Filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt has a gift of gab and that of filmmaking, but he promises the latter won’t be put to use anymore. The razzle and dazzle of filmmaking has come to an end for the maverick storyteller, who was a prominent cinematic voice of the 80s and 90s. After directing over 50 films in his career, Bhatt says he is done with the movies.
His work changed the grammar of Hindi movies, Mahesh Bhatt hung up his directorial boots in 1999 with the Sanjay Dutt-starrer Kartoos. While he vowed never to return as a director, Bhatt broke his promise and helmed Sadak 2 starring his actor daughter Alia Bhatt. The film was a sequel to his beloved 1991 drama but opened to scathing reviews upon its release in 2020.
It was also the last time he made a film for his banner Vishesh Films, led by his brother Mukesh Bhatt. The brothers later publicly split, with Mahesh Bhatt severing his association with the production house, known for churning consecutive ‘low budget high concept’ hits in the early 2000s.
Recently, Mahesh Bhatt sat down with filmmaker Vikram Bhatt and actor Avika Gor to promote their next, Bloody Ishq streaming on Disney Plus Hotstar. When indianexpress.com asked the veteran, if he would ever return to Vishesh Films to direct a film if need be — as he had once famously said — Bhatt said a lot had changed within him.
“This is a new age, a new vibrant dawn,” the filmmaker said, calling this the “most gratifying phase” of his life, where he can mentor filmmakers to make their art, rather than create one himself.
“Nothing can be more gratifying than creating people. Vikram is a true protegee, who has provided me a space under the metaphorical Banayan tree where I sit down and for my fulfillment, give people who come to me, the courage to look inward.
Calling himself an ‘extinct volcano’, Bhatt said he knows so much and has a huge body of information. “However, I don’t have the thirst to leave my footprints on the sands of time, which is paramount in the entertainment world. Those who make it, have an insatiable thirst to leave their footprints on the sands of time. Vikram has it, Avika has it, I am outdated, a has-been,” the filmmaker said.
‘The Vishesh Films boom, and burst’
Though Vishesh Films was born in 1988 with Mahesh Bhatt’s Kabzaa penned by Salim Khan, the production house truly hit the jackpot in the early 2000s as they cracked a novel formula of mounting mid-sized films with non-stars, packaged with great music and some titillation.
With Emraan Hashmi as the face of most of their films, Vishesh Films also brought to the fore actors like Bipasha Basu and John Abraham, music composer Pritam, filmmakers Anurag Basu and Mohit Suri. The movies dominated the box office, as Vishesh Films belted hit after hit with projects like Raaz, Murder, Kalyug, Gangster, Woh Lamhe, and Jannat, among others.
Their golden run ended after Aashiqui 2 and the films started to bomb. “Every film is a by-product of its time. Indian was changing, the consumer’s taste was changing,” Mahesh Bhatt said, explaining the reason behind the death of the Vishesh Films genre.
“It was Vikram who spearheaded that kind of a space. Even Pooja Bhatt did her bit with Jism, which was an outstanding film. It had my angst and her style. There was this low-cost, high-concept, and great music idiom which we stumbled upon. We ensured we didn’t work with stars and only good actors. Because we thought ultimately chalti toh film he hai na (It is the film that works).”
Bhatt said the idea was to focus on making a film and not “beg” stars to headline their projects. It worked, until the non-star faces of Vishesh Films, such as Emraan Hashmi, became stars.
“We wanted to make a movie and not queue up outside a star’s office, beg him to give you dates or some crumbs for you to stay alive. There was a phase where we found self-sufficiency, but then the rot set in. The so-called ‘non-stars’ become stars and then the market comes to you to get those stars. They want access to the stars and you also succumb to that. That is the pitfall.
