Guest Blogger Siddharth - The Striker Diaries I My early influences
[Transcribed from an exclusive talk with PFC]
At a very young age, I told my dad I wanted to be in films, not knowing what it would be or what in films that I wanted to be in. So the lack of clarity or the over-expectation of wanting to do everything, has actually led to me not restricting myself from a decision making process, where if I had to pick one out of three choices, I have always picked up all three. From being a thespian with “The Players” (Kirodi mal college) to MBA (SP Jain Institute of Management) to being assistant director to Mani Ratnam (for Kanathil Mathumithal) to acting, it indeed has been a roller coaster ride. I was with the debating society in college. I was jamming with musicians and was in a band and in theatre too. I think it was in my college is when I came into my own. So when I went to Delhi University, I came into this happy zone which made me do a lot of things where I could creatively indulge myself. Ironically, I even look at my MBA experience as an even bigger splurge into creativity because I had very little to do with the academic process but more to do with the two big things that I associated myself with; one is finding myself as a human being, as a creative professional and second, I made friends for life in b-school, who are my closest friends. Most of them older than I was, in fact, I was the youngest in my batch. Many of them told me that “you’ll want to direct films all your life but all you would end up doing is acting”. I had bets with my classmates that I would become a director and that’s when I signed out of placements in college. I had a lot of jobs but then I decided to go and work with Mani Ratnam in Chennai I dreamt of being a director but I guess life had other things in store for me.
I did write scripts for films, learnt direction, sung in many of my films. Juggling with so many hats was not easy for me but I was confident I could deliver on most of the faculties of entertainment and cinema. I never structured my life to take a course that was chartered out for me. In those days, I have never done anything that I have not been asked to do. So in terms of writing, people said you should write for films and I ended up writing for a film and likewise for singing. I never pushed anything as an agenda, it’s always that life just kept happening to me, inch by inch, moment by moment.
I am trying to find my space where I get to practice my method where I don’t compromise or the bastardization of my own process. So I am your quintessential lover boy in Telugu but I have made sure I won’t explore territories that I am not comfortable in, like I don’t like vulgarity or violence and I keep them out of my films. Films like Rang De Basanti or Bommarillu and now Striker, are the films that help me explore the method actor in me. From start to the finish, these films required staying in one character and that’s what I enjoyed about this process. Not undermining the fact that my most impactful performance, from an audience stand point, is my first Telugu film with Prabhu Deva called Nuvvostanante Nenoddantana. It had everything; the song and dance, extreme energy, the humor, dramatic histrionics and everything that launched me as a commercial star.
I find it hugely contradictory that people say I do too little work; like I’d do one film a year but on the other hand I am told, I indulge in many things at a time. The right way to put it is that when I am working on something, I feel the urge to give my all to the medium and I end up doing everything. But when I am not working I kick off my shoes and not worry about the time going by. My sabbaticals have been different, ranging for 2 months to 7 months. People who stuck by me said I’ll be out of sight & out of mind but I knew deep down, you’re only as good as your last release. Luckily for me, most of my last films have been commercially viable and at the same time have not been overtly genre bending or breakthrough kind of films, but definitely not run-of-the-mill.
If there was one interesting project I was to pick up from my repertoire, I’d pick Blood Brothers. Blood Brothers is a special film for me. Vishal Bhardwaj and I wanted to make a film for long. With just a phone call I agreed I’d do the film and in a week we had shot the film. We had taken up this project as part of the Gates foundation and also that we were working with Oscar winning cinematographer Guillermo Navarro! I enjoyed working in a short film, it is interesting and challenging at the same time. You get far less screen time to establish far more stuff. The most exciting part for Vishal and I was working with Guillermo. I’ve learnt a lot working along with Guillermo, that immaterial of the fact whether you are in India or any place else, all filmmakers go through the same challenges, everybody has to fight the studio system, battle the suits and all the horrors of an Indie filmmaker. The exciting part was that before Blood Brothers, I had gone to The BAFTAs with Aamir and Guillermo introduced me to a table at the dinner which I will never forget. A round table that comprised of Alfonso Cuarón , Alejandro González Iñárritu, Gustavo Santaolalla , Pedro ALmodovar and Penelope Cruz and next to me was the most influential of them all, Guillermo del Toro. That night I could never forget because I felt like I was back in hostel and people are talking about an imperfect world and how they want to change it. It all felt so surreal as though impossible things do happen. I am not much of person who is star struck or one who runs for an autograph but if not for those couple of hours of dinner and drinks with them, I wouldn’t have come anywhere close to what I am today.
And now for the cinema I like; I am not much of a director driven cinema watcher. I think directors are not consistent from what it is. A film is as good as it works. Directors are human, films are not. Films like Citizen Kane had changed my life forever. At the same time there was Bharathi Rajaa’s Muthal Mariyathai or Kamal Hasan’s Nayakan and Satya. Mohanlal’s films like His Highness Abdullah and Kireedam were also my favorites. My parents thought I got into films because I watched films more than anyone else they knew. Right from Ghatak and Ray to completely enjoying films by Singeetham Srinivasa Rao for being the best of commercial cinema! I always believed that there are films that work and then there are films that don’t. No other title applies. I don’t go by the ideology of commercial or the avant-garde or dogma. I have never been into all those names. I watch films without any prejudice. I am as much for a solo comedy to a French minimalistic film. I don’t allow myself to have role models but if I were to pick up two filmmakers out of the blue; it’d be Billy Wilder and may be François Truffaut because I think they never went with set of rules, they never started out as making a comedy or a drama. They just made films that came out of their hearts. Truffaut and Diamond are still considered the greatest screenwriting combinations of all time. When Wilder crossed over to the US, he was asked at the immigration about what he does. To which he replied “I make movies” and the person said “Make good movies” and let him into America. I like that form of passion for cinema and everything that is associated with it. In my next post I will talk about the genesis of Striker.
- Siddarth
Guest Blogger Siddharth: The Genesis of Striker
[ Transcribed from an exclusive talk with PFC ]
We are lead by this ideology of not putting all the eggs in one basket but I couldn’t have found a better film than Striker to do this. Chandan and I met soon after RDB in Chennai and he told me about the research he has been doing in Malvani for Striker. The research consumed us and we wanted to make a ghetto film. If I were to explore the landscape of Striker, I’d like to mention the films of Spike Lee, Scorsese or even John Singleton who have taken the demographic of the ghetto lifestyle and blown it up so that the audience gets to smell, hear and taste the ghetto. I keep referring to a lot of Scorsese in my discussion about Striker because Striker is an amalgamation of Good Fellas and Raging Bull, in terms of genre. It’s a biopic and it’s about sports as in Raging Bull and also about the Ghetto as in Good Fellas. Chandan’s rhythm and grammar is so honest, he is making a film that is entertaining based purely on the basis of his understanding of entertainment. I am proud that I found a collaborator like Chandan at this early stage of my career. It’s one man’s vision not to give into convention and stick by his principles of cinema.The film is set in 80s ghetto where carom was iconic. People’s lack of drive and exposure lead them to playing carom. So boys and teens from the ghetto would leave their houses empty handed and return home with 15000 rupees, which in those times was quite a lot. Suryakant, the character is simply not afraid to stand in line. He doesn’t make his own line or break the line. He just stands there in the line adamant and saying “mera number aayega” . Aur jab uska number nahin aata to wo Striker ki kahani hai. It’s the story of an adolescent man who is completely in control of his destiny and slowly learns that nothing is in your hands, all that he will ever need to do is “play”. It’s his ultimate hope of survival and he must go on. The most amazing line in the film is “Break zindagi ne le hai, abhi apne ko khelne ka hai, Sala ab apni baari hai”. Suryakant takes control of his life in the third act of the film and the only way he knows how to do it is through carom, which becomes his weapon.
For the first time we will have an Indian film being distributed on YouTube. The YouTube experiment is as exciting as it is scary. I have never had a worldwide release for my film. The strongest centers for my films apart from Andhra Pradesh are Bangalore, Virginia, Washington and the Bay area. I have ensured that my film has a theatrical release in these centers. When I watched Striker, I felt this could be any good International film coming from South America to Taiwan. So for me its like if Striker gets a release on YouTube for no cost and even at least 1000 people watch it in South America, then the risk is worth it. It has been two years since Striker finished principle shoot (Read recession, industry strike and the overall lack of people’s belief in good films) and now its out.
I have also produced the music for Striker, which would include compiling the album structure, the composer list and being in all sessions from scratch to mix. When I first heard the soundtrack of Pulp Fiction, I have always wanted to make an ensemble score. So with Striker, I had conceived the idea of getting different composers to watch the film, get inspired enough to compose one track each. Striker is a film about a ghetto milieu which is a complicatedly interwoven microcosm of society. When different composers from different backgrounds come together and react to the same circumstance, that’s when the true essence of the ghetto would come alive. It’s not a conventional background score. Chandan and I come from different background score schools. Chandan is more of ambient school and I more of melody school (which is why I grew up on Illayaraja). Chandan would set the mood for the whole film first, select sounds that come from ambient dialogue and then compile a fabric score for the film. So we had Shri, who is popular in the London underground scene alongside Talvin Singh, Nitin Sawhney and DJ Badmarsh. He has influences of contemporary Jazz and a lot of Rhythm and Base that fuses comfortably with the ambient of the film. The background is primarily the sound of the ghetto. I had initially spoken to a Turkish orchestra to compose for the film. We wanted to get 80 musicians from the rural heartlands of Turkey. We had sent Striker with the first scratch sound of the Turkish orchestra to Sundance and other festivals and the response was phenomenal. But Shri’s score blows it out of the water with its realistic depiction of cinema. Shree is more from the schoolyard of his friends Sanjay Maurya and Allwyn Rego.
I am known by my friends as one who lives his life in pursuit of posterity. So I’d like to think of my life as how it is analyzed after I am dead. It may seem morbid than I intend it to be but I believe in it. At the age of 30, whatever happens today, on February 5th, Striker will always be remembered as a defining moment of my film career. I have put all of my beliefs in to this film, as to why I came here in the first place.
source: passionforcinema.com
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