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Sep 10, 2020 26 tweets 12 min read Read on X
A chance viewing of de Sica's 'Bicycle Thieves' opened a floodgate for a young Delhi University student.

He worked in the local theatre scene, moved to Bombay, often wrote films without any credits and is now a familiar face in global cinema.

Happy Birthday, @anuragkashyap72! Image
Anurag Kashyap chucked his Zoology ambitions and arrived in Mumbai in 1993 with Rs. 5000 in his pocket which he soon exhausted.

He slept on benches and shacked up at the hostel room of Imtiaz Ali, who was doing his post-grad at Xavier Institute of Communications. Image
At XIC, Anurag Kashyap met two of his longtime collaborators.

Aarti Bajaj was a year junior to Imtiaz Ali. She worked as an editor for both Imtiaz Ali and Anurag Kashyap for almost all of their films.

Bajaj's classmate was someone called Vikramaditya Motwane. Image
In the late ‘90s, Anurag Kashyap took over a movie based on the life of “Auto Shankar”, a serial killer from Madras.

Though the film never saw the light of the day, it did reach to Ram Gopal Verma, who gave Anurag Kashyap his biggest break back then, a film called 'Satya'. Image
When @RGVzoomin was shooting for Daud, he discussed his next venture and asked Manoj Bajpayee whether he could suggest a writer.

Bajpayee took Anurag Kashyap to RGV's office without even seeing any of his work.

Satya changed Kashyap's life. He called it his "film school". Image
Apart from writing, Anurag Kashyap also did casting for RGV.

One day, he met Rajpal Yadav, who was so disappointed with Bollywood that he was leaving for Jabalpur. He offered him a one-scene role in ‘Shool’.

Standing next to him that day was someone called Nawazuddin Siddiqui. Image
In 2003, Anurag Kashyap turned director with 'Paanch', loosely based on the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders.

The film had an ensemble crew. Abbas Tyrewala wrote the lyrics, set to tune by Vishal Bharadwaj.

Paanch also marked Bosco Caesar's first film as a choreographer. Image
Due to its controversial content, Paanch never got a theatrical release.

His next film was 'Black Friday', based on the 1993 Mumbai blasts, coincidentally the year when he first set foot in the city.

The film was initially conceptualized as a series for Aaj Tak who backed out. Image
Black Friday got into a legal entanglement. The Supreme Court finally gave a verdict allowing its release after three years in 2007.

Anurag Kashyap later said that the entire ordeal destroyed his honesty.

It's a brutally truthful film with a superlative album by Indian Ocean. Image
Apart from Black Friday, 2007 saw the release of two other films by Anurag Kashyap.

'No Smoking' was the first ever Hindi film to be adapted from a Stephen King work.

Between the release of Black Friday and No Smoking, his animated project 'Return of Hanuman' hit the theaters. Image
A couple of years later, his next two films, 'Dev.D' and 'Gulaal' got released.

Dev.D was an adaptation of Devdas while Gulaal was a medley of poetry and politics set in Rajasthan.

Both the films had exquisite music. Dev.D was also the first major project of Amit Trivedi. Image
During the making of Gulaal, all of them travelled to Jaipur during Diwali for six years to complete the night time shoot as the city gets decked up during those ten days.

A major portion of the film is thus a continuous Diwali. Anurag Kashyap called Gulaal his "angriest film". Image
The controversial "That Girl in Yellow Boots" starring Kalki Koechlin and Naseeruddin Shah followed soon.

Roger Ebert in a review, wrote of him as "a leader of a growing independent film movement in India."

Anurag Kashyap then laid his hands upon the epic Gangs of Wasseypur. Image
It was Zeeshan Quadri (seen in the role of 'Definite') who presented Anurag Kashyap with the paper clippings of the story of Wasseypur.

The final material was a 150-page novel by Quadri. Kashyap turned it into a 240-page script.

In India the film was released in two parts. Image
Clocking at nearly 320 minutes, Gangs of Wasseypur was India's first mainstream film to be screened in the Director's Fortnight section at Cannes, to a standing ovation.

In 2019, it became the only Indian film to feature in @guardian list of 100 Best Films of the 21st century. Image
Kashyap's next outing was 'Ugly', which also premiered in Cannes.

He would get involved in a mammoth project called 'Bombay Velvet'. The film made on a high budget turned out to be a box office dud.

This failure forced him to direct Raman Ragav 2.0 on a shoestring budget. Image
Anurag Kashyap once told, "I am a child of Martin Scorsese who fantasizes about Quentin Tarantino's films."

Thelma Schoonmaker, the Academy Award-winning editor who has been working with Scorsese for more than five decades, edited the international cut of Bombay Velvet. Image
Kashyap's last few projects, apart from Mukkabaaz and Manmarziyaan, have been made for Netflix.

This includes both the seasons of Sacred Games to his latest Choked.

In between, he also directed a segment of both Lust Stories and Ghost Stories, a reunion after Bombay Talkies. Image
Many film personalities of today's Bollywood, outside the 'star' system, owe their success to Anurag Kashyap.

Both Neeraj Ghaywan and Vicky Kaushal assisted him on Gangs of Wasseypur.

Vicky Kaushal would feature prominently in Neeraj Ghaywan's directorial debut 'Masaan'. Image
During the making of GoW, Anurag Kashyap, Mukesh Chhabra et al were looking for local actors from UP-Bihar.

A young actor stepped into Kashyap's office asking for a role. The casting had just been completed and Kashyap could not offer him a role despite fitting the bill.
Abhishek Kapoor was looking for an actor then, who has worked on TV before. Chhabra got an audition tape of this young actor and sent him.

This is how #SushantSinghRajput made his debut through 'Kai Po Che'.

SSR's last film 'Dil Bechara' is Mukesh Chhabra's directorial debut. Image
A few years later, Anurag Kashyap got in touch with Sushant Singh Rajput for his film 'Mukkabaaz'.

He was looking for an actor who can play someone from eastern UP.

SSR said he would get back. In the meantime, the biopic on MS Dhoni became a hit and Rajput never got back.
Anurag Kashyap's story is inspirational for all strugglers in Bollywood.

He went on record talking of his depression, his failed marriage with Aarti Bajaj and his alcoholism.

From writing scripts within a night to cutting cake with Quentin Tarantino, it has been quite a ride! Image
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Oct 2, 2020
On this day in 1869, #MahatmaGandhi was born in Porbandar, Gujarat.

In 1982, Richard Attenborough's film 'Gandhi' raked in eight Oscars. The film had an ensemble cast and crew, even in lesser roles. Many were already famous and many became legends in the years to come.

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In 1962, Motilal Kothari, while working for the Indian High Commission in London, asked Richard Attenborough whether he would direct a film on Gandhi. He got Mountbatten to have a word with Jawaharlal Nehru who agreed with the script. The film is dedicated to all three of them.
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Sep 27, 2020
#OnThisDay in 1962, 'Silent Spring', one of the most influential books of all time, was published. It takes its title from the ruinous imagery of John Keats' 1819 ballad 'La Belle Dame sans Merci'.

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By the early 1960s, Rachel Carson was not an unknown author. Having trained as a biologist, she joined the US Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1951, she published 'The Sea Around Us' which was a bestseller.

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She would spend much of the next ten years focussing on harmful effects of pesticides and this is how she came across a newfound antagonist.

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Sep 26, 2020
"The Man Who Saved The World"

September 26, 1983. Stanislav Petrov, a lt. colonel in the Soviet Strategic Air Defence Forces, stations himself as the duty officer at the command centre of Oko, a brand new early warning system built to detect any nuclear attack from the US.

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It's half past midnight. All of a sudden, the warning light comes on. A siren starts screaming. This means a missile has been launched from US. A second warning light appears and the siren screams of another missile. Then a third, a fourth, a fifth. The writing is on the wall.

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Everyone in the room freezes for a while. Petrov finds himself in a dilemma. He has clear orders, i.e., pick up the phone and order an appropriate response. The window of reaction is so small that if a split second passes, there might not be any missile bases left in USSR.

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Sep 19, 2020
Last week we added 13 questions from each of the 13 editions of the Indian Premier League, at #IndiaGyanKaBhandar to make #IndiaKnowledgeKaSuperpower.
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2008

Which cricketer was CSK’s preferred choice for the role of skipper whose decision to represent the city he was brought up ultimately resulted in MS Dhoni being roped in as the most expensive player in the inaugural edition?

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@Bazmccullum scored a mammoth unbeaten 158 runs in the very first match of the tournament. However, who was the first Indian to score a century in IPL?

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Sep 16, 2020
Rome won the bid to host the 1908 Olympics. London took over hosting duties as the Italian government had to divert funds to the reconstruction of the city of Naples. The obstacle: Mt. Vesuvius erupted in April 1906. For Italians, April truly turned out to be the cruellest month. Image
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The King and Queen did indeed visit Naples while the clean up operation was underway and later made a cash donation to aid recovery.

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Sep 15, 2020
Agatha Christie turns 130 today.

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