“BRING YOUR BRAINS WITH YOU, PLEASE”
December 19, 2009 by TFSJ
Mahesh Nair, first-time director of Magna’s Accident On Hill Road, insists he has made a decent, realistic, mainstream commercial film and he would like viewers to bring their brains with them when they are watching it. “If my film does well in the first weekend, then I’m sure word of mouth will turn it into a hit,” he says confidently. “I have made a good film and it deserves to be seen.”
Accident On Hill Road is about a young ambitious girl (Celina Jaitley) who runs over an old man (Farooque Shaikh) while returning from a late-night party in her car. She covers up the incident since she doesn’t want to jeopardise the prospects of her visa to America. But the old man, still stuck to her car, is not dead. Suddenly, she finds herself getting deeper into the web of crime solely because of her ambition to get to America. “It is based on a foreign film and the plot and many scenes are similar to the original,” reveals Nair, “but we have bought the remaking rights and we have stated in the opening credits that the film is a remake. We have not gone about it in an underhand manner.”
Nair, like most debut-making directors, went through the rigours of struggle before bagging Accident On Hill Road. He started off as a journalist and went on to make documentaries and non-fiction programmes for television. Nair’s cinematographer, Hemant Chaturvedi, showed Nair’s documentary on Bombay’s underworld, Fear Over The City, to Ram Gopal Varma, when he met him to ask for work. “Ramu told me, he liked my documentary a lot, and I think quite a bit of Company seemed to be inspired by my Fear Over The City,” reveals Nair, “but there wasn’t much I could do about it at that time.”
Nair then joined Ramu as an assistant. “I did Naach with Ramu and co-wrote Ek, which was shelved before it could roll,” says Nair. “Then I wrote News for him which was to star Vinod Khanna and Ritesh Deshmukh, but then Ramu’s Factory went bust and the film was shelved.”
Currently, Nair fears that Ramu’s Rann is based on the script he wrote for News, and he even asked the director about it. Ramu denied it flatly. However, Nair feels that at least three characters in Rann seem to be inspired by his script but he can’t do much about it just yet. “My News is registered and if Rann is borrowed from my script, I’ll be able to do something about it this time. Till then, I’ll wait and watch.”
Nair is aware that the issues of copyright are so cloudy in India that proving ownership becomes very difficult. “If I narrate a script to Ramu and he suggests changes which amount to about 10-15% of the script, then who does the copyright belong to? Me or Ramu?” he asks, sounding perplexed. It’s an issue that may well be answered when Rann is released.
Like all first-time and even seasoned directors, Nair is praying that his film does well. “I’ve done everything right: I’ve made Accident On Hill Road in less than the planned budget and completed the shooting in just 26 days. Now it’s up to the audience,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, I know I have made a film I’m proud of.”
Issue dated Dec 20 – 26, 2009
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