MUMBAI: She describes "Kyaa Kool Hai Hum" series as Bollywood’s answer to "American Pie" series. But Ekta Kapoor is miffed that the censor board has snipped three scenes from the theatrical trailer of "Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum". She blames it to existing prejudices in the Hindi film industry.
Anurag Kashyap’s "Gangs Of Wasseypur" had coarse and crass language too, but it released without cuts. So what is the hullabaloo around "Kyaa Super Kool Hain Hum"? She replied saying, "There’s a big difference here. That’s Anurag Kashyap – you know how it is. Everything that Balaji (Motion Pictures) does or any mainstream filmmaker does, will always be considered to be cheap and crass. If Dibakar (Banerjee) would have made this film, it would have a totally different effect. So we always suffer prejudices in Bollywood, and we just fight constantly."
The 37-year-old is upset that the censors are not letting the movie’s original promos reach the theatres, but she doesn’t blame them for double standards either. "We never had issues in the film’s first part. I think our society was so much cooler at that time. Now suddenly everyone raises a question, everyone asks 15 questions. So we have a sanitised, boring promo in the theatre for the ones who will be seeing ‘Bol Bachchan’," said Ekta who was in town to show the uncut version of the trailer.
"A-rating programming is allowed on TV after 11 p.m., then also we are not allowed to show anything. There is so much prohibition in society for everything and because anyone can raise a question. Everyone is so scared. I don’t blame the censors. They are under so much pressure. People are ready to file a PIL (public interest litigations) against everything… it’s really curbing the creativity. I thought the first part of my series in 2005 would have to face all this. We are in 2012, for god’s sake! It really seems like the world is coming to an end," she quipped.
But she points out the biggest challenge is that "any kind of double meaning in Hindi sounds crass". "Very strong research once said that the real problem with our language is that it is so restrictive. The American language has extended itself to slangs and made itself more colloquial," Ekta observed.
"Hindi has not taken any such extension because of which there has been stagnation in the language. So it is much tougher to write a Hindi comedy with double meaning because we didn’t want to go crass," added the filmmaker, who has produced films like "Love Sex Aur Dhokha", "Ragini MMS" and "The Dirty Picture".
However, she believes the Sachin Yardi-directed movie, releasing July 27, has adult humour in measured amount. "We wanted to go funny with adult humour. Some portions could probably hurt some sensibilities. But on the whole, the film has tried to keep its humour funny without being offensive," she said.
Cracking jokes in Hindi is an uphill task "because they sound worse than they sound in English," said Ekta. " ‘Delhi Belly’ was made in English because they clearly realised the power of that language in making things sound much better than they are.
"For us, it has been a struggle to make Hindi a language where double meaning doesn’t go into becoming another lowest common denominator and this just turns out to be another film," said the filmmaker.
She has brought her brother Tusshar Kapoor and actor Riteish Deshmukh together after seven years for the franchise, which hits the screens July 27.
