Vidhu Vinod Chopra gets agitated

The cast and crew of 3 Idiots walked into their press conference on Friday in Delhi looking a little tense. There were Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Raju Hirani, Aamir Khan, R Madhavan, Sharman Joshi, Omi and the film’s writer, Abhijat Joshi. Boman Irani joined them later.

At one point early on, after VVC announced that they’d put their contract with Chetan up on their website, a journalist asked him about the points of similarity between the book and the film. VVC asked him if he had read the book. The journalist replied that he ‘knew about the book’. At that point, Vidhu gave a heated reply, saying that when he hadn’t read the book, he had no right to make that accusation, ending with a shouted, ‘So you shut up!’

Immediately, another couple of journalists got up and joined the one who’d been shouted at, all of them angrily demanding that VVC apologise on a public platform to them. Aamir Khan and Raju Hirani immediately took the mike, apologising profusely and asking for calm to be restored, but when the shouting continued, Hirani got very upset as well. He also heatedly began to explain scene-by-scene comparisons between the book and the film.

From then on, Aamir dominated the mike, helped cool things down, and articulated the filmmakers point politely, restoring order to the situation. Other mediapersons joined his efforts by asking for ‘deviations’, and bringing up other issues and subjects in the film to keep the conversation away from the contentious issue.

THE CLAIMS MADE AND ANSWERED:
Chetan claims that the makers have abused the contract, which stipulates a payment of Rs 1 lakh to him before the release of the movie, and Rs 10 lakh afterwards, depending on the financial fate of the film. He says that they can credit someone else for the screenplay, but not for the story, which is from his book. He says that he was told that the film was only “2-5 per cent” of his book, and wasn’t shown the script or the film before its release; also that his credit was “hushed away” at the bottom of the end credits. He says he tried to contact the filmmakers before writing his blog, but they didn’t respond.

In the press conference in Delhi the day before, Chopra claimed that Chetan had himself said, over the years that 3 Idiots was being made, that the film’s script (by writer Abhijat Joshi and Raju Hirani, which he had read, according to Aamir), was different from his book. He says that the rolling credits can only be at the end of the film, and that’s where the credit has been given, as per the contract. He also says that he has a contract with only Chetan, from among all the people associated with the film, because he did not trust him from the beginning.

Aamir also says that Chetan himself had said to him, when the film was being shot in IIM Bangalore, that the film’s script was very different from his book. He says that Chetan came to see him there, and when he, Aamir, mentioned that he hadn’t read the book and wanted to do so, Chetan assured him that he didn’t need to because the script was quite different.
The makers have been hinting at taking legal action against Chetan, and he has been saying that he is ready for it.