Black

The story of making of Black is something like this (as against the one given by SLB that he got this idea while making Khamoshee, a film he wanted to make since he'd seen Gulzar's Koshish):Screenwriter Prakash Kapadia (Devdas, Black) met Bhansali at the premiere of P Kapadia's Gujarati film Dariya Chhoru (directed by Vipul Shah of Aankhen fame). Bhansali was invited to the screening by AatishKapadia (writer of Aankhen and the then screenwriter of Devdas). Bhansali came up to Prakash Kapadia after the screening and told him, "You are the real hero of the film." Of course, a few days later,Aatish Kapadia was replaced by Prakash Kapadia to write Devdas for SLB. During the making of Devdas and later, Prakash Kapadia would discuss all his plays (some 20 great stories that he made in his 20year long illustrious theatre career). Among these, were two plays: one was a story called "Aatam Vinjhe Paankh", a Gujarati play inspired straight from "The Miracle Worker" and the other was a storyof an ageing teacher suffering from the Alzheimer's. Post Devdas, Bhansali asked PK to render the story of Bajirao and Mastani for him. While PK was busy with that, Bhansali clubbed the two storiesof Miracle Worker and Alzhiemer's, with the help of co-writer Bhavani Iyer and developed a complete English script titled "Black". When he sent the script to PK, PK rejected most of the screenplay asdry and dull. With PK entering the scene, it was decided that SLB will make a bilingual film instead of an out-and-out English film. SLB approached the Helen Keller Institute for rights and assistance.He was denied the rights, but was offered the assistance. So the secondary level problem had now become a primary one. They had to deviate from Helen Keller's life and The Miracle Worker as much asthey could. They gave a thank you note to the institute in the film, but couldn't mention anywhere that Black is indeed inspired from the Miracle Worker or Keller's life. Problem 2 was they had to...