And/Or

And/Or

The Return of the Scriptwriter?

Ashwini Malik, Direction 1994

It all began during the Wisdom Tree festival in November 2003. During a seminar on multiplexes, screenwriter Anjum Rajabali argued that no amount of new cinema halls would change the quality of our films if we continued to neglect the craft of screenwriting. And the blame for this neglect, Anjum laid squarely at FTII’s door. His logic was not difficult to see. Consider this: a country which produces more films than any other in the world and whose indigenous cinema dismisses the Hollywood threat did not have a single bonafide course that taught Scriptwriting! Not even in our premier film school, the Film and Television Institute of India! Hollywood, which produces fewer films than us, has literally hundreds of courses teaching screenwriting. Far too many perhaps; but at least it reinforces the fact that screenwriting is a craft that needs to be learnt. It is to the credit of Mr. Tripurari Sharan, Director, FTII that he took Anjum’s contention in the right spirit and offered to start a course in Screenwriting at FTII.

And so the decision was taken – FTII would start a full-fledged Certificate Course in Feature Film Screenplay Writing from the academic year 2004. In spite of his professional commitments, Anjum took on the responsibility of designing the one-year course, with assistance from screenwriter and filmmaker Vinay Shukla (Direction, 1971). Once the basic design was in place, I was offered the opportunity of being the course’s first coordinator, an offer I received with mixed feelings. I was at a crossroads in my life at the time. I had just sunk all my savings into making a feature film on DV (Clever & Lonely) and had been unable to secure its release due to lack of funding. A bit demoralized by the experience, I wasn’t sure what I would do next. What settled the issue was a closet dream I had since my college days - of becoming a teacher! So I accepted the offer – admittedly feeling a little like an escapist – and returned to my alma mater a decade after leaving it. This time I was determined to do what I didn’t as a student – study, in order to teach. Anjum and I set about finalizing the curriculum. One thing was clear from the beginning – the course would be geared towards the Indian film industry and would focus on the popular form. I was a little apprehensive about how this would go down with the FTII fraternity. As for me, it suited me just fine. In the 10 years that I had spent working in Mumbai, I could never shake off the feeling that the popular form had been largely neglected at FTII. I had very little understanding and therefore appreciation of Indian popular cinema primarily due to the condescending attitude that a lot of FTIIans (myself included) had towards it. We had brainwashed ourselves into believing that popular cinema was dishonest cinema. Yes, Ray, Ghatak, Fellini, Godard, Bunuel, Tarkovski are great masters. However, does that mean that Indian popular cinema has no merit? Can we honestly blame the form for the quality of our films? I have often had discussions with FTIIans who have said that popular cinema should be given its due because, in today’s market conditions, that is the only cinema possible. That may or may not be true; but the reason for giving popular cinema its due is not as negative as that. Popular cinema has its own independent merits. And not just because it communicates with millions of people; but because it has emerged from a long and unique tradition of several Indian arts, because it derives from the epics and from our rich folk theatre, and because it is not ashamed to learn from the efficiency and economy of Hollywood screenwriting. Yes, we should not be lifting plots from Hollywood, simply because, as I have realised after two years of intense story discussions with two batches of screenwriting students at FTII, there is just no need to lift from anywhere. Because each one of the twenty-three students of the first two batches had – would you believe it – original, engaging stories to tell! Was I startled by this? Well yes, frankly. But why? We have a great legacy of story-telling, don’t we? We have problems in this country, don’t we? Don’t we feel pain, anger, joy, love, hope, disappointment, agony, ecstasy, angst… Then why shouldn’t our screen stories be original, and alive, and engaging?

Our aim in this course was clear: we would first help students discover stories within themselves and then train them to craft those stories into screenplays. The process that we followed was pretty methodical. Each student would begin with a story idea (originated by the student), brainstorm on that idea with the entire class in order to help the student discover the story within that idea. Then the student would formulate a premise or a description of the central conflict, identify the main character/s, understand the characters by delving into their lives, write character biographies, brainstorm again during workshops, write a treatment, bring it back to the workshop for a discussion and then start crafting the screenplay. In addition to the theory lectures, of which Anjum took the onus upon himself, and the workshops that I conducted, their training included regular viewing of world cinema, script analyses and presentations. Last year we introduced the study and analysis of works of literature. There were also regular visits from writers and directors who didn’t think twice before coming down to the institute to interact with the students. Adoor Gopalakrishnan (Direction 1965), Govind Nihalani, Prakash Jha, Saeed Mirza (Direction, 1976), Anurag Kashyap, Sriram Raghavan (Direction 1987), Bhavani Iyer, Kundan Shah (Direction, 1976), Vinay Shukla, Sooni Taraporewala, Ashok Vishwanathan (Direction, 1985)… – they were all eager to see new screenwriters emerge. An interesting dimension that we included in the course was a study of indigenous narrative traditions, mythology and music – via two workshops conducted by Dr.Ashok Ranade and Prof.Sadhana Naithani.

In my two years as course coordinator, it became clear that there is absolutely no dearth of writing talent in this country. In the last two years, several production houses and directors – Entertainment One, UTV, iDream Production, Subhash Ghai (Acting, 1965), Percept Picture Company, Sriram Raghavan - visited the course and our students pitched their scripts to them professionally. The response has been more than encouraging. Perhaps, after all, this course has done something right. And as the students make their way in the real world, collecting more stories as they mature, accumulating the ammunition of angst and ecstasy, they will continue to hone their skills. I certainly don’t feel like an escapist any more. If anything, I feel guilty: after all, I was actually being paid to be at FTII, doing something I loved doing, something that may even be important!

Yes, there are issues which we continue to address – shouldn’t the students be given some basic training in the other aspects of filmmaking, as in the first year of the diploma courses? Shouldn’t we somehow ensure that they get to see their work on screen? Complex questions these with no simple answers, given the factors that govern the functioning of the FTII. Perhaps next, a debate on these issues is in order.

Now, two years later, as I move back to Mumbai to make my next film (yes, within the popular form), I do so with a feeling of cautious fulfilment. A permanent screenwriting course is now in place at FTII, the wisdom tree is happy to lend its shade to writers, trained screenwriters are hitting the industry with self-assurance. Perhaps soon the growing number of cinema halls will be screening films with fresh, original and well-crafted screenplays. A pipedream you say? I don’t think so. No, definitely not.