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Vir Das — actor, stand-up comic, theatre artist, musician, filmmaker, author and an overall chill guy — can do everything.
In just the past year, he directed (Happy Patel: Khatarnak Jasoos), released a book (The Outsider: A Memoir for Misfits), finished directing a movie (Baara Number), got nominated for another International Emmy (Vir Das: Fool Volume), underwent a physical transformation, been on tour with his old set (Sounds of India), wrote a new set (I Say We Run), did trial shows in Mumbai... and is now ready to take it to the world.
In an exclusive conversation with The Hollywood Reporter India, Das discusses his upcoming directorial Baara Number (in which he also stars), the unconventional filmmaking process behind the horror film, the philosophy driving his production company Neeche Films, and the company's ambitious five-project slate.
What can you tell us about Baara Number?
It's a found footage, pure horror film. Kavi (Shastri) and I co-wrote it, and then had these young writers called Ali, Kush and Veer do a dialogue draft on it. They are young guys, very sweet, full of testosterone, and then I directed it. It's a pretty stacked cast: Atul Kulkarni, Sheeba Chaddha, Arunoday Singh, Shriya Pilgaonkar, Ahsaas Channa, Puja Sarup, Navin Kaushik, Lyra Dutt, Suhail Nayyar and myself.
So, all of them are kind of OTT and indie film darlings, and some of them are commercial darlings.
Is it like our Blair Witch Project?
No, it's much more grounded and relevant to Mumbai; the lore is around a Maharashtrian demon. So, you know, in that sense, it's very grounded. But it was a tough, tough shoot. I've never directed horror before. This was a 20-day shoot!
Happy Patel took 30 days to make, and this took 20. How do you manage to finish films so quickly?
Because this film is entirely handheld. It has 13-14 oners (long continuous takes). So, you're seeing 20 days of shoot, but there's also... every actor gave me 15 days of workshops. So, we shot the movie twice before we actually shot the movie, with the actors! We shot it once on a cell phone, then we shot it once on a good camera on location, then we built the thing and shot it. But I just had really good actors and a lot of them have theatre backgrounds, so they could stay in character for six and a half minutes.
You might only be in the foreground for 30 seconds of those six and a half minutes, but you have to be in character in the background, as the camera spins around 360 degrees.
I'm also in the movie; so it was like, doing a scene, running behind the monitor, but knowing I must hit that mark over there when the camera spins back around. A lot of it is set on one location. There was no crew... we just locked the door, and we'd go for it. There were no hair checks, make-up checks, cell phones or entourages. We never looked at the monitor once. It was hidden behind a black cloth somewhere, and I'd look at it after I was done with six takes.
So, the tough thing with that is, if it's a six-minute take, and then, in the fifth minute, one guy laughs a little bit, you've got to go all over again. You really have to be very patient with each other and know each other very well.
You're on to something with such a no-frills focus on the film to get it made.
So, we're making a slate of movies — five projects. It's kind of based on how we made Happy Patel and Baara Number, where we don't think films have to cost the sun and the moon to be made.
Anything that is made on a smaller budget, we feel like people aren't having enough fun. So, a lot of things tend to be like pathos, very artistic, but nobody’s just doing silly or horror or comedy on really low budgets, with really high concepts. The idea was to reverse that.
After Happy Patel, we kind of became this lighthouse for young writers. A lot of guys just wrote in to us, saying, 'Man, I loved Happy Patel, it was awesome, I sat with my friends and I had this mad idea.' And then we got a hundred scripts and we're like, 'Oh, all of these can be done on smaller numbers.... if we follow two rules.'
... which are?
We make it a rule that we offer actors things that they don’t normally get offered. So, if you look at Mona Singh in Happy Patel, she'd never been offered anything like that before. And she killed it, she had a blast. So, we went to these 15 people for Baara Number and offered them different things.
We're calling it Neeche Films… because we're, allegedly, one of the lower rungs on the ladder. But also, I remember once being with a producer, and he was like, ‘Beta, tumhara audience bohot neeche hain,' and he meant to say ‘niche’. So, we were like, let's just make it Neeche Films! And let's make them on a budget with which we feel completely free.
So, you're not burdened by old school Bollywood barometers of recovery. You can do boutique releases and be innovative about the release as well. We're making five of them in different genres, and the audience we're going for isn't actually tough to reach. Like comedians reach them far easier without marketing agencies and standees; it's a native online audience that is very easy to reach.
Watch the full interview dropping later tonight on The Hollywood Reporter India's YouTube channel