Anurag Kashyap apologizes for Shakalaka Boom Boom

My respect for Anurag Kashyap has just gone up significantly.

Over at PassionForCinema, Anurag Kashyap, dialogue writer of Shakalaka Boom Boom has apologized for atrocities inflicted upon us.

Quote:

… worst is every time the promos come on air my daughter calls out to my maid and says, “shamsu..papa ki picture” and i try and tell her don’t say it out loud.. i hope she doesn’t tell her friends in school..or her teacher, or her school bus driver…

and then a little later

…but then did i take so much interest in the film when it was going on.. no.. was i there to tell them where everyone was going wrong.. no..did i fight for it.. no..did i care..no..well..when you don’t care then this is what you get baby..commercial or not..when you make a choice you gotta care and i didn’t..i didn’t bother..when they called me i went..what they asked me to write..i wrote..i did not add anything to it..so all i can say for it is I AM SORRY and that is not enough..all i can say is never again..

After Black Friday (which he wrote and directed) and Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd. (for which he wrote dialogues) I had a lot of respect for him. Amazing versatility! That came back crashing down after Shakalaka Boom Boom. But, now he has gone and redeemed himself.

It takes a clear-headed and courageous person to publicly admit that some of his/her work is bad. (Maybe I am partial to such people – I recently blogged about Leslie McFarlane the author of the early Hardy Boys books, and how he hated his work. Mildred Wirt Benson, who wrote some of the early Nancy Drew books, appears to like her work, and I have less respect for her.) But in the case of Anurag, I wonder how much easier this apology became because of the fact that the producers stopped paying him for his work. I wonder whether he would have done a similar apology if he was still on speaking terms with the producers.

Whatever the nitty-gritty details, I think this is a great step. I also loved the fact that Anurag blogged about why he made Black Friday and then diligently and thoughtfully answered most of the readers’ comments there. This is a celebrity who “gets” blogging. That is a rather rare phenomenon. I don’t know any other Indian celebrity in this category.

Read his entire article. And the comments – those are interesting too.