Raj & DK reveal 'Shor in the City’s dark alternate ending, say they once approached Ethan Hawke: ‘He might have been dead’

‘Shor in the City’ is often missing from conversations about films set in Mumbai, which feels a bit surprising. This small, energetic indie by Raj Nidimoru and Krishna DK came before their style of mixing humour and emotion became widely popular. The film follows several characters and connects their stories, while also paying attention to both the loud chaos of the city and the quiet struggles within each person.Fifteen years later, Raj and DK, in a conversation with SCREEN, look back at where it all started—the uncertain early days, the casting journey, and an ending that could have been different. Speaking about the casting process, DK said, “In the beginning, the idea was that an American comes to India to set up a business. So we pitched it to actors like Ethan Hawke and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. People who weren’t massive stars then, but were doing a lot of interesting indie work. We even had a couple of meetings with their agents. But they’re used to functioning within a certain kind of system, there’s usually some studio backing, even if it’s a small one in Los Angeles. We didn’t have any of that. And here we were, saying, “We’re indie filmmakers, we used to live in the U.S., now we’re in India making this film.” There was a clear mismatch. Once union rules and logistics came into the picture, it became obvious it wouldn’t work.”Raj shared, “After that, things shifted in an interesting way. We reworked a key character, rather than an outsider, we made him Indian, which felt more organic to the story. That’s when we met Sendhil Ramamurthy, and he immediately connected with it. From there, we began casting locally. Atul Mongia was working with us, and he brought in a lot of exciting, unconventional talent. Many of them were relatively new, we didn’t really know Radhika Apte at the time, for instance. With Amit Mistry, it was different. We had worked with him on '99', so he was always an automatic choice. In fact, for any film we made, he was the first person we’d call. We still miss him a lot. Even now, when we’re writing something, he comes to mind. Just the other day, we found ourselves saying, “I wish Amit was here for this.”Talking about the ending of the film, Raj revealed, “Interestingly, when we first sent 'Shor in the City' to festivals, this ending didn’t exist at all. There were no end credits the way you see them now. The film simply ended at that point, with Ganesh Visarjan, and a super that said “come again next year.” That was it. And it worked. Those screenings brought us some of our first awards and a wave of appreciation on the festival circuit.”Raj further added, “But here there was another kind of feedback. People kept saying, “You need an ending, you can’t just leave it like this.” We resisted for a while; there was quite a bit of back and forth. Eventually, we decided to shoot something additional. The original ending was far more ambiguous. There was a possibility that Tusshar Kapoor’s character might actually be dead, and what he’s experiencing, the visions, even the presence of Ganesha, could be something like a post-death state. We wanted to leave that open to interpretation. But with all the suggestions coming in, we reworked it slightly and added the end-credits sequence, giving it a more defined sense of closure.”‘Shor in the City’ features Tusshar Kapoor, Sendhil Ramamurthy, Preeti Desai, Girija Oak, Radhika Apte, Nikhil Dwivedi, Pitobash Tripathy, Sundeep Kishan, Zakir Hussain, and Amit Mistry.