 When screenwriter Rajat Aroraa initially started working , taking cues from producer Kapoor , the scope of the film was much smaller , primarily looking back to the soft @-@ pornography scene of the 1980s . But gradually as work progressed , the scope widened to include the controversial romances of Smitha through a fictionalised biopic . While researching for the film , director Luthria and screenwriter Aroraa found little material in film magazines of that period , as " women like Silk Smitha were often ignored by film magazines , except for gossip column mentions " . Thus they derived many of the details of her life from anecdotes and party gossips , and then fictionalised them . Apart from depicting the pomp of the Telugu / Tamil film industry , the screenplay also takes up issues such as money management by actors , " their string of broken relationships " , and the way they " led lonely lives and met with tragic ends " . For inspiration , instead of looking at South Indian films of the period , the team turned to the work of mainstream Bollywood directors like Manmohan Desai , Vijay Anand , Raj Kapoor , Feroz Khan and G.P. Sippy ; and in order to put the global soft @-@ porn industry in context , the team looked into Boogie Nights ( 1997 ) and The People vs. Larry Flynt ( 1996 ) . The final script became a " fictionalised , women @-@ oriented , generalised perspective on the 1980s film industry " . 
