Going for Take: The Making of Omkara and Other Encounters in Bollywood by Stephen Alter

‘Silence, please! … Going for Take! … Sound! … Camera! … Action!’ Movies are stories: they tell them, they make them, sometimes they are the story. In setting Shakespeare’s tragic tale of Othello in the gangster-infested badlands of western UP, Vishal Bhardwaj created a cult classic. With unforgettable dialogue, stunning imagery and chartbusting music, Omkara made waves both critically and commercially. The story behind the making of the film is as exciting as the movie itself. Going for Take is that story. It takes readers behind the camera and follows the making of Omkara from the initial brainstorming sessions to scriptwriting, music composition, pre-production, casting, shooting, editing and release. Full of interesting nuggets, like its producer Kumar Mangat’s film-like rags-to-riches story, and Vivek Oberoi and Kareena Kapoor negotiating the words of ‘I just called to say I love you’, this book is also an insight into the mind of one of modern cinemas most accomplished artists, Vishal Bhardwaj, who has repurposed the idiom of Hindi cinema to create a unique, dynamic vision of visual storytelling. His Shakespeare trilogy, of which Omkara is the second, was and remains a new frontier in Indian cinematic language. Originally published as Fantasies of a Bollywood Love Thief, this updated edition includes a new introduction, where the author talks about Vishal Bhardwaj’s latest film Haidar, based on Hamlet, which completes his Shakespeare trilogy. Going for Take is essential reading for movie buffs.