Amit Masurkar

Some Lesser Known Facts About Amit Masurkar

• Does Amit Masurkar smoke?: Not Known

• Does Amit Masurkar drink alcohol?: Yes

• He was born and grew up in a middle-class family in Mumbai’s Mahim area.

• During his school days, he earned the ire of his mathematics teacher, Prof SS Vengsarkar, for being a slacker and a prankster.

• In the late 90s, he left Mumbai for Manipal in Karnataka to pursue his further studies.

• It was at Manipal, where he was introduced to the world of Cinema for the first time as there were several illegal ‘video parlours’ that existed in lieu of actual movie theatres.

• He started frequenting websites like Drew’s Script-O-Rama to read the original screenplays of films he was watching. He would also maintain several notebooks filled with ideas for scenes and half-finished story ideas.

• By the time Masurkar entered his 2nd year in Manipal, he’d realised that he was in the wrong profession, and ended up dropping out to pursue his newfound passion.

• Back home in Mumbai, he pursued BA through correspondence from Mumbai University, while working as a cartoonist at a youth-oriented magazine.

• While in Mumbai, he got an assignment to cover that year’s edition of the Mumbai International Film Festival that led to a chance meeting a young filmmaker in a lift, who ended up introducing him to her friends, opening a door to the world he’d been seeking access to.

• When he got a chance to work with Aanand L Rai on a telefilm, he was in his 20s.

• In October 2004, Masurkar got his 1st big break, when he joined the writing team of The Great Indian Comedy Show that featured performers like Vinay Pathak, Ranvir Shorey, and Suresh Menon. It was also his 1st ever regular paycheck for two and a half years.

• Masurkar is a good friend of the stand-up comedian, Varun Grover.

• In 2007, started working on his first, full-fledged script.

• In 2012, he started writing the script that would become Sulemani Keeda, a small budget indie on which most of the cast & crew worked for free & shooting locations were fixed through favours. The film, when released in 2014, received glowing reviews.

• In September 2017, his political satire film, Newton, starring Rajkumar Rao, Pankaj Tripathi, Sanjay Mishra, Raghubir Yadav, and Anjali Patil, received rave reviews. The film also became India’s official entry for the Oscars.

• Amit Masurkar knows 4 languages- Konkani (his mother-tongue), Marathi, Hindi, and English.

• Here’s a detailed conversation with Amit Masurkar: