Akshaye's interview

With its hilarious plot and surprisingly good cast, Short Kut: The Con Is On is a million laughs a minute. Mathures Paul speaks to the main
protagonist

One of the most underrated actors of our times, Akshaye Khanna has been giving us hit after hit ~ Gandhi, My Father, Salaam-e-Ishq: A Tribute To Love, Hulchul, and many more. A few weeks back he received the IIFA Best Villain Award for his role in Race. Khanna is very much in the news as his new film ~ Short Kut: The Con Is On ~ has succeeded in making box-office cash registers ring.
First, the plot of the film in brief. Short Kut is a comedy about the trials and tribulations of two con artistes ~ a struggling director and an actor in pursuit of their tinsel town dreams. Shekhar (Akshaye Khanna), an aspiring assistant director, and Raju (Arshad Warsi), a wannabe junior artiste, meet and strike-up a friendship. While Shekhar is extremely talented and confident, Raju is a buffoon and thinks he is God’s gift to Bollywood! As luck would have it, Raju manages to steal Shekhar’s prized script and is catapulted towards stardom. Soon Shekhar plunges into a phase of self pity and dejection, which results in his wife Mansi (Amrita Rao) leaving him. Shattered, Shekhar looks for that golden opportunity to get even with Raju.
What was it about Short Kut that appealed to you ~ Anil Kapoor or the script?
It’s always the script. Always. I respond, or react, to scripts spontaneously. We have a great personal relationship, a friendship that’s not easy to break. I cherish it and value it.

Anil Kapoor, the producer and the actor…
Actor-producer relationship is more at a professional level. A bit formal. We are careful of not upsetting each other; not to make the other feel uncomfortable. Anil is a friend and a producer. He brings commitment and passion to any project. The same goes for anything he does in life. That indeed is a great asset.

Are you satisfied with the new Hindi film scripts?
Difficult question. Generally things are getting better but not at a pace most of us would want. I think the level of writing that we see in the television or film industry in the West is higher than in India. We have a long way to go before we achieve that level of originality and diversity. (Thinks) Not only in the area of writing but every aspect of film-making ~ acting, designing, production, etc. The drama audiences watch on television or films in the West cannot be found that frequently in India.

The need for casting directors…
In the Hindi film industry there is almost nothing called casting directors. It doesn’t exist and it never has. It’s sad. But one of the reasons for that profession not being able find its place is because we have only a few actors. You have 20-odd leading men in the industry. Maximum 25. Girls even less. There are so few people that the industry doesn’t require a casting director. If there were hundreds of actors, their (casting directors) roles would have been important.

But new actors are coming our way…
But we need many more.

Maybe viewers don’t want to accept new faces…
That’s also true. Viewers need to accept them. At times our audiences don’t accept new faces. If someone new comes, he or she is either accepted or not accepted. An actor like Imran (Khan) has been accepted. It’s not a matter of coming from an established family of actors. A person is accepted because he is accepted! As simple as that. Sonam (Kapoor) was also simply accepted. Now look at Deepika Padukone. She doesn’t have any background in acting. But she was accepted. In south India Asin is already accepted. But to the Hindi film industry she is new.

Your next film with Anil Kapoor…
We haven’t started shooting. When we start, it begins in South Africa and then moves to Mumbai.