(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 )
