One would've assumed that Imtiaz Ali saw Ali Bhatt's previous work before casting her in Highway but the Tamasha and Rockstar filmmaker says he hadn't even seen her debut film Student of the Year, in an interview with film critic Komal Nahta on his channel Game Changers. He describes his casting process as an "instinctive" one.
"There is no arithmetic in our work; it’s an instinctive process," he said, adding that he initially thought of casting a "mature 30-year-old actor" for Highway—"someone who had seen the world and would rebel," but meeting Alia changed all that. "I thought, ‘This is the girl.’ Alia was just 18 then, but she had that vibe, the emotional depth required for the character. She hadn’t done much work then — I hadn’t even seen Student of the Year — but the way she talked... it was very charming. It came from the heart. She had a quality about her that was fantastic for this part," Imtiaz explained.
Since filmmaking is an art form as well as a business, Imtiaz was asked which aspect is more important, to which he responded that when he gets an idea for a film, he evaluates it to see if it makes sense from a business point of view; if it doesn't, he makes some superficial changes to make the commercial prospects better. "If that doesn't work, I won't make the film; instead, I make some other film," he said.
However, Imtiaz maintains that he pays attention to the business aspect, but that's not his primary work.
"There are other people who work around me that know the business aspects better than me. If this is not vibing with the market, we let it go, and think about doing it later," he explains.
In the interview, the filmmaker also talked about art's influence on society and recalled how the breakup in Love Aaj Kal was influenced by something he saw. "I had attended a breakup party in college. Two seniors broke up, they conducted a party. So, art follows life follows art. There's a symbiotic relationship between art and society. Both are necessary for growth."
