For a film maker, an Oscar is like a Nobel Prize, you know. So I am very happy… delighted. There is nothing more after this. I cannot hope to get anything more prestigious.
If a film is entertaining, it will work irrespective of anything. It should be entertaining and engaging; otherwise, it becomes a documentary.
In my view, the only way to see a film remains the way the filmmaker intended: inside a large movie theater with great sound and pristine picture.
I was very excited and interested as a background dancer or as a theatre actor or when I was working on TV, or even on the film which didn’t do well, like ‘Byomkesh.’
I love the idea of using film language similarly to how musicians use music – combining images and sounds in a way that they create an emotional effect.
I’m allergic to the word ‘important’ in film and theatre. Cancer research is important.
A film like ‘Shirdi Sai’ caters to the family audiences, while ‘Rajanna’ evokes patriotic sense in viewers. ‘Damarukam,’ on the other hand, is a full-length commercial film made for the masses.
Once I started ‘Nagaram Nidrapotunna Vela’ I had to finish it. I made a wrong decision. I knew the film would be a flop and told the producer so. Everyone failed – director, producer and all.
You have to understand that you are not making the film for yourself; you’re making it for the audience. If I am asking my audiences to buy tickets, I owe them the worth of their money, and I owe them entertainment.
It’s rare to find a film that goes for broke and says, ‘To hell with the consequences.’
It was the script of ‘VRV’ that brought Gautham Karthik on board. He would not risk his career if he wasn’t confident about the film.
You have the massive world that was created by Marvel, and then you have these very intimate actors around you. There was as much character work on this as there would be on a little independent film. So, I felt very fortunate in that sense.
I was on the Mekong River between the border of Thailand and Laos. I was there to find the elusive Mekong giant catfish but the border police were suspicious. Along with my film, they confiscated my passport and started making accusations about my political allegiances.
There is violence in real life but I would never impose violence in a film just to attract the audience.
I want film stories to provoke a question in people about what’s going on emotionally around them and empower them in some way or ask them about themselves.
My debut film, ‘Madras Cafe,’ is a political thriller in which John Abraham plays an army officer. My character’s name is Ruby Singh, and I play John’s wife, with all the strappings of an army man’s wife.
The film of tomorrow will not be directed by civil servants of the camera, but by artists for whom shooting a film constitutes a wonderful and thrilling adventure.
I have a studio in a barn at home – we rehearse there, we film there and we record there. It’s fun to hang out with my guys and see what comes out next.
Lots of people expect ‘Andhadhun’ to be a dark film, given it’s from Sriram Raghavan. But this film is fun, entertaining, thrilling, and while it has moments of darkness, overall it’s not a dark film.
That film ‘Memento’ creeped me out. I was looking over my back through the whole thing. I get more creeped out than scared and spill popcorn all over the place.
I did 10 years of comedies and 10 years of Westerns. I really like to stay away from car chases. I prefer the more intimate film. You have a much more direct association with the emotions.
Look at the films of Walt Disney: ‘Snow White’ came out in February 1938, and I can’t think of another film from that year that’s watched as much. The same is true of ‘Bambi,’ ‘Dumbo’… even, frankly, ‘Toy Story,’ which is probably watched more than any other movie of 1995.
College is something I’ve always said I wanted to do, but you’re going there to get a piece of paper that says you can get a job, but if I’m already working steadily and doing good work, it makes you question your priorities. Right now, I’m in my own film college: filming a TV show.
I got a lot of film companies approaching me to write some songs for their films.
When you’re in theater or the circus or film – to me it’s all one – affairs happen. People fall in love.
A zombie film is not fun without a bunch of stupid people running around and observing how they fail to handle the situation.
I don’t know why I chose to make my debut with ‘Dil Maange More.’ The film had three leading ladies – Tulip Joshi, Ayesha Takia and me – opposite Shahid Kapoor. I was fresh to Bollywood at that time because I had just come back from England and had no clue about hero-heroine dynamics in India.
I think TV is much more the writer’s medium and film is about the director and their vision and how you can collaborate with them and see that through to the end. They are so different.
Being at the centre of a film is a burden one takes on with innocence the first time. Thereafter, you take it on with trepidation.
I’m a bit of a shopaholic. I’ve been working in the Bollywood film industry since I was 17, and I have always been financially independent, but I think I would be useless looking after my own money.
I’m a film maker who started on the Atari and then went onto the Commodore 64 and the Amiga. So I possibly have a different sensibility to people who didn’t play games growing up.
The success of the film is down to the crew.
The best thing I can think of would be to create a union between something as beautiful and powerful and wonderful as Hollywood films and a criticism of the status quo. That’s my dream, to make such a German film.
Sometimes you film in your hometown, sometimes you go halfway across the world.
If you make a film about a pig farmer in Wales and you are a huge hit as the pig farmer’s wife, the next thing is you’ll be asked to do a film about a sheep farmer in Scotland.
Um, I think every role, whether in TV or film, has a part in building a career and relationships.
For me, the driving emotion of selecting a film is that I just love that story. It may give a message, it may not give a message – that’s fine. I just loved it.
‘Deep Red’ (1975) is my favorite movie. The character David Hemmings plays is very much based on my own personality. It was a very strong film, very brutal, and of course the censors were upset. It was cut by almost an hour in some countries.
I feel I am blessed. So many actresses went without doing a period film in their career, and I got a chance to do one in my first film.
Typically, when you read, you have more time to think. Reading gives you a unique pause button for comprehension and insight. By and large, with oral language – when you watch a film or listen to a tape – you don’t press pause.
The first director who ever allowed me to shoot a film for him was a male. He was a gay male. My first feature also came from him. I worked for a lot of dudes at NYU.
Film as dream, film as music. No art passes our conscience in the way film does, and goes directly to our feelings, deep down into the dark rooms of our souls.
No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.
‘Jurassic Park’ and ‘Star Wars’ shoved me into loving sci-fi and film in general when I was a barely coherent 3-year-old. And ‘Lord of the Rings’ took me to another planet entirely. Before that series, I knew I loved writing, but after, I knew that I had to write.
Of course, an Oscar nomination would have added considerably to the film’s business abroad. But it has already made nearly Rs 150 crore. It has done stupendous business overseas. We did a business of Rs 80 crore when we took ‘Devdas’ to Cannes.
With this film, ‘Need For Speed,’ with this, we had a blank canvas to work with. What we had to do was have fast cars, and that’s it.
But a year before that, I was starting to drink beer on the set of the film Lucas (1986).
‘Gaana Bajana’ gave me an opportunity to experiment with my looks. I played a tomboy in that film, a role that I hadn’t essayed before. I have no regrets for having done the film.
I feel I can rush the passer well. I feel like I can play the run even better than what I did starting off to when I got in my senior year as far as making plays in the backfield and just being able to break down film a lot better.
I didn’t dream about being a director. I didn’t know I wanted to do something with film until the summer between my sophomore and junior years at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia.
‘The Princess Bride’ is by far the most popular film I’ve ever done. I don’t think I’ll ever top it.
‘Hum Dono’ was accepted in a very big way. It was the official entry at the 1962 Berlin Film Festival.
There are so many great actors, but I really have a lot of respect for Johnny Depp. I’ve seen a lot of movies with him in it and, even if it’s a film that wasn’t as successful as you thought it would be, I’ve never seen him put in a bad performance. My favorite actors from history have to be Steve McQueen and James Dean.
I’ve never done work for money ever. If your choices are based on grosses and the film doesn’t do well, what does that mean? It leaves you with nothing.
So, where’s the Cannes Film Festival being held this year?
