Sit With Hitlist: Zoya Akhtar was asked to audition as an actor for the film Bombay Boys, where she met Reema Kagti for the first time. Both of them ended up being ADs on the film
Reema Kagti and Zoya Akhtar with Mid-day's Mayank Shekhar
Reema Kagti grew up in Assam, spent some years in Delhi and moved to Mumbai for college, at Sophia, and thereafter a course in social communications at the media school, Sophia Polytechnic.
Describing the beginning of her long-term association with Zoya Akhtar, Reema narrated during Mid-day's Sit With Hitlist, "At some point, I bumped into Zoya. We liked the same kinda films, had a lotta common ground, we began writing small stuff together."
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To be more precise, this was during the auditions for Bombay Boys (1998), where Reema was already an AD. Zoya had dropped in for the same position.
Zoya had been an AD on Dev Benegal’s Split Wide Open (1999), after returning from a diploma in filmmaking from New York University (NYU). She had assisted in the costume department on Mira Nair’s Kama Sutra (1996), before NYU.
“Only, the director, Kaizad, was keen to test Zoya for Tara Deshpande’s part in Bombay Boys,” Reema recalls. She was staffing the audition. Right after which, Zoya told Reema she's the world’s worst actor! Reema replied, “Listen, I don’t think you’re getting this job either!” Well, she got the job she wanted.
Which was as a freelance AD, the rotating culture of which only spawned in Bollywood in the late ’90s, early ’00s: “We were moving into a phase of sync-sound on the sets, shoots getting wrapped in a single schedule.
“To pull that off, you needed a more structured system. Unlike before, when films would take years to finish, and everyone just hung around in offices—there would be 12 ADs, and everybody did everything,” Zoya says.
Reema had earlier worked on Rajat Kapoor’s directorial debut, Private Detective: Two Plus Two Plus One (1997): “That was my film school. I got to dabble in all departments of filmmaking.” But there was one thing both Zoya and her were clear about—they were not going to assist only one person, throughout, which was, at the time, the common practice.
Zoya says, “I don’t know how we had the guts to take that call. Back then, ADs were associated with particular filmmakers, or even production houses, when it came to advertising. There was a ‘chhaap’ [creative trademark] of that director, that remained with you, even once you left them and went your own way.”
Sensing a trap, neither wished to mirror particular mentors. Writing and directing their own movie was the end-goal, anyway. They got to work on multiple sets, when they did; and wrote their own scripts, when they didn’t. It was around this time they decided to script a short film together.
Zoya remembers, “We almost killed each other—let’s do this, let’s not do that, etc. Later, I wrote Luck By Chance (2009). Reema started writing Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd (2007). We gave our scripts to each other for feedback. She finished the portions I got stuck at. Likewise, me with Honeymoon. While we hadn’t credited each other, we were on each other’s films."
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