BAHUT LAMBI KAHANI HAI YEH

The idea of wanting to do something with Sholay came approximately around five to six years ago. One day I got a call from Sasha Sippy saying that his grandfather Mr. G. P. Sippy wants to meet me. As he is a respected man by all, as well as the producer of Sholay and a senior in the fraternity, I went all the way to town to meet him.

There Sasha Sippy mentioned that they are interested in making a sequel to Sholay. He also had a storyline already worked out in his mind. As per his story after the song of “Mehbooba” Gabber Singh sleeps with Helen, she bears the son of Gabbar Singh who was to become known as Junior Gabbar.

The big problem with the sequel of Sholay was that some of the cast or some of the characters have died. One of the main characters Jai died, and in reality Sanjeev Kumar and Amjad Khan passed away. Therefore one has to make do with the remaining characters and cast and possibly creating new characters.

Helen’s son wants to take revenge for his father Gabbar Singh who was behind bars because of Jai and Veeru. Veeru and Basanti keep coming to Ramgad village now and then to meet Jayaji's character Radha who is still residing in the village. They are kidnapped by junior Gabber. Then both Veeru and Basanti’s sons come to the rescue. This was the basic plot line he had in his mind.

In the above plot he wanted me to create a character for Jackie Chan. I first thought he meant some local actor named Jackie Chan till I realized that he was talking about the Honk Kong superstar. Sasha Sippy’s Jackie Chan brainwave was due to the influence of “Rush Hour” where an American and an Asian actor together gave a big hit. I found the whole thing so bizarre and I declined it and came out laughing. Little did I realize that the last laugh will be on me…!  
 
KYA SOCHA? KYA NIKLA?

Anyways cutting again to the flashback, on my way back from Sasha Sippy’s meeting a thought occurred to me what if the story of Sholay was set in contemporary times in a city. That felt interesting and I bounced it off to some people around me and all of them thought that it was a superb idea.

Then just for the heck of it, I started doing changes as simple as instead of ‘Kitne admi the’ Gabbar should say ‘Kitne’. I thought if Sanjeev Kumar doesn’t have hands so how could he have shaved everyday? So let’s have Thakur with a beard. So I basically went on this trip of literally having interpretations of shots and dialogues and scenes, and completely forgot the basic emotional aspect of the film.

So when I was talking about each of the shots and scenes, people around me were praising and getting affected so much with whatever I said, I started thinking may be over the years Sholay has completely broken up into audio visual bytes. You still remember lines from it, made characters from it, made cartoons out of it and so it is kind of fragmented into parts and you don’t look at it as a whole film experience and that’s how I think it became at least in my mind.

The people around me also went into that mindset primarily psyched by me. I know it sounds stupid, it sounds stupid to me too. So I can understand how others feel about it. I made a few people sit and started talking about for example Amitabh Bachchan’s character. In Babban’s introduction, I told them he will be drunk with power, hence a laidback stance. And he will have a characteristic laughter which will sound like a cough. Everybody around me thought it was a fantastic interpretation.

Now when the film released one particular gentleman told me Gabbar looks like he has fever as he is coughing in his introduction scene in the film. Now if one looks at it from that point of view, yes it sounds like he has fever. So everything what I thought so seriously went seriously wrong.

One day when I was sitting with 4 to 5 people, this commercial poster designer came with the poster of how Gabbar should look. My first instinct was ‘why would any city dweller wear such clothes’ because my idea still at that point of time was to make it very realistic but the people around me said it was fantastic.

When I said that it didn’t look real, the designer said “In the old Sholay Gabbar was a normal guy and over the years he has become a legend. So Gabbar should not look realistic, he should look very stylized and very fantasy oriented.” They all said he was perfectly right. Now the point is that they didn’t know what I had in my mind. They were reacting to a still image but just under the influence of that particular moment of so many people seemingly so excited about it, I thought that may be I was missing on something. Maybe he is right in what he meant by legend, so I thought let me just not get stuck to my original thought and I should be flexible.

Then I took it over and showed it to Mr Bachchan and he also said it was fantastic. But Mr. Bachchan also didn’t know what I was doing. He also was just reacting to a still image. He took it for granted, a professional that he is, that I know what I am doing. And he has developed so much of trust in me as a director post Sarkar, he thought I must be having some reason behind why I would evocate such a look. The fact that Amitabh Bachchan also thought it was fantastic and people around also found it fantastic I took it for granted that may be this was the right one.

Then keeping a reference to that I started changing the look of each of the characters and situations, what kind of a place he will stay in etc…. So I went into the technical aspect of trying to match up to this design which somebody gave and I got completely carried away after that.

So everything I was trying to match to that and it obviously can’t because the scenes and the characters and emotions were at loggerheads. So I started manipulating it or psyching myself and whoever was there. So now each of the actors, when I spoke to whether Ajay Devgan or Sushmita Sen or Mohanlal or Mr. Bachchan or Nisha Kothari or Prashant Raj, all of them were completely convinced primarily because of the analysis I was giving. So they were also not able to look at the film in totality. Also by that time the hype of the film was so much that I was making Sholay, it was almost impossible for me to detach and re-look at it in totality.

To complicate this whole thing, another thing that happened was that initially the lawyers told me that there is no problem the way you are interpreting it, you don’t need to take rights. After I started, they said you can’t do this and you have to change this character, you cannot have these many scenes in a sequence, so I constantly started changing scenes and characters. It is very dangerous to start changing scenes once you start the film because you don’t know which and where what is going to be affected in the final cut.

ISKE PEECHE BHI EK KAHANI HAI

I could not get the title Sholay. I said like Ram Gopal Varma’s Sarkar or Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Devdas, so let us call it Ram Gopal Varma Ke Sholay. What is the big deal? Then by the time it came for release, the court gave an order not to use the word Sholay. So I had no choice but to change, but I wanted a sound which has got a meaning like sholay. This is how the word Aag came in, so the publicity guys just took the name Sholay out and put Aag in. So that’s how Ram Gopal Varma ki Sholay became Ram Gopal Varma ki Aag. So in one sentence everything whatever could go wrong, went wrong with Aag.
But all these are still minor things in comparison to the most dangerous thing that any filmmaker can be subjected to. It’s to be surrounded with people who will not tell him the truth or lie to him. Not necessarily by intention to harm him but it could be just to please him or are scared of him or psyched by him or in cases they take it for granted that the filmmaker knows what he is doing.

Also it came as a shock to me that most people in the age group of 12 to 30 haven’t seen Sholay. They have seen parts of it or at least their knowledge of it was a vague memory. So they couldn’t make head or tail of the film and people who remember the original Sholay didn’t like the intrusion of these new characters and a new way of telling the story. So to all of them Aag looked like a ridiculous collage of scenes going nowhere.

To sum it up thinking of ‘kitne admi the’ to ‘kitne’ as my interpretation… the tremendous reaction that I got from various concerned people was the first nail in the coffin. Second is this publicity designer getting that poster of Babban’s look and me getting carried away again, third is the court cases and fourth is the way I was changing everything and having as ridiculous a title as ‘Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag’ completely prepared the ground for the disaster.

YAAD RAKHOONGA

When people ask me if I got hurt by the brickbats, I was not because I learnt a lot from the experience both in terms of the making and its aftermath and I truly believe that today I am a better human being and director because of Aag, but yes I feel terribly guilty because I made so many people, actors, technicians, investors party to a blunder I committed. They put in their time, money, hard work and trusted my vision and suffered for no fault of theirs.
 
- Ramgopal Varma
P.S: This piece I wrote is just a trailer of how ‘Aag’ happened. In future blogs I would get into many more details of the same from time to time.

Since I am not a net savvy guy and only just now entered this world I made a startling discovery. I have never read reviews beyond 3 to 4 Mumbai based newspapers ever and I thought that was it. On the net there are literally hundreds of reviews. When I went through them I was amazed at so many diverse points of views both in liking and disliking the film. Many of them have been much more intelligently written than the so-called names attached to popular newspapers. I am not talking about praise or criticism here; it’s just about their analytical power.

Everyone has a mind and every mind has an opinion and every opinion-maker strongly believes that he is right and the whole world is wrong, not realizing that probably each of all those other millions of minds will be thinking the same. I think this is the most beautiful part of life… that each of us creates a world of our own in our heads and when we seriously listen to another person it’s almost like visiting another world. When I read a nasty review or a glowing review many a times I get struck by how differently they viewed it from how I intended it. The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche said “there are no facts only interpretations”. I think this is very true of cinema.

In all my good, bad and ugly films I keep getting stumped when people who meet me over the years tell me the reasons why they liked something and why they didn’t, as in more often what I did not intend is what they took from the film. I saw “Ardhsatya” seven times. When I happened to meet Govind Nihalani years later and discussed the film with him, I was shocked to realize that what reasons he made it for was not what I liked it for. He made it for the father-son relationship and I saw it for Rama Shetty and for my curiosity of what happened inside a police station. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I always used to fast-forward the father-son scenes. But yes, there would be probably many others who would connect to that part of the film and the proof of that is the existence of Mr. Govind Nihalini himself. The fact that he thought like that is proof that there will be people who think like him.

In my growing years I was greatly influenced by Mr. Shyam Benegal’s Ankur, Nishant, Kalyug etc… Company is actually a rehash of Kalyug. Instead of politics in the Corporate world I dealt with politics in the underworld. But I very heavily borrowed from Kalyug. In my few interactions with him I have realized that he is an exceptionally knowledgeable and well-read and would understand the subject matter so well. So as a result he has a tendency to tell the story almost from a top angle whereas me I do it from a low angle. I like to be intimidated and awed by the characters and situations I am dealing in with a child-like fascination.

Coming back to the point of opinions now thanks to the net anyone can literally access anyone’s opinion across the globe. What more can a filmmaker ask for? People ask me whether I know what the audience wants. Let me tell you an observation I made on a recent visit to a DVD library near my house on Yaari road. I went to pick up a film, spent about 20 minutes in the store. While I was doing that various customers were coming in. 9 out of 10 of them were picking up films which for the life of me can’t imagine why anybody would want to see. So if my disconnect right under my nose on the street where I live in is so off the mark, on what basis can I even begin to think I know the audience of the country.

Let’s say there are 1500 titles in the store. If any of us spend one full day I doubt we will be able to decide more than 200 films what we have seen or what we want to see. Then what are the other 1300 films doing there? The fact that they have been made and put on the shelves is proof enough of the existence of the people who would watch them too.

Dhoom 2 is the biggest hit of last year. It reportedly collected 20 Crores in Maharashtra. On an average price of 100 rupees a ticket, 20 lakh people saw Dhoom 2. For a film like that I guess half of them would be repeat audience. So my question is if 10 lakh people in a population of 6 crores of Maharashtra can make the years biggest hit then what are the rest of 5 crores 90lakh people doing? Do they watch films or no? Is it the same people that watch Tare Zameen Par and Welcome or are they different? Anyways the point I am trying to make here is that you can’t generalize audience and as long as you can’t do that why think of the audience and delude yourself.

David Dhawan uses the term audience, Maniratnam uses, Sanjay Leela Bhansali uses; I use the term audience, like-wise various directors of various different styles and sensibilities. But how can those audiences be the same? The truth is that we all directors do what we as individuals like and tell ourselves that this is what the audience wants.

Film in the truest sense of the word is an expression of ones own personality. A filmmaker is not a primary artist in the sense of the word. The actor is acting, the writer is writing, the music director is composing etc… etc… but all these primary works are being processed in the directors mind to create a coherent whole, at least in his mind. So he might not be able to compose the music but we only get to hear what he likes to hear. We only get to see characters such as what he would like to show us, likewise all the other departments.

You go to a clothes store and you might not like many shirts but you will find something you like. The ones you don’t like are all bought by somebody else or the other. So I think at best for both, for the manufacturer which is the filmmaker and the retailer which is the theatre and the consumer which is the ticket buying audience, the one-to-one interaction and reaction are just about the only truth. Everything else is a matter of commerce.

My reactions to reactions:

1. Leave something for the audience to decipher?
Ans:- You missed the point.

2. Since when did Anita suddenly become family?
Ans: Since I decided.

3. We didn’t know who exactly the central character is among the two Nagres.
Ans: My answer was intended for the reviewer who thought there was one.

4. Beg to differ, sire.
Ans: Okay dokey!

5. Always your Eklavya.
Ans: I am impressed with your observations.

6. You never revealed the benefits of the plant in Sarkar Raj.
Ans: The film is not about the benefits. It’s about the interplay of various characters having their own motivations and agendas in the making of the plant.

7. Why are you so fascist in your decisions?
Ans: - I get a kingly kick.

8. I would say that RGV is not bettering himself.
Ans: That’s because I am already the best. Ha Ha! Just joking! On a serious note may be I am not. Ha Ha! Joking again!

9. Why did you leave out Tarun Adrarsh? Just because he gave a good review?
Ans: It’s not about good or bad.  It’s about where I wish to make my point.

10. I think you like praise. You just have inferiority complex.
Ans: Okay dokey!

11. Love the 3 to 5 minutes single shot scene in Deyyam. Any insights into that!
Ans: I forgot.

12. You are being harsh when you say you copy.
Ans: I copy with joy and pride.

1. Shouldn’t we make films which can make an impact on the world?
Ans: Hello, you are talking to the maker of AAG and also I believe in making films such as what I want to see.

2. I don’t think you’ve made any bad films, some of them just didn’t work.
Ans: Films should only be made with an intention of making them work. Good and bad are very subjective.

3. Are the subtle sense of humour scenes in your films your ideas?
Ans: All ideas in my films whether they are good, bad or ugly, are mine.

4. How do you see RGV doing 10 years from now?
Ans: I don’t think beyond today.

5. Howard Roark did not dislike anyone. He was just indifferent.
Ans: Indifference is worse than dislike.

6. Shiva was an incomplete film. The 2nd half is with me.
Ans: Make it yourself.

7. AAG is my favourite film.
Ans: Can you please send your picture so that I can frame it and keep it at home.
P.S: Don’t tell anybody but AAG is my favorite film too.

8. Your penchant to contradict yourself is becoming predictable.
Ans: The only exciting thing about life is contradictions and I also have outgrown the anger of Nigga disi adugu.

9. It was always me… I trusted you… I took time and watched your movie, how can I blame you.
Ans: Ahhhh! Wisdom at last.

10. I had fallen in love with Sridevi after watching Kshnam Kshnam.
Ans: I made that movie because I was in love with her.

11. I am in no comments after reading your blog… just background music.
Ans: I love you for this.

12. In one shot in Bhoot after the car leaves the basement the shot changes with the sound of a dolby click.
Ans: That was not a dolby click. It is the igniter sound which Urmila uses on the gas stove. Anyway as long as you felt the impact it does not matter. The psychology of that shot is that the audience would be used to the fact that the shot will be cut after the car left the frame. But the fact that it lingers on automatically puts them into a heightened tension thereby making them anticipate something terrible will happen and that’s why even an ordinary click sound will scare them. Similarly one more example of this is when Urmila comes down into the hall to go into the kitchen for a glass of water. In a wide-angle shot I show the audience that there is no one in the living room. If the camera follows behind her they will be half expecting something to jump on her from of the frame. But the fact they can see the whole room their eyes will be darting all over to see if anyone is hiding somewhere. Meanwhile Urmila takes her time to drink water and comes back. As she goes up the stairs I cut to top angle where the audience can see behind her.

Now as the audience can’t see anything in the back and from Urmila’s expression they can see that there is nothing in the front, they slowly relax as she comes close to the camera into out focus distance thereby expecting the shot to be cut. But as she crosses the camera we reveal Manjeet under the stairs making them jump out of the seat.

13. I don’t know if ‘Govinda Govinda’ theme suited the film Sarkar. Originally it was from your Telugu film.
Ans: Yes. Since I loved that track in the Telugu film and that film flopped I was adamant on tying to ram it down people’s throats once again and I gave a logic to myself that Sarkar is like Lord Krishna which justified the Govinda word. Nobody else got that but as of now it’s the most identifiable sound byte from the Sarkar films. My case rests.

14. How does Sarkar make a living?
Ans: He didn’t tell me.

15. What do you feel when you look at your movies that are 6-7 years old?
Ans: That they are 6-7 years old.

- Ram Gopal Varma

I have answered the questions randomly from the queries on my Blogs....

Can you give me your email id? I want to bring to your notice important socio-political issues.
Ans: Socio-political issues are not important to me.

1. Sometimes you don’t stick to your words.
Ans: Actually most times I don’t.

2. Was it your idea to change Shiva’s climax and end scenes? They didn’t work at all.
Ans: Yes and the obvious reason for that is I thought they will work better.

3. I find RAAT path breaking.
Ans: I find it boring.

4. If you don’t have light moments such as of Tanisha’s character in Sarkar Raj the film will make people drowsy.
Ans: I find light moments drowsy.

5. Did you watch Good Shepherd?
Ans: No.

6. I hope you will make Fountainhead one day.
Ans: It’s my dream.

7. What state of mind were you when you were making junkies like AAG?
Ans: Drugged with arrogance.

8. Please make commercially successful films.
Ans: Thanks for the advice. It didn’t occur to me.

9. Why are you so fascinated by dark themes? Even your blog has a dark background.
Ans: Well.

10. If you like Mario Puzo’s Godfather novel more than the film, why did you dedicate SARKAR to Coppola?
Ans: You are bang on right. That was downright stupid. Thanks for pointing it out.

11. You have to screen the new directors you work with.
Ans: If I knew how to screen good directors so that they can make good films, why would I myself be making bad films?

12. Your films like AAG, Nishabd scared me and I don’t want to watch your films anymore.
Ans: Thanks

13. Be more hardworking. Ideas can’t solve problems. Proper execution can. Give your best as its still in you. Push your boundaries and you will fly again…
Ans: I think you have talent for advising and also maybe poetry.

14. If you see your film before releasing you will definitely know what you have made.
Ans: A film Idea primarily comes out of a certain emotional state of mind. So by the time you go through the entire process, scripting, constructing scenes, editing etc it’s not possible to emote with the finished product the way you felt it the first time. At best you can listen carefully to people to who you show it for the first time before release. But if they chose to lie to you or are scared to tell you the truth, as so often it happens, you have had it. Will detail on this aspect when I start putting on this blog how I came about making each of my films including my magnum opus AAG. What I thought of them when I wanted to make them and what they turned out to be.

15. Einstein said that if someone tells that have not made a mistake then they have never tried anything new in life. You will face challenges when you tread new paths.
Ans: To start with I never consciously have this thought of tying something new or to take up as a challenge to tread different paths. At best I am like a child in a candy store excited to try anything and everything whatever catches my fancy at that time depending on my mood and state of mind. Whatever good or bad comes out of this is completely by accident and not out of intention.

16. Aishwarya’s character is inspired from Dagny Taggart in Atlas Shrugged.
Ans: NO.

17. A study on you would be incomplete without AAG.
Ans: Ahhhhh! You are telling me! The greatest education I have ever had in my life with regards to cinema, my life and my self is due to AAG and its aftermath. I must have had one million twenty seven lakh thirty thousand and twenty three advises, and criticisms not including the ones I deduced myself. Now you can see how much more richer I am. Want any charity?

18. You should have a provision in your blog for short films from budding filmmakers.
Ans: Yes.

19. You are retarded. You talk crap in News Channels. You might become the next Tim Sebastian.
Ans: I am, I do. I don’t know who he is.

20. You need to go back to Aamir Khan for one more blockbuster.
Ans: That’s a fantastically fabulous advice. I am amazed I didn’t think of it.

21. Your emotional scenes are half-baked and not well-executed.
Ans: Quite a few people feel the same as you. It could be because I have a subconscious dislike towards people who cannot control their emotions. For me emotional displays are more vulgar than wealth displays. I like to see only strength in my characters, so even when they are in a highly vulnerable situation I still want to see them strong. It’s probabl;y this which results in the scenes not working for people like you. But then I only do what I want to do.

22. You have the nerve to test it whereas others play safe.
Ans: I am like a guy on the beach who suddenly sees this island in the distance and is gripped by a sudden intense desire to reach there. So I jump in even though I am not a swimmer, with this basic assumption that at best I will learn to swim and at worst I will drown. But I hate to stay put on the beach worrying about sharks and storms. I can’t really claim that I play safe because I don’t really care about the dangers. I know that sounds stupid, but that’s me.

23. You beauty is that you accept your flops.
Ans: Not accepting your film as a flop and standing by it is like telling a joke to someone and when he does not laugh to claim that he does not have a sense of humour.

The intention of telling the joke to him in the first place is to make him laugh like the intention of making and releasing a film is for the people to like it.

Standing by a film is also like you proposing to a girl and when she rejects you, you tell yourself that “I love myself, so what if she doesn’t.”

After that when I became a director, lot of times I used to take references from Godfather - the scenes, the dialogue style or some moment from here and there. And they were in Shiva; they were in Satya. For example in Satya there is the voiceover after Amodh Shukla’s murder describing the aftermath. That was a direct take-off from a certain chapter of Godfather wherein Mario Puzo describes the aftermath of Solozzio’s killing. But consciously to make an adaptation of Godfather to the truest extent struck me probably sometime in 1999. Once I met Mr. Bachchan and I vaguely told him I have this idea of making an adaptation of Godfather.

In spite of many people not having heard of the Mafia as it is a American phenomenon it had a such a high resonance across the world because those kind of people exist all over in forms of gang lords, political leaders, dictators or kings who can influence a lot of people with the strength of their personalities and their tremendous Power. In the Indian context I thought the closest reference was someone like Balasaheb Thackeray. There is this one man who without any official position or a political seat out of his personal charisma he can affect people to the extent of they are willing to die and kill for him. I thought he was also the right reference for a character like Godfather to be created. The primary difference between the Godfather and Sarkar is that the tone of the Godfather novel has impressed me much more than the film version of Godfather because it had a certain mythological larger than life quality. In the book there is a line where Puzo mentions “from 1935 to 1937 the name of Santino Corleone sent shockwaves through the underworld.”
James Caan playing Santino Corleone’s character does not justify this line but Vishnu Nagre does. That is what I mean by taking reference of the tone of the book. Likewise in the beginning when Amerigo Bonasera talks to the Don to help him to bring justice to the people who hurt his daughter I disagreed with the conversation which was very like “how much do you want?  Why did you do this to me? Why didn’t you come to me first, instead of going to the police?” I felt it was very unreal because any of these big people who have reached a certain status, whenever a person comes to them because of some trouble; they will go out of their way to help them to make them feel emotionally obligated. That’s the reason they get indebted. There is a reason why they become so big as they develop these many people’s gratitude and trust and thereby they will start doing whatever they ask them to do at the end of the day. That also I took from a thought from the Godfather novel. The opening scene of SARKAR when a guys gets out of the rickshaw and comes into Sarkar’s bungalows gate, you can see the defeat in his walk and feel it in the voice when he is talking to Sarkar about the injustice he suffered.  There you get sucked into the mind state as that of Sarkar and you feel the anger as much as him, whereas in Godfather you look at the scene objectively.

Also my intention was to make the audience constantly feel intimidated by the characters. All of them should come with an inbuilt background score. For example the way Rashid enters the house,  the gate opening,  the background score and the way he gets down from the car and goes up the staircase its almost like a Mahabharat character coming with a full piece orchestra.  So by the time he reaches Sarkar the background score and the shots are commanding the audience to take him very seriously. Then on top of that sitting in front of Sarkar, taking his own time and not seemingly concerned or bothered or scared of the bigness of Sarkar, the character, the audience and also on the subconscious level, they feel the impact of a new actor sitting in front of Amitabh Bachchan and not being scared.
 
When people ask me my thing of casting new actors, it works in a scene because people have never seen that guy, I can play around with the audience’s imagination. If I take a big name in the effort of trying to match somebody with Amitabh Bachchan, somebody like Danny Denzongpa or Amrish Puri, I don’t think the scene will be effective enough because subconsciously the audience will feel the final outcome thereby making it predictable. With the new guy they won’t know what to make of him… how big he is? How small he is? And what he can do? That unpredictability of an unknown face I think works very well in films of this genre. As per with Abhishek’s character initially I thought of a guy who’s just a chilled out boy and he becomes a man in the course of the film. But later I thought that right from the beginning I should make him larger than life. The fact that he becomes what he became there is obviously a special quality in him. He does not do what his father does or may not agree with it or he many not be so much into it but that does not mean I should take away the larger than life quality that Shankar can have right from the time when he comes out of the airport the way he walks you still feel the sense of largeness around him. It is what I maintain more or less with all the characters in the film.

My tendency is to have very dramatic and in-the-face background score. I have two reasons for it; one reason is I find background score drives the emotion of the audience in a specified intended direction. At times I have been accused that I use it so loud almost to the point that you cannot hear the dialogue properly. Sometimes the reason for this is when I reach the mixing stage at times I am so bored of the dialogues myself by hearing it so many times I feel like listening to the music at that time. I know it sounds stupid but it can happen. So I think more or less if we know of the emotion of what they are going to talk about so why do we need so specifically for them to hear the lines.

My favorite shot in SARKAR is the end after the whole thing is resolved. This shot was of Sarkar in the background waving to the crowd and as he turns back and walks we hear the voice of someone speaking and then Tanisha comes in and for a second you feel Tanisha was talking. Then as the camera moves back we see the silhouette of a women talking to someone about her problem and as it pans, you see Shankar. The fact that Sarkar for the public is still the head and Shankar not really wanting to take credit for what he is doing is in the background. But his transition to take over has started so I wanted that to be communicated in one shot so the silhouette of this woman and Shankar and Sarkar being in the broad daylight. Its not that the audience will consciously understand this was the essence of the communication of the scene but I think one will feel the difference and will feel the impact. I don’t think the craft of cinema is not so much about the audience consciously understanding but they have to feel the impact.

During the making of SARKAR, me and Abhishek used to discuss the possibility of making a sequel. SARKAR is eventually about character conflicts. Obviously there will be so many situations that will happen in Sarkar’s life. If he dealt with one such type of situation and one set of antagonists then you can scale it up further and create another situation.

When I thought back about it I felt Sarkar was a very simplistic story. It is so because it is taken from the original Godfather plot. So many films have been made on that story line but it’s just the newness of the meeting and the performances which made it stand apart. In the sequel, I thought the newness of the first will be taken for granted because they have already seen it. But I cannot change that style because that is the tradition of SARKAR. But if I put a story in it which is very original and make on a scale, on a span and on issues which are bigger, I thought I can make it a lot more interesting than the first Sarkar.

One thing I felt when I saw Godfather Part Two – is that the characters were taken for granted. There was no intention on the part of the Director to make them look larger than life, the way it was done in the first part. So I somehow was disappointed to see Michael Corleone running here and there. No doubt that it is a great film and I have seen it many a times but I didn’t want to miss out on the intensity and the larger than life quality of Sarkar in SARKAR RAJ. So in fact I worked more than in SARKAR to sustain the feeling of larger than life treatment in terms of character portrayals. In spite of applying new technological advancements which have been developed in the last few years in terms of various treatments, I still tried to stick to the tradition of SARKAR and every technique was employed to capture the intensity of the actors because I don’t believe anything is bigger than an actors performance and any time technique is trying to take away or go away from that is where any film will falter.

- Ram Gopal Varma