#MakingWhatBollywoodWouldnt.
Actor Abhay Deol has been using this hashtag to explain the making of some of his movies, which have a cult status now.
As a part of this series, he discussed Manorama Six Feet Under a few days ago.
And today, he elaborated on the process of making Dev D, which gave a modern twist to the old classic Devdas.
It was Abhay, who came up with the concept, after he read the book and realised that the characters needed to be redefined.
I could see that the character was a chauvinist, a misogynist, entitled, and arrogant. Yet he had been romanticized for decades! The women on the other hand were strong and had integrity, but there was still that expectation for them to love their man no matter what. I wanted to change that.
Obviously, he faced a lot of challenges on the way as the makers felt it was ‘too much of an art-film’.
However, he eventually got Anurag Kashyap on board.
Abhay’s vision was to empower women in the story (Mahie Gill as Paro and Kalki Koechlin as Leni/Chanda), and not give Dev an unncessary redemptive arc.
I wanted to empower them, shed the image of the “good, devoted, woman”. It was time to make them independent, not defined by the man they love, or by men in general.
In fact, in his version, Dev died right outside Paro’s house after being shot by the police. Anurag, though, thought it was too dark and said it would be better if Dev and Chanda get together.
Anurag felt a happy ending would make the film more accepted by the audience, and his twist was to have Dev and Chanda fall in love. My vision was too dark! I went with the flow, and even brought my buddies Twilight Players to feature in it.
The rest, as Abhay says, is history. You can read the complete post here:
