Prod Pooja Bhatt a bit and she will have you know that all this ‘we-are-open-about-ourpersonal-life’ attitude among B-wood leading ladies is hearlded by none other than the lady in conversation, a decade back.
Says Bhatt, “Today, the leading ladies can afford to be bold on their personal lives thanks to Manisha Koirala and myself. Both of us had to pay the price for making it possible for the heroines to walk hand in hand with their boyfriends.” And Pooja had no qualms in taking the credit for bringing Bollywood lasses to the threshold of being bold in talking relationships in public domain. She adds with a casual shrug, “We were the first ones to be open about our personal lives we were considered non serious because of this.”
But it doesn’t really come as a surprise, the claim to the credit, when Pooja has never shied away from going bold whether while acting or directing. Though much in news for ” Jism 2″ Pooja dimisses talking about the film with the wave of a hand and says, “I wish to remake “Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin” with Ranbir Kapoor and Alia (her sister) and recreate the chemistry that I shared with Aamir onscreen. It is one of the top love stories of our industry till date and one of the first road film without the tricks of foreign location,” says the actor who was in Varanasi recently.
But in this age of action will romance sell? “What is life without romance? The world revolves around love. If it is not a love story I cannot work on the film. You cannot put arms around twenty crore of rupees, life is miserable if you don’t have someone to share it with. I like working on love stories. Even “Jism 2” is a love story though an adult one. It does not cater to a teeny bopper’s emotions. When the earlier “Jism” was released people had expected a skin fest but it was the chavvani audience who went away and it was the women above the age of 35 and young couples who made the film a hit. I find it strange that we are catering primarily to an audience of GenNext. There is nothing for the mature audience in the films today which is rather unfortunate, but I try to focus my films to make them appeal to an emotionally mature audience,” she says.
Always living on her own rules, Pooja says, “I am at that stage of life when I have nothing to lose and every thing to gain. I am not afraid of failure since I have failed enough as a director. In fact, the bigger the budget of a film is, the more it operates on fear. Then you take the artiste jo bikta hai rather than your work from your heart. When I was making “Jism”, I wanted to take John Abraham for the film who was just a model then. I was not ready to compromise on this though lot of people advised me against it. I did not want Shah Rukh Khan for the film. Now the same people ask me ki ‘kya John Abraham nahi hai “Jism 2″ mein?’ It is the herd mentality that rules the roost in the industry today. The same applies to Sunny Leone. Everyone waiting to see who would bell the cat and now that we have belled the cat, others too want to do it.”