Small Town Or City Based Stories? Here’s Master Director Rajkumar Hirani’s Choice!

Filmmaker Rajkumar Hirani has said he strongly believes stories come from small towns.

Hirani was interacting with the media at the announcement of the 2nd edition of Cinestaan Script Contest along with Anjum Rajabali and Juhi Chatuvedi on Monday in Mumbai.

“I strongly believe stories come from the small towns. People have more exposure to life there. In big cities, especially like Mumbai, all the time goes in travelling,” he said.

“I grew up in a small town and we could just walk into a neighbor’s house. Here, in Mumbai, we don’t have the time to even meet our friends. Stories are out there. It’s just that we have to find them and I feel writing needs to be taught in a way that they can become proper screenplays. I think it’s an extremely good initiative where the start has been made.”

Talking about circumstances of writers while writing a film script, the maker of PK said, “I think writers need to be respected a little more financially. They are foundation of every film and unless you pay the writer probably the maximum amount of money in your film, you won’t find good writers because it’s a big struggle for writers.”

I have seen, in Mumbai, people are trying to write four scripts at the same time because they are not sure which one will start and which one will work. A small token money is given to them for experimenting by saying that “you work on this script and if it turns out to be good, then we will make a film out of it”.