Glory Director Karan Anshuman Detests the Word "Content"

Karan Anshuman began his career watching films and writing about them—as a film critic. As it turned out, the instincts to back them up behind the camera took over. The results spoke for themselves—as a showrunner and director, he has spent the better part of a decade shaping the grammar of Indian streaming, from Inside Edge, Prime Video India's first original, to the phenomenon that Mirzapur became, to Rana Naidu's slow-burn family violence. These are shows with texture and teeth, built around damaged men navigating worlds where ambition and morality are permanently at war.

His latest, Glory, arrives with a somewhat different register. It's more interested in grief and legacy than shock and spectacle. Anshuman calls it "elevated pulp," which is as good a description as any for work that refuses to choose between being serious and being entertaining. We chatted with the director to talk about the new show, the state of Indian OTT, toxic masculinity, algorithmic filmmaking and more. Edited excerpts:

You’re behind some generation-defining shows on Indian streaming: Inside Edge, Mirzapur and Rana Naidu. All of them have accrued critic cred and cult following in their respective zones. What was your vision for Glory?

My instinct is always to create something distinct, fresh and original, something the audience hasn’t quite seen before—but still tell it in a mainstream language that reaches wide… I’m always interested in that balance. You want novelty, but you don’t want to become inaccessible. You want the grammar to feel familiar enough for people to enter the world, but the world itself should feel new.

With Glory, I wanted to make a drama that was really about family, legacy, grief, masculinity and the cost of ambition. I also wanted it to be more mature and emotional than some of my earlier work.

But the pulp kept writing itself in. The world, the irreverent characters—it had its own crazy propulsive momentum. So, I think what we ended up with is a kind of elevated pulp. Emotional and dramatic but still very entertaining.

You started off as a film critic. In the move from someone who commented on what was made to someone who made it, what did you want to change?

I don’t see critic and filmmaker as two sides of a coin, or two people standing on opposite sides of a fence. They’re completely different things, and you can actually be both at the same time.
I don’t think I’ve switched off my critic brain when I watch films. I’m a film buff first. I love watching films (this is why I have gotten into movies in the first place), dissecting them, analysing them in my head.

And I think people often confuse the word ‘critique’ with ‘criticism’. A critic is basically someone who watches something, thinks deeply about it, and puts a point of view out there. Over time, they find an audience that resonates with their point of view and learn to count on their recommendations.

Filmmaking is a completely different beast. You’re speaking to a much wider audience, and it’s no longer one person’s opinion. It’s a whole team of people trying to work towards a common vision. In my very first film I found myself shooting an item song - I thought about ranting against them for years—and then I doubled down on it. Max irony? No. It’s just a different job.

Being a critic definitely taught me a lot about what works and what doesn’t. But as a maker, you also realise something very quickly: as a critic you may identify a problem, but often the maker has already seen that problem well in advance. Sometimes they’ve chosen another creative road, and sometimes they simply couldn’t solve it because of time, money, people—whatever the case may be. So, making things gives you a lot of humility. It makes your relationship with criticism less theoretical and much more human.

In the near-decade of Indian streaming—beginning from Prime Videos’s first original, Inside Edge—how far do you think the industry has got in creating a sustainable and credible smaller-screen source of entertainment? Chasing formulas and algorithmic filmmaking seem to have arrived on OTT—a format deemed as a goldmine of novel storytelling and new concepts—too…

OTT changed the game in India. It created room for stories, genres, actors and writers that theatrical films could never have.

But every new medium starts with freedom and then slowly gets systematised. The early years felt like a gold rush. Nobody fully knew the rules, so we just took all our chances. I really went for it—if you remember the opening of Inside Edge—I think I was trying to pack in all the seven deadly sins in that first shot!

But yes, the hits happen and then everyone is trying to reverse-engineer success… completely forgetting that these cyclical things have always failed in the long run. The algo can’t be allowed to become the boss. There is no way it can account for what people are going to fall in love with next. Can an algo predict which memes will go viral? Not a chance. It’s near random. Film and shows—these are not predictable either. Human instinct is far from being replaced.

To sustain, streamers will have to reward original takes and risky ideas.

What do you make of the term “content”?

You know, all these dark characters I create—I think their primary source is the feeling I go through when someone uses the word “content” with me.

Which is to say, I detest that word. Can you really equate everything from Lawrence of Arabia (1962) to “6-7” memes under one all-encompassing term? No. And if you do, don’t. /You can’t flatten all creativity into one word. I don’t think any filmmaker wakes up thinking, “Today I’m going to make content to be consumed,” like it’s some chakna. We’re trying to tell stories; create scenes, characters, images, moments—things that stay with people.

Do you think OTT is the reason for the failure of theatrical projects for the longest time?

This question isn’t really relevant right now, given what Dhurandhar has done by beating all theatrical records.

But yes, OTT has changed viewing habits. Audiences are spoiled for choice. And I do think the inherent laziness of people plays a part. Human instinct is to find the fastest path to dopamine, and usually picking up a remote is less taxing than making a trip to the theatre.

In fact, streamers themselves are now facing challenges from the dreaded “second-screen viewing”. People are watching shows while scrolling on their phones. So how long before the second screen becomes the main screen? Will that kill streaming? No, I don’t think so. I think all of it can co-exist, with a little bit of periodic reinvention.

Mirzapur and Rana Naidu stirred the pot with the depiction of violence and sex on screen—both themes hugely divisive around the time following the pandemic. Is it possible to create a piece of great cinema without any sex or violence? (In the same way that a good film like Kill was created entirely based on violence).

This is a rhetorical question. So let me reverse-state: sex and violence don’t automatically make something lesser either. The real question is, does the story need it? Adding colourful language, sex or violence gratuitously is lazy. But removing those things from a world where they honestly belong can also be dishonest. The problem is not sex or violence. The problem is dishonesty.

Like you pointed out, Kill works because it commits completely to violence as its cinematic language.

In my own work, yes, in the early years, shocking audiences was fun. There was a certain freedom in that. But I got bored of it fairly quickly, and I think I’ve been weaning myself away from it over time. The challenge now is not to shock. The challenge is to be truthful, and yet entertaining.

Would you agree that in the age that has followed the passage of millennials as the primary viewer base for entertainment, the depiction of masculinity has gotten toxic? It seems to be the age of the post-woke male…

We’re certainly in a backlash moment. Animal is right on top of the pile here.

I don’t find it odd, because it is reflective of society. There is clearly a section of people that feels fed up with conversations around political correctness. So, this post-woke male figure has arrived almost as a reaction to that. But just because I understand where it comes from doesn’t mean I’m completely comfortable with it. I don’t think we should be celebrating toxic male representation blindly. We have to examine it, question it, interrogate it.

I’ve written many damaged men myself—Munna (from Mirzapur), Rana (Rana Naidu), Dev from Glory. But they don’t simply get away with being damaged. There is always a cost. There is comeuppance. And very often, they are interrogated by the women around them. That’s important to me. I’m interested in damaged men, not heroes with a free-for-all pass.

Okay, so, contrary to the ‘angry young man’ of the 70s, why does the hyper-aggressive alpha male of our times seem like an algorithmic supply?

The ’70s angry young man came from real-world reasons—unemployment, corruption, institutional failure. I don’t think those reasons have disappeared. Guddu and Baloo come from unemployment, too, and they are forced to choose crime. Dev comes from a broken home and is angry at the world because his own family has always been angry with him. So, for me I think the reasons are still the same, still rooted.

Are others doing it for reels, clips, likes, swipes, memes? Who knows.

What are you watching currently—and is there something that you keep returning to?

I like to watch everything. I love sci-fi. I just saw Project Hail Mary (as good as the book) For All Mankind (final season, noooo!) and Monarch (love all things Godzilla).

I’m also watching the IPL (surprise surprise) and a lovely reality TV series called Jury Duty.
I’ve stopped rewatching things. There’s way too much to explore and too little time!