Anurag Kashyap, who has created his own space in Indian film industry, says it was his passion for cinema that helped him carve a niche for himself despite many hardships.
The 43-year-old "Bombay Velvet" director, was in the city to deliver a lecture on "creative writing" at Banaras Hindu University.
"You have to do things on your own and have to fight your own battle, in order to make your place in the industry," Anurag said.
Sharing his own struggles, the "Gangs of Wasseypur" helmer revealed that after being denied direct entry in Prithvi theater, he decided to take up the job of a waiter in it's canteen.
"This was how I got the entry inside the Prithvi theater and then soon started mingling with everyone and started taking up works as a scriptwriter and other small jobs there," he said.
Kashyap told students that his passion for work in the film industry in the initial days made him do things beyond his imagination and when he got the work of script writing and film direction he accepted it without expecting any money in return.
The director said the '90s era was tough for aspiring filmmakers to make it big in the industry, but now thanks to internet, people have a platform to present their work to the world.
"New boost for cinema is now the availability of internet, you can upload your work online now," he said.
Kashyap said that Indian censor board is better in comparison to countries like Iran and others, where some of the directors had to face jail.
"There are alwayspros and cons," he said.
Anurag was accompanied by his filmmaker brother Abhinav Kashyap, who made his directorial debut with Salman Khan starrer "Dabangg".
Talking about his struggle, he said he had a tough time convincing filmmakers about his script before Salim Khan decided to make the film.
"I roamed for two-three years with my script of 'Dabangg,' it was rejected by many filmmakers. Then Salman Khan's father Salim Sahab chose the script and sold his land to arrange money to make this movie," Abhinav said.
The director said he first writes and then thinks as it gives him a material to work on and make it better.
The filmmaker, however, won't reveal names of those films
and says most of them were copied from other Hollywood movies, so he was "ashamed" to take credits for story writing.
"I will never take the names (of films) nor reveal in an interview. But people know for whom I've written. That time, 90 per cent films were copy so I used to not like putting my name anyway. It helped me both ways," Anurag said.
"Then I decided at one point when I got so conscious of it- that most of the films are copied - even when I wrote (them), I used to take only dialogue credits. I stopped taking story credits. I was very ashamed of taking that," he said.
Kashyap said the films that he wrote were based on somebody else's ideas and were never his own, hence he did not have a problem of letting his name go by in the credits.
"The ideas never came from me. It was always of some other person who wanted someone to execute it. The ideas weren't even something which made me want to include my name. I just wanted to write. But if something has come from within me, I won't let it go (without credits)," he said.
The filmmaker also revealed that "out of the 13-14 films I've made, I've got fees only for three films. Rest of them have been made for free.
