THE DIARY OF Z

How does it feel spending a day on the sets of the latest Ramesh Aravind’s directorial venture, Accident? I decided to find out one wintry morning by driving all the way to Prakruti, a house off Kanakpura Road and found a crew of 80 members already stationed at the spot. This is what I noticed during the day-long stay at the film set.

“I was lucky that my first directorial debut did well!”

As always, I won us over by Ramesh Aravind’s simplicity, talent and an unwavering focus on the job at hand. He excelled in acting and direction at the same time. Not only was he ensuring that his lead actress Rekha was at ease with everything that was going on, he also ensured he was capturing the right moment on the camera film. I saw him editing on the move. “Let us re-shoot again,” he says to his cameraman. “But this time, I don’t flip too many TV channels, just two should do, otherwise it gets annoying to the viewer.” The best comment came from the house owner’s mother. “Half the crew is outside, which makes it so much better. Only those required for the shoot are inside the house,” she was overheard saying.

During lunch break, I caught up with Ramesh. His candid and studied comments shed some light on the life of a film director. “I was lucky that my first directorial debut Rama Shama Bhama did very well,” he says matter-of-factly. “It’s important for you to succeed in the very first attempt in this industry. Otherwise, you will be nowhere.”

“Accident is based on real incidents”

The story of Accident materialised in Ramesh’s head one-and-a-half year’s ago and is based on real life incidents. “It’s about three disjointed incidents… one police encounter death, one Aaj Tak scoop and one open railway crossing. It’s a thriller all the way and it’s family viewing.”

So what school of direction does Ramesh belong to? While he has no idea of that, he says he has been influenced by the likes of Mani Ratnam, K Balachander and Kamal Hassan. “When I was acting under Kamal’s direction, I have learnt so much from him. Many of his films may not have done well, but his direction has always been excellent.”

This 42-year-old actor who has been in the industry for over 20 years has his eye on the future. “I will continue to make movies for a family audience, but yes I will try different genres,” he says. “My next film is based on a treasure hunt story similar to Mackenna’s Gold.”

But he has one statutory warning to anyone wanting to direct a film. “Unless you believe in the story, don’t do it. It’s not worth the effort you put in,” he says.

So how does he find direction? “It’s definitely much more challenging, taxing, enjoyable and creative at the same time.” He doesn’t stop there. “The job of a director is to make the artistes comfortable. If they are not comfortable in what they are doing and saying, it shows on the screen. As a director, every creative decision is also an economic decision. Essentially, direction is about showcasing your creativity amidst chaos. This requires tremendous energy levels, a great amount of consistency and the ability to lead a team.”

Rekha’s parents were initially opposed to her film career

She was largely confined to her room in-between shots and during the lunch break. She was only concerned about the impromptu pictures I took of her. “This picture looks like I am angry with Ramesh, so please delete it,” she requests. I comply and move on. When I tell her about her first shy in modelling circa 2000, she smiles. “I just did modelling for a couple of months before getting into the film industry. Those were the days.” Today, she isn’t looking back. After doing her 12^th standard, she had thought of vying for the Miss India crown, but destiny had other ideas. “Initially, my parents weren’t keen on my film career. But now since things have worked out well for me, they are happy.” Her work plate is full right now. She is doing three Kannada films, one Telugu and one Tamil film.

Temperature rises on the sets

There were some frayed tempers on the sets when my camera flash went off during the shoot. It had both Ramesh Aravind and Rekha hugging and playing with each other at the dining table, when I goofed up. The shot had to be picturised again, and this time around, no flash bulb went off and the film crew moved on to shoot the next scene, this time in the living room. The scene: Ramesh Aravind is surfing channels while his wife Rekha is lying on his lap. When he switches to a sports channel and exclaims, “Cricket”, Rekha turns around to watch it too. Again, I made news. After the scene was shot, cameraman Bhaskar barks, “Who touched my elbow?” When he realised who it was, his temper didn’t die down. “Atleast you could have moved away without touching me!” Thankfully, this scene didn’t need to be re-shot. Later, during the lunch break, when we apologise, he says, “Don’t worry. I blurted out in the heat of the moment.”

Veg food greets the crew

The house is deserted as everyone, barring the lead actors stay inside the house. All the others move to the basement. Vegetable food (rice, roti, vegetables, salads, dal) is brought from the nearby Nandhini. Ramesh Aravind sits with the owner’s family and has a hearty dinner that lasts half an hour, interspersed with a lot of informal chatter on everything under the sun.

About 15% of the script undergoes changes during filming

I spent some time with the film’s dialogue writer Rajendra Karanth. A full-time banker and part-time writer and theatreperson, his expertise is largely on stage. “I write Kannada plays… two of them have been made into films. A third is to happen soon,” he says. “I also wrote the dialogues for Rama Shama Bhama.” So how much of his dialogues is retained? “Only 15% gets changed because the actor or director has a better line or if the actor isn’t comfortable saying it.”

Incidentally, Rajendra Karanth has also written the script for the Kannada remake of the Hindi film, Bheja Fry. “I wrote the script in three days,” he says. “Though the storyline is the same, the dialogues are completely mine. There is no literal translation.”

And what’s the film called? “Mr Gargasa and it stars Jaggesh’s brother Komal as the idiot while Anant Nag plays the role of a dinner party organiser!”

Accident is slated for a January release. 

(This piece of mine has appeared in the film magazine, South Movie Scenes)

(When I saw his name in the many film ads, I realised he was my senior in college. Without further ado, I decided to meet him for a film magazine where I am on the advisory board… here is what I wrote on this young debutante director in Sandalwood. My review of his film will follow in the next post.)

He started small to make a big impression. After more than a decade of hard work, Lady luck has finally smiled on thirty-three-year-old KM Chaitanya. The debutant director’s Kannada film Aa Dinagalu (back in those days) is running to packed houses. Based on the Bangalore mafia of the 80s, this film is as visceral as Ram Gopal Varma’s Satya (“I must have seen this film atleast 80 times”) and yet stays clear of the documentary look and feel in Black Friday.

Humble beginnings

You could call Chaitanya Mr Serendipity. He has never gone after something. Things have always come to him, the moment he wished for one. “You are right, I have never had to try harder for anything,” he admits. One look at his career trail is ample testimony of that. After his master’s in communication from Hyderabad Central University, he got an offer from Channel V to be their executive producer. He rejected it. Instead, he went to work with advertising professional Peter Colaco. The affair lasted only four months. “All I had to do was be in the office from 9-5 and only watch films all day,” he says of those days. “After a while, I got bored because I was being paid for doing nothing.”

And then Girish Karnad approached him (“He was a good friend of my father Marulasiddappa”) to assistant direct his Hindi TV serial to be telecast on DD Metro in 1996. “They were real-life case studies dealt by psychiatrists… from schizophrenic patients to those with an obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Alongside, he was making documentaries, adfilms and corporate films for various clients. And then, he went back to Karnad to direct Kanoonu Heggadati (Mistress of the House of Justice). He also happened to work for CNNindia.com as a tech correspondent before doing feature stories for Surabhi, the then popular cultural programme on Doordarshan. From e-governance in Mandya to computerisation of land records in Ramnagaram (where the film ‘Sholay’ was shot), Chaitanya found himself doing 1-2 stories every week for Surabhi. “When Siddarth Kak (of Surabhi) called me, I thought someone was playing a prank on me, so I replied, ‘And I am Steven Spielberg’. Only later did I realise that a friend of mine had given him my number.”

His international experience

From Karnataka, he moved to London for a good twelve months. His next job was to make a documentary film on South Asians for the National Health Services in the UK. “My job was to track South Asian patients and narrate perfect cancer case studies that were essentially about breaking the bad news. It took me a year to do this 20-minute CD that involved meeting more than 75 patients.”

Chaitanya’s next assignment took his ingenuity to a new level. His job as director of a BBC show was to showcase people in unusual businesses. From the dabbawalas of Mumbai to the management of the Tirupati temple and Sulabh toilets, his canvas stretched the limits of imagination for a programme that was just as aptly titled: Business Bizarre.

Back to his roots

At INTV, it was not just ingenuity but also his power of persuasion that brought Chaitanya an encore. In a programme titled, “Back to the Floor”, his job was to convince eight CEOs from different industries to become an ordinary employee for the day and be captured on film. Some of those who were game to this included Priya Paul of The Park hotel and Capt. GR Gopinath of Deccan Aviation. “Priya had to be a chef for half a day and a housekeeper for the reminder of the day. This meant taking sales calls, cleaning the bathroom and even taking orders for room service.” The hard work paid off. The programme was adjudged the Best Business Programme of 2004 by the jury of Indian Television Awards.

When Cupid struck

Along the way, he married his neighbour Radika Makaram in 1999 after eight years of courtship. Five years later, she gave birth to a daughter. His desire to give his daughter Amita the best environment brought him back to Bangalore where he founded his own production house - Time Code Films. So far, he has directed 1 TV serial and produced 4 under his banner.

How ‘Aa Dinagalu’ came about

It was while he was directing Kichchu (Fire) that things started to work for him in Sandalwood. “The serial wasn’t doing well. That’s when I got a call from Sreedhar (the tabloid editor who is also the producer of Aa Dinagalu). He wanted me to play the role of rowdy Oil Kumar. When he saw me, he said, I didn’t look like a villain. Then he asked me if there was any good person who could direct the film. I suggested Karnad. But Girish said he is too old to do this kind of film and suggested that he look for youngsters instead. Sreedhar took that to mean me and that’s how I became the director of the film. Once my name was finalised, I wound up the TV serial after 120 episodes.”

His journey into Sandalwood wasn’t a cakewalk. It meant two months of going to Sreedhar’s house in Banashankari and sitting on story meetings that started at 2pm and went on till 10pm over endless cups of green tea. He played an important part in casting the actors as well. “I was looking at people whose personality can dissolve into somebody else. A person cannot be a good actor if his self is too strong; it should be fluid.” According to him, some of those who fit into his definition of good actors include Anant Nag, Naseeruddin Shah, Irfan Khan, Brad Pitt and Sean Penn.

So how does he review his own film? “Aa Dinagalu is realist cinema treated as a classic. Every frame conveys a story, including the title.”

(This piece has appeared in the film magazine, South Movies Scenes, where I am an Editorial Advisor )