Interesting Interviews

Chai with Chitra is one You Tube channel, where in famous personalities from tinsel town share their life experience. Their stories include not just about their successes. Unless prodded on by the anchor, they always talk about how difficult their entry had been into movie industry, their embarrassments, family situation, insults and how they landed up with their first break. Invariably the first episode of the multi episode series follow this template. I saw for 3 people and each of them couldn’t be any different from other. First interview that made me hooked into the channel for further episodes was that of Director Venkatesh, more popular as the cruel villain of Angadi theru movie. In fact, I had never seen any of the movies he had directed as they were all crass and B grade. But the way he explained the effort behind each of them was interesting. His struggles as a debutant director and how his cast helped him during a 6 month break in between the shooting schedule it was all very honest and straight from the heart. Even for dabba movies which majority thinks as flops, his version of hit was another interesting view point. In fact he mentioned most of his movies as commercially profitable ones. To me the highlight of the 4 part series was his humility which was quite evident on screen. For a person who had made all those rowdy and rogue movies, his interview came out quite humble. It made me saw the next one which hosted another personality 360 opposite in character. It was that of Selvamani, the ace director of Captain Prabhakaran and pulan visaranai movies. 

I had seen couple of his earlier interviews and this guy always came out as a dominant personality to say the least. Someone who never listens and always imposes himself on others was a view that was oozing from his body language and the incidents that lead to his first movie was ripe with similar examples. In fact, because of his adamant nature and arrogance he almost lost his chance as a director to do Pulan Visaranai. And ditto during Captain Prabakaran. Both of them were no doubt trend setter movies and were block buster hits. But his extravagant attitude and megalomania was evident even now and the look on his eyes when he described how he eventually prevailed showed the true nature of this person, who even after 25 years doesn’t want to repent or express heart felt regret for his actions. 

The third one I saw on that series was that of K.S Ravikumar. His character came out as a toned down version of Selvamani. The way he was sitting on the chair while talking to the anchor was testimony to that. Even otherwise, he is known as someone who never hesitates to hit his technicians or use swear words on the set to get the work done. The sense of achievement sat very heavily with him for to his credit he has directed many a block buster. But as a politically correct speak, his interview was anything but it. Calling his lead actors in singular except for Kamal and Rajini was one of it. His reason for not directing any movies at present was a case study for those who don’t prepare themselves to be current. Ravikumar is known for his super fast scheduling where in most of his movies get finished in 3 months max. But with the advent of latest way of working, even for a single song to be recorded where the music director takes couple of months at max to deliver, his way of slave ship work mode doesn’t augur for present ways of movie making. He rather chose to point fingers on the other side that while he is ready and available, it is upto the leads to make use of him. Another interesting concept he slightly touched upon was on the concept of story and screenplay. While most of the recent hits were embroiled on the story rights controversy, none of his movies had that issue for he would be very particular that only screenplay would be done by him and story rights have to be brought or taken over by someone else. That would be a good point for recent crop of directors to follow which may eventually help in getting good movies reaching the audience. 

I am particularly fond of such interviews for the simple reason that, I am more curious to see how they overcame their failures and what steps they took to come out of it. The end result might have made them sit on that chair for the interview but the path that lead them there is something I am always very curious to hear. In that way, all 3 interviews were full of lessons for anyone from any field to adopt or to avoid.