Tags:
Journalism of Courage
SOME years ago when Gulshan Devaiah was walking towards his Andheri pad after a particularly bad day,he got a call from Kalki Koechlin. She was having dinner with Anurag Kashyap in the vicinity and wanted him to join them. Devaiah headed there. However,there was more in store for him. Kashyap and Koechlin narrated some scenes from That Girl in Yellow Boots to him and asked him to play the role of Chittiappa.
The character of this ruthless gangster was not fully fleshed out at that time. Drawing from his experience of devised theatre where the cast improvises together and develops a script,Devaiah started working on it. We did not want Chittiappa to be a typical gangster. Apart from theatre,what helped me was the experience of living on the outskirts of Bangalore. People I had encountered there as well as the hoodlums in my college came handy in giving shape to the character, he says.
After moving to Mumbai,the 35-year-old started working with various theatre groups. He took up roles in indie and offbeat films too,before landing on the grand sets of Ram-Leela. Film was on my mind five years ago when I moved to Mumbai. However,I did not know how to go about it. I did not know my space. Luckily,a new kind of cinema came about, he says.
When he was offered Ram-Leela,he was initially intimidated by Bhansali. Prodded by his wife Kalliroi Tziafeta,a Mumbai-based theatre actor,he accepted the role. You have to first understand the directors craft. Then you know how to apply yourself. I got two days on the sets of Ram-Leela before I faced the camera. I observed Bhansali and tried to understand his ways, recalls Devaiah.
Shooting for Ram-Leela overlapped with that of Hunter for some days. Apart from allowing him barely four hours to sleep,this demanded
that Devaiah move between two very different settings. Hunter is a rom-com and more realistic in nature compared to the grandeur of Bhansali which gives the impression of a classic painting, he recalls.
After Ram-Leela,he will be moving to a very different space when
he starts shooting for two films produced by Pooja Bhatt Kaustav Neogi-directed Cabaret and another untitled project.
