Keith Gomes Talks New Short Film, Life after ‘Badass Ravi Kumar’, and His Dystopian Sci-Fi Script for Salman Khan

Where to begin with Keith Gomes? His is not a filmography—or a life—easily made sense of. He was a visual effects supervisor on Gayab (2004). He survived a car crash in 2009. He agitated during the Jan Lokpal movement. He’s worked with tribal communities in Chhattisgarh and Odisha. One of his screenplays was a finalist at the Sundance Script lab. Oh, and he also co-wrote Kick (2014), starring Salman Khan, and, earlier this year, directed Badass Ravi Kumar, a winking trainwreck of a spoof, pairing Himesh Reshammiya with a chainsaw, a heavy-duty machine gun and a thousand cigarettes he never smokes. Those who saw it in theatres recall a painless lobotomy, blissful and blank. The film ran 50 days at Gaiety Galaxy.

We connect over Zoom. Keith is at his home in Mulund, lounging in his garden, ‘looking at butterflies’. He’s returned to a more earthbound space, having directed a short film on child trafficking in Bihar. Titled Dear Men (on YouTube), it’s inspired by the real-life heroics of social worker Dipesh Tank. In 2018, Tank, pretending to be a film director, complete with fake crew, rescued two minor missing girls from the stronghold of a flesh trader. From a parody of '80s masala to an Argo-like dramatisation of a real mission, it’s another leap into the surreal extremes of cinema.

“Dipesh and I have been friends since our Anna Hazare days,” Keith shares. “He’s a hardcore social worker and a Governor's Award recipient. He’s done extraordinary things in the past, like help arrest 140 men who’d harass female commuters on Mumbai local trains.”

Some years ago, Keith and Tank were travelling across North and Central India to research a documentary on the Bedia community, notorious for inducting their girls into the sex trade. During their journeys, Tank started telling him about his rescue stories. One in particular caught his ear. “Some parts of the story, which I did not show, had elements of disturbing black-comedy. The images were harrowing.” In Dear Men, the role of the undercover rescuer is assumed by Sayani Gupta, a gender flip encouraged by Tank himself. “Since she dons the guise of a man for her mission, it has the spiritual context of the Ardh-Nari,” Keith says.

Keith readily concedes the gulf between his socially conscious shorts (Dear Men, Shameless, Doobie) and his more blithesome Bollywood work. “After six years of social work in the interiors in Odisha, I was completely broke when Sajid Nadiadwala called me and asked me to write Kick.” He’s made his peace with the demands of mass commercial filmmaking—broad strokes, sentimentality, superficiality. “In India, our conflicts are still roti kapda makkan. For first-world audiences, it’s weather and taxes.”

Badass Ravi Kumar, he assures me, did not emerge from a cynical space. “Himesh kept insisting, ‘Keith, we need trollers, we need to be trolled’. But while shooting I realised even the trolls will lap up this movie.”

He feels confident the film will attain cult status over time, if it hasn’t done so already. “I was at the Housefull 5 success party when I got introduced to Vishal Bhardwaj. He loved Badass Ravi Kumar.” The Maqbool and Haider director told him it takes conviction to make a film like that. ”I was like, ‘Are you kidding me?’ But he was serious. He even called two of his associates who had seen the film twice.”

Congratulatory phone calls and texts also came in from Shridhar Raghavan, Sujoy Ghosh, Tiger Shroff, John Abraham and Sajid Nadiadwala. Which prompts the question: why isn’t the film on OTT yet? “I know every streaming platform wanted the film. Discussions are going on. But that’s Himesh’s call. I trust his judgement.”

One of Keith’s long-cherished dreams has been to make a film with Salman Khan. In 2011, he’d narrated a futuristic dystopian sci-fi film to Salman, built around the theme of water scarcity. “It was set in 2147. It’s about different Indian tribes banding together to fight the British who come as savages. Salman was supposed to play the hero who reunites all the tribes. The film was called Tiranga at the time. It depicted the rebirth of a nation in the future.” Salman, though impressed, passed it on.

At present, Keith has two scripts he’s shopping around in the mainstream: Thunder Singh, a romantic mass actioner, and Love Hai Toh Sab Kuch Hai, a rom-com with action elements. With dystopia no longer an alien concept to Indian moviegoers—Kalki 2898 AD, Ganapath and UI were some recent attempts, with varying success—would he like to revive his sci-fi idea with Salman?

“I would always love to make a film with him,” Keith says. “But I don’t know if it will be this one. In the South, producers take risks on big conceptual ideas. They put their faith behind ₹300 to 400 crore projects. In Bollywood, that space is limited. But if times change…”