THE PRESIDENT IS COMING, PRODUCTION NOTE
In the end of 2007, when Anuvab Pal (The Writer) met with Rohan Sippy (The Producer) for a reading of the play, he proposed that it could be adapted to film- and the idea clicked. It was decided that if the idea were to work on celluloid, then it was imperative to get it into production fairly soon.
When it came to finding the right director for the film, Kunaal Roy Kapur, the director of the play was an obvious choice.
Konkona Sen Sharma came into the RSE office for a narration of the script but she had no idea that it would actually end up being an entire script reading session with most of the cast involved. It was a fun evening and Konkona came on board driven by the sheer madness of the film. She loved the concept and thought it would be fun to be a part of something that crazy.
Shernaz Patel was already aware of the script and had even seen the play and had loved it. The producer felt that she would bring in a lot of wit to the film. She immediately agreed after reading the screenplay once.
Akarsh Khurana, the line-producer who is also a theatre director and producer, played an important role to get things moving; he was also behind most of the casting and even roped in his father, Mr. Akash Khurana to play a part in the film. Akarsh also got on board the Production Designers, Ayaz and Payal, who are NID graduates and work on most of Akarsh’s plays.
The writer Anuvab Pal and the director Kunaal Roy Kapur come from the talented league of stand – up comedians. The dialogue derives a lot of inspiration from their stand – up comedy and the film is full of smart one – liners.
The kind of language used in the film is very Indian English. During the workshops done for the play and the film this was improvised and thoroughly brushed up to make it sound authentic.
The film was shot in 24 days and almost everyone behind the scene was roped in to be a part of the film. There was an overall theatre camaraderie since most of the cast and crew came from a theatre background. One of the actors, Anand Tiwari, even worked as a director’s assistant on the film.
There was also a strong Xavier’s influence with several key members of cast and crew from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Among them were cast members Satchit Puranik and Namit Das, director Kunaal Roy Kapur and Line Producer Akarsh Khurana.
Jack Warner once said ‘Every worthwhile contribution to the advancement of motion pictures has been made over a howl of protest from the standpatters, whose favorite refrain has been, ‘You can’t do that.’ And when we hear that chorus now, we know we must be on the right track.’ I doubt this is one of those films, but its been a hell of a lot of fun to make!
– Rohan Sippy
