Lok Paritran hit Headlines Today

My ex-colleague Saptarshi Bhattacharya did the story.

April 23, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 15 Comments »

The Gautham Menon Interview: Uncut

There’s a certain amount of honesty in the characters he creates. Be it Rajiv Samuel (Abbas) not forgiving his arch rival Rajesh Subramanium (Madhavan) for stealing his girl even towards the end, or the sublety of Reena Joseph’s (Reema Sen) reaction when she learns about her fiance-impersonator Rajesh in the refreshing love story ‘Minnale’ or the realism in romance between Anbuselvan (Suriya) and Maya (Jyotika) in gritty cop flick ‘Kaakha Kaakha,’ there is a streak of the real world and real people running through.

It’s that stamp of candour in the frames that makes Gautham one of the most genuine storytellers around.

Even outside the canvas of 35mm, Gautham retains that consistency in signature. He talks straight, speaks from the heart and is matter of fact about satisfaction and uncertainty, confidence and doubt, as he speaks about his latest release ‘Vettaiyaadu Vilaayaadu’ with Kamal Haasan.

It a sequel in spirit to ‘Kaakha Kaakha’?
“I would like to treat it as another episode of a police officer’s life. Something as an extension of Kaakha Kaakha. But then, I thought the genre should be slightly different. As in, make it like a thriller and then shift to the ‘Kaakha Kaakha’ mould in the second half. That’s how it’s come out. Very involuntary also, i think … Like, Ram Gopal Varma makes a trilogy on gangster films. I thought I’ll make a trilogy of cop films. I’m not equating myself to Ram Gopal Varma here, I’m just inspired by the idea. So this would be my second film. After some years, depending on how it goes, maybe the third film.”

The cop-versus-killer cat-and-mouse game, leads to the same problem as in ‘Kaakha Kaakha,’ when the cop’s personal life gets involved and affected in the course of the investigation. The classic serial killer mystery in the mould of ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and ‘Seven’ soon gives away to a full-fledged commercial action film as the cop and the mystery killer go tit-for-tat, says Gautham.

Apparently, the script demanded a place outside India. “It could have been China but I thought New York would be nice. It would have been nicer if we had planned it out a little better. We had problems with the first producer because he ran into a financial crunch. All the planning we made were rendered null and void when climate changed. More money was spent. We had to stay on for another 10 days from what we had planned. So costs went up. But, any place you put your camera, you get a beautiful frame. It’s a beautiful place to shoot. It’s a very film friendly place because a lots of shoots happen there. Once you get permission from the Mayor office, then you can shoot anywhere. You have to tell them what scene you are doing. And there are cops around to help you. We did some good work there. Not extensive as much as I wanted to, because of the budget. Like, I wanted to shoot action sequences on the road and stuff. But it realise its difficult to shoot unless you plan it three months in advance. So I changed it around, changed it around, made it simpler for Kamal and the other actors… But it looks good, the film looks like an English film.”

How difficult was it directing a director?

“I was directing a super actor. But, actually No. Because… lots of stuff happened between me and him because of the production. He was pissed off with change in producer, the film was not taking off, his time was getting delayed all. He was very unhappy and hesitant initially. He was like “Bunch of kids, what they gonna make” and stuff like that. He kept to himself mostly. So I’ll give him the scene, he’ll take a look at it and he’ll act. He’ll make a couple of changes… Simple ones, like “Can I hook this line and this line?” He would tell me when you write, you tend to write a little more. “You can cut this line.” So I take stuff from him. He let me handle it. I can never say he bossed over. He totally understood what I wanted. I wanted a subtle performance from him, the character demanded that and he went for the right variations.”

Did he manage to break ice with the legend subsequently?

“Well, as much as ice could be broken, we broke. It can’t get beyond that ever, I think. When you write something on paper, and when you see somebody peforming that to the hilt… To the T… you realise it’s awesome. And, he gives you much more than that. Certain expressions of his, you can never write. He would do something different for every scene. But we kept him totally subtle throughout. His character demanded him to subtle, quiet and soft, which he understood. As much as co-operation there was, there was from him. No complaints at all. It was a beautiful experience working with him because I learnt a lot in terms a lot on how my writing should be. Like, how an actor’s expression should be written, which we don’t tend to do because we write in the classic screenplay format. Whatever I asked him to do, he did. I asked him to jump in the sea he did that. I asked him to run and shoot on the road, he did that. He was extremely co-operative.”

Did Kamal have to use a double? “No stunt double. Not for Kamal. But there were no major stunts.”

Since, he wrote the film for Kamal, there was no need to modify the script to suit him. “There are moments when he’s not there in the screen and the attention shifts to the villain and to the heroine. Apart from a song in the beginning, there’s nothing we had to incorporate for him.”

Soon, he opens up to tell us more about Kamal’s character. “He’s a deputy commissioner of police. He’s 40-plus in the film, he knows what he wants. He’s instinctive, reacts according to his instincts. He’s a supercop. He walks in where he wants to. The story takes him to another country where he’s investigating a case. He’s not allowed officially. But he goes to check what happened to somebody he knew. And he unravels something.”

Is it real for a cop from Tamil Nadu getting to go on to a foreign country on an investigation?

“It is realistic. First half is very real, bang on… I’ve not compromised at all. He’s not allowed to take a gun. He has to find out what happened from the local cop there. He walks with the other cop and suggests what they could do… So, it’s a sort of an unofficial investigation.”

Who’s playing the villain?

“I can’t reveal that,” he says with a straight face.

What exactly was all the controversy about change in producer?

“Our producer Kajah Mohideen had a lot of financial problems. So the film wasn’t taking off. Kamal and we sat for script discussions and that took him. By which time, the interest rate was escalating. So, he tried commited suicide. Not because of us, but because he had financial hassles. For 10-15 days, Oscar Ravichandran came in, put in Rs. 90 lakh, and suddenly, he said he can’t do anything and backed out. There was a schedule waiting for Bombay. But then, we had to think about Jo’s dates, Kamal’s dates … If we lose those dates, everything goes for a toss.. So I funded that Bombay shoot myself… As usual, I put money in from my partner and we carried on. We did Rs. 80 lakh worth of shoot. Just when we were wondering what to do for the American schedule, Mr.Narayanan came in. But we are doing it on a first-copy basis. Now, Mr.Naryananan is on the helm. But distributors have put a stay on the film saying what Kajah owes them should be given back. The financiers put a stay. My work is going on. But May 5th, it will come out. “

What can people expect from Vettaiyaadu?
“A good film…nothing else. No problem if they call it another ‘Kaakha… Kaakha.’ That is a good film. It made for good viewing, good value for money. This is definitely that. It’s got good songs, it’s got Kamal Hassan. I wanted to go one step beyond that… which im not sure. From your earlier film, you have to go five notches higher. Especially with Kamal, I would have loved to do something like a Nayagan, which is an all-time favourite film, don’t know how “commercial” it was, but it was a complete film. I didn’t do that. I didn’t have that kind of time. So, I thought let me make commercial film.”

And he’s already on to his next film, ‘Silandhi’ working double shift.

How’s personal life been?

“Haywire… because I work 20 hours these days…I’ve gone on to ‘Silandhi’ with Sarath Kumar, Jyotika, Tabu and Milind Soman. I have lost weight. I haven’t spent time with my family. But that’s something I’ve brought upon myself… It’s just that I haven’t done a film in more than one and a half years. And I had a script ready and people were tearing it to bits. I just wanted to do the script and I felt I have a good team to support me on the prost production. Mahendra Jain, financier, is giving us the money, we are doing it on a first copy basis. I wanted to get going on another film. I shoot for Silandhi in the morning and from 6 to 2 in the night, I work on post production for ‘Vettaiyaadu’ and then sleep for 4 hours and work on the other again. We’ve shot for 20 days already. It should release two months after Vettaiyaadu. I’m also starting Suriya’s film in June. That will come out on Diwali.”

Whatever happened to the English and Hindi remakes of ‘Kaakha … Kaakha’?

The English version, I backed out because I wanted to establish myself here in Tamil first. The Telugu version didn’t do well. And I wasn’t ok with Sunny Deol doing it. The whole idea of remaking didn’t appeal to me.

April 21, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 22 Comments »

When Kiruba interviewed the director: Part 4

There is quite a bit of money invested and there will be even more you will have to invest. How do you plan to recover your money?

Oh, that wouldn’t be much of a problem. Or at least we hope. We’ve got a decent film with us with a decent cast. Satellite rights alone these days fetch a handsome sum that would recover entire cost of production. Besides, we intend to distribute it ourselves in a small way, one step at a time. It’s our baby, we will make it crawl first before it can walk around the country and do the rounds around the world. We will make it grow from strength to strength. We have a few plans to market the film, taking it personally from one city to another city. We hope to cover ten Indian cities before it’s ready for the world.

When do you plan to release the movie?

Ideally, during Friendship Week, the first week of August. That’s exactly the mood we want people to be in when they watch the film. This movie is about a gang of friends and best watched with your gang of friends.

There’s more to our organization Made in Madras InkOperated! than TFLW. Tell us about it.

Made in Madras was what we wanted to called our film before we came up with That Four Letter Word. But then, it would have been such a cliché with Hyderabad Blues, Bombay Boys and then Made in Madras!! So we chucked the idea but the phrase is so close to our heart because we are simple people made in this simple city and we are proud of our identity. In this globalised world, I think that’s something many of us are forgetting. What was good about us! Who we really are!! Made in Madras hopes to rekindle that spirit of simplicity. It will be a society committed to bringing independent filmmakers together. In a couple of years, we will be ready to produce independent films and make the dream of first time filmmakers come true. We are also putting together a database of professionals and resources available to help you shoot your film free of cost. It will be a not-for-profit organization, run not through money but by ink! Because great ideas just require ink. Either you write them down or print them out. But put it on paper. Paperwork is all it takes to make a film! That’s the idea behind Made in Madras inkOperated! It’s also a fun company, that’s what the pun on Incorporated signifies and the exclamation is the statement we want to make through our work. A form of eccentric expression!

We notice that you use your blog to ask for volunteers for your item dance. How useful have the blogs been? Do you plan to leverage further?

My blog is one part of my life that I’ve made public. So that’s how the film sneaked in and found itself into my regular blog (http://sudhishkamath.blogspot.com). I started my film blog (http://thatfourletterword.blogspot.com) as an attempt to chronicle the making of the film because I realized that the behind the scenes were larger than life, in fact larger than the film itself. But I’ve not found the time to update it as often as I would’ve liked. I just put up a community on Orkut to keep people posted. We have an official site which we will update in the next one month.
It’s been an amazing journey of learning, togetherness and bonding as a family. It has taught us the importance of chasing a dream and the joy of doing it together as a team. Yes, the blogs have been useful in generating moral support. I had at least two volunteers for the item dance but its an idea we dropped. I have people offering me space to shoot. I’m touched. And if this interview is going to add to the help, I will only be overwhelmed! I will be putting down chapters that went into making the film, so that it can be published as a book, for purely selfish reasons. I want to give them away as souvenirs to every person who has been part of this film. A token of thanks. A memento.

What are your future plans?

I want to continue writing because I’ve become addicted to it. I want to finish my first five films before I turn 35. I’m ready with two of the five scripts. My second film Watcha Gonna Do, a multi-genre spoof on American films, will be the first production from Made in Madras inkOperated. And, hopefully it will make enough money to fund my other projects because I know that no producer with a sane mind will agree to fund my third, fourth and fifth films because they will not make money. I know there is a chance that they might not work but these are the kind of films I think are absolutely original. My third film, Checkbox Theory, (I’ve blogged about my Checkbox theory) is about a six-year old boy in love with an eight-year old girl. The film looks at contemporary love stories from the point of view of children. It tells us how clinical we get about love. The older we grow, the more checkboxes we look at ticking, in our choice of partner. The younger we are, the more blissfully we are in love, without any specific reason. To me, that is the pure love, nothing like first love. My fourth film, Slip of Mind, is a psycho-thriller set in the near future where there is no good left in the world. It’s an evil-versus-evil tale and each character has a virtue for a name. The characters are called Hate, Evil, Beauty, Lust, Hope and so on. It is a very dark, philosophical film with a lot of gore. My fifth, Bad News, will be a critique on TV journalism and the entire film unravels through news clippings. Each scene is a news capsule from a different channel. So each TV channel is a character and each tells its own version of the same set of incidents, starting from the abduction of an aging superstar in India, which ultimately snowball to September 11. It’s a fact-meets-fiction tale that requires a year of research. I personally believe I’m not old enough to make my fourth and fifth films yet. I hope to grow up in the next four-five years and develop the right kind of sensitivity and expertise to deal with such complex films. Meanwhile, we at Made in Madras will produce simple films, backed by a panel from the film industry. Just a matter of time before we get Mani Ratnam, Kamal Hassan, Ramgopal Varma, Farhan Akhtar and an A.R.Rahman to see what we see and get them on board as directors who will screen scripts. I personally hope to do one film a year after ensuring that Watcha Gonna Do releases in every corner of the world, no matter how long that takes. High time someone showed the finger to America’s monopoly over English films. English after all is not their language, the Brits created it. And we are/were closer to the Brits than they are/were. So, fuck you Hollywood! Here we come!
Update: I, next, starting next month, want to work on a mainstream Hindi film. I’m calling it ‘Parchayi,’ it’s a tribute film to one of my most favourite films (I’m not saying which one but by the time it comes out, I dunno how many of you will see through it). But yes, a tribute does not mean its not original. It is entirely original because I’ve just taken the soul of a movie I’ve liked and transplanted it in a different world, with different people, with a different conflict and so, it became a very different plot with very little resemblance to the movie I’m paying tribute to. I want to make it now because it is on among the most relevant contemporary issues in Bollywood. There is a huge difference between a tribute and a remake. ‘Parchayi’ is an ode to orginality and fresh thinking, the need to give back something to the movies that have made us and the life around us, instead of rehashing them. To bring movies to life, you need to bring life into the movies. It’s my tribute to movies and people who inspire them.

(concluded)
Want know more? That will take you back to the beginning of the series.

April 21, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

When Kiruba interviewed the director: Part 3

Your movie is seven years in the making. What have been your stumbling blocks.

Money. We always knew it can create, we didn’t know it can also corrupt. We had a producer in Sashi who was willing to invest about 17 lakhs in the film. That was a lot of money for us. Until one day, Levis came and said: “Take ten from me. I want to be part of this film too.” And then, we decided to exploit the potential of in-film promos. We tried more sponsors first through our own company, then gave up and tied up with Ogilvy to get sponsors. That took us a year and a half before deals got finalized. Then we shot a promo. And tried some more to get sponsors. That didn’t work, so we had to make Sashi spend all the money. We spent about 11 lakhs making the film. We shot almost 95 per cent of it. Just another five per cent was left and life began playing games with us. One of our cast members didn’t have dates because she was now an RJ and said she couldn’t spare “even half a day” because her boss was strict. Another guy broke his knee and was advised bed rest for six months. In that period, Sashi’s daughter was diagnosed with tumour and the rest of the cast got busy with their respective careers. Cary and Usha became Southern Spice VJs. Ranvir was away, first in the middle of action, thanks to the Pooja Bhat episode, and then out of action due to an accident and then busy again in life with Lakshya. Getting common dates became a hassle. Mid of last year, one and a half years after we last shot the film, we guys got finally together and decided something had to be done. Sashi said he will give us the last instalment of five lakhs to complete the film. There was no way we couldn’t shoot parts of the film replacing two of our cast members, so we decided that it was easier to shoot the whole film again. Abbas volunteered to be Executive Producer, it was a shot in the arm for the team. In the last months, we did our best to get sponsors, but it is always difficult to get people to part with their money in the last quarter of a year. So all we have now are promises from different corporates, not a penny in hand. How long can we wait? Usha had been postponing her visit to see her sister in America for the last six months, she got a visa some five months ago. She finally had booked her ticket for mid April after we assured her we will finish by March. So two weeks ago, we took the call to go ahead and finish it, no matter what. With or without money. People have been doing it. One of my one-time assistant director Pradeep had got together with his friend Vijay last November for a cup of tea. They wrote a script by November 17, auditioned people and started shooting by November 24 and finished shoot by December 17 and editing by January 7 this year!! With no money at all, sheer will-power!!!
Pradeep and Vijay, today, are my inspiration.
I did this scriptwriting workshop at SRM mid last year and at the end of it, as a part of my motivational exercise told them to write a feature length script in 30 days and if they did, I would personally ensure that the director will provide them with the camera and the editing set-up for the shoot. Early February this year, I got a call from their director. They had a film on them. A completed one. They, today, are my inspiration.
Money corrupts a project. Will-power gives it the boost. Today we don’t have any money. But we have the will, we have people, we have the spirit. What more do we need, huh?
Having said that, thank you Mom!! For letting me steal money from your account to do the movie.

With so many difficulties, many would have given up. But you *REALLY* persevere. Why?

Ah, no way. Why would we even think of giving up on something that means the world to us. That’s like quitting life. Plus, if you’ve spent five and a half years on something, you surely don’t want that much of work to go down the drain, do you? It’s just that that kept us going. This film has changed our lives. We owe it to this film and give it some life now.

Dealing with high profile stars has its own difficulties. Why don’t you use fresh faces? After all, movies like Hyderabad Blues and Kaadhal really didn’t have big stars.

Well, like I said, the film wasn’t written for stars. The film found these stars. Every artiste wants a script he/she can relate to. I guess that worked for our film. Every person involved is in the film, not because he/she is a star but because they believe in the script and they can so relate to it. And hey, it helps to have stars because I know hundreds of filmmakers in the country who have not found distributors because we have such a dim-witted system that believes in names to sell a film. I know many completed films which haven’t found buyers because they didn’t have stars. Even Hyderabad Blues had to wait for four years after it was made before it hit the screen and Kaadhal had Boys Bharat who was a name. With the clutter of so many promos, these days we only decide to watch films if we know some face behind the film. Sudhish is hardly a face, Abbas is, Cary is, Usha today is … it’s these faces you see in the promos that actually help you make up your mind if you want to see the film or not. And no, though we fought like mad dogs on the project, we never had any major problems because we always knew that each of us wanted the film to be good.
Even if Abbas isn’t a part of the film now, he will always remain a part of our family, as one of those responsible for seeing the film through.

DVD cover of the short film I made with Abbas years ago
Ellipsis was shot in two nights in the middle of a cyclone

You movie is one of the first ventures to be shot fully in digital format. What difficulties do you face with it?

There were very few difficulties as such. Though it would have been easier for us had we not shot using sync sound (location sound). Sync sound is something very few have attempted… something only what a Kamal Hasan has tried before here in the South. Farhan did it too for Dil Chahta Hai. And it’s the toughest thing when you are shooting in real locations. If you shut everyone up on the set, even the most real locations look like a set. If you don’t, it turns too noisy that you can hardly hear the lines. Then there’s the sound of the blast of the AC, other ambience noise … like traffic for example, which require you to go in for more and more retakes. This time, we’d rather go in for dubbing. Other than that, video has its limitations. There is the inherent danger of the film looking like a TV serial, because all said and done, the canvas is smaller when you shoot on video. But the advantages of shooting on video really more than make up for the difficulties. If not for video, most of us wouldn’t have ever made a movie!

Does your movie have music?

Yes, we have this American rap/hiphop/fusion band called Karmacy that has recorded a title track for us. And they are giving us another two songs. Asif Ali, our music director sat with Cary and recorded about 20 scratch songs, we’ve shortlisted quite a few of them. This time around, Asif has done another ten songs, mostly instrumental. It’s about young people. There’s got to be music.

What lessons have you learnt in filmmaking?

Oh plenty. First as a scriptwriter, I learnt how much I should NOT write. As a director, I learnt how much I should NOT take from the script. A director does not just take a script and translate it to film, he adds value and character to the film. He eliminates words and replaces them with visuals. He takes 95 per cent of the text and puts it in context and uses it as subtext. I learnt that there is no limit to how much you can add to a script. A script is basically made up of a page a minute, it probably packs ten ideas a page and is probably made up of, say, a thousand ideas which tell a story. A director needs to take each of these thousand ideas and express each of these using another ten, twenty, thirty, forty, hundred or more ideas depending on the importance and the magnitude of the idea, keeping the desired impact in mind. The lessons are many. The biggest lesson is that there are many more to be learnt. And you won’t learn till you’ve made the mistakes. I’ve made a million mistakes. I’d like to believe I’ve learnt a million lessons.

Want know more?

April 21, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

When Kiruba interviewed the director: Part 2

We hear that you were able to rope in a very decent line up of stars. Film actor Abbas, ex-Channel [V] VJ Ranvir, SS Music VJ Cary Edwards, Usha (VJ & model), Suchitra (Radio Mirchi Rj). How did you meet the actors?

Well, first TFLW was this small film we wanted to make without any money. It wasn’t a script written after we put the cast together. One day on my job, during an interview with VJs Ranvir and Purab, I learnt Ranvir wanted to be an actor. I told him ‘Every VJ wants to be an actor.’ He didn’t take that comment lightly. After we were done with the interview, he told me that it has nothing to do with a VJ. Every body in this world either wants to make a movie/be an actor or cut an album/be a singer or write a book/be a writer. “I don’t know you but I can bet you want to be a writer,” he said. I smiled back and said: “No, I’d be the movie guy.” “Oh, so you want to make a movie,” he asked. “No, I’m making my movie,” I said. He got all curious then, so though I was least interested in telling him what it was all about, I just gave him a polite two line description of what the movie was about and he immediately asked: Can I audition? Man, I couldn’t believe that! He was a VJ, someone I had great respect for. When I studied in Manipal, he had come to our campus for a shoot. He was so funny and not even in my wildest dreams did I think that HE would want to be in MY movie? For icing, there was Purab, who joined Ranvir and said: “Me too. Can I audition too?” Purab, then got busy with ‘Supari,’ so he passed on the script to Cary, who had just about quit Channel [V] after hosting the much acclaimed Virtual [V] for three years. I still remember that we didn’t have money, so the first time I ever spoke to him was through SMS. My message to him was: “Hi Cary, no STD, only SMS. This low budget film. You still interested? Welcome to the film.”
There was Cyrus Sahukar too who was once a part of the film after he expressed interest but he backed out last minute, saying he didn’t have leave. We just had another two weeks to shoot. And I could only think of Abbas, with whom I had shot a short experimental film called ‘Ellipsis’ a few months earlier. I called him, he said: Give me two minutes, I’ll check if I have dates. Two minutes later, he calls back to say we have. “When can we meet,” he asks. “Now?” “Cool,’ he says. Thirty minutes later, at 8.30 p.m., I meet him at his wife’s boutique on North Boag Road. I narrate the script and we end up talking till 2.30 in the morning. I’ve never seen anyone more excited than him. He could so relate to the character he was playing. And then, he told me something that happened four months before that. He had invited me to the premiere of his Hindi film, ‘Ansh,’ and it turned out to be quite bad. Interval break, he asks us to come out and asks us for our honest opinion. “Bad man … it’s very bad,” I say softly. But I wasn’t telling him anything new. He knew it was bad. He almost broke down: “Why does this happen to me? I make the same mistakes in choosing films,” he said with near moist eyes. “Let’s go for a drive,” I suggested because the last thing we wanted to see was him breaking down outside his own movie preview. A friend stayed next street, so we took him there and showed him the trailer we had just shot for the film, just to warm up. At that point of time, Cyrus was still part of our film and I had my whole cast. “I really wanted to ask you if I can be part of your film that day,” Abbas recalled. “I didn’t want to take advantage of our friendship. But I think it’s destiny. God wanted me to be a part of this film.”
To this moment, Abbas has displayed the same amount of unflinching commitment, passion and enthusiasm to the film. Which is why these days I never say ‘my film,’ I always refer to it as ‘our film.’
Oh, and Ranvir almost never made it to the film because he was busy with his play ‘Blue Mug’ and he asked us to postpone shoot by a month. Cary had waited a year waiting for the film to take off by then and so we told him we can’t wait any longer. Ranvir was already upset with us for an earlier goof-up. When we shot in Pune, he drove down all by himself from Bombay and couldn’t find us because he had the wrong phone number with him and we couldn’t reach him. He was left stranded there before we reached him 36 hours later. He was so angry, he swore he wouldn’t be a part of it. By now, he had cooled down but he was still upset that we couldn’t wait for him in spite of him having done so much for the film. “I was a part of the film even before Cary joined,” he reminded us. But Ranvir had a regular job, Cary did not. So we told him we had to shoot no matter what. “Well, no bad feelings then,” he said, wishing us luck.
There was no one else who could have done that role but Ranvir. And the next alternative we could think of was Cyrus Broacha. How do we get Cyrus Broacha, we wondered aloud sitting at Qwikys when a guy walked up to us and said: “I’ve been observing you guys for the past few weeks. I’ve always wanted to help with your film. I have Broacha’s number,” he said. We christened him ‘Angel.’ Ever since that day, Angel was part of our dream. He quit his job, worked with us on the film and went back to Pune to take up a low paying job saying we inspired him to chase his dreams.
Anyway, so we called Cyrus Broacha and said: “For us, sending you the script and asking you to do our film is like asking Amitabh Bachchan if he wants to work with us.” He laughed and said: “I’m not Amitabh Bachchan. Send me the script.” We did just that and he went incommunicado while we made friends with his Mom over a coupla weeks. Initially she was hostile, then seeing that we had no intention of giving up, finally became friends and tipped us on what time we can catch him at home. Cyrus first said he liked the script and wanted to change the lines a bit. We were game. Then he asked: “When are you looking at shooting this film?” Next month, we said. “Oh, I hate to sound like Amitabh Bachchan but I have two foreign tours lined up next month. One is the UNAIDS conference in Barcelona where Bill Clinton will interview me and talk about sex” (he wasn’t exaggerating too much, it was all over the papers that he was interviewing Clinton) and there was the Nickelodeon Chotta VJ hunt in the Middle East.
So he took off, became incommunicado again. We got so desperate we tried calling five star hotels in Spain through the internet phone at Iway to reach him. No luck, people who picked up the phone didn’t even understand English.
So we scheduled his scenes for the last four days and started shoot. Ten days into the shoot, we reach him … this is two nights before we have scheduled his scenes. And he now tells us his boss Natasha didn’t want him to shoot a movie. We then call Natasha who tells us that she didn’t have a problem, in fact, she didn’t even know about the film. “Maybe he doesn’t want to do it,” she said.
So that’s how Broacha pulled a Bakra on us.
And we were all so pissed off that we cancelled shoot that evening and went for ‘Bend it like Beckham.’ In the interval, Cary asked: “Why don’t you ask Ranvir what he’s doing day after tomorrow?” “He will kill me,” I said. “That’s not too bad. But what if he agrees … we have everything to gain,” he said.
Thank you Cary, for suggesting that.
Because the phone conversation, went like this:
“Hi Ranvir, this is an SOS. We need you to bail us out.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Broacha was supposed to do your role and he backed out last minute. We know we are being really selfish but we didn’t know who else to ask.”
“What dates do you need?”
“Four days from day after tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’m free on these days. Because I just quit Channel [V] yesterday. But I’ll come only for four days. And you were going to pay me 5K a day, now make it 10K. Send me the ticket and keep the cheque ready, I’m coming.”
Ranvir, we would have paid you a lakh a day if we had the money! We jumped at his offer. Done!
So Ranvir was in again and we got our Zebra back.
That was the last time around.
This time, it was a rollercoaster because we had to change our cast halfway and resume shoot in 48 hours. And all that we did for years to get our actors, we fit into the most tense 48 hours of my life. That is something I will save for the book I’m writing on the movie.

You are a full time reporter in The Hindu. How do you manage to juggle between your full time job and the movie.

Well, the movie has been part of me for these seven years. I go to sleep with it, wake up with it, have breakfast with it, take it with me to office, make it wait while I meet different people and key in my story and then come back home with it. A movie happens in your head. It didn’t really take time away from what my work required of me, except for the 20 days when we had to do the shooting. Or let’s just say that my job isn’t really a job. It’s like life. Everyday, I meet different people, get to know them and write them in my diary using a little journalese and hey, you read it in the papers. Most of my stories are conversational, they talk to people. I didn’t find a style in it, it was what came naturally to me. And I’m glad it worked. I don’t see myself as a journalist or even a writer, nor do I even claim to be.

I dream and films are just about living out that dream … you share it with a few people, shoot it for the camera and share it with more people. It is really that simple, leave the jargon and the work out of it.

Finding the money to shoot that dream is what is 90 per cent of the “work,” the rest of it is what we love to do anyway.

Want know more?

April 21, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

Coming soon: Gautham uncut!

I got a sneak preview of the theatrical trailer of Gautham’s ‘Vettaiyaadu Vilayaadu’ when I went to interview him at his studio. It blew my mind. Super slick. The movie’s gonna rock.

My interview with Gautham should be out tomorrow. And once that appears, I will publish the uncut version here. He had a lot to say about his relationship with Kamal Haasan. Quite candid. Toned it down quite a bit for the paper because it’s not the paper’s style to sensationalise things.

Watch this space for the Director’s Uncut!

April 20, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 9 Comments »

That Four Letter Word: FAQS-4

There is quite a bit of money invested and there will be even more you will have to invest. How do you plan to recover your money?

Oh, that wouldn’t be much of a problem. Or at least we hope. We’ve got a decent film with us with a decent cast. Satellite rights alone these days fetch a handsome sum that would recover entire cost of production. Besides, we intend to distribute it ourselves in a small way, one step at a time. It’s our baby, we will make it crawl first before it can walk around the country and do the rounds around the world. We will make it grow from strength to strength. We have a few plans to market the film, taking it personally from one city to another city. We hope to cover ten Indian cities before it’s ready for the world.

When do you plan to release the movie?

Ideally, during Friendship Week, the first week of August. That’s exactly the mood we want people to be in when they watch the film. This movie is about a gang of friends and best watched with your gang of friends.

There’s more to our organization Made in Madras InkOperated! than TFLW. Tell us about it.

Made in Madras was what we wanted to called our film before we came up with That Four Letter Word. But then, it would have been such a cliché with Hyderabad Blues, Bombay Boys and then Made in Madras!! So we chucked the idea but the phrase is so close to our heart because we are simple people made in this simple city and we are proud of our identity. In this globalised world, I think that’s something many of us are forgetting. What was good about us! Who we really are!! Made in Madras hopes to rekindle that spirit of simplicity. It will be a society committed to bringing independent filmmakers together. In a couple of years, we will be ready to produce independent films and make the dream of first time filmmakers come true. We are also putting together a database of professionals and resources available to help you shoot your film free of cost. It will be a not-for-profit organization, run not through money but by ink! Because great ideas just require ink. Either you write them down or print them out. But put it on paper. Paperwork is all it takes to make a film! That’s the idea behind Made in Madras inkOperated! It’s also a fun company, that’s what the pun on Incorporated signifies and the exclamation is the statement we want to make through our work. A form of eccentric expression!

We notice that you use your blog to ask for volunteers for your item dance. How useful have the blogs been? Do you plan to leverage further?

My blog is one part of my life that I’ve made public. So that’s how the film sneaked in and found itself into my regular blog (http://sudhishkamath.blogspot.com). I started my film blog (http://thatfourletterword.blogspot.com) as an attempt to chronicle the making of the film because I realized that the behind the scenes were larger than life, in fact larger than the film itself. But I’ve not found the time to update it as often as I would’ve liked. I just put up a community on Orkut to keep people posted. We have an official site which we will update in the next one month.
It’s been an amazing journey of learning, togetherness and bonding as a family. It has taught us the importance of chasing a dream and the joy of doing it together as a team. Yes, the blogs have been useful in generating moral support. I had at least two volunteers for the item dance but its an idea we dropped. I have people offering me space to shoot. I’m touched. And if this interview is going to add to the help, I will only be overwhelmed! I will be putting down chapters that went into making the film, so that it can be published as a book, for purely selfish reasons. I want to give them away as souvenirs to every person who has been part of this film. A token of thanks. A memento.

What are your future plans?

I want to continue writing because I’ve become addicted to it. I want to finish my first five films before I turn 35. I’m ready with two of the five scripts. My second film Watcha Gonna Do, a multi-genre spoof on American films, will be the first production from Made in Madras inkOperated. And, hopefully it will make enough money to fund my other projects because I know that no producer with a sane mind will agree to fund my third, fourth and fifth films because they will not make money. I know there is a chance that they might not work but these are the kind of films I think are absolutely original. My third film, Checkbox Theory, (I’ve blogged about my Checkbox theory) is about a six-year old boy in love with an eight-year old girl. The film looks at contemporary love stories from the point of view of children. It tells us how clinical we get about love. The older we grow, the more checkboxes we look at ticking, in our choice of partner. The younger we are, the more blissfully we are in love, without any specific reason. To me, that is the pure love, nothing like first love. My fourth film, Slip of Mind, is a psycho-thriller set in the near future where there is no good left in the world. It’s an evil-versus-evil tale and each character has a virtue for a name. The characters are called Hate, Evil, Beauty, Lust, Hope and so on. It is a very dark, philosophical film with a lot of gore. My fifth, Bad News, will be a critique on TV journalism and the entire film unravels through news clippings. Each scene is a news capsule from a different channel. So each TV channel is a character and each tells its own version of the same set of incidents, starting from the abduction of an aging superstar in India, which ultimately snowball to September 11. It’s a fact-meets-fiction tale that requires a year of research. I personally believe I’m not old enough to make my fourth and fifth films yet. I hope to grow up in the next four-five years and develop the right kind of sensitivity and expertise to deal with such complex films. Meanwhile, we at Made in Madras will produce simple films, backed by a panel from the film industry. Just a matter of time before we get Mani Ratnam, Kamal Hassan, Ramgopal Varma, Farhan Akhtar and an A.R.Rahman to see what we see and get them on board as directors who will screen scripts. I personally hope to do one film a year after ensuring that Watcha Gonna Do releases in every corner of the world, no matter how long that takes. High time someone showed the finger to America’s monopoly over English films. English after all is not their language, the Brits created it. And we are/were closer to the Brits than they are/were. So, fuck you Hollywood! Here we come!
Update: I, next, starting next month, want to work on a mainstream Hindi film. I’m calling it ‘Parchayi,’ it’s a tribute film to one of my most favourite films (I’m not saying which one but by the time it comes out, I dunno how many of you will see through it). But yes, a tribute does not mean its not original. It is entirely original because I’ve just taken the soul of a movie I’ve liked and transplanted it in a different world, with different people, with a different conflict and so, it became a very different plot with very little resemblance to the movie I’m paying tribute to. I want to make it now because it is on among the most relevant contemporary issues in Bollywood. There is a huge difference between a tribute and a remake. ‘Parchayi’ is an ode to orginality and fresh thinking, the need to give back something to the movies that have made us and the life around us, instead of rehashing them. To bring movies to life, you need to bring life into the movies. It’s my tribute to movies and people who inspire them.

(concluded)
Want know more? That will take you back to the beginning of the series.

April 20, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 5 Comments »

That Four Letter Word: FAQS-3

Your movie is seven years in the making. What have been your stumbling blocks.

Money. We always knew it can create, we didn’t know it can also corrupt. We had a producer in Sashi who was willing to invest about 17 lakhs in the film. That was a lot of money for us. Until one day, Levis came and said: “Take ten from me. I want to be part of this film too.” And then, we decided to exploit the potential of in-film promos. We tried more sponsors first through our own company, then gave up and tied up with Ogilvy to get sponsors. That took us a year and a half before deals got finalized. Then we shot a promo. And tried some more to get sponsors. That didn’t work, so we had to make Sashi spend all the money. We spent about 11 lakhs making the film. We shot almost 95 per cent of it. Just another five per cent was left and life began playing games with us. One of our cast members didn’t have dates because she was now an RJ and said she couldn’t spare “even half a day” because her boss was strict. Another guy broke his knee and was advised bed rest for six months. In that period, Sashi’s daughter was diagnosed with tumour and the rest of the cast got busy with their respective careers. Cary and Usha became Southern Spice VJs. Ranvir was away, first in the middle of action, thanks to the Pooja Bhat episode, and then out of action due to an accident and then busy again in life with Lakshya. Getting common dates became a hassle. Mid of last year, one and a half years after we last shot the film, we guys got finally together and decided something had to be done. Sashi said he will give us the last instalment of five lakhs to complete the film. There was no way we couldn’t shoot parts of the film replacing two of our cast members, so we decided that it was easier to shoot the whole film again. Abbas volunteered to be Executive Producer, it was a shot in the arm for the team. In the last months, we did our best to get sponsors, but it is always difficult to get people to part with their money in the last quarter of a year. So all we have now are promises from different corporates, not a penny in hand. How long can we wait? Usha had been postponing her visit to see her sister in America for the last six months, she got a visa some five months ago. She finally had booked her ticket for mid April after we assured her we will finish by March. So two weeks ago, we took the call to go ahead and finish it, no matter what. With or without money. People have been doing it. One of my one-time assistant director Pradeep had got together with his friend Vijay last November for a cup of tea. They wrote a script by November 17, auditioned people and started shooting by November 24 and finished shoot by December 17 and editing by January 7 this year!! With no money at all, sheer will-power!!!
Pradeep and Vijay, today, are my inspiration.
I did this scriptwriting workshop at SRM mid last year and at the end of it, as a part of my motivational exercise told them to write a feature length script in 30 days and if they did, I would personally ensure that the director will provide them with the camera and the editing set-up for the shoot. Early February this year, I got a call from their director. They had a film on them. A completed one. They, today, are my inspiration.
Money corrupts a project. Will-power gives it the boost. Today we don’t have any money. But we have the will, we have people, we have the spirit. What more do we need, huh?
Having said that, thank you Mom!! For letting me steal money from your account to do the movie.

With so many difficulties, many would have given up. But you *REALLY* persevere. Why?

Ah, no way. Why would we even think of giving up on something that means the world to us. That’s like quitting life. Plus, if you’ve spent five and a half years on something, you surely don’t want that much of work to go down the drain, do you? It’s just that that kept us going. This film has changed our lives. We owe it to this film and give it some life now.

Dealing with high profile stars has its own difficulties. Why don’t you use fresh faces? After all, movies like Hyderabad Blues and Kaadhal really didn’t have big stars.

Well, like I said, the film wasn’t written for stars. The film found these stars. Every artiste wants a script he/she can relate to. I guess that worked for our film. Every person involved is in the film, not because he/she is a star but because they believe in the script and they can so relate to it. And hey, it helps to have stars because I know hundreds of filmmakers in the country who have not found distributors because we have such a dim-witted system that believes in names to sell a film. I know many completed films which haven’t found buyers because they didn’t have stars. Even Hyderabad Blues had to wait for four years after it was made before it hit the screen and Kaadhal had Boys Bharat who was a name. With the clutter of so many promos, these days we only decide to watch films if we know some face behind the film. Sudhish is hardly a face, Abbas is, Cary is, Usha today is … it’s these faces you see in the promos that actually help you make up your mind if you want to see the film or not. And no, though we fought like mad dogs on the project, we never had any major problems because we always knew that each of us wanted the film to be good.
Even if Abbas isn’t a part of the film now, he will always remain a part of our family, as one of those responsible for seeing the film through.

DVD cover of the short film I made with Abbas years ago
Ellipsis was shot in two nights in the middle of a cyclone

You movie is one of the first ventures to be shot fully in digital format. What difficulties do you face with it?

There were very few difficulties as such. Though it would have been easier for us had we not shot using sync sound (location sound). Sync sound is something very few have attempted… something only what a Kamal Hasan has tried before here in the South. Farhan did it too for Dil Chahta Hai. And it’s the toughest thing when you are shooting in real locations. If you shut everyone up on the set, even the most real locations look like a set. If you don’t, it turns too noisy that you can hardly hear the lines. Then there’s the sound of the blast of the AC, other ambience noise … like traffic for example, which require you to go in for more and more retakes. This time, we’d rather go in for dubbing. Other than that, video has its limitations. There is the inherent danger of the film looking like a TV serial, because all said and done, the canvas is smaller when you shoot on video. But the advantages of shooting on video really more than make up for the difficulties. If not for video, most of us wouldn’t have ever made a movie!

Does your movie have music?

Yes, we have this American rap/hiphop/fusion band called Karmacy that has recorded a title track for us. And they are giving us another two songs. Asif Ali, our music director sat with Cary and recorded about 20 scratch songs, we’ve shortlisted quite a few of them. This time around, Asif has done another ten songs, mostly instrumental. It’s about young people. There’s got to be music.

What lessons have you learnt in filmmaking?

Oh plenty. First as a scriptwriter, I learnt how much I should NOT write. As a director, I learnt how much I should NOT take from the script. A director does not just take a script and translate it to film, he adds value and character to the film. He eliminates words and replaces them with visuals. He takes 95 per cent of the text and puts it in context and uses it as subtext. I learnt that there is no limit to how much you can add to a script. A script is basically made up of a page a minute, it probably packs ten ideas a page and is probably made up of, say, a thousand ideas which tell a story. A director needs to take each of these thousand ideas and express each of these using another ten, twenty, thirty, forty, hundred or more ideas depending on the importance and the magnitude of the idea, keeping the desired impact in mind. The lessons are many. The biggest lesson is that there are many more to be learnt. And you won’t learn till you’ve made the mistakes. I’ve made a million mistakes. I’d like to believe I’ve learnt a million lessons.

Want know more?

April 20, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

That Four Letter Word: FAQS-2

We hear that you were able to rope in a very decent line up of stars. Film actor Abbas, ex-Channel [V] VJ Ranvir, SS Music VJ Cary Edwards, Usha (VJ & model), Suchitra (Radio Mirchi Rj). How did you meet the actors?

Well, first TFLW was this small film we wanted to make without any money. It wasn’t a script written after we put the cast together. One day on my job, during an interview with VJs Ranvir and Purab, I learnt Ranvir wanted to be an actor. I told him ‘Every VJ wants to be an actor.’ He didn’t take that comment lightly. After we were done with the interview, he told me that it has nothing to do with a VJ. Every body in this world either wants to make a movie/be an actor or cut an album/be a singer or write a book/be a writer. “I don’t know you but I can bet you want to be a writer,” he said. I smiled back and said: “No, I’d be the movie guy.” “Oh, so you want to make a movie,” he asked. “No, I’m making my movie,” I said. He got all curious then, so though I was least interested in telling him what it was all about, I just gave him a polite two line description of what the movie was about and he immediately asked: Can I audition? Man, I couldn’t believe that! He was a VJ, someone I had great respect for. When I studied in Manipal, he had come to our campus for a shoot. He was so funny and not even in my wildest dreams did I think that HE would want to be in MY movie? For icing, there was Purab, who joined Ranvir and said: “Me too. Can I audition too?” Purab, then got busy with ‘Supari,’ so he passed on the script to Cary, who had just about quit Channel [V] after hosting the much acclaimed Virtual [V] for three years. I still remember that we didn’t have money, so the first time I ever spoke to him was through SMS. My message to him was: “Hi Cary, no STD, only SMS. This low budget film. You still interested? Welcome to the film.”
There was Cyrus Sahukar too who was once a part of the film after he expressed interest but he backed out last minute, saying he didn’t have leave. We just had another two weeks to shoot. And I could only think of Abbas, with whom I had shot a short experimental film called ‘Ellipsis’ a few months earlier. I called him, he said: Give me two minutes, I’ll check if I have dates. Two minutes later, he calls back to say we have. “When can we meet,” he asks. “Now?” “Cool,’ he says. Thirty minutes later, at 8.30 p.m., I meet him at his wife’s boutique on North Boag Road. I narrate the script and we end up talking till 2.30 in the morning. I’ve never seen anyone more excited than him. He could so relate to the character he was playing. And then, he told me something that happened four months before that. He had invited me to the premiere of his Hindi film, ‘Ansh,’ and it turned out to be quite bad. Interval break, he asks us to come out and asks us for our honest opinion. “Bad man … it’s very bad,” I say softly. But I wasn’t telling him anything new. He knew it was bad. He almost broke down: “Why does this happen to me? I make the same mistakes in choosing films,” he said with near moist eyes. “Let’s go for a drive,” I suggested because the last thing we wanted to see was him breaking down outside his own movie preview. A friend stayed next street, so we took him there and showed him the trailer we had just shot for the film, just to warm up. At that point of time, Cyrus was still part of our film and I had my whole cast. “I really wanted to ask you if I can be part of your film that day,” Abbas recalled. “I didn’t want to take advantage of our friendship. But I think it’s destiny. God wanted me to be a part of this film.”
To this moment, Abbas has displayed the same amount of unflinching commitment, passion and enthusiasm to the film. Which is why these days I never say ‘my film,’ I always refer to it as ‘our film.’
Oh, and Ranvir almost never made it to the film because he was busy with his play ‘Blue Mug’ and he asked us to postpone shoot by a month. Cary had waited a year waiting for the film to take off by then and so we told him we can’t wait any longer. Ranvir was already upset with us for an earlier goof-up. When we shot in Pune, he drove down all by himself from Bombay and couldn’t find us because he had the wrong phone number with him and we couldn’t reach him. He was left stranded there before we reached him 36 hours later. He was so angry, he swore he wouldn’t be a part of it. By now, he had cooled down but he was still upset that we couldn’t wait for him in spite of him having done so much for the film. “I was a part of the film even before Cary joined,” he reminded us. But Ranvir had a regular job, Cary did not. So we told him we had to shoot no matter what. “Well, no bad feelings then,” he said, wishing us luck.
There was no one else who could have done that role but Ranvir. And the next alternative we could think of was Cyrus Broacha. How do we get Cyrus Broacha, we wondered aloud sitting at Qwikys when a guy walked up to us and said: “I’ve been observing you guys for the past few weeks. I’ve always wanted to help with your film. I have Broacha’s number,” he said. We christened him ‘Angel.’ Ever since that day, Angel was part of our dream. He quit his job, worked with us on the film and went back to Pune to take up a low paying job saying we inspired him to chase his dreams.
Anyway, so we called Cyrus Broacha and said: “For us, sending you the script and asking you to do our film is like asking Amitabh Bachchan if he wants to work with us.” He laughed and said: “I’m not Amitabh Bachchan. Send me the script.” We did just that and he went incommunicado while we made friends with his Mom over a coupla weeks. Initially she was hostile, then seeing that we had no intention of giving up, finally became friends and tipped us on what time we can catch him at home. Cyrus first said he liked the script and wanted to change the lines a bit. We were game. Then he asked: “When are you looking at shooting this film?” Next month, we said. “Oh, I hate to sound like Amitabh Bachchan but I have two foreign tours lined up next month. One is the UNAIDS conference in Barcelona where Bill Clinton will interview me and talk about sex” (he wasn’t exaggerating too much, it was all over the papers that he was interviewing Clinton) and there was the Nickelodeon Chotta VJ hunt in the Middle East.
So he took off, became incommunicado again. We got so desperate we tried calling five star hotels in Spain through the internet phone at Iway to reach him. No luck, people who picked up the phone didn’t even understand English.
So we scheduled his scenes for the last four days and started shoot. Ten days into the shoot, we reach him … this is two nights before we have scheduled his scenes. And he now tells us his boss Natasha didn’t want him to shoot a movie. We then call Natasha who tells us that she didn’t have a problem, in fact, she didn’t even know about the film. “Maybe he doesn’t want to do it,” she said.
So that’s how Broacha pulled a Bakra on us.
And we were all so pissed off that we cancelled shoot that evening and went for ‘Bend it like Beckham.’ In the interval, Cary asked: “Why don’t you ask Ranvir what he’s doing day after tomorrow?” “He will kill me,” I said. “That’s not too bad. But what if he agrees … we have everything to gain,” he said.
Thank you Cary, for suggesting that.
Because the phone conversation, went like this:
“Hi Ranvir, this is an SOS. We need you to bail us out.”
“Why, what happened?”
“Broacha was supposed to do your role and he backed out last minute. We know we are being really selfish but we didn’t know who else to ask.”
“What dates do you need?”
“Four days from day after tomorrow.”
“Okay, I’m free on these days. Because I just quit Channel [V] yesterday. But I’ll come only for four days. And you were going to pay me 5K a day, now make it 10K. Send me the ticket and keep the cheque ready, I’m coming.”
Ranvir, we would have paid you a lakh a day if we had the money! We jumped at his offer. Done!
So Ranvir was in again and we got our Zebra back.
That was the last time around.
This time, it was a rollercoaster because we had to change our cast halfway and resume shoot in 48 hours. And all that we did for years to get our actors, we fit into the most tense 48 hours of my life. That is something I will save for the book I’m writing on the movie.

You are a full time reporter in The Hindu. How do you manage to juggle between your full time job and the movie.

Well, the movie has been part of me for these seven years. I go to sleep with it, wake up with it, have breakfast with it, take it with me to office, make it wait while I meet different people and key in my story and then come back home with it. A movie happens in your head. It didn’t really take time away from what my work required of me, except for the 20 days when we had to do the shooting. Or let’s just say that my job isn’t really a job. It’s like life. Everyday, I meet different people, get to know them and write them in my diary using a little journalese and hey, you read it in the papers. Most of my stories are conversational, they talk to people. I didn’t find a style in it, it was what came naturally to me. And I’m glad it worked. I don’t see myself as a journalist or even a writer, nor do I even claim to be.

I dream and films are just about living out that dream … you share it with a few people, shoot it for the camera and share it with more people. It is really that simple, leave the jargon and the work out of it.

Finding the money to shoot that dream is what is 90 per cent of the “work,” the rest of it is what we love to do anyway.

Want know more?

April 20, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

When Kiruba interviewed the director: Part 1

Thank you all for enquiring and it’s time for an update.

We’re nearly done dubbing for the movie, but for a little patchwork here and there. We should be done by the middle of the next month. Unless things go wrong drastically again!

Till then, here’s an interview Kiruba did with me one year ago. I’ve edited it all over again because we went through a few cast changes after that.

The movie and my life has changed quite a bit.

Sudhish, you practically live, breathe and dream TFLW. Take us to the birth of the film.

Interesting choice of words there, Kiruba. Live, breathe and dream. Hmmm… EXACTLY the words that the film tries to explore. Yes, TFLW is about living, breathing and chasing your dream. Which is why it has to do with each one of us. Which is why it is a story of every gang of friends. Which is why it is a universally relevant theme. Which is why I found the idea interesting enough to pursue in the first place. But yes, the film was conceived when my best friend Murugan and me caught up with life, during one of his annual trips to India. While discussing our lives, we found a common thread that has to do with everybody’s life. Actually, I started a blog to record the birth of the film. So you can find the details there. (http://thatfourletterword.blogspot.com). But briefly, here’s how it started. It occurred to us that everybody in our age group had the same things to worry about: What next? What are we going to do with the rest of our lives? What determines our dreams, goals and the means to reach them? What is the price we need to pay? These are things we wanted to explore through two diametrically different attitudes in life. One way to live is to go by your heart, it has to do with living the moment, going with the flow… Carpe Diem. And the other way to live is to use your head: you plan, stick to it and know where you are going with total focus. But most of us are somewhere caught between the heart and the mind … confused about which one is right. I, for one, didn’t like Science in school, did Commerce in College, and then Masters in Science, ironically in Communications, always wanted to do advertising, but took up a job in journalism to start working on a film, just to tell someone who much I liked her. How confused can one get? TFLW is about these people … these people we know so well. Ourselves.

Did you learn filmmaking formally?

I did, we had a whole semester dedicated to it when I did my Masters, but it didn’t help much. Because, one thing about filmmaking and sex… till you have actually done it, you really don’t know how know how it REALLY feels like. Man, I sound like Siddhu, don’t I? He he! But yeah, I learnt filmmaking through the grind, on the job, while making TFLW. TFLW taught me filmmaking. I didn’t make TFLW. TFLW made me!

Who are the main people behind this venture?

Now, I don’t know where to start. Okay, first Murugan, because he wrote it with me. He was in it from Day one, or night one rather and still continues to be. That was seven years ago. And we wrote the movie over email and it took us a year and a half to develop the script. My family, my Mom and Day especially, and then, Sashi Chimala, my producer and my guide all the way. If there’s one man who has his heart in the right place, that’s him. His little daughter has been bravely fighting brain tumour for two years now and our prayers are with him. And she needs yours too, so pray for her. Though he’s not actively involved in the project now, he will always remain a part of it. Next, my cast … every single one of them. The sacrifices and the emotional investment they have made probably outweigh what me, Murugan and Sashi together have, over the years.

Abbas, who’s not a part of the film anymore, but who we are indebted to forever, for being there, without being paid, supporting us for two years of his life. Unfortunately, the only way we can sort out our differences is when I finish my film and show him what I envisioned.

Cary stayed without a job for a year, waiting for TFLW, before we shot something. Similarly, Usha too, completed her second round of six months waiting for TFLW, before she shot and got another job that paid.

I have the most amazing cast, Aashil Nair, who risked losing his job at IBM to step in for Abbas in 48 hours, Paloma Rao and Praveen Bharadwaj who almost let us take them for granted unconditionally, always showing up on time, Sunil from ‘Evam’, for giving me the most amazing Zebra, a role I thought no body could do after Ranvir Shorey. Thank you for proving me wrong. I guarantee people will love you, whether they like the movie or not.

Archana, my production manager and angel incarnate, she was like the Atlas, carrying the weight of the production department, just by herself. Well, I could go on… my inspiration and film editor, my ‘nanban’ Vijay Prabakaran, who made his own film in less than two months, with no money at all, my associate director and bundle of energy Swathi Raghuraman for working round the clock, my art directors Anuradha and Preethi, for the unconditional support, all those hours of toil and believing in the film more than I have (which might tempt me to forgive them for giving The Last Samurai, my old bike, a coat or orange and blue), my music director Asif Bhai for staying on patiently giving us 30 plus tracks when we needed only half a dozen, thank you Sindhu, my really sound engineer, Preethi Narayanan, my art director from the first film, for the super professional work you churned out even before your NID experience, my soul-brother and assistant director Abhishek who has believed it is his film more than mine (lol!), my script reviewer for four years Ghirijah Jeyaraj, Ranvir who pledged his unconditional support from the moment he heard about the plot, Pradyumna Singh Chauhan who did this just to support a friend’s dream despite his broken knee that took away one year of his life, Shanky Mahendra, who did the camerawork on the previous, our cinematographer Jai for stepping in at short notice … oh, there are just too many to mention. My professor Rakesh Katarey and filmmaker Hariharan, who I consider my guru.
I’ve had like ten assistant directors till date… Thank you Deesh Mariwala teaching me basics of production, Sravan and Bharani for being super resourceful, Rohit Rueben for working harder than everyone else the first time around, Krishna Ramkumar, Pradeep Kalipurayath (who came a full circle in the last five years, he started as an AD and returned to the movie as a cinematographer), Shalini Venugopal, Kumkum Jagadeesh, Avinash, Livingston, Shyam Balasubramaniam! And please remind me if I left anyone out, better late than never. And yes, I’m gonna suck at Oscar acceptance speeches… He he!

Want know more?

April 20, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | Leave A Comment »

That Four Letter Word: FAQS-1

Thank you for enquiring and bombing me with the same question everytime and everywhere you meet me.

We’re nearly done dubbing for the movie, but for a little patchwork here and there. We should be done by the middle of the next month. Will next update in the second week of May.

Till then, here’s an interview Kiruba did with me one year ago. I’ve edited it all over again because we went through a few cast changes after that. The movie and my life has changed quite a bit.

Sudhish, you practically live, breathe and dream TFLW. Take us to the birth of the film.

Interesting choice of words there, Kiruba. Live, breathe and dream. Hmmm… EXACTLY the words that the film tries to explore. Yes, TFLW is about living, breathing and chasing your dream. Which is why it has to do with each one of us. Which is why it is a story of every gang of friends. Which is why it is a universally relevant theme. Which is why I found the idea interesting enough to pursue in the first place. But yes, the film was conceived when my best friend Murugan and me caught up with life, during one of his annual trips to India. While discussing our lives, we found a common thread that has to do with everybody’s life. Actually, I started a blog to record the birth of the film. So you can find the details there. (http://thatfourletterword.blogspot.com). But briefly, here’s how it started. It occurred to us that everybody in our age group had the same things to worry about: What next? What are we going to do with the rest of our lives? What determines our dreams, goals and the means to reach them? What is the price we need to pay? These are things we wanted to explore through two diametrically different attitudes in life. One way to live is to go by your heart, it has to do with living the moment, going with the flow… Carpe Diem. And the other way to live is to use your head: you plan, stick to it and know where you are going with total focus. But most of us are somewhere caught between the heart and the mind … confused about which one is right. I, for one, didn’t like Science in school, did Commerce in College, and then Masters in Science, ironically in Communications, always wanted to do advertising, but took up a job in journalism to start working on a film, just to tell someone who much I liked her. How confused can one get? TFLW is about these people … these people we know so well. Ourselves.

Did you learn filmmaking formally?

I did, we had a whole semester dedicated to it when I did my Masters, but it didn’t help much. Because, one thing about filmmaking and sex… till you have actually done it, you really don’t know how know how it REALLY feels like. Man, I sound like Siddhu, don’t I? He he! But yeah, I learnt filmmaking through the grind, on the job, while making TFLW. TFLW taught me filmmaking. I didn’t make TFLW. TFLW made me!

Who are the main people behind this venture?

Now, I don’t know where to start. Okay, first Murugan, because he wrote it with me. He was in it from Day one, or night one rather and still continues to be. That was seven years ago. And we wrote the movie over email and it took us a year and a half to develop the script. My family, my Mom and Day especially, and then, Sashi Chimala, my producer and my guide all the way. If there’s one man who has his heart in the right place, that’s him. His little daughter has been bravely fighting brain tumour for two years now and our prayers are with him. And she needs yours too, so pray for her. Though he’s not actively involved in the project now, he will always remain a part of it. Next, my cast … every single one of them. The sacrifices and the emotional investment they have made probably outweigh what me, Murugan and Sashi together have, over the years.

Abbas, who’s not a part of the film anymore, but who we are indebted to forever, for being there, without being paid, supporting us for two years of his life. Unfortunately, the only way we can sort out our differences is when I finish my film and show him what I envisioned.

Cary stayed without a job for a year, waiting for TFLW, before we shot something. Similarly, Usha too, completed her second round of six months waiting for TFLW, before she shot and got another job that paid.

I have the most amazing cast, Aashil Nair, who risked losing his job at IBM to step in for Abbas in 48 hours, Paloma Rao and Praveen Bharadwaj who almost let us take them for granted unconditionally, always showing up on time, Sunil from ‘Evam’, for giving me the most amazing Zebra, a role I thought no body could do after Ranvir Shorey. Thank you for proving me wrong. I guarantee people will love you, whether they like the movie or not.

Archana, my production manager and angel incarnate, she was like the Atlas, carrying the weight of the production department, just by herself. Well, I could go on… my inspiration and film editor, my ‘nanban’ Vijay Prabakaran, who made his own film in less than two months, with no money at all, my associate director and bundle of energy Swathi Raghuraman for working round the clock, my art directors Anuradha and Preethi, for the unconditional support, all those hours of toil and believing in the film more than I have (which might tempt me to forgive them for giving The Last Samurai, my old bike, a coat or orange and blue), my music director Asif Bhai for staying on patiently giving us 30 plus tracks when we needed only half a dozen, thank you Sindhu, my really sound engineer, Preethi Narayanan, my art director from the first film, for the super professional work you churned out even before your NID experience, my soul-brother and assistant director Abhishek who has believed it is his film more than mine (lol!), my script reviewer for four years Ghirijah Jeyaraj, Ranvir who pledged his unconditional support from the moment he heard about the plot, Pradyumna Singh Chauhan who did this just to support a friend’s dream despite his broken knee that took away one year of his life, Shanky Mahendra, who did the camerawork on the previous, our cinematographer Jai for stepping in at short notice … oh, there are just too many to mention. My professor Rakesh Katarey and filmmaker Hariharan, who I consider my guru.
I’ve had like ten assistant directors till date… Thank you Deesh Mariwala teaching me basics of production, Sravan and Bharani for being super resourceful, Rohit Rueben for working harder than everyone else the first time around, Krishna Ramkumar, Pradeep Kalipurayath (who came a full circle in the last five years, he started as an AD and returned to the movie as a cinematographer), Shalini Venugopal, Kumkum Jagadeesh, Avinash, Livingston, Shyam Balasubramaniam! And please remind me if I left anyone out, better late than never. And yes, I’m gonna suck at Oscar acceptance speeches… He he!

Want know more?

April 20, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Guest post: Politics for sceptics

My buddy China a.k.a. Navin (an arivali doing his Ph. D.) came up with this post after reading a comment in the last post.

April 17, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 36 Comments »

Vote for change. Vote for Lok Paritran!

If you don’t encourage the first man to try something new, how will you give the second man the courage?

So here goes, my interview with the guys from Lok Paritran. These guys are contesting in about 10 constituencies in the city, out of which they have released a list of eight. Read story for more.

Since they are not contesting in Villivakkam, my vote will go to Captain.

April 15, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 36 Comments »

Road Trip: A day with Captain Vijayakanth!

After winding up dubbing for That Four Letter Word around 2 a.m. and getting home around three, the last thing you want to do is to take off to the heartland of Tamil Nadu to get a feel of the election mood. More so, when you’ve been asked to follow Captain on his election trail from Chidambaram to Vriddhachalam just as summer peaks.

Suderman left home sleepless at 4 a.m. for an adventure that covered over 600 kilometers in 15 hours, spending six hours and 127 kilometres with Captain’s convoy, stopping every few kilometres on battered roads and coming face-to-face with Captain’s fan base in the remotest of villages.

Meanwhile, I have uploaded the pictures: Watch the slideshow here and click on the pic to read the captions.

Here goes the account of what happened:

A few kilometers outside Chidambaram, people have come out of their huts and lined up along the road. They know that Captain Vijayakanth would pass that way. Soon enough, a little boy bursts a cracker. Another has a wardrobe malfunction, he hastily fastens his button-less trouser as the convoy approaches.

There’s a sense of urgency as the first car in the convoy, asks people to clear the road. “We don’t have permission to stop here. Please forgive us but you can see Captain from there,” says the speaker from the Tempo Traveller, the third vehicle in the convoy. Seated next to him, Captain waves.

Captain’s convoy has six vehicles in all, including the security bus, the CB-CID personnel following him and his private multi-utility vehicle. Only two cars for party workers. “We have told party workers not to join the convoy. We don’t want to flout election rules. We told them that if they follow, we will not stop the police from seizing the vehicles,” says Captain’s aide.

A few metres away, there’s a huge group of people who plead him to stop. Captain gets out and tells them they don’t have permission to stop, apologises and makes a quick one-line request with folded hands: “I promise you change, help me.”

10.20. After a long stretch of battered roads, he stops at his first stop for the day, Kumarachi.

Within seconds, hundreds of people surround his convoy as Captain emerges from the top of the vehicle. “This is my first time here and what good roads you have,” he says in sarcasm as the crowd cheers. “I heard that the roads have been this way for 15 years. This road, a short-cut connecting Chidambaram to Trichy has been like this for years and you keep voting for the same people?” he adds. “It’s been 20 years since MGR died. Both these parties remember his name every election and you blindly vote for them?”

“Keep the relief aside and think for a moment. Do you have roads? Do you get good ration rice? Do you get water? I have not been idle since September. I’ve been talking to people to understand your problems. Your problems can be solved with inter-linking of local water-bodies. You have five classrooms and two teachers. How is this ‘Porkaalam’?” he said criticising the ruling government, as a party worker goes around with a Dictaphone asking them if that speech is reason enough to vote.

“Why would you now vote for Captain when you’ve been voting for the big two parties all these years,” he asks. “For change,” answers the youth.

As he winds up campaign, a woman asks him to name her baby. “It’s not my job to name babies,” he says. They insist. Embarrassed at the moment, he names her Vijayalakshmi and gets into the vehicle.

As his convoy heads to the next stop, a funeral by the roadside is temporarily suspended as the mourners desert their chairs to rush to the road to get a glimpse of Captain.

Next is a Muslim dominated neighbourhood. Captain emerges out with the Muslim cap and says it felt like home-coming. “If I wanted to make money, I would traded suitcases for alliances. Please vote for my brave decision to go alone … We will not discriminate on the basis of caste or religion,” he says during his stop at Lalpettai, his second pit-stop after Yelleri. “I don’t have to tell you about the other two parties. Watch Sun TV and Jaya TV and you will know what they have been doing,”

At the Kattumannarkoil stop, he’s thronged by hundreds again. “I’m coming here alone without any alliances. The DMK and AIADMK have money power. I’ve come here hoping to win on people power. Don’t let me down,” he pleads. “They say I beg to the people. I say I should and must beg only to the people and not with political parties,” he adds as the crowds cheer again.

As he passes Palayamkottai, he sees huge groups of children in uniform along the road. Captain stops for a moment to enquire. “Do you know me,” he asks. The kids nod. “Desiya Murpokku Dravidar Kazhagam,” a girl says out loud. “Not bad, you are in tune with politics. Don’t think about all that. Let all that be, study well now.”

“Why are you out in the sun? Have you all eaten?” The kids are thrilled at the gesture.

Outside the Srimushnam temple, he’s mobbed by hundreds, perched on rooftops and trees.

“I’m dark. You are dark. I stand under the same sun as you do,” he says as the crowd roars. Not once does Captain make any personal attack or even name political leaders. He prefers to criticize government and parties. “The DMK says they will give you rice for two rupees. They were in power the last term. Why couldn’t they give it then? I don’t want to lure you with such false promises. I’m not saying I’m going to bring the Himalayas here. I promise good basic amenities. I will get my symbol only on April 20. But I believe that even if get it only a day before the elections, you will remember it,” continues Captain.

As the convoy makes its way into his constituency Vriddhachalam, there are crackers (which Captain pulls up his party cadres for, asking them not to waste money on them) and fan-fare with a band playing and the town has come alive with people taking to the roads just to get a glimpse of the man. Suddenly there over a dozen cars added to the convoy. The roads are clogged with people and vehicles.

“I’ve come here to release my election manifesto in front of the temple, to the public. It will speak for itself. I will spend at five or six days here to talk to you. They asked me why I didn’t contest from Madurai and chose Vriddhachalam. It’s because I believe you are my own people, just like my people in Madurai.”

April 11, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 26 Comments »

@Elizabethtown!

And lovin’ it here!
Yes people, I have a new favourite from Cameron Crowe. Thank you Darshan.
P.S: Strictly for Crowe fans only. I loved every bit of it.

April 9, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Updated: He says, she says

Yeah, Men are lazy to update blogs. But what do you call women who don’t even maintain them?

This is just to let our regulars know that our He Says She Says column has been updated online. Should a man dance or be content doing the chance pe dance? Should a man use pick up lines? Or does she really need to be picked up?

April 6, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Review: Zathura

When kids smoke up

Cast: Jonah Bobo, Josh Hutcherson, Dax Shepard, Kristen Stewart, Tim Robbins
Director: Jon Favreau
Genre: Space adventure
Storyline: Siblings find themselves inside a Space adventure game called Zathura, as their house ejects out to space and the only way they can return is by completing the game.
Bottomline: Kids on drugs could conjure up bizarre fantasies.

Seems like Hollywood has conducted some sort of a focus-group experiment.

That goes something like this.

Take 100 kids, comprising of siblings at war and best friends, a good mix of guys and girls. Lock them all in a room and let hash in through the air conditioner. For best effects, put well-read imaginative kids into that room.

Once they’ve smoked up enough, ask them to describe their fantasies. Have a screenwriter talk to them and get them to describe where they went and what they saw. Get a visual effects guy to talk to them and find out what the creatures they saw, looked like. If that isn’t bizarre enough, put them on pot too.

What happened after, went something like this.

Almost all kids reported going to some strange place, finding funny-looking friends and monsters on a munch-fest, and soon enough learnt that they were the chosen ones, to slay monsters and save the world. In no time, they found they could do horse-riding, mountain-climbing, sword-fighting and were suddenly strong enough to lead the fight against evil.

The focus group experiment lead to the following movies.

The kids who were J.R.R.Tolkien fans helped Peter Jackson make ‘The Lord of the Rings.’
Kids who were J.K.Rowling addicts helped in the making of the Harry Potter series, as the experiments with pot continue for the forthcoming films in the franchise.

Kids who grew up on C.S.Lewis came up with the script for ‘The Chronicles of Narnia,’ after they tried escaping the room through the cupboard, only to find that the impact of the air-conditioner was strongest there. Strong enough for them to see the Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

Those who didn’t read enough, recycled an old film (Jumanji) with what they remembered from Star Trek and came up with ‘Zathura,’ with a little help from the gaming addicts, who came up with the plot points derived from a computer game. (Trivia: Zathura is based on a book written by Chris Van Allsburg, the author of ‘Jumanji’)

Seriously, what is with Hollywood?

How many more movies can children take of kids turning superheroes after realising they are the chosen ones and leading a war against evil?

This one, particularly, features a boom mike in the lead, in every other scene. Given that the boom mike has more screen time than any of the actors in the film, this movie certainly was made by a crew where at least one person was drugged.

Apart from the visual effects, which offer nothing new whatsoever, there is no reason why anyone would want to watch Zathura.

Unless they are kids from that focus group who came up with this plot.

Tim Robbins has a guest role, so don’t let that mislead you. The kids in the lead, nine-year old Jonah Bobo and 14-year old Josh Hutcherson, are not the best of actors but they suffice for a movie like ‘Zathura,’ providing the right amount of the cute and the wicked. There are a couple of moments (with Jonah Bobo specially) to make you go ‘Awwww’ but not enough for you to shell out money.

Verdict: Really little kids might like it (they like anything with special effects), but they can catch it on video or TV later after exams.

April 6, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 3 Comments »

Episode 18: Why would she want to be picked-up?

She says:

I clicked open my gmail inbox, and almost fell off my chair. There it was, boldly printed across the page. “If I were stranded on a desert island, I wouldn’t need three things – I’d just take you,” from some guy I didn’t even know.

And I thought Austin Powers was the only person with enough chutzpah to use pickup lines in this day and age!

A pickup line (and this is to all you squares who’ve never feverishly browsed the net, or taken down lines from movies to impress a girl) is an outrageous icebreaker, used by some smooth operators. And many, many complete klutzes.

But, no matter how witty or pathetic they are, they always achieve one thing. They give women a really good laugh.

And sometimes, that’s the best icebreaker you can possibly have.

After all, most of the best lines are the funny ones. Like the guy who beams, “You know, I’m not really this tall. I’m just sitting on my wallet.” Or a simpler, “Do you believe in love at first sight, or should I walk by again?” Besides, who can resist someone who saunters over and says, “You see my friend over there? (Pointing to friend who sheepishly waves from afar.) He wants to know if you think I’m cute.”

Well, provided he’s cute.

Because a pickup line is a conversation starter and is therefore only as useful as the conversation that follows it. So if you’re going to be a duck anyway, don’t bother swaggering about with just one line in your head.

Especially if it’s the Dumb And Dumber variety: “So yr a girl, huh!” or, “I’m not trying to pick you up. You’re like too heavy. Huh huh huh huh. Get it?”

If you think that’s bad, try being on the receiving end of lines that make you wonder how he manages to walk without melting into a mess of gooey pink slop. Like “I didn’t know angels could fly so low!” Or “Your beauty makes the morning sun look like the dull glimmer of the
moon.” Ew!

But even they’re better than the stock, “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?” Or even more yawn-worthy, “What’s your sign?”

They might trigger a response, but – trust me – she’s far more likely to remember the chap who murmured, “Was your father a thief? Because he stole the stars from the sky and put them in your eyes.” Even if it’s only in a hysterical bout of laughter.

He Says:

Yeah, right.
If pick-up lines were the only things you needed to break ice, man would have bought real estate in Antartica. And built castles the size of skyscrapers.

It’s no big deal really, after all, pick-up lines (all the good ones she listed) are just a website ( http://www.linesthataregood.com has 1200 such lines) or a Google search away. Why would a girl fall for a pick-up line? Unless she wants to be picked up.

Let’s face it, if women went only for men who make them laugh, Senthil, Goundamani, Loose Mohan, Johnny Lever, Vadivelu, Vivek, Crazy Mohan and Cyrus Broacha would be grinning away on a water-bed in some beach-house in Ibiza with a hundred bikini babes around them doing the MTV Grind.

So what role to lines play anyway?

They work as a mere excuse, if she’s waiting to be picked up. She would laugh even if you told her that she needed a dentist appointment, instead of saying “I need an dentist appointment. I just dropped my jaw and need to fix it.”

(Psst: Now, if her theory is true, for that line above, I should be having more dates than the calendar. Instead, my life is the sort of desert where even dates of the edible variety refuse to grow.)

So are there better ways to make her remember you?

Yes, of course.

Sit next to her, make sure the bartender sees you talking to her (What do you talk? Ask her what time it is and leave saying: “See you soon” ) and when she’s not looking, tell the bartender she’s paying and walk away. She’ll find you. If she doesn’t, how does it matter? You just got yourself a free drink. *grin*

April 6, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 10 Comments »

Episode 17: Do the Chance Pe Dance like a Man!

She says:

Macho men don’t dance. But that’s why they’re so dumb. Because even as they skulk manfully beside the bar, looking snottily at the dance floor as they flex their muscles picking up ice cubes, some smooth operator with gel in his hair will oil in and impress all the women with his John Travolta moves.

Women adore men who dance. And who can blame them? It’s a choice between standing like a wallflower besides Rambo all night, as he tries to make small talk over loud addictive music, or being swept onto the dance floor by a hunky Ricky Martin look alike, (and men with dance moves somehow always seem hunky) who then proceeds to teach you how to salsa like some groovy girl from the movies.

Yeah. You can blame it on the movies. Every girl who’s ever been brought up on a balanced diet of dance movies, from John Travolta in Grease to Patrick Swayze in that all time favourite ‘Dirty Dancing,’ dreams of someday meeting The Man Who Dances.

However, he’s as rare a species these days as The Man Who Opens Doors. And the whole problem is the fact that a large number of men think dancing is effeminate. Which, in other words means, they look like idiots on the dance floor.

Fortunately, help is at hand. Dance schools are opening up in ever city. And are they drawing people? Well, does Puff Daddy like jewellery?

Women flock to dance classes. And, as everyone knows, where women go men will follow. The smart men who learn how to dance have a never-fail opening line at parties, “Shall I teach you the Samba/Salsa/ Lambada/ to Jive?” I’ve seen parties where women queue up to dance with these man.

And for Rambo? Well, let’s hope his ice keeps him warm.

He says:

Going by her account, there are only two kinds they notice in a disco: A Rambo or a Disco Dancer.

I won’t bother taking Stallone’s side because she’s anyway explained why he’s boring.
What I would talk about is the disco dancer: Yes, yes, the Mithun Da types. (Then what? You thought you ll find Patrick Swayze or Travolta on the dance floor? This is India, madam. Here only hero-tapori or dance master types do dance-wance on the floor.)

Actually, I CAN imagine her match step to step with the likes of Prabhu Deva, Raju Sundaram, Govinda, Mithun or Simbu, all reputed to be the best dancers around. Or occasionally, the Michael Jackson look-alikes doing the moonwalk after a couple of rounds.

Since these guys are obviously unattainable, the women settle for lesser dancers. Like that one guy on the floor who can dance, the smooth operator who has more dates than the calendar itself. What does this guy do? He entertains yet another woman who fancies her chance with him for a dance or more. Does the ‘dance’ when he gets a chance or more.

Before he can move over to the prettier, hotter, item number on the floor. Like she said, there’s a queue to choose from.

Before he can arrive at the best of the lot, he has to be polite enough to entertain scores of other women with two left feet, bad breath, body odour, terrible sense of humour, alcoholics and the other single lonely Bridget Joness who fancy him.

While one out of these 100 get the man that evening, what happens to the other 99? They go hunting for others who can dance, wait for their turn or drink their blues away. Three drinks later, when they can’t tell whether they are dancing or not, our man with the ice-cubes steps in. Now our Stallone has a choice: 99 desperate women!

Come on guys, who would you rather be? A guy with the arms to carry her home? Or the guy mobbed by women you don’t want to dance with?

April 6, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 6 Comments »

Vetti? Want velai? Vela? Want kaam? Reading blogs? Need a job?

Now, that was just to get your attention.
There are more lucrative jobs around that provide as much fun… er… at an intellectual level. Save the world. Be a superhero. Join the movement.

April 4, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Vodkathon: Round Six

FROM DARKNESS TO LIGHT: They say a picture speaks a thousand words. So I’ll just sum with these snapshots from my Vodkathon, thanks to my buddy Sravan for the Sikkim Fire Ball Brandy and the morning drive to Marina. That’s us breaking the Vodkathon with a single tea. Got a movie to catch now. Off to the Banaras preview. Sleep can wait.

Ferrari: This is what you guys were supposed to do! Live update on all the action dude… Maybe we should keep the vodkathon virtual to make it a unique experience instead of it being just another blogger meet with cocktails. Grrrrrrrrrr!!

April 2, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 12 Comments »

Vodkathon: Round Five

It’s 5 in the morning. There’s some Sikkim stuff called Fire ball brandy inside me.

And I feel the need to wear this T-shirt.

Random trivia: The new Pepsi Cafe Chino seems to be ideal for rum with its coffee flavour… Sorta Irish Coffee taste. Rocks. It worked pretty well with the Brandy too… Made it sweet, smooth and strong… Went down in a minute!

April 1, 2006 | Categories: Uncategorized | 1 Comment »