The KGF and Salaar filmmaker on his writing process, prioritizing the smaller and more impactful moments in his movies, and his take on cinema’s influence on society
Edited excerpts:
Certain directors bring in certain stars to represent different things, but they also write certain scenes or fights or dialogues or comedy to appeal to certain sections of the audience. Do you think about how the audience would perceive something after you write it?
I’ll give you the example of KGF-Chapter 1. After the movie came out, many people told me they loved the bun scene. That has nothing to do with scale or elevation moment. The way I see successful directors do it, and what I try to mimic, is I try to make the small moments in the movie work, more than the bigger ones. I think that’s what they’ll take back with them. In Salaar, too, we put in a lot of small moments. No graphics or punchlines. That’s what we concentrate on doing. Because we know we’ll get our fights and punch dialogues right. The moments in between are the most difficult ones. And I think that’s what is ‘pan-India’. Today, the audience has become judges and they know what trick is used to achieve a certain thing in a certain scene. The one thing they cannot take away from you is the small moments. They cannot judge you with it if you get it right. I have loved the small moments in all the pan-India movies I loved.
Do you think certain people are likely to be influenced by certain things in the movies that are seen as negative?
I think if people were influenced by cinema, we would’ve seen a billion heroes more than anything else. I don’t think the negative things matter so much. Look at what is happening around the world today. It’s all real. We feel that cinema is an exaggeration, but if you see what is happening in Ukraine or Gaza, you know that we are probably underplaying it in our movies. The reality is out there. The violence is not used in movies to say that it is good. They always show a hero who uses violence to bring down the bad people. There is a moral to it, right? Try and be a hero. You don’t have to pick up a gun to be a hero. And we don’t try to inspire. That’s not my job. I’m not here to preach. If your father and mother haven’t done it for you, then I cannot do it. I’m not going to influence you. So if you tell me that I’m influencing a lot of youngsters with my content, you should see what’s happening on the cricket pitch. People are swearing. Do you think that’s fine? Nobody is pointing a finger at them.
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