| ||||
Wednesday, 19th Nov 2014, 3:03 PM IST Hansal Mehta is known to make out-of-the-box movies and his next film starring Manoj Bajpayee and Rajkummar Rao is based on a gay professor. Manoj will be seen playing the role of the professor and Rao will play the role of a journalist. The movie will be inspired by a real incident that took place in Aligarh Muslim University. A professor, just few days before retiring, was suspended after being captured on spy-cam while having consensual sex with a rickshawallah. It is not yet finalized that who will be cast as the rickshaw puller. Hansal and Manoj have known each other since 1993, but Mehta was anxious about approaching the actor to play gay on screen. So, he asked Mukesh Chhabra, casting director of the film, to ask Manoj. Hansal said, "After he spoke to Mukesh, Manoj called me up and let loose a volley of expletives, demanded to know why I hadn't asked him myself." The idea of making a movie on this incident was emailed to Hansal by a girl, Ishani Banerji. Talking about it, he said, "Thank god, I don't erase my emails without reading them. Apurva Israni, who edited ‘Satya’, makes his debut as a full-fledged writer with this film. A similar case happened in Baroda. We will borrow from both these incidents and a few others." "Why do we marginalise people in our society on counts like religion, sexual preferences and the likes? This film is about the draconian article 377 of IPC. How does it matter to anybody what two consenting adults do in their bedroom? I have several gay friends whose housing societies mirror the state that has become the moral police," he added. There was a buzz that Hansal wanted Nawazuddin Siddiqui to play the role of the professor. "I had spoken to him sometime ago. But after that we both got busy and lost touch. Nawaz is a phenomenal actor and I would love to work with him in future," Mehta said. When Hansal was asked if Manoj will be comfortable doing intimate scenes with another man, he said "That won't be a problem, Manoj is a director's actor. He has even started learning Marathi and getting into a professor's body language." The movie will be produced by Sunil Lulla and Hansal, and it will start rolling in January 2015. Now you can enjoy ad-free experience by downloading India’s first Box Office mobile app from here – Android:http://bit.ly/BOCapsuleMobileApp and iOS: bit.ly/BOCapsuleiOSApp |