Among the circumstances that prompted Gautham Vasudev Menon to persevere with Nadunisi Naaigal is his longtime costume designer’s confession that she read the script and wanted to puke. “That interested me,” he says, with the smug satisfaction of a five-year-old who’s just deposited his pet toad next to his mother at suppertime. “That’s the kind of reaction I wanted.” His team pointed out that he’d alienate the female audiences who like the way he portrays love, the way he treats women on screen. “But I don’t believe in that. Nadunisi Naaigal is an I-don’t-care film. I had somebody who’s a rank newcomer. He works with me. I kept looking at his body language and said, ‘Let me write something bizarre.’ And while in the US, I met a shrink who narrated something from his files, without mentioning names. I was inspired by that. I also read a novel from which I was inspired to write this story.”
Afterwards, he realised there might have been an additional fount of inspiration, from his own backyard. “Maybe Sigappu Rojakkal was in my head while making the film. Bharathiraja, who made 16 Vayadhinile and Pudhiya Vaarpugal, switched to something that people might call vulgar or obscene but it was a psychological thriller. The unraveling of the human mind — that’s what I’ve tried to depict in Nadunisi Naaigal.” He knows that under two hours, it’s a multiplex kind of film. He knows that it caters to a very young audience, whose years on the planet he pegs from 18 to 35 or 40. He knows people above 50 might be squeamish about some scenes. “But I wanted to make it, that’s all. While writing it, while making it, I just didn’t care whether it would reach out to a certain section of the audience.”
Last year’s Vinnathaandi Varuvaaya — that lacerating anti-romance — was another I-don’t-care film. “The characters kept talking throughout. There’s a violent side to this guy. When she keeps him at a distance, he reacts in a violent way — not in the sense of using his fists, but he kind of mocks her dad, he treads on that space. How many women would have liked to see somebody like that? But I just felt that’s inherent in most men. They tend to react like that if their love doesn’t come through. So even as I wrote it, I felt some women might say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is not right!’ But that didn’t worry me.” Put differently, he didn’t care.
But there is a point at which the armour cracks and he begins to feel vulnerable, the point at which he begins to care. “I make films without worrying what the audience will think. But once the first copy is ready and we wait for release, I’m in a very nervous state, because it’s our money now and there is a distributor involved and a theatre exhibitor
involved. I go into a shell thinking whether this will be accepted.” He is concerned about how much money the film will make
because Nadunisi Naaigal is the first film made under the company he and his partners have listed on the London Stock Exchange. “There are investors. If it does well, people will invest in the company. So I need it to work.”
Like every smart speculator, he has taken precautions to insulate himself against financial shock. He’s already earned back the movie’s micro-budget from satellite rights and also from Telugu rights. (Nadunisi Naaigal will be released in a dubbed version, with a few scenes reshot to accommodate local flavour.) “We’re releasing it ourselves in all theatres, so I’m not taking any money from distributors. Nobody can come back to me and say we lost money on the film. So that way I’ve covered all angles.” But he still hopes it will do well.
Among the more exciting films from his stable, in his estimation, is Thanga Meengal, made by Ram, the dyspeptic director of Kattradhu Thamizh. “When I heard the subject, I had tears in my eyes, so I thought this will be the reaction in everybody in the audience.” It’s interesting that here, he admits to extrapolating his gut-feeling to that of a mass audience, while with the reactions to his own scripts, he seems to occupy the opposite corner, running the risk of alienating these very audiences. “See, there will be people like me. My wife has not come to a theatre to watch a film after we got married. She watches some films I pick up on DVD. But she loves Quentin Tarantino films. She loves Hostel. Nadunisi Naaigal is not a scary film. It’ll make you squeamish at a couple of places. I liked Nalini’s [his costume designer] reaction but I knew there’d be people like me. The whole idea is getting people ready for what kind of film it is.”
