My primary goal was to make a movie with the best of my ability. It was not that I have to make the film, I have to write it, I have to produce it and I have to direct it.
I’m bad in front of the camera. However, if someone gave me a small role in a film with two dialogues and one scene, I’d do it.
With stand-up, I can have an idea, go down the street to a comedy club and work on it, flesh it out, book a venue, people will come, then film it. I do all that myself; I never have to answer to anybody.
Lord of the Rings was something I always wanted to do. I read the book when I was about 25, and I was always hoping if it was ever made into a feature film that I would be involved in some way. And then I finally got it, and I was over the moon. It was fantastic news.
The very first film, documentary that I made, was called ‘The First Year.’ It was 11 years ago and I followed these five novice teachers. I was actually with them on their first day of school and followed them for their first year.
There was a film that really affected me, ‘La Strada’ by Fellini, where Anthony Quinn and Giulietta Masina travel around on his little motorcycle thing.
When I did my first Hindi film, ‘Sargam,’ I had to play a dumb girl. Critics went to town saying that since I was a south Indian and didn’t know how to speak Hindi, producers of the movie decided to make me play dumb.
The secret to film is that it’s an illusion.
I like to write film music that stands on its own.
My biggest dream from the beginning – besides Evanescence – is scoring film and writing music for film.
‘NRT’ is a comedy film, which has the extreme of emotions with Vijay Sethupathi and Nayanthara as the protagonists.
With songs I almost see the images, see the action, and then all I have to do is describe it. It’s almost like watching a scene from a film, and that’s what I go about trying to catch in a song.
I believe in 3D for certain kinds of films. I certainly believe in using 3D for all things in animation because animation has such clarity and so much depth of focus. It worked great with ‘Avatar’ because 70 percent of that film is animated.
Salman Khan did not help me get movie offers. What rubbish! Will any producer take a risk of millions of rupees at the instance of any person? Everyone knows that the film industry is highly competitive, and one gets a job on one’s talent only and not on any recommendation.
I believe writing is where it all begins; you can not make a film look different, you have to write it differently.
‘Atlas Shrugged,’ let’s face it, was probably the most important novel of the 20th century that was never a film.
An often-repeated assertion in the body of film criticism I have written is the assertion that movies do not just mirror the culture of any given time; they also create it.
‘The English Patient’ was a huge turning point in my career and my life; it became this huge thing. But the whole Oscar build-up got completely out of control; I spent more time talking about that film than I spent making it!
You have to find it in the moment, and that’s one of the challenges of being an actor – especially a film actor – is that you have to maintain these heightened emotions for long periods of time. There’s no trick to it. You just have to do.
The next film I’m making is a horror film, and I’m making it with A24. It’s a dark break-up movie that becomes a horror film, set in Sweden. That’s all I can really say now. It’s called ‘Midsommar.’ Everybody’s been spelling it wrong. It’s ‘midsummer’ in Swedish.
I want to do a good, high-tech-commercial-action film. Something along the lines of Bollywood’s ‘Dhoom.’
Wes Craven is obviously a horror film icon so I was definitely very interested in bringing something back to life that Wes had created.
On a film set, there are runners who are 19, it’s their first job, but to me they’re as important as anybody else because if they don’t do their job then nobody else can. So I don’t think anybody should be treated disrespectfully or as if they’re of a lower status.
The biggest challenge of any cinematographer is making the imagery fit together of a piece: that the whole film has a unity to it, and actually, that a shot doesn’t stand out.
‘Bramhotsavam’ is a celebration of families, life and togetherness. It’s a film I hold close to my heart.
I didn’t see myself as a woman doing film but as a radical film-maker who was a woman.
Trying times will begin when I will take up my second film as that’s when people will take me more seriously. I will have to prove myself too.
‘Tangerine’ being my fifth film, I was out of favors. I couldn’t afford to get the Arri Alexa or RED cameras and I definitely couldn’t shoot on film.
Film has always been a really good tool for me to communicate emotion about why I create a collection. I’m probably one of the first designers to make short films.
Rain is also very difficult to film, particularly in Ireland because it’s quite fine, so fine that the Irish don’t even acknowledge that it exists.
I’ll say initially acting was my first love, and that’s what I pursued. But then, so far as even my first day on a film set, and just watching how things were set up, I just said, ‘I think I want to be in charge.’ I am very much type-A. I am a bit of a control freak.
‘Hello’ was a niche film with no high levels of energy. It had no much happiness, no much dance in its screenplay. But it did a lot of good for me. I was in a negative space before it happened.
In school I was sidelined by Tamil language teachers. But in the film industry, I got interested in Tamil poetry after reading and working with the Vairamuthu.
My idea behind the film was to show the struggles an athlete continually endures. There is always a story behind a successful sportsperson. In ‘Soorma,’ we have tried to recreate that.
In the modern media age we are rarely surprised by what we see. Whether it’s on television or film or in the theatre, everything is so advertised, so trailed, that most entertainment is merely what you thought it was going to be like.
My personal fave is ‘The Japanese Wife’, because I think I achieved a lot of what I wanted to do. I wanted that Japanese minimalism in the film, which I managed to get somewhat.
I could have made a small film and kept all the money from ‘Life is Beautiful’. Instead, I spent more money than I had on ‘Pinocchio’, a very risky film.
With ‘Badlapur’, I wasn’t even thinking about casting. I was wondering whether any producer will want to make a film with a story like this. It is not your expected, feel-good, or even your regular thriller.
I always make sure that every film of mine has some element of freshness to it.
I did some film reviews for small papers in Finland and things like that to be able to keep living here.
A film like ‘Kai Po Che!’, ‘Queen’, ‘Behen Hogi Teri’ and ‘Bareilly Ki Barfi’ are not really independent films.
I have, indeed, lived most of my life overseas, but I’ve returned repeatedly to work in film, special television productions, and the New York theater. There have also been tributes and similar occasions that have called me back to Hollywood. I’ve returned so often, I almost feel that I’ve never left.
If you make an authentic political film, which talks of real people and real events, in a politically conscious country like India, it is but natural that people will react to it in different ways and there will be a collage of opinions.
‘The Lobster,’ at some point, was my most accessible film. Then I made ‘The Killing of a Sacred Deer,’ which turned out to be not as accessible as ‘The Lobster.’ It was the film I wanted to make and the story I wanted to tell.
Even though I’m an actor, I’ve gone to productions where there has been someone whose work is known in film, and you can’t take your eyes off them. It unbalances the production. Whether they’re good or not, it doesn’t matter.
‘The Butler’ has virtually nothing in common with its source material, the life of White House butler Gene Allen, except for the fact that the main character of the film and Allen were both black butlers in the White House.
My movie is born first in my head, dies on paper; is resuscitated by the living persons and real objects I use, which are killed on film but, placed in a certain order and projected on to a screen, come to life again like flowers in water.
I had seen ‘Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels’ and I thought that was a different kind of film than I’d seen before, with that kind of editing and slick camera movements.
In ‘Age of Innocence,’ the opening flowers, that’s a metaphor for the film, the Victorian veneer with the malevolence beneath it. We attempted to show that with flowers that start as sweet and then slowly become malevolent.
I would love to do an action film. In college, I have played a lot of aggressive characters.
I think empathy is a beautiful thing. I think that’s the power of film though. We have one of the most powerful, one of the greatest communicative tools known to man.
The Cannes film festival is about big-budget films but also remarkable films made in different political regimes by film-makers with little resources.
I loved ‘Saturday Night Fever’ when I was a kid. I couldn’t believe people talked that way. It was just a whole new culture I didn’t understand. I snuck into it. It was an R-rated film. So it holds a special place.
