You know you're entering uncharted territory for the usually squeaky clean Bollywood when a film opens with a stool sample and a bag of cocaine getting mixed up.
Elsewhere in the newly released Delhi Belly, you'll find excessive profanity, both blatant and subtle sexual innuendo, and scatological humour that's only for the brave of heart (and stomach). The expletives and alleged corruptive influence of one of the songs on the soundtrack was discussed by India's Congress party in parliament. And dialogue in a brothel was deemed so offensive the movie was banned in Nepal (but finally released after the offending scene was cut).
Delhi Bellly has no beauty queens dancing around trees. And its three male leads, the bearded, the corpulent and the afro-coiffed, have never modelled before - quite an achievement for an industry that pays obeisance only to the photogenic. The film was a huge hit when it was released in India last year. The Hollywood Reporter called it a 'sexy, filthy and thoroughly entertaining comedy' that 'marks a welcome shift in contemporary Indian cinema'. And the man responsible for this shift was its producer: Aamir Khan.
What made Khan back the film? 'The script. I thought it was funny. That's the simple reason,' he says. 'The script was written by Akshat Verma. He came from Los Angeles and had been chasing me for months. I get scripts all the time and I was completely busy working on another film. He ended up giving the script to my maid when I was away.'
The script landed on his desk on top of a pile of 50 to 60 other scripts. 'My wife Kiran [Rao, also a writer/director] read it,' Khan says. 'I was in another room, and I kept hearing her giggle, then laugh out loud. Then she was holding her stomach laughing and she fell off the sofa. She finished reading the entire thing in 90 minutes. I had to grab it from her. When I finished the last page, I knew we had to make the film.'
However, by then Verma had left India, presumably having given up. The day he landed in the US, he got the call from Khan and flew back to Mumbai within 24 hours. 'The film could not have been made without the conviction of Aamir Khan,' says Verma.
Khan, 47, has been one of India's leading actors for the past 24 years. But in Delhi Belly, he relegated himself to the role of producer and appears only briefly at the end of the film. Unrecognisable as a 1980s throwback disco king, Khan's spoof of a Bollywood hero is ironic, as he's very much the Bollywood archetype.