Transcript of the Rahul Bose interview

How would you assess your journey as an actor?

I can safely say that it hasn't been an evolution towards excellence. I think that I was better in English August, than I was in Bombay Boys, although Bombay Boys followed a couple of years later. Split Wide Open has been my best performance, although I was shooting Thakshak alongside.

Acting is never a question of growth in term of betterment. It is so heavily dependent on how good the story is how good the director is and how good your role is. And the last fluid magical little thing it depends on is where your are at that point in time in life. Where you are in your head, and how you are you are in your response to the stimulus around you. So it's a play of all these factors. I think time has least to do with it.

When did you decide to move from theatre to films?

I never decided to move to films. I decided to just become a full-time actor. Fifty per cent of my acting life is theatre. I do a play every year. I just finished doing one in England. I was doing a play every year on the professional stage in Bombay from '89 onwards. I had joined advertising at the same time, and had become a creative director of an agency in April '94. I was creative director for a year till March '95 when I quit. In that year for the first year of my life, I couldn't do any theatre. I was devastated by the fact that I was not acting. Professionally as an adman it had been a very successful year, I could have taken off, gone abroad as a creative director and made obscene amounts of money. I didn't.

Instead, I decided to give it all up. English August had been released the year before that, when I hadn't been creative director and I had a fairly decent idea that, yes, I could do theatre and movies. So even though not much was happening in my acting life I just quit the advertising industry. I decided to create a vacuum in my life, hoping that acting offers would come in and fill it. I believe if you are always doing something in your life, it is very difficult for other things to enter your mind. It is very difficult for people to understand that you are willing to do something else. So I sat at home and did nothing for two months. And then work started coming. So it was just brilliant luck, but no money.

What is it about theatre that drives many screen actors back to the stage?

I think every single theatre actor, every single person, who starts working in the theatre knows clearly that it is the final test. It is the test for one human being standing in what can never be a believable surrounding with the only tools that he or she has. The tools are voice, body, modulation, characterisation, and emotion. It is the ultimate test for you to make a thousand people sitting around you to suspend their disbelief and believe in the illusion you are creating for those minutes in time. So which actor will not want to know, that he or she can do it before they die?

This thing about great film actors going to theatre is because they are seeking to quieten their deepest insecurity. Can they cut it on stage? People like us who have cut it for seven or eight-- this is my eleventh year on stage in India and abroad-- we don't have those anxieties. I might never do a play again. If I do it will be for the love of it, it is not going to be because 'I'm going back to the theatre.' I find that a whole lot of crap. I have been born into theatre. I have spent time with Peter Brooke and Simon McBurny. I know how these guys think. I know that I am good. So I have no fears. But I think most actors who actually who make it very big in films or do theatre then move into films and then want to get back to theatre are trying very hard to quieten their growing sense of fear that maybe they can't sway an audience in real time.

You have now turned director with your film Everybody Says I'm Fine. What's it all about?

The film is called Everybody Says I Am Fine because it is set in high society Bombay where everybody says I am fine. In truth everybody isn't. All of us have problems. What I have found, in the achingly tender and sad part of people, is that they invariably try and portray their public life or their lives per se to be happier than their lives really actually are. Someone's marriage isn't as happy as it is made out to be. Someone is unhappy about sending one's children to a school but they have to because their neighbour is sending their children to the same school. Someone is not doing as well as they are saying they are. I find it to be so superfluous; people get obsessed with this whole bahari dikawa thing.

h It's a film in English. In one line the story of the film is how decent people succumb to peer pressure and lie about how well they are doing in life.

I realised that Premchand's story Parda is about the same thing and set in the lowest rung of society. But its all about the brave attempt at trying to keep up some sense of self-esteem and prestige by lying about how well is one is doing. Whereas I believe the true yardstick of someone's self-esteem is exactly that-- how well do you respect your self? If you can respect yourself, so what if you wear rubber chappals! It doesn't matter. If you respect yourself, so what you don't have the right accent! It doesn't matter. If you respect yourself, hang the fact your clothes are all wrong. A five-star mind is ten times more valuable than a five-star lifestyle.

I always believed that and I found that part of our lives very fascinating. So I wrote the story of Everybody Says I'm Fine about it. It focuses on one central character who meets with four other characters. He is very much part of high-society. But he is compassionate and gentle. He knows the inner stories of these four also--there is an elderly businessman, a socialite, kids, girls who love to drink and party all night long.

It's not a voyeuristic film; it's not an aggressive in-your-face kind of film. It is not a poking-fun-at film. It is a very gentle, very compassionate and exceedingly emotional film. There two kids who fall in love. There is a man who lies about the fact that he is faithful to his wife. There are socialites who are not doing as well as they say they are, which is quite dark. The film has got everything.

But primarily it is the story of the central character and the way he deals with these people's inner lives and their real truths in a very healing, helpful way. That is my outlook to these people in society. What a crying shame! If only people could just sit back and say- actually we are not fine, how much more relaxed and true society would be! How much happier they would be! At one level I find that laughable; at another it is tragic.

You are not acting in this film?

Yes I am! I have a small but significant role in this film. It's a role of about hyper kinetic madness. I am this off the wall comic character. Since no one casts me in comedy, I decided what the hell! I put myself in the casting couch and had a good time.

I believe this film will be distributed globally?

It all began with the script. 20th Century Fox India liked the story very much. Though they haven't signed on the dotted line--they are waiting till the film is made--they have said that we love the script. The Fox official said that he thinks it's the first script from India that truly has a global potential because it is about societal hypocrisy and high society which is the same every where in the world. There are the BMWs, Liz Claiborne outfits, latest hairstyles, etc. This film could be set Rio de Janeiro or New York or even Tokyo high society.

We then went across to Los Angeles and met the head of Fox Worldwide. He loved the script and said if you make the film as well as you've written the script, we would love to shop it and distribute it in North America and the rest of the globe. But we never know. Who knows I could make a really crap film!

You are also marketing the soundtrack internationally?

Yes we decided to get Zakir Hussain for the music since our effort is to market even the soundtrack internationally. In the film, of course, no one sings but you hear these soundtracks in the background.

And you have got an international agent for yourself?

Yes, William Morris the largest agency in the world has signed me on to be an actor, writer and director on their rolls. It all seems to happening fast. But as far as I am concerned, I am just going to make this film in the next six months and do nothing else. So all these tie-ups don't mean much as of yet. But come March 15 when we send the film to Cannes I think of our international tie-ups will really kick in.

Is Rahul Bose still an actor?

Oh, yeah, totally. It's the worse time in my life to direct a film, just when I got this award (Best Actor at the Singapore Film Festival), and when there is so much interest. I had to say no to a huge play in England. I said no another film offer in India. I am just kicking myself. Damn. Otherwise, it would have been a great year for me as an actor. Unfortunately, that will not be possible. But, hey, I am definitely acting. I have cast myself in my own film, in a swoop of nepotism and narcissism. And I will be back to act, by March next year. Whoever out there is waiting to cast me hold your horses, please!

Produced by SoundPicture Communications