/> Raj Santoshi has always made Ajay Devgan do the unusual. In Halla Bol which is releasing in January 2008, Devgan plays a film star.

And to get a feel of his the character's showbiz activities, Santoshi and his camera-person Nataraj Subramaniam trailed Devgan at various dos, events and film functions.

Reveals Santoshi, "The idea is very simple. We needed to capture Ajay's personality as a film star in all its facets. And to do so we needrd to see him relaxed and unconscious of the camera.

The best way to get my character's public personality was to follow Ajay into his daily activities.

We caught him on the set of Omakara with Kareena Kapoor. We'll be using that footage to show our hero's professional side. "

This a unique experiment merging fact with fiction. The only instance where a filmmaker tried to fuse real footage from Bollywood into his film was Manmohan Desai.

In Naseeb he captured all the big stars from Raj Kapoor and Waheeda Rehman to Rajesh Khanna and Sharmila Tagore at the jubilee celebration of Desai's Dharam-veer as Amitabh Bachchan dressed as a waiter mingled with the guests singing John jani janardhan.

And in Om Shanti Om Farha Khan paraded a bevy of stars in a song.

So far films about Bollywood have mostly looked at showbiz with tinted glasses. The exceptions being Guru Dutt's Kaagaz Ke Phool and Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Guddi Raj Santoshi's film takes a candid look at Bollywood.

"It's like a docu-fiction, very unlike other films on showbiz. We want to show the real deglamorized side of Bollywood."