Varun Grover on Kiss: ‘Censorship is a good challenge, I find my ways around it with a new language’

Varun Grover (left); stills from his short film 'Kiss'; Swanand Kirkire.

In a classic press-release blunder Varun Grover was wrongly credited as a producer on Neeraj Ghaywan’s Cannes-premiered sophomore feature Homebound. Ghaywan’s Masaan had premiered at Cannes too, in 2015. Perhaps, that explains the gaffe in perception. Grover, however, wrote the dialogues for Homebound. “I was busy shooting my own feature film (All India Rank, 2023) at that time when Neeraj was writing the story (Homebound). When he was ready with the script, I was busy editing my film. I did a draft of the dialogue, that’s why I’m credited as the dialogue writer,” he says. And, in his customary shtick, Grover adds with a straight face, “if the film (Homebound) makes Rs 100 crore, I should get Rs 10 crore.” That sense of wry humour has helped him survive, not just as a creative in the industry but as a stand-up comic in censorial times.

His directorial debut, short film Kiss (2022), produced by Newton Cinema, released on the streaming platform Mubi this month. The cast includes noted singer-lyricist Swanand Kirkire, with whom Grover’s collaboration dates back to Masaan, when Kirkire lend his voice to Grover’s words Tu kisi rail si guzarti hai/Main kisi pull sa thartharata hoon. What does he enjoy more: acting, writing or singing? Kikire says, “Whatever happens without a problem (laughs). I’m really enjoying acting right now; I didn’t earlier.”

Kiss probes artistic freedom at odds with censorship. At a single-screen cinema, that can project a 35mm film, young director Sam (Adarsh Gourav) shows a particular scene from his film, about a boy meeting his future older self, to two middle-aged men from the CBFC: Ramesh Chauhan (Shubhrajyoti Barat) and Salil Aabid (Swanand Kirkire), for them to decide on the length of the said scene. But there’s a catch, the watches of all three men reflect different time stamps. Kiss has tries to blend a bit of sci-fi (time travel) with nostalgia for old-world cinema. Grover packs in childhood trauma, censorship, hypocrisy or moral crisis and self-reflection with the lost world of communal viewing of films in theatres and that evoking different responses owing to different experiences and principles the audiences hold. Time acts as the metric, for individual endurance level, as well as a metonym for the changing times. Grover aims to put a human face to such big brothers and Scissorhands who greenlight artistic creations. In hindsight, the director feels his debut is a bit wordy, “probably 30 percent of the lines could have been chopped off” but that’s the thing with first films, they act as learning springboards.

Edited excerpts from an exclusive interview with multi-hyphenate artists Varun Grover and Swanand Kirkire:

(From left) Swanand Kirkire, Adarsh Gourav and Shubhrajyoti Barat in a still from Varun Grover's film 'Kiss'.

If you could recall the experience of your first kiss?

Varun Grover: It was a very emotional moment, in my early 20s. It made me feel there is love. It was kind of very dreamy for me, I was unsure whether it was happening at all. On the road back home and days later, I was in that slightly drugged-out state. That was very new for me. I hadn’t expected that having seen multiple kisses in cinema many times over.

Swanand Kirkire: I come from Indore. And for us there, a little touch of hand was a huge thing. Kiss was a far-fetched thing. We’d always think about how it would feel, whether and when it would happen to us. When it did, in my early 20s, my heart was pounding. It was a big thing. I remember crying after that. The fact that I was getting that kind of acceptance and embrace from someone made me very emotional. Of somebody letting you so close to them and trusting you. The sense of acceptance is what I remember from it.

What was the genesis for the story of Kiss?

VG: Sometime in 2018, I read that the censor board (Central Board of Film Certification or CBFC) asked for a particular kissing scene which was 22 seconds in the film to be reduced to 11 seconds. I kept thinking, why have they arrived at this particular number, how do their systems work, whether there’s some internal clock which says 11 seconds is not too uncomfortable but 12 seconds is. There lay the thought process. Then I thought, why not go beyond pontificating and figure out what it is, because there are people like us in the censor board, probably they have grown up in homes like ours, cities like ours, gone to the same colleges and schools. So, there has to be something which happened in their lives which makes them apt for a censor job, and apt for giving such diktats. So, I wanted to have a slightly understanding look, instead of just saying, they are stupid conservative folks, but to figure out what makes them that. I wrote the entire script in one day, sitting at home during COVID, and then, while reading and reworking, it kept evolving.

Did you choose the short film format so as not to lock horns with the CBFC?

VG: No, I still want to send this film to the CBFC and see how they respond. This is a story or kind of a vignette which lends itself very easily to a short film format. I can’t imagine a feature film on this particular idea. Of course, there are many things I still want to explore in multiple future stories I tell, but not in this particular specific genre. And I wanted the entire film to be set inside the cinema hall and also hint at our relationship with cinema and cinema hall and that dark space where there are people watching something together. It is a very therapeutic space for a lot of us who watch and love cinema. For me, this was just the perfect length.

What was your intention with the film?

VG: We wanted the audience to also have that feeling of discomfort and imagining what could it be that the men are reacting so strongly to. We wanted to show the discomfort and show the reason behind the discomfort and have the audience judge the kiss on its own. To see how uncomfortable that makes you. After knowing the reasons why some people are uncomfortable with it. And if you are still uncomfortable, then maybe you go back to the film and see what doors you can open for yourself. So, that was the kind of game I wanted to play.

Adarsh Gourav in a still from 'Kiss'.

Tell us about the choice of the film’s cast.

VG: So, initially, I actually wanted Swanand sir (Salil Aabid) for the other role (of Ramesh Chauhan, the other censor board officer) which is played by Shubhrajyoti Barat. But he was unavailable at that time. I wanted Swanand sir and Shubhra da for those roles specifically because I wanted the characters to be slightly ambiguous looking, where they are not the typical traditional, strong, patriarchal men, such as the father in Udaan (2010), for example. A very clearly masculine image. But I wanted people who have very sensitive faces, who have this quality where they can look vulnerable, like a person next door. What is great about Swanand sir’s acting is that he’s so natural, he doesn’t act. The same is true for Shubhra da. He has great theatre experience. I’ve seen him in many roles, from a play called Park, to Kaumudi, and now in Puraane Chawal. He’s very malleable. And has a great sense of humour, though we did not use that in the film. I wanted to have faces, of people from the censor board who are not easily bracketed into a very angry, brute kind of a person. Same for Adarsh (Gourav), whom I saw in the trailer of The White Tiger (2021) and was fascinated by his face. On his Instagram, I saw he was the kid from Rukh (2017). These actors have very shapeshifting kind of personalities. I wanted those kinds of faces.

Is becoming a director a purely creative impulse or is it also to wield some power in the industry?

VG: No, there are certain stories you want to tell in your own way, because as a director you have way more creative control than as a writer, because then you give the story to the director and then they interpret it. But as a director, I want to interpret my own story. And that process, albeit very tiring and very frustrating, it is very, very fulfilling. I’m not going to direct every film I write but there are certain scripts I want to do myself. And then there are stories which I will just write for other directors I like.

Could you talk about the current crisis, from writing to music, in Hindi films?

SK: That is a vast question. I’m a part of the crisis. And I don’t understand whom to blame for it. But we are going to go through a big transformation, that’s what I understand and think. But at any place, at any given moment, a good story told well is always appreciated by the audiences. I can talk about the rights of the lyricists. I know that we are fighting the fight for the dues, for the due credits, due royalties, due everything for the lyricist on every front. From cassettes to CDs to now streamings or YouTube, whenever the mediums change, the crisis arises again. We need to fix these problems and we are working towards that. Actually, I have a very big answer to your question…maybe, another time.

What is the harshest thing you have had to endure in the industry?

VG: It is difficult to choose one. There are a lot. It happens a lot with everyone in the beginning. When I went to someone and I finished some project for them and it was greenlit. I did the pilot and everything and after three months I thought now I can ask for my fees. I went to them to talk about money. That person asked me to pay money monthly to him instead because he said I was getting a first project with him and I was learning so much. So, I had to quit something which I had built from scratch. And, also, the most offensive thing someone has told me last month was, ‘are you that content creator?’ I was very hurt.

SK: Actually, there are many harsh things you have face in the industry. But one of the harshest was, in the beginning of my career in 1998-99, when I was thrown out of a film and left stranded on the road. So, I was supposed to write a film for someone. They took us all to Khandala. There the director changed his mind and sent me back in a car, without telling me the reason. When I returned and inquired with the star who was in the film and had got me the project, he said: ‘these things keep happening in the industry!’ You have to keep hearing that at every step of your career here. I think that’s very harsh.

What distinguishes a good script from a bad script? 

VG: The sense of time and place makes a great script, it’s what makes a great film also. A good script always has a very specific time and place. If you take out the script from that time or place, it should collapse. That script you can transplant to any country, any place, any time, and it will survive.

A favourite writer-director of all time?

VG: Sai Paranjpye.

SK: Same! Sai Paranjpye. And I’d love to work with Anurag Kashyap and Vikramaditya Motwane.

ALSO READ: Vikramaditya Motwane: ‘I’m an enabler not disruptor, that’s Anurag; we are a very sensitive country’

Anurag Kashyap spoke of a trial room effect for the current crop of Bollywood filmmakers who, having grown up on existing cinema, tend to replicate or imitate established cinematic styles and visual language.

VG: I think since the time I have been here and Mr Kashyap himself has come here, it has never been easy making films in the city. The kind of films you want to make. Films, individuals, individual voices have always found it difficult to survive. They have always struggled. Mr Kashyap had to break so many walls and barriers to make the kind of films he wanted to make. His first three films did not even get a release, Black Friday (2003) and Paanch (2004). And even No Smoking (2007) got stuck. Then he finished it somehow. And there were so many, every one of them, including Vishal Bhardwaj, Anurag Kashyap or anyone you name, even a film like Khosla Ka Ghosla! was in the box for two years after being made [in 2004]. Then, somehow it got a release [in 2006] and, then, it became a big thing. And, then, Dibakar Banerjee got going. But it has never been easy for voices who want to make something against the grain of the day. And the grain of the day right now is making a war film, for example, or a film about an angry man on a revenge mission. Angry men with weapons. Just because you have a weapon, everything and every problem looks like a nail that you have to hammer. I don’t think it’s going to be very difficult to make such films.

Can one make a Masaan (2015) again, which you co-wrote with Neeraj Ghaywan?

VG: Even at that time, Masaan happened almost like a miracle. So, yeah, miracles keep happening. I mean, All We Imagine as Light (2024) happened from India. Everyone figures the way to make the kind of stories set in our world or the world we know. Like Payal Kapadia knows Bombay and she loves Bombay. She made something about Bombay and women of Bombay, working women of Bombay. Okay, she had French producers, but so did Masaan and (Kanu Behl’s) Titli (2014). You find a way to make things happen.

Do writers get royalties?

VG: We are getting close to cracking that. And there is a proper movement happening now to get royalties for writers. And we are hoping it will be sorted. Just like lyrics writers get royalties, screenwriters should, too, but they don’t. They will, hopefully, in a year from now.

Varun, you’re called the title king in Bollywood. The tiles of both of your directorials, Kiss and All India Rank, and of Reema Kagti’s Superboys of Malegaon are in English. Doesn’t that alienate the Hindi-speaking audience?

VG: All India Rank is written on every board in small cities of India. It was chosen because it is part of the common lingo. And Kiss… who says chumban in Hindi in today’s time? Everyone says kiss. Superboys of Malegaon is set in Malegaon and has a Superman angle in it but because of copyright issues, we couldn’t use Superman since it’s an international franchise. So, I think that’s why Superman didn’t come in the title, and we had to change it to Superboys. But I hope that the next film I make will be in pure Hindi or Bangla.

Were you going to direct Superboys of Malegaon?

VG: No, I was writing it and I was the executive producer. And, then, we figured that when the script will be ready, we’ll decide. But I was doing my own feature, All India Rank, at the time.

ALSO READ: When Supermen of Malegaon exists, why Superboys of Malegaon was made

Adarsh Gourav in a still from 'Kiss'.

Both All India Rank and Kiss have an adolescent angle to it. That has gone missing in Hindi cinema. Will this theme recur in your future work?

VG: The other two scripts I’m writing right now don’t have that angle explicitly. But generally, I feel, our youth, our teens, from the ages of 13 to 19, are the most formative years of our lives. They tell us a lot about who we are and shape us into who we would become. So, that theme I don’t think will ever go away from my writings. I write a lot for children and young adults. I have written a graphic novel (Biksu). My partner Raj Kumari has illustrated and co-written it. There are many things I do for that age group. And I feel that is something which I feel is very important to do.

Do you now self-censor as a screenwriter and stand-up comic?

VG: So, there are so many challenges already in the world. As an artist, you deal with many challenges. So, yes, censorship is one more challenge. But I am not frustrated by it. It is unfair but I don’t mull over how bad censorship is. I find my ways around it. I find a new language, a less offensive language. I think of better and funnier ways to convey my thoughts. I think that is all I can do. And it is a good challenge.

Swanand, where is Bandwaale stuck? That was supposed to be Zahan Kapoor’s debut.

SK: No, it is not stuck. It is with Amazon Prime. And in their scheme of things, whenever it will come, it will come. I don’t have that answer.

ALSO READ: Zahan Kapoor — An actor prepares; ‘I don’t feel crushed, I feel inspired’

What next?

VG: There is an anthology film which I have co-produced, and co-directed with Ambiecka Pandit (Under the Waters) who did Black Warrant; Faraz Ali (Shoebox) who made Obur, which won lots of awards; and Zoya Parvin who has made a short film (Clean). It’s a film with four interconnected stories set in a hospital, which is kind of a microcosm for India. Then, there are stories of various people trying to belong.

SK: I have acted in two-three films. I’m writing something for myself and for OTTs. I have released three-four individual songs and will release more. Rajkummar Rao’s film Maalik, which will be released in July, I’m a part of that.