His debut directorial 'Bumboo' is the remake of French hit 'L'Emmerduer', yet it's sans big Bollywood stars. Budget constraints notwithstanding, Jagdish Rajpurohit says he would have made it with the similar cast even supposing he had a lot more money because stars don't guarantee returns.
"I have a super cast - Sharat Saxena, Sanjay Mishra, Sudhir Pandey...all of them is probably not part of the so-called list of industrial stars, but they're all popular and feature done some wonderful work of their career," Rajpurohit told IANS over phone from Mumbai.
A veteran theatre actor himself, Rajpurohit says he has acted within the film to chop down at the cost of the small budget film. "Otherwise, if I USED TO BE to receive the similar script to be made with much more money, I'D have made 'Bumboo' with the similar bunch of actors. They're spontaneous and lovely. And stars don't matter these days," he said.
The story of "Bumboo" revolves around a bumbling professional hitman, a stock market scamster, a press photographer, cops, a psychiatrist, a bell boy, a failed suicide attempt and a sequence of hilarious events that go out-of-control when one mistake ends up in another and best laid plans go awry.
Rajpurohit first saw "L'Emmerduer", written by Francis Veber, on a flight from Mumbai to Paris. He was intrigued, and wished to evolve it for the Indian market.
He sought the fitting to remake it, and got French media group TF1 International on board because the film's associate producers.
He sat down with Kavin Dave and tweaked the script to entice Indian sentiments.
"French cinema could be very subtle, very classical. Once I saw 'L'Emmerduer', it seemed very different from what I had seen in their films. The tale plot was hilarious, and that i felt the tale must come to India. So, the tale remains the similar. But we haven't literally translated the dialogues...we have used our 'desi bhaasha' to make situations more hilarious."
"Also, despite being a distinct French film, there have been parts that we couldn't have used for Indian audiences, for the reason that audience wouldn't have appreciated them. So, we now have slashed out those situations to fit our cinematic grammar, added music as per tradition...but it's an adaptation in true sense," said Rajpurohit.
"Bumboo" will release March 30.
