‘Yash Raj Films just wiped out three years of my life,’ says Devashish Makhija | Bollywood News

Devashish Makhija has made four films in the 20 years he’s been in the film industry. He’s desperate to get on set again, having just returned from filming Gandhari, his maiden Netflix original, starring Taapsee Pannu. The reasons are both creative and financial. After the failure of his last film Joram, which he produced independently, he’s been getting calls to repay the money he lost. He even opened up on his financial crisis recently, only to clarify later that he doesn’t want to romanticize his struggle. “But none of it was untrue. This is the same house that I didn’t pay rent of for six months,” he tells SCREEN.In an exclusive interview, Devashish talks about how his journey led him to this point, whether awards open doors for indie filmmakers like him, and the way ahead to leave a lasting legacy in Hindi cinema.
You started your career as an Assant Director, on both Black Friday (2004) and Bunty Aur Babli (2005). At that time, was it case of two roads diverged in a wood and you took the road less taken?There was no red pill, blue pill. It was a black pill. It’s been a very confusing journey. That’s why I’m 45 and I’m making my fifth film. If I had the two paths, choose one option, I’d be sitting on my 11th or 12th one. After Bunty Aur Babli, I was making an animation film for Yash Raj Films and Disney. When the first animation film they made, Roadside Romeo, tanked, they pulled the plug on my film. That was three years into production. I was to fly and do the final production at Pixar. I lost three years there. I don’t know, accidentally or synchronically, I went down the Yash Raj path. But because that film got shelved, I walked away from a three-film deal I had with them. Because nobody told me a film three years in production can get shelved. They just wiped out three years of my life.
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That’s when I went to this trip to Chhattisgarh, Odisha, and North Andhra to understand the Naxalite situation. I was very obsessed with understanding the politics of the rebel and what’s happening in India. Because what you read in the mainstream news, no matter how left-leaning the news portal, you don’t get the real picture. So I thought maybe I wasn’t meant to do this (mainstream movies), let me just go there and see who I want to be. I travelled for three months and came back with so many stories! I thought I can’t pick up a gun, I can’t be a political leader, I can’t be a journal, so let me come back and tell the stories. That made me shift to the Black Friday kind of space. That wasn’t an active choice, but a circumstantial one.
Also Read | Devashish Makhija says Netflix needed a lot of convincing for Gandhari: ‘Taapsee Pannu and Kanika Dhillon fought for me’
Does the PTSD of having a film three years in production get shelved stay with you? Even though Netflix has commissioned Gandhari, do you still feel anxious about its release?It does. Gandhari almost got shelved four times during prep. Every time, we had to crunch the budget and the number of days. My teams changed, my EPs left, my first AD left. Two-three of us have stood in front of its shelving, saying no, we’ll crunch it further. It’s a Bengal story. I didn’t go there even for a day. I cheated Bengal in Maharashtra. Every morning, I used to wake up and think, ‘No, I need to ensure the film doesn’t get shelved today.’
Do you think this film will open more doors for you?I don’t know, I’m not holding my breath. Bhonsle got more noticed than Ajji. Joram got a lot more noticed than Bhonsle. They opened zero doors. But what I’m open to doing now, which I wasn’t before, is lening to scripts. Because I want to be on the location shooting than be locked up in a room. I’ve done 15 years of that, and I’m just feeling that I deserve that change. So lening to already greenlit scripts, the chances of getting them on floors sooner and more frequently will rise.Story continues below this ad
You won a couple of Filmfare Awards for Joram last year. Did that not open doors either?It’s an interesting question. When they called my name for the (Best) Story award, I went up the stage very slowly and saw Rajkummar Rao there presenting the award, I was thinking I’d made a l of 20 awards I want to win. That had the Booker, the Pulitzer, the Oscar, the Palme d’ Or. The Filmfare was nowhere in there. But I won it, I don’t know what to do with it, but “F*ck! I won a mainstream award!” How often does that happen to someone like me? So no validation, none of that, it just felt like a very welcome surprise to be acknowledged something that far on the spectrum from the space I’m trying to inhabit.
Have actors like Rajkummar or others not reached out to you asking to work together?Not really. But say, the people I want to work with, from Vikrant (Massey) to Rajkummar, they’ve spoken to me in the past. But no, not any direct ‘want to work with you’ kind of communication. They’re also the actors who are so busy right now! Even if they do reach out to me, they’d be like, “Can we do something in 2031?” So where will that conversation go?
How is your financial position now? Has Gandhari helped on that front?I’m still paying off those debts. It’s a long road. I don’t know when that journey will end. Estimating another one-and-a-half years. All the money I’m earning now, it’s getting funneled there.
Will you ever produce a film independently again?I don’t think so. Not because I’m afraid to, but I realised while producing that you need certain mental and psychological chops to be a producer, especially in Mumbai, independent or not. Because I’ve spoken to a lot of independent producers in the Malayalam film industry, the Marathi film industry, and in the Northeast, they operate like families. Everyone’s gotten each other’s back. Even the dributor is a friend of the investor and the producer. That’s not the case in Mumbai. There’s zero sense of community. Everyone’s out to get everyone else down.Story continues below this ad
You need a certain kind of thick skin to not get affected someone else’s need or what you owe them. I’m not the first producer in this town who went into debt. But I’ve seen a lot of producers not get affected all those legal notices and that clamour of money they owe to people. I get very affected. I get so affected that my IBS kicked in, I’m having loose motions for days, my hands go clammy when I’m talking about this. I have the chops to pull off impossible films creatively. I don’t have the chops to not answer calls when I owe someone money.
I’ve come out of prostate cancer, my father died of the Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, my mother died of cancer, I never took a loan. I’ve struggled to make ends meet in my initial years in Mumbai, I never took a loan. How the f*ck I took a loan for a film? How stupid is that? How blinded and desperate can someone be to put their art out that you take a loan for that, at the expense of one’s own mental, physical, and psychological health? I’m a great producer on the field, but I can’t be beholden for money. That’s a pressure I can’t handle.
Anurag Kashyap also gave up on production for similar reasons. Do you relate to that?
Anyone who has creative sensitivity doesn’t make the producer who needs to handle money. That bargaining with workers, not paying people, stringing them along for three months, because you’re also working off a limited box of wealth… those are chops you need to finetune over years. I never thought of doing that and that just bit me in the bum quite badly. I’m sure Anurag also should feel this way because he has a mushy, little creative child inside. And that personality can’t handle this. You can’t be both.Story continues below this ad
Do you then, like him, want to go to Kochi and make films there?I would love to! I’ve reached out to some Malayalam producers and tried to speak. But generally, there’s a bit of a firewall because I don’t speak the language, I don’t know the culture. I don’t know if even I make a film, will I know the nuances enough to be able to subconsciously bring them to the fore? I’m from Kolkata. When my films here weren’t getting made 10-12 years ago, I went back and spoke to a bunch of producers there. They all told me, ‘You’re not a Bengali. We can’t put money on you. We don’t know if you’ll catch the pulse of the Bengali audience.’ I said, ‘Fair enough. But I’m not exactly a Hindi person either. So where do I go exactly?’