He always toys with the romance genre in his movies, but filmmaker Mohit Suri says that in real life his wife and former actress Udita Goswami finds him to be the least romantic person.
Asked what fascinates him most about the romance genre, Suri said, “You should ask my wife the same thing. She thinks I’m a fraud, she thinks I am the least romantic person in real life and I try to do it all in my films.
“I genuinely give a lot of importance to the women in my life — I love my wife, I loved my mother, I love my daughter.
“I think men are made by the women they have in their lives. So, even if my film is a thriller, I keep a small emotional quotient which is to do with the female protagonist.
“Maybe, I enjoy those kinds of emotions, so that reflects whether it is a thriller or a love story and I always wanted to bring that.”
Suri, known for directing films like Zeher, Aashiqui 2, Ek Villain and Half Girlfriend, says he wants to keep making romantic films for the rest of his life.
“That’s something I really enjoy — with songs in it — dealing with thrilling emotions, thrilling romance…”
Besides romance, Suri, who last directed Half Girlfriend — based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel of the same name — says he would love to try making reality dramas.
“I think it is good that today biopics are being made and real life people are being tapped. That’s great because all of us draw instances from our own lives or lives of people and books that we read. I think it is high time people start making films on those narratives.”
It was a “very difficult” experience for Suri to put Bhagat’s novel into a two-hour film.
“You have to let go of some information. It’s not humanly possible to put a whole book into a film. A book is already out and in the mind space of people. They have already read it and liked it. You are scared if you remove something, will they be appreciative or not.
“It’s a really thin line. So I relied on my writers Reema Kagti, Ishita Moitra and Tushar Hiranandani who helped me a lot in adapting the film so well,” Suri said ahead of the TV premiere of “Half Girlfriend” on Zee Cinema on Sunday.
Suri feels more comfortable directing original ideas.
“You can shape the characters the way you want and then you present them the way you want to to the world as against portraying a character that is there in the book already,” he said.
On his upcoming projects, Suri said he was finishing his script and will make an announcement “in a month”.