Vidhu Vinod Chopra: I abuse for effective communication on my film’s set

	view VIDHU VINOD CHOPRA AT KHAMOSH SCREENING picture gallery

The greatest of Indian film directors were prone to it, especially those who have the Punjabi blood running in their veins. The late Raj Kapoor did it and so did the others. Liberal use of expletives and abusive language is a common and acceptable practice on a Bollywood film set. That’s the first culture test a novice has to take while entering the hallowed portals of Bollywood. If he or she is the one who gets easily offended by ‘maa-behan ki gaalis’, this probably is not the industry for him or her.

Even women producers, directors, cameramen, and choreographers don’t bat an eyelid before sending forth a volley of expletives in most manly ways to kick the butts of their subordinates and get things moving. Over the years, with the anglicization of industry, extremely offensive ‘maa-behan gaalis’ are replaced by a little less offensive four-letter words from the English lexicon.

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Vidhu Vinod Chopra is one of those notorious producers and directors known for using hot-tempered expletive-laden language during the shooting of his films. In the just concluded retrospective of his films, well-known stars and technicians kept referring to this peculiarity of his during post-screening ‘conversation’ sessions. This must have made Vidhu Vinod Chopra to come up with his explanation. He candidly admitted that he uses bad words and screams but it is less out of anger and frustration and has more to do with brevity and effective communication. The ploy never fails to work. Doing it in any other way would be a long-drawn process and a criminal waste of precious shooting time and thus money.

(Rajesh Kumar Singh is Editorial Consultant for Festivals and Markets for BollywoodTrade.com. He is a filmmaker, critic and market analyst)