An Interview with Anurag Kashyap, director of "That Girl in Yellow Boots"

[src] courtesy of: Mayank.hc

“That Girl in Yellow Boots” makes its world premiere out-of-competition at the Venice Film Festival before playing in the Special Presentations section at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Flick Pick Monster: What inspired you to make “That Girl in Yellow Boots”?

Anurag Kashyap: A story in a newspaper about a German girl who came to India looking for her father...she is still looking, though. And yet another story that I can't talk about or it would reveal the film, which dominated the front pages of the Mumbai Mirror for sometime. The two stories affected me and kept playing in my head and I narrated them to Kalki [Koechlin], I said “I want to do this with you, but I want a woman's POV so will you write it?” and she did.

FPM: What is the significance of the yellow boots, if there indeed is any beyond being a distinguishing characteristic?

AK: The title is such because it has a connotation of a gossip. It’s not the girl in yellow boots but "That Girl…" as in when someone talks, "You know that girl who wears yellow boots, you know what she does, blah blah blah[….]” It’s at the very core of Indian morality that we can't talk about things openly and sometimes a strong individual woman, who happens to be beautiful and white, gets scrutinized a lot. It's a story of one such girl[;] yellow boots are her only distinct identity.

FPM: I’ve read that the technique of Snorricam (something I much enjoy) is given screen time in “Dev. D” and your other films. Given that the same cinematographer, Rajeev Ravi, worked on “That Girl With Yellow Boots” as well as “Dev D.,” is there any of it to be expected in the new film?

AK: No, there are no [snorricams] used in TGIYB. We have shot 10 % of it on 7D, though.

FPM: It is always interesting when the director of a film works on the screenplay with an actor of the film. Such examples include Ethan Hawke, Julie Delpy, and Richard Linklater on “Before Sunset,” to an extent Quentin Tarantino and Uma Thurman on the "Kill Bill" films (though they really just came up with the character together), and you and Kalki Koechlin with your new film. How was this experience?

AK: Oh, it was tough. She is not just the actor, she is also my live-in partner and she has strong [points of view]. For her to be both writer and actor and me to be the director using her and her material and [to be] the boyfriend was very intense. After [the] shoot we both needed our space. We couldn't go back to bed together after the shoot each day. It was very intense but it showed on screen.

FPM: What do you have lined up for after “That Girl in Yellow Boots”?

AK: I am next doing a tribal gangster film [entitled “Gangs of Wasseypur”] set in the state of Bihar around the coal mines. It’s a revenge story set across six decades and three generations.