Top 60 Vikramaditya Motwane Quotes

Indian audience has a mindset that a movie which does well at film festivals will necessarily be slow and boring.

In 2007, I probably wrote four screenplays in the entire year. Every three months I was writing a screenplay.

Personally, the films I love include ‘Black Friday,’ ‘Lage Raho Munna Bhai,’ ‘Love Sex Aur Dhoka,’ and ‘Zindagi Na Milege Dobara’ because they work at the box office and are complete packages.

Trapped’ is the story of a guy stuck in an apartment with no food, no water and no electricity, and of his survival based on his primal instincts.

Box office does matter. One cannot ignore it.

Post my parents’ divorce, when I was 10, my mother, Deepa Motwane, took up a job as a line producer with documentary filmmaker Shukla Das, who was a cousin of hers. When I was 17, she did a TV talk show and I helped her with research and assisted her as she was also producing that show.

Actors love… at the end of the day, stars are actors. They love performing. And the more challenges I feel that you end up giving stars on the sets, the happier they are.

Trapped’ is unique because it focuses on one character who is stuck in an apartment.

While writing ‘Bhavesh,’ I pretty much chewed up every single graphic novel I could get my hands on, so all the way from the entire ‘Batman’ series, Frank Miller’s ‘Batman,’ Ed Brubaker’s ‘Batman,’ Scott Snyder’s ‘Batman,’ all the way through ‘Daredevil’ to ‘100 Bullets,’ through so many other graphic novels.

It’s always a challenge to adapt a novel for screen, a visual medium.

The more shows that there are, the better it is for the industry. The writers are busy, if the writers are busy, the actors are busy.

Multiplex cinema culture has created a level-playing field for directors where small budget movies are able to break even, even make profit.

We don’t have a superhero culture. Comic books and superheroes are part of American culture. We have ‘Amar Chitrakatha,’ etc.

You want every film that you make to do well, not just indie films in general.

In India, it’s tough to shoot a period film outdoors. You cannot find mud roads without wires, signage and billboards with ads of mobile phones even in rural areas.

The most important thing in a love story for me is the intensity and passion that my lead actors bring into playing their characters.

What I loved about the 1950s is that there is an aesthetic to even the average film. The way the camera is placed, the way characters move, the way you dressed the sets, the respect for craft and actors, I do miss that in today’s films.

Censorship is a stupid thing. There should be certification, and not censorship. People are smart enough to understand that if a film is meant for kids, then kids will watch it and if a film is meant for adults, only adults will watch it.

Horror movies make a lot of money in India.

Make movies that you want to go and watch in a theatre.

I like the films that gain awareness at the end – a sort of breakout moment.

If you are irresponsible as a parent and don’t know what your kids are watching, that’s your problem. It’s not the creator’s duty to create every show in a way that a six-year-old can watch it.

You have to be honest about what kind of films you want to make.

Making realistic films is basically about the style.

I am not afraid of slowing down moments – if you have the right emotion in the right place at the right time, you can have any length of film you want.

If we go back to the birth of ‘Superman’ and ‘Batman’ in America in the ’30s, they were created because of events like the Great Depression, crime and Al Capone, among others. Everybody was corrupt back then, and if you can’t have a hero in real life, it helps to have one in your fantasies.

I have not understood till date why we censor adult films. If someone over 18 can get married, produce children and drive cars, why can’t they watch a movie?

It is okay to put as much money as you want in a story, as long as it is justified.

When you are working on a movie, you have to ensure that the journey of characters ends in two hours.

I am very excited about the TV medium and the Amazon-Netflix medium. It has been so liberating to work on these formats.

I don’t think ‘Lootera’ is slow paced; it’s finely paced for its setting and story.

Writing takes too much patience and it takes too much out of you for me to want to attempt it too often.

I had problems my entire life trying to make films. Problems come but you have to find a solution.

I love the new Marvel films, but I am not crazy about them. It is no longer a sub-genre or a fanboy genre. It has become so mainstream. You cannot say, ‘I love superhero movies.’ Everyone loves superhero movies now.

My father is a Sindhi and my mother, a Bengali.

I want to direct more often. The job of a producer brings its own benefit as you start to see the simplicity of film making. But yes there is a constant battle between the director and producer in me.

Harshvardhan Kapoor is very sincere, somebody who wears his heart on his sleeve.

Bombay is the ideal microcosm of India, of that whole sense of inequality where you could have the biggest skyscrapers next to the poorest slums.

I would love to direct a documentary film if any good subject comes my way.

It is extremely satisfying when you finish a script, but the process of it can be just nerve-wracking.

I lock myself up in the apartment when I am writing a script. There’s no phone, no Wi-Fi, no distractions whatsoever.

Bhavesh’ is my most accessible film for sure.

Showrunning is when you’re the constant creative voice in the show. For a year-and-a-half, you are working on the scripts, you’re fine-tuning them, you’re the final say on the edit, the music and the cast.

My defining moment was when I finally went to Cannes and saw my name along with international filmmakers.

I knew exactly what I wanted out of my actors – the film stars Ranveer Singh and Sonakshi Sinha in lead roles – and how each shot should look. A large part of ‘Lootera’ has been shot under tough conditions.

Everyone wants their film to do well and I am no different from them.

I love writing but it’s a real pain. It’s a miserable process – very satisfying but very miserable.

Problems just make me more determined.

I’m willing to fail, my producers are willing to fail, my crew is willing to fail.

I was born in Mumbai and brought up between Mumbai and Nashik.

You want your film to be seen by the largest audience and stars help in facilitating that. Star-power does work.

I think I like reluctant protagonists.

My earliest childhood memories are just of me falling and getting injuries.

There should be a certification process to suggest if a particular film is suitable for 12-year-olds, 15-year-olds or 18-year-olds. The same thing I think applies for the Internet.

To be a showrunner and a director is beyond exhausting.

Phantom Films is an established production house and it will help to spread awareness about the documentary film ‘Katiyabaaz’ among the audience. I saw this film and I loved it. Then we decided to support this film.

I am open to doing comedies, romantic stories, and commercial cinema, but it has to work for me so that I can give a year of my life in making it.

I’ve never lived anywhere else in my life, I have a massive love-hate relationship with this city. I grew up in the western suburbs in the ’80s and for everything we had to go to south Bombay – so you lived the whole city, in a sense.

Most films have a relationship or lack of it. They are about human beings.

If you don’t take a risk then what’s the point. We can’t keep making films in the same space.