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You’ll never feel like you’re meeting Advait Chandan for the first time, his warm smile and non-stop banter makes you feel you’ve known him forever. So after bonding over a few random things with this first time director, I finally got down to business.
Advait is the director of Aamir Khan’s next film Secret Superstar and was previously his manager for four years. The new director on the block talks about his journey from being a manager to directing the superstar himself. Read on to find out what he said:
Advait Chandan: It’s really easy. I’ll tell you why, because he is a really easy guy. He is absolutely no nonsense. Anybody else in that position would have been a disaster to manage because there is so much work. But Aamir Khan has so much clarity and he is so neat that it’s very easy to manage him. The problem was the volume of work, it was overwhelming for me because he just doesn’t stop.
So, I went and told him ‘Sir, I have to be honest, back then you just told me something thodi jhapki lag gayi thi so I was sleeping, so what did you say to me?’ He was like ‘Ya ya I want to meet this particular guy so kal mujhe mila dena usse’. So I apologised and he was all cool about it. But for half-an-hour I didn’t know how to tell him that I was sleeping in the car. But I was tired, we had been working for fifteen sixteen hours.
Let me tell you another incident because you have asked me how it is to be his manager.
Well, after that we took just one Sunday off. But genuinely speaking, if I can go back I would never take those Sundays off because that’s the time when I just absorbed everything that I could (from Aamir).
Advait Chandan: He is totally focused, even when he is eating his food and when he is sending his message. When he is messaging and you talk to him he doesn’t listen to you, he won’t react he will just message. After he is done, he will be like ‘Were you saying something?’ So, when he is messaging he is only messaging. When he is eating you should see him eat. He enjoys every grain of rice he is eating and he is only eating and not doing anything else. You can’t talk to him when he is eating. So, the thing is, he applies his approach to whatever he is doing.
It can start anytime. I have set up meetings for him with Siddharth Roy Kapur. I called Sid and said, ‘Sir wants to meet you at 3 am’ and Sid was like, ‘Is this a prank?’ and I was like, ‘No, we are shooting in Masjid Bandar (a place in South Mumbai) and if you come to Masjid Bandar station at 3 am he will travel back to Bandra with you and have the meeting in the car.’
So he actually sleeps for 8 hours. So, whenever he sleeps the next 8 hours he is sleeping and the day starts then. But that 8 hours can start at 4 am so his next day starts 8 hours later and then everything gets pushed. And those are the 8 hours when I live my life. When I go back home, watch a movie, spend time with my family.
It happened very nicely because of him. I didn’t have to do it. I also feel like I wouldn’t have been able to do it had he not changed the equation. He took the initiative. He is somebody who treats everyone equally anyways. Even back then when I was his manager and I managed him for so long we had kind of become friendly. I won’t say he is like a friend of mine because he is such a senior and he is like a guru to me but we have a friendly equation.
See, I have also rehearsed with him when he is on his way in the car or you know told him what if we do that in this way in other projects as well. Then what he did was he took me to Panchgani for ten days before we started shooting for this film, I mean his part. Then he was like ‘Chalo, let’s read the scene’. So, I read with him, we jammed at it and it was not in front of thirty people, it was only him and me. At the end of those ten days, we read the script again together and we had arrived at Shakti Kumar, we had formed him. So, when we got to the set, we knew what we were doing. We were just improvising a bit here and there. It was easier that way. It was not stressful.
I’ll be honest, about eight days into shooting the film, I knew that he would probably watch the footage or edit at some point and I started thinking about that and I had a bit of a panic attack, where I thought I would disappoint him or he won’t be happy with the footage and I really freaked out. I started throwing up.
That day onwards I had the worst acidity ever. That’s just how my body reacted. I was really stressed. I would have breakfast throw up and then come and have another breakfast. So, it was the stress of disappointing him. It really messed with my head. I think he sensed it at some point.
He gave me a hug. He gave me a full hug. It was really one of my full dear diary moments. I cried a little later. He liked the first cut, I remember he was very happy with the first half and he said ‘I have few suggestions for the second half. Anyways we will sit on this but there is not much work left in this. You are ready’.
Watch the trailer of Secret Superstar here:
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