A movie that happened by fluke

After nearly 18 years in the industry, filmmaker Venugopal Arla is only on his fourth directorial yet with the upcoming

Kannada

movie

Tale Bachkoli Powder Hakkoli

. By his own admission, his slow progress in the industry is his doing. 'Despite being a writer, so far, I have only concentrated on making films that I have written. I've also shied away from approaching other filmmakers with my stories, which is something I am looking at rectifying,' he says. Ahead of the release of his next film, Venugopal speaks about how he landed this project and more...

Chance encounter
The opportunity to make Tale Bachkoli... came to me by fluke. Vikram Arya, who is the producer and hero of the film, was looking for a director to make a film with him in the lead. Armed with a copy of a directory of film personalities, Vikram had been contacting filmmakers and having story narrations, but was not happy with what he heard. I was the 51st director he approached in his capacity as producer. I gave him a basic narration, after which he sent me a few pictures of someone he wanted to cast as hero. Frankly, at first look, I thought he looked like a rowdy, albeit one with a certain innocence on his face. But I thought he could be worked upon and communicated the same to Vikram. That's when he told me that the pictures were of himself and that he was very impressed with my story, as it resonated closely with his own life.



Making Tale Bachkoli...
Once we decided to work together, I told Vikram that considering that he is a newbie, I needed established artists for all other characters. I had always wanted to work with Chikkanna and Tale Bachkoli... seemed perfect for him. For starters, it is a comedy, and second, he is one of the heroes. When I spoke to him about the film, what struck him was that he was getting a track to himself, which included a relationship with his mother, comedy and a song, but no heroine. This was very different from his regular characters, in which he plays the hero's friend. Nikita (Thukral) was also floored by the comedy element in her character and the fact that she gets to work closely with Chikkanna. Shobraj, Bullet Prakash and Ramesh Bhatt have all worked with me earlier and did not even ask for a narration. The making itself was a breeze as Vikram did not compromise on quality, and given that we were working on a comedy, everyone was in splits most of the time.