Paul Buck/European Pressphoto Agency
    Quentin Tarantino with his Oscar for best original screenplay for ‘Django Unchained’ at the 85th Academy Awards in California, Feb. 24.

    On “The Front Row” this week, directors Anurag Kashyap, Sujoy Ghosh and Sanjay Gupta talk about the influence of American filmmaker Quentin Tarantino and their favorite scenes from his movies.

    Edited excerpts:

    Anupama Chopra: Sanjay, you’ve remade a Tarantino film – ‘Reservoir Dogs’ as ‘Kaante.’ How much has Quentin Tarantino influenced you?


    Sanjay Gupta: A tremendous influence. It’s the first time for me where I was just watching a film and not looking at the technique, I was not looking at the camera work, nothing. I was just seeing these people talking and saying things that I’ve never imagined. I was listening to it and everything in your mind is telling you that, ‘Oh my god, yes that’s how I want my characters to talk’.

    Anu: Anurag, your films are often described as Tarantinoesque. When you write and film a project like ‘Gangs of Wasseypur,’ does the ghost of Tarantino loom large?

    Anurag Kashyap: No, that’s something that I always argue against. But I think he writes the coolest characters. I saw ‘Pulp Fiction’ before I saw ‘Reservoir Dogs.’ Like Gupts (Gupta) said, I’ve never seen people talking like that. Talking about some very mundane things and finding humor in that and finding an attitude. That was very cool. When Pulp Fiction came out those were the times of VHS and the film was heavily censored in this country. I went and bought the screenplay from Lotus Book House. That was the screenplay I used to read. I used to mug it.

    Anu: And Sujoy for you? Are you as big a fan boy as Sanjay and Anurag?

    Sujoy Ghosh: Actually he (points at Sanjay Gupta) introduced me to Tarantino. He and he (to Anurag). Between them they launched Tarantino in India. So I learnt about Reservoir Dogs. I didn’t think I would enjoy a film where people talk so much but it was awesome. So there was a huge quotient of cool in that film and that was very impressive for me.

    Anupama: One of the great after-effects of Tarantino is that the line between inspiration, plagiarism, homage, remake, adaptation is totally gone.  He once said: I steal from every single movie ever made.  How problematic is this?

    Anurag: See, he’s very intelligent. He borrows from cinema, like in Django Unchained he has borrowed from Django (1966). The first thing he did is make Django a black man and then he starts to play around with it. So he is not really borrowing from Django (1966), he’s just borrowing the character, the possibilities of that character and the names and then he writes his own film. He borrows a line from here and there but the way he constructs them together, it becomes his own piece.

    The Front Row with Anupama Chopra
    Anurag Kashyap, Sujoy Ghosh and Sanjay Gupta on The Front Row.

    Anupama: And you as creators don’t see this as a problem?

    Anurag: I feel sad if somebody steals my work before it has come out. After, is all well. I’ve really never seen directors feeling offended if someone’s copying their work. They feel good about it, they feel flattered. It’s actually the producers, the studios who stand to make money and lots of film geeks who feel offended.

    Sujoy: I don’t know because normally people don’t steal anything directly probably because they only take an idea. Like I take a lot of ideas from him (points at Sanjay.) Half of my movies I copy his style, you’ll never know it. But it’s more or less just learning the style in order to represent something visually.

    Anupama: A recurring note with Tarantino’s work is the extreme violence. It’s almost gleeful and many would argue, gratuitous. There’s such a spate of violence in America… do film makers have to be socially responsible?

    Anurag: The same movie releases worldwide, with the same violence, why are all incidents happening only in America? The problem is not with the movies. The problem is with their gun laws. Nobody will actually address the real problem.

    Anupama: What’s your favorite line or scene from a Quentin Tarantino film?

    Sujoy: Probably Pulp Fiction. When he reads from the Bible and the way Travolta gets shot in that film. He just comes out of the loo reading this magazine and Boom! It was just cool.

    Anurag: Mine is that moment where Travolta does the dance with Uma Thurman.

    Sanjay: Mine surprisingly is from a film he wrote but didn’t direct: the Christopher Walken and Dennis Hopper scene from ‘True Romance.’ Why Italians ‘have black hair and blue eyes. That reasoning and the way they say, they are these two baap (stellar) actors just performing it.

    Watch “The Front Row with Anupama Chopra” today at 8:30 pm on Star World for the full conversation with directors Anurag Kashyap, Sanjay Gupta and Sujoy Ghosh on the legacy of Quentin Tarantino.  For more details on the show log on to our website. Follow us on Twitter and on Facebook.