Always wanted to work with Ganesh; Prashant Raj

If director Prashant Raj hadn't stuck to his guns and insisted on learning the art of filmmaking, his parents would have ensured that he had a regular 9-5 job. They had, after all, sent him to the UK for an MBA. But such was his love for cinema, that Prashant managed to convince them that film is what he wanted to work in. 'I went to Mumbai, where I did a diploma in filmmaking at Subhash Ghai's institute.Immediately after, I got to work with several filmmakers as their assistant, including on films like Raaz and Shootout at Lokhandwala, among others. I was in Mumbai for about six years, but I always wanted to make a Kannada film and decided to come back home. Once here, I approached several producers for a chance to direct a film, but got none, as they had not heard about me or my work. Considering that I had already worked as an assistant director in Mumbai for six years, I was not willing to start off at that level here again,' he says. So, after much deliberation, Prashant went back to his family with a plan to produce his directorial. 'I told my parents, 'I have a script for a beautiful love story. Why don't you produce it for me?' Their first reaction, obviously, was no, but I insisted and they finally agreed. All of my extended family also chipped in and that's how Love Guru happened,' says the director.
Love Guru not only did well at the box office in Karnataka, but it was also dubbed in several other languages and won a lot of awards, including a State Award for Best Director. Buoyed by the success of Love Guru, the same team, including lead actors Tarun Chandra and Radhika Pandit, worked on their next collaboration, Gaana Bajaana. 'After that, I did my first and last remake, Whistle, which was the Kannada version of the Tamil film Pizza. I was always against remakes, but had no other choice but make it, as my production house had acquired the rights and had not found the right candidate to direct it. It did well commercially, but critics wondered why I did a remake, and some of the comments only reinforced my belief that I am meant to do bigger things in life. In fact, immediately after Whistle, I got a lot of offers to direct remakes, but I refused all of them and decided that I will never again do one,' Prashant says. The bigger things in life, it would seem, was for Prashant to then juggle the making of two films at the same time. 'I had two scripts, Zoom and Dalapathy, and dates of Ganesh and Prem, and had to shoot them almost simultaneously. It's been two years since Whistle, and I am going to have two releases this year,' says the filmmaker. Zoom sees the director reunite with Radhika, whom he calls his lucky charm, for a third time, and get Ganesh onboard, with whom he has wanted to work since the beginning of his career. 'I wanted to work with Ganesh for Love Guru, but that was the time when he was the most happening actor in Kannada cinema and had no dates to spare. I am glad that I finally got the chance to work with him. I normally write one song in each of my films, and for the first time I have penned a pakka commercial number, which is Ganesh's introduction song,' says Prashant. Zoom is a love story set against the backdrop of the advertising industry, which the director says is apt, considering that Bengaluru is the hub for a major chunk of national advertising. 'When I made Love Guru, even though Bengaluru was an IT hub, no one had made a film with that industry as the backdrop. In Zoom, I have merged the backdrop with the story seamlessly. Seeing Ganesh, Radhika and Sadhu Kokila make creatives will be engaging,' Prashant signs off.