The Secrets of Rajkumar Hirani's Midas Touch Unveiled
This issue of Moneylife, a top-notch personal finance magazine, features a long interview with director and scriptwriter Rajkumar Hirani. The issue has hit the stands on Friday and contains marvellous accounts of the director's remarkable journey from humble typewriting classes in Nagpur to the glitz of Bollywood.
Tweet- Where does 'Rajkumar' come from in Rajkumar Hirani's name?
- Where did Hirani get the idea of making a film on doctors lacking in compassion?
- In 3 Idiots, Farhan confronts his father about wanting to be a photographer and not an engineer. Did that episode come from Hirani's own life?
Read all about it in the issue of Moneylife now on the stands.
Getting it right once may be attributed to co-incidence and twice to good luck. To make three movies in a row which not only became cult-classics but also all-time-great commercial hits, needs genius and oodles of attitude. Director, screenwriter and film editor Rajkumar Hirani has plenty of both, and that is apparent from his films that mirror his convictions in an unassuming way. His first foray into tinseltown was not encouraging, and he drifted into the advertising industry. But his heart lay in making films. He made the transition from advertising to filmmaking as an editor for Mission Kashmir. But it was his directorial debut Munnabhai MBBS that made audiences, as well as critics, sit up and take notice. A huge box-office success, the movie went on to become a cult phenomenon and paved the way for its sequel, Lage Raho Munnabhai. Coming in 2006, Lage Raho proved to be an even greater success than its predecessor; it not only reinvented Gandhiji, the father of the nation for the present generation, but also reinstated the importance of his teachings in a contemporary context. Gandhigiri was back with a bang... for good.
With a long string of big-budget flops in 2009, just when Bollywood was desperate for a big grosser, Mr Hirani did it again. With 3 Idiots. This last movie in the hat-trick has proved to be the highest-grossing Bollywood movie of all time, making Rs375 crore within just four weeks, and is the first movie to be released on YouTube within 12 weeks of its release in theatres. Calm and composed, Mr Hirani takes this stupendous success in his stride as he chats with Moneylife editors Sucheta Dalal and Debashis Basu and shares the story of his remarkable journey in the most down-to-earth and candid manner.
Mr Hirani's family migrated from Pakistan to Agra after the partition of India, and later moved to Nagpur where he was born. He was named Rajkumar after Rajkumar Commerce Institute, the typewriting institute that his father used to run. He was expected to study to become a CA but hated Accounts; so finally one day he mustered enough courage to talk to his father about it. This scene has been replicated in 3 idiots where Farhan (Madhavan) confronts his father and tells him that he does not want to be an engineer. The scene was really inspired from Mr Hirani's own life!
In fact, most of the scenes and characters in his movies are inspired from real life. For instance, while writing a script for Munnabhai MBBS, he incorporated many scenes in the film that were inspired from the anecdotes that he used to jot down while doing theatre with medical students way back in Nagpur. The incidents that highlighted the lack of compassion in doctors were also taken from his own life.
3 Idiots was another film for which he drew heavily from his own experiences. Discounting the controversy engulfing the film, Mr Hirani said that his own life is a testimony that success comes from doing what one enjoys the most. He tried everything, from engineering to commerce, until he got into the Film Institute (FTII) and everything changed. He not only excelled academically, he even went on to win a scholarship simply because he was enjoying himself so much.
The Film Institute was the place where Mr Hirani came into his own because of the kind of independence he experienced there, perhaps for the first time in his life. When he left the place, he knew exactly what kind of films he wanted to make. Today, at the pinnacle of success, it's not the success or failure of a film that worries him. Instead, he is more concerned whether people would like it or not. Some excerpts from the interview.
"For me, it was the joy of having made my film. Everybody who comes from the Institute comes with the dream of making at least one film. One year, I remember, during holi someone had mixed something in the bhang and everyone on campus who had even had a sip was violently sick for two days with food poisoning. The next day, I remember this guy, he was in the shower and still a little high and the door was open and he was saying, 'God, let me make just one movie and you can kill me after that'.
One of the key features of Moneylife has been long interviews with pathbreakers like Mr Hirani. The magazine's interviews with luminaries such as Amitabh Bachchan, Ratan Tata and Mukesh Ambani, sportsperson Geet Sethi, scientist CNR Rao and many others, have captured little known facts about their lives and unveiled hitherto unknown facets of their personalities. These riveting autobiographical narratives have been compiled into two books, Pathbreakers and Pathbreakers 2, which not only make for inspirational reading but are also ideal as gifts.
To know more about Pathbreakers, please log on to
http://www.moneylife.in/books/4417437.html
To read excerpts from some of the earlier interviews, please visit http://www.moneylife.in/section/78/44595.html
Notes to Editor
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Moneylife is a fortnightly magazine with unique features and powerful pedigree. It empowers the individual to invest and spend wisely by offering hard facts, insightful opinions, unbiased options and useful tips from the world of money. Moneylife is essential not only for those early in the earnings-spending-investing cycle but also those wanting to optimise their value of investments and plan for a financially trouble-free education, marriage and retirement.
- Team: Moneylife has been launched by some of India's best financial journalists. Debashis Basu, a Chartered Accountant by qualification with 25 years of experience as a journalist and the author of several business books is the Editor & Publisher. He has worked with Times of India, Business World, Business India, Business Today, Financial Express and has written columns for Business Standard and The Economic Times. Sucheta Dalal, among the best known financial journalists in India and former Business Editor of The Times of India is the consulting editor. Based on her outstanding investigative journalism spanning two decades, she was awarded Padma Shri in 2006.
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