Y2K+1: Underdog’s day out!

year 1999. one-time assistant to ram gopal varma is making his directorial debut. he has roped in actors like milind gunaji, arshad warsi and sharad kapoor to essay the role of three messiahs aka trishakti to fight evil. the film, a regular bollywood potboiler, bombs miserably at the box office. and the world of films, which only salutes successful people, forgets about debutante director madhur bhandarkar.the man, however, resurfaces in y2k+1. this time with chandni bar. and as they say in bollywood, today bhandarkar is garam in the market. this has been a magical year for three directors, who have risen from the ashes, proverbially phoenix-like. burdened by their past flops, all but completely forgotten, bhandarkar, along with ashutosh gawarikar (lagaan) and anil sharma (gadar) are now part of the hot-n-happening brigade. actor-turned-director gawarikar is an old pal of aamir khan. he made his directorial debut with pehla nasha, starring pooja bhatt and deepak tijori. the film bombed. next, gawarikar tried to give a different image to chocolate boy khan by packaging him in the action-oriented, baazi. the experiment failed to cut any ice with the audience. that was in 1995. gawarikar had all but faded from public memory till he resurfaced with lagaan this year. a movie that has managed to please the box office and critics alike. "when i was directing pehla nasha and baazi, i was constantly thinking about the audience response. i was not making a film that i believed in, instead i was trying to please the audience," confesses gawarikar. "with lagaan, i tried to make a film that i believed in,"' he adds. anil sharma made his directorial debut in 1981 with a film called shradhanjali, starring rekha and suresh oberoi. he then resurrected the career of dharmendra with films such as hukumat and elan-e-jung. his last two films farishtay and maharaja were a forgettable experience at the box office. gadar ek prem katha has, however, changed everything and today sharma is the hottest director on hire in bollywood. today, all three directors are busy working on scripts and looking for one. none of them has rushed into signing new films as directors. y2k+1 might be remembered for many things, but for bollywood, it was the year when the underdog finally had it's day!