The Rohit Shetty directional comedy movie ‘Cirkus’, featuring actors Ranveer Singh and Varun Sharma hit the theatres on Friday (December 23).
Amidst the fanfare, an old interview of Shetty with ‘film critic’ Anupama Chopra has also been doing the rounds of the internet. The video was originally uploaded on the Youtube channel ‘Film Companion’ on Aug 7, 2014.
In the interview, Anupama Chopra asked director Rohit Shetty about his ability to maintain the common touch and live up to the expectation of the masses. The film director quickly seized the opportunity to take potshots at the host.
Rohit Shetty made Anupama Chopra speechless #Cirkus #rohitshetty #Bollywood pic.twitter.com/jLobPupmUf
— B’wood (@Twentyo52159919) December 17, 2022
“Yes, the connect with the common man is very important. That’s what we are losing now. I am talking about the industry or the critics. You go to a Starbucks and you will meet like-minded people,” Shetty remarked.
“And then you’ll feel bad and you’ll support PETA and you’ll support stray dogs. But if a nariyal pani wala (coconut seller) is liking the film, then, you say it’s mass-y. This is hypocrisy. You guys look down upon mass-y films (referring to movies that appeal to the common people),” he further emphasised.
Rohit Shetty added, “Who is mass? They are poor people. So it is a bad film? It’s not…How you all escape? With due respect to Mr Yash Chopra, I saw your review of Jab Tak Hai Jaan.”
“You said where will a waiter fall in love with a multi-millionaire? Okay, it will fall in Yash Chopra’s world. Why can’t cars fly in Rohit Shetty’s world? So there is a kind of hypocrisy that ‘We are intellectuals.’ That is there. And it is sad,” he pointed out her glaring hypocrisy.
An embarrassed Anupama Chopra was left with no option but to nod in agreement. “Absolutely. No, your movies can (blow up cars in the air) and they do. Very successfully.”
Anupama Chopra and her controversial movie reviews
Earlier, this year, the ‘film critic’, while reviewing the Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri-directed film ‘the Kashmir Files’, had blatantly denied that genocide of Hindus ever happened in Kashmir.
The review had called the movie a bad attempt at propaganda or worse, a “revisionist drama” saying that the “film reimagines the exodus as a full-scale genocide – where every Hindu is a tragic Jew, every Muslim is a murderous Nazi”.
The review that was written by Chopra’s sidekick further read, “Even if I were to buy into the film’s dodgy worldview, the film-making is exploitative – geared towards riding the current wave of Hindu nationalism rather than empathizing with the displaced victims of history.”
Anupama Chopra had also published a piece decrying the popularity of SS Rajamouli’s recent release RRR in the USA, complaining that Americans were celebrating a toxic Hindutva movie that upheld caste hierarchy and Kshatriya pride.
