, it’s another revenue generating stream for the unexpected bonanza that was ‘12th Fail’.

The film tells us that the initial plan was to get a young director to direct this film, but everyone who was chosen, five directors in fact, decided the script wasn’t up their street. So, the job eventually fell into VVC’s hands, but the producers were not happy about that either. They did not want VVC to direct the film because, according to them, the script did not have any high emotion, action, comedy or heavy drama typical of VVC’s earlier hit films. Then there was a lot of discussion around casting of the lead actor. Some felt Varun Dhawan was better suited for the lead role and had a bigger draw at the box office, but VVC wanted someone who could blend in with the milieu, not stand out.

The script was trivialised by a lot of people. VVC kept asking for inputs from his regular team of writers, but they too felt the film would never be made. The mockumentary opens with the making of a song for ‘12th Fail’ with Swanand Kirkire and team singing it raw and Chopra joining in with his vocals. They sound awful but that’s the point. It’s a creative process and has to go through different stages before being finalised.

Much of the footage is repetitive and tiresome. The recce, finalising of locations, rehearsals, repositioning, shooting in Chambal, the railway station sequence, the scene involving the coaching centres, the crowd scenes, the ridiculous search for an atta chakki — all get repeated and refined as per Chopra’s desires. It’s a tedious process, utter chaos reigns, but there’s obviously a method to the madness on display.

As Chopra admits: “While making ‘12th Fail’, most of the time I was clueless about what I was doing, but I didn’t give up and followed my passion and kept doing what I felt was right.” For an experienced, multiple award-winning filmmaker to admit to that is a big thing. The final product was universally loved. Whatever be the madness and the chaos on sets, Chopra stuck to his vision and achieved his goal. The rest is history, as they say.

‘Zero Se Restart’ is a companion piece lending levity and context to that achievement.