|
Mon, 3rd Oct 2011  Chetan Bhagat is over with the idiot business. The author, who was miffed with the makers of 3 Idiots for not including his name in the film’s opening credits even though it was inspired from his book Five Point Someone, says he has made peace with the film’s director Rajkumar Hirani.
“I ran
into him one day and we were like, what are we supposed to do, be grumpy about this thing all our lives? Then, we decided it was time to put that behind us,” said Bhagat, who was in the Capital on Friday ahead of the launch of his latest book, Revolution 2020.
Does that mean he wouldn’t mind more adaptations of his scripts by the filmmaker? “I’ll have to think about that,” he says.
These days, there’s another filmmaker that’s drawing attention to Bhagat. In his Dusshera release Rascals, David Dhawan has named the two lead characters of the film Chetan and Bhagat. “I spoke to him on that, and believe me, we’re both pretty cool about it. It’s in good humour, and I really don’t mind ... isn’t it a big thing that central characters in a mainstream Bollywood film are now named after an English-language author?”
He adds that Dhawan had, in fact, once wanted to work with him. So, why didn’t he? “I’d love to ... I love his humour, but his films are so slapstick and although humour is important to me, so is a strong storyline ... so we need that meeting ground,” he says.
The 37-year-old’s latest title, a love triangle revolving around characters with different ideologies, is set in Varanasi, or Haridwar on steroids as he puts it. “It was while I was delivering a lecture there that I observed how youngsters in small towns have very different issues, far from the metropolises and the IITs and IIMs.”  |
