The Dirty Picture

The Dirty Picture

Producer : Ekta Kapoor, Shobha Kapoor

Director : Milan Luthria

Singers : Bappi Lahiri

Music Director : Vishal Dadlani, Shekhar Ravjiani

Star Cast : Vidya Balan, Naseruddin Shah, Emraan Hashmi, Tusshar Kapoor, Imran Hasnee, Anju Mahendroo

The Dirty Picture is an upcoming Hindi language biopic on the life of Southern siren Silk Smitha, directed by Milan Luthria and produced by Shobha Kapoor and Ekta Kapoor. They had earlier collaborated, along with scriptwriter Rajat Aroraa, on the hit Once Upon A Time In Mumbai (2010). Vidya Balan, Naseeruddin Shah, Tusshar Kapoor and Emraan Hashmi will be seen playing lead roles in The Dirty Picture. The film will be released nationwide on December 2, 2011 on the birth anniversary of Smitha.

Ekta Kapoor launched the film with director Milan Luthria soon after their collaboration Once Upon A Time In Mumbaai became a super-hit. She said that The Dirty Picture would be India's answer to the Academy Award nominated film Boogie Nights. Later in a press conference, Kapoor clarified that neither of Balaji's forthcoming film, Ragini MMS nor The Dirty Picture were "porn films", as they were made out to be.

She has gone on record to add, "I would be surprised if I don't get unbelievable critical acclaim for The Dirty Picture and a national award for my actress, Vidya Balan. The movie has one of the most well-written scripts I have come across and a lot of youngsters in my office have looked at it with great admiration." She also pointed out that the purpose of the film was neither to justify not criticize Smitha's life, but for the audience to live her life. Additionally, all actors, including Balan and Shah attended workshops for almost two months before filming could begin.

When screenwriter Rajat Arora initially started working and took cues from producer Ekta Kapoor, it was seen as much smaller film in scope, primarily looking into the soft-pornography phenomenon of the 1980s, but gradually as the work progressed, it grew to also trace the controversial romances of Smitha, through a fictionalized biopic. Further while researching for the film director Milan Luthria and screenwriter Rajat Arora, found little material in the film magazines of the period, as "women like Silk Smitha were often ignored by film magazines, except for gossip column mentions", thus they derived much of the details of her life, from anecdotes, met-at-a-party stories, quick tea-break chats, and fictionalized them. The Dirty Picture .

Apart from depicting the pomp of the Tamil film industry, it also takes up issues like, money management by actors, how they got cheated, "their string of broken relationships, led lonely lives and met with tragic ends". The Dirty Picture. However, for inspiration instead of looking at South Indian films of the period, the team turned to work of mainstream Bollywood directors like Manmohan Desai, Vijay Anand, Raj Kapoor, Feroz Khan? and G.P. Sippy, and to put the global soft-porn industry in context, the team look into Boogie Nights? (1997) and The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996). The end script, became a "fictionalized, women-oriented, generalized perspective on the 1980s film industry".