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'I knew Amitabh wouldn't turn me down'
How Arjun Sajnani took the leap from theatre to films in Agni Varsha
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MD Riti
Devare!" chorused the extras. They fell at his feet and began invoking his blessings.
Actor Raghuvir Yadav is puzzled. "I am not Indra bhagwan. I am just an actor dressed up as him," he explains patiently. But the film extras, all of whom had been hired locally by director Arjun Sajnani to work on his Hindi film Agni Varsha in Hampi [in the southern Indian state of Karnataka], did not believe him.
For the next four days that he was in costume, whenever he walked onto the sets, they would all flock to him and bow before him. Everyone was relieved when Yadav's role, which is that of a theatre actor in the film, was over and he went back.
The play, called The Fire and the Rain and written by Girish Karnad, did nine shows in Bangalore --- a record for English theatre in this city. Sajnani took it on tour to Mumbai and Pune. But much to his frustration, he could not take it any further because his actors were all professionals from other fields who could not spare more time. Besides, production was on a very large scale, and transporting sets and equipment any further would have been prohibitively expensive.
Now, Sajnani has directed the screen version of this play. Agni Varsha will be released all over India, the US and UK, August 30. It has already been screened at the Commonwealth Film Festival, recently.
Arjun Sajnani is a much-known and respected presence on the theatre circuit in Bangalore. He also runs a popular restaurant that serves authentic European cuisine called Sunny's.
Sajnani's plays, until this one, have usually been his adaptations of Broadway and off Broadway productions, with elaborate sets, costumes, grand music and good dialogue. "I have always said that I would do an Indian play some time and I have begun with this one," he says. "After this, I will only do plays and films that are set in my culture and background."
In fact, after this first film, Sajnani wants to continue in cinema, not theatre. "I have done so much theatre for a decade and a half now, I would now like to work more in this new medium," he explains. He is open to offers from the Hindi film industry, provided potential producers realise that he will only make 'honest' films. As he puts it, "No song and dance sequences in Switzerland, no special effects and gimmickry."
The initiative to make this play into a film was Sajnani's. He also decided that it should be done with a Bollywood connection, to enlarge its reach. He found the right producers in the film company Channel 9. The producers wanted saleable Hollywood names for the film, so Sajnani managed to rope in a most impressive star cast, ranging from Amitabh Bachchan, Raveena Tandon and Jackie Shroff to Nagarjuna, Milind Soman, Sonali Kulkarni, Raghuvir Yadav and Dr Mohan Agashe.
"Some of the Hollywood film crowd who saw the film at the Commonwealth festival said that that is a lot of film for the money you spent," says Sajnani. Unfortunately, Channel 9 folded up, putting Sajnani in a fix. And Sripal Morakia's iDream Productions, which liked the work he had done so far, stepped in.
His major casting coup was, of course, Amitabh Bachchan, even though he only has a tiny role in the film's climax. "All I needed from him was two days of shooting time," says Sajnani now. "I knew he would not turn me down, because we were good friends long ago, when we were both acting in Delhi theatre. We shot those scenes in Mumbai."
His initial choice for the female lead was Shabana Azmi. When she could not give him the required dates, Sajnani looked around for popular Mumbai actresses and zeroed in on Tandon. "Vishakha is a strong, confident, intelligent woman," says Sajnani. "I had to convert Raveena into what I wanted from her for this role. Fortunately, she and I bonded very quickly and I got a superb performance out of her."
For Parvasu, Vishakha's husband, Sajnani wanted a man who would look visibly older than hero Milind Soman, and exude power onscreen in the limited number of scenes he had. Shroff suited him perfectly on all counts. "Jackie was quite sceptical about the film, at first," says Sajnani. "He kept asking me, Kar sakoge?"
As for Nagarjuna, who plays Tandon's lover in the film, Sajnani says, "He is a very sexy guy. His body language is excellent. He had worked with Raveena in a Telugu film before, so they were able to generate the sexual tension that the story requires between them." As for Soman, Sajnani describes him as "gorgeous, hard-working and dedicated." Only he stayed with the unit throughout the 65 days of shooting at Hampi --- the others flew in and out of Mumbai.
The film has been made on a big canvas. "I always favour huge productions and large-scale spending," he says. Anil Mehta is the cameraman for the film. The music is by Sandesh Shandilya, with background score by Taufiq Qureshi. Costumes were designed by Rukmini Krishnan with Leena Singh. The lyrics for the songs were written by Javed Akhtar. Playback singing is by KK, Alka Yagnik, Chitra and Pamela Jain. Atul Tiwari has written the dialogues.
Sajnani hopes Karnad will like the film. "He did not want to do the screenplay himself because he said he was too close to it," says Sajnani. "He liked the way I did the play. I hope he likes the film too. He said he trusted me to do a good job." Although the film was screened at Manchester, Karnad could not come down from London to see it as he had another important engagement on the same day.
As for Sajnani himself, he confesses to having watched the film a 100 times already and to still finding it very educative and satisfying. "I have stood true to my material and I hope that the audience will appreciate that," he says.
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