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The Rediff Interview/Ram Gopal Varma
'We know zilch about audience tastes'
June 09, 2003
Ram Gopal Varma has always refused to run with the rest of Bollywood. Earlier, he was indulgently looked at as a maverick. Today, with the success of his songless Bhoot (Ajay Devgan, Urmila Matondkar, Fardeen Khan, Rekha, Nana Patekar, Seema Biswas, Victor Banerjee), he has again shaken the industry's complacency.
No one expected Bhoot -- which went against many of Bollywood's rigid movie-making conventions -- to do average business, let alone turn out to be a hit!
The ace director speaks to Subhash K Jha about what it means to be a pathbreaker:
Are you surprised Bhoot is a success?
Well, if I went by what the so-called experts had to say, Bhoot didn't stand a chance in hell. If one takes an experimental risk like Bhoot and it is successful, obviously one's faith in what one is doing is reaffirmed. Bhoot, which is a small budget film [Rs 6.5 crore, approximately US $1.39 million], took an opening as huge as any of the big Rs 30-40 crore [$6.4-8.5 million] budget films.
Bhoot is already a winner. Now, it's only a question of the enormity of the profits. The film's budget has been recovered in the first three days. Now I have my Bihar distributor calling to say, "Bhoot proves Ram Gopal Varma has a market in Bihar!" I don't know whether I should be flattered or insulted.
Without doubt, Bhoot is my biggest hit since Rangeela [Aamir Khan, Urmila, Jackie Shroff] eight years ago. I'm especially glad because it comes after two other successes -- Ishq Vishk and Andaaz. The dry spell in Bollywood seems to be over. Now, I'm determined to be more experimental than ever before.
Songless films are said to receive a hostile reception at the box office.
I believe B R Chopra's Kanoon [Ashok Kumar, Rajendra Kumar, Om Prakash] in 1960 was the last songless film that opened to a huge audience. Their other songless film, Ittefaq, came at the peak of Rajesh Khanna's popularity. My own songless horror film Raat [Om Puri, Revathy] was a disaster. For Bhoot, I was told only ghosts would be in the audience. They said, 'The film is called Bhoot, but the promotional clips show no ghosts.' More than being happy for myself, I'm happy for the film industry. Bhoot will bring a tremendous attitudinal change.....must read
http://rediff.com/movies/2003/jun/09ramu.htm
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