A Quote by Manoj Bajpayee
My lowest point came when I shifted to Mumbai in 1993. Nothing was happening. This is right after I did 'Bandit Queen.' I had no way to tell people that I know my job. There was no casting department here. All the commercial films that were happening in those days did not have any place for me.
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That was a piece I did in 1963 with Konrad Lueg in a department store, in the furniture department. It was announced in some papers as an exhibition opening, but the people who came didn't know that it was to be a sort of Happening. I don't think it is quite right that it has become so famous anyhow. It was just a lot of fun, and the word itself, Capitalist Realism, hit just right. But it wasn't such a big deal.
Film can do lots of things: It can produce alternative ideas, ask questions, just record the reality of what's happening, it can analyze what's happening. Of course, most commercial films are controlled by big corporations who have an interest in not doing those films.
Back when I was 15 or 16, in Dallas there was a department store called Sanger-Harris. One holiday season, I got a job as a gift wrapper there. The others were all experts who did that job every year, and I was by far the youngest person, who was totally inexperienced. In those days, department stores around Christmastime were a total frenzy.
We first started to rent old VFW halls in Philly or whatever; we rented kegs and did parties and played our own music. We had to find a way to do it because nobody else was helping us, and I think now it's important to keep those dialogues happening, those parties happening.
There were times at the start of it all when I would be standing, terrified, in front of the cameras and people I considered 'real' actors. I had no idea what was happening, what the guy with the clipboard did, or if people in the studio were looking at me because it was their job to look at me or because they thought I was making a mess of things.
The Zionist movement did not send any assistance, financial or otherwise, for the victims of Nazism and it did not allow any other side to provide any kind of aid. The Zionist movement concealed the information that came from within the ghetto walls and concentration camps, news that shed light on what was really happening. If it had to publish anything, it did so by questioning that information and diminishing its importance.
Avenues opened right after I did 'Ship of Thesus' but doing films where there is big money involved or has big stars involved is not the reason I came to Mumbai.
I definitely care about what's happening in our country. I grew up in a family that was very liberal and had very strong opinions about liberal ideas. I was around those thoughts and had conversations about those things and did the best I could to absorb what was happening around me and have my own opinion about it.
I invite people to just stop and be still. And in that you discover who you are, because once you discover who you are, you can stop fragmenting into pieces. I know that in any one day there are moments were there is nothing going on, but we link up what is happening from thought to thought without any space. We overlook the spaciousness that it is all happening in.
Not in my wildest dreams did I think it would ever become a job. I'm forever grateful for it happening. Although it did take me years to own up to being a dancer.
Directors like William Friedkin (Killer Joe), Steven Soderbergh (Magic Mike) and Lee Daniels (The Paperboy) got in touch with me and wanted me to be part of their films. That was a whole new chapter for me. I didn’t chase any of those films and it made me think that I was right to take a chance, say no to the kind of thing I had grown tired of doing, and wait until something good came around. And it did.
As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.
When we started Nowhere, maybe the fashion industry recognized something was happening, but they just thought, Oh, those kids . . . whatever. They didn't know what was actually going on with us. Now we are those people in a sense - the current establishment. So I hope there's something happening that is new and independent that we know nothing about.
I was a good student. For a while, my parents did make me cope with school and films simultaneously. But after a point, this wasn't practical. I had to choose between studies and films. I chose films.
I did so many interviews and auditions for films, and it was just zilch. Nothing I did impressed anybody! I could just feel it. It was always, 'Okay, thank you, Mr. Lloyd.' Then, out of the blue, 'Cuckoo's Nest' came to cast. A casting director who sent me up for different things over the years sent me up for that, and it just clicked.
All those days that came and went, little did I know that they were life.
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