Feature: Screenwriter Akshat Verma (“Delhi Belly”)

I’ve been tracking Delhi Belly, a new comedy from India — here and here. As I understand it from all the comments helpfully provided by GITS readers who either live in India or follow Bollywood, the movie is pretty much on the cutting edge there. So when I found this article in Tehelka (“India’s Independent Weekly News Magazine”) featuring a first-person article by the movie’s screenwriter Akshat Verma, I thought it would be interesting to see what he had to say about the movie’s journey to production and screenwriting in general. Some excerpts:

The screenwriting programme at UCLA is nothing if not rigorous and if you’re ambitious enough — and everyone is — you write a script every quarter. That’s cranking out a feature film every 10 weeks. Thanks to this pace, small mountains of paper are generated. Two-and-a-half years later I graduated, the proud owner of my own mini-Everest, Delhi Belly now stuck somewhere near base camp.

I had a stack of first drafts, but first drafts, we all know, are almost worthless. First drafts don’t sell, first drafts aren’t filmed and until multiple rewrites happen, first drafts get you nowhere. So I had an armful of possibilities, but nothing else.

Now the problem with being a screenwriter — actually, there are many, but let’s stay on point here for a moment — is that there is really no well-defined career path. Every writer has to beat out his or her own little road through the jungle. Unlike every other productive member of the workforce, there is no office you can join, clock in, clock out, write nine to five, pick up your paycheque at the end of the month. You can if you become a copywriter, a journalist — but screenwriting? Nope. You write, fuelled by hope, your favoured stimulant du jour and really, not much else.

— —

Getting laid-off isn’t so bad. For about three days. After that, the self-loathing, the questioning and the sharp spikes of depression set in.

I was past the three days. Endless free time doesn’t sit well with me. I was sleeping through days and nights, just so I wouldn’t think. My brain had slowly leached onto my pillow.

The phone rang. I couldn’t drag myself up to get it. It died, began ringing again. Dammit. I picked myself up at 48 fps.

“Hello?”

“Dude.”

It was Jim. Also known as The Furgele, and depending on the day, Chuckles, for his rampant misanthropy.

“I heard you’re trying to set up your movie. You should let me help you. I can make it happen.”

Jim and I had been at UCLA together. In fact, he had been in Richard Walter’s workshop with me, when I was writing the first draft of Say Cheese [aka Delhi Belly].

Really, what did I have to lose? It’s not like sacks of money were crashing through the ceiling, pulled in by my magnetic aura. “Okay.”

That evening, Jim came over. We’re flying to India, he informed me, to attend FICCI Frames, an industry event. The idea was to meet everyone in town and pitch them Delhi Belly.

— —

After much rejection in life, I’ve finally come to realise that rejection is a good thing. Many years ago, I was rejected by every institution of higher learning in India — FTII, NID, MCRC Jamia Millia. In case I didn’t get the message, some of them spared the time and energy to reject me twice.

But had this not happened, I never would’ve dragged myself up and applied to UCLA. And studying at UCLA was the best thing that ever happened to me.

If Delhi Belly had been picked up when we were doing the rounds in Mumbai, it never would’ve have gotten to Aamir Khan — and who knows what kind of film it would then have turned out to be.

In the moment, rejection can be soul-sapping, but if you fight through it, you realise what you’re made of — if you remain undeterred by what are, at the end of the day, only opinions of your worth, or lack thereof, picking up and moving on becomes easier and easier.

I can say this today, only after much time has passed. Instead of hiding them, I wear my scars with pride. A rejection is nothing but the universe choosing the right fork in the road for you.

And why Jim called me out of the blue that day, I will never know. And neither does he.

Only one person has to love your script. As long as it’s the right person.

Line of the article: “Only one person has to love your script. As long as it’s the right person.”

Or as I like to say, “It only takes one set of eyeballs to change your life.”

But all that assumes you finish your script. And write a damn good one at that.

For the rest of the article, go here.

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