02/07/2024
“We seek a connection with the cosmos. We want to count in the grand scale of things. And it turns out we are connected not in the personal small-scale unimaginative fashion. But in the deepest way, involving the origin of matter.”
I remember the first time when told me about his idea of soulmates being connected with dots. We were both high and we talked for hours on the same topic. Then, from the next week, we started writing this idea into a screenplay. During that time, I had a book called “Cosmos by Carl Sagan” (pretty famous book) on the top of my bookshelf. Never could finish reading it. But it was such a weird coincidence that the random page we opened of that book turned out to be the above-mentioned quote. Then, we, for days, wrote the story and the conversation and we acted it out and whatnot. Then, a week later, we’d got a task assigned by to shoot this film in a day and without him. We thought, “sure, why not?” Then, , Kushagra and I planned the production stage in a day or two (dumb move lol). And what happened during the production was a complete disaster. I directed it then and could never gather the guts to take it to post-production.
Now, fast forward to a year or so - Kushagra did not give up on the idea. He rewrite it, he made the story his own, he made it deeper, different, better (with this time) and come to us and told us that he want to make it again. We said, “Sure, why not?”
Then when we were hunting for actors, none of the candidates seem to make feel that they’ve understood the story. Then, one day, out of the blue, he asked Kirti and I to act in the film. I said “Why? Fo!?” Kirti said, “Can think of it.” Then, I said, “Yeah sure, let’s do it lol”.
And then, oh god, so many days of Kushagra talking about the characters and the story and then rambling about other things and then back to the characters and story. And yeah, he made it happen. The result is out there. On Youtube. Do watch it and appreciate this guy for his passion and dedication (and cuss me for my bad acting I know I know).
Go go go watch “Til” right now :)
