Guerrilla Tactics

The hunt for the bandit begins. Assistants scurry, watchman Surendra Kumar runs after him, Shimit Amin, director of the under-production Let8217;s Kill Veerappan, says he didn8217;t meet the man. 8216;8216;How tall is this guy?8217;8217; Varma asks.

Minutes later the actor finds himself face-to-face with the man he8217;s always wanted to meet. Perhaps it8217;s too much for him to handle, he does the worst thing possible. He dives past the fluorescent green chairs, under the desk and burrows his head into his idol8217;s feet.

That8217;s enough to kill the mood. Varma tells him to get up, asks him a curt question about his acting experience, then sends him off to Amin. 8216;8216;It takes one gesture for me to get turned off,8217;8217; says the director. 8216;8216;But I8217;m convinced he can be made to look like Veerappan. He8217;s got the same bone structure.8217;8217; Babu8217;s fate now rests on the screen test and on whether he ticks Varma off again.

It8217;s just another day in the cockpit of an almost parallel world of guerrilla film-making that draws all sorts. The Factory, a 9,600 sq ft wood, brick and metal office in Mumbai8217;s Versova, is the hub of Varma Corporation and partner K Sera Sera. The plush, very male ground floor is occupied by finance and marketing types. The eight or so directors, all working on a movie, all men in their 30s, camp in the 8216;8216;galleys8217;8217;, as they call the tiny cubicles below.

Everybody8217;s just a little scared of the 43-year-old8217;s gruff manner, but that goes with the job. Rohit Jugraj, who8217;s directing the angry young man tale James, recalls the time Varma quizzed him: 8216;8216;Why do you work for me? I don8217;t care whether you8217;re there or not.8217;8217; Jugraj replied that, among other things, it was because Varma never asked him to get coffee or cared what shirt he wore.

Sourabh Narang, the 31-year-old director of Vaastu Shastra is summoned. 8216;8216;I8217;ve announced Chudail,8217;8217; Varma tells him. 8216;8216;That8217;s supposed to be the sequel to Vaastu?8217;8217; asks Narang, just back from test driving audience reactions. 8216;8216;We8217;ll decide that later,8217;8217; chuckles Varma.

Narang, a Delhi boy who went through St Stephen8217;s and then Jamia Millia Islamia, has been working here for 11 months. The biggest compliment he received was when Varma told him Vaastu was scarier than Bhoot. 8216;8216;When people ask if he interferes, I tell them 8216;if you work with a man like him, you8217;d be foolish not to ask what he thinks8217;.8217;8217;

Thanks to the demand for Asian horror post the success of The Ring, Vaastu will soon be distributed in France. In fact, the producer of The Ring wanted to remake Bhoot in Japanese and English. Narang doesn8217;t know who8217;s going to direct Chudail, but he doesn8217;t want to. 8216;8216;I don8217;t really like horror. I don8217;t want to do a scary film again.8217;8217;

These days watchman Kumar spends most of his time turning away an assortment of beards around 70 every day who show up outside the glass door that8217;s open 24/7. All of them want to be Veerappan.

Varma is not known for his diplomatic skills and, over the years, he8217;s told a lot of actors he doesn8217;t like their face. 8216;8216;It8217;s the ultimate rejection,8217;8217; he says. 8216;8216;You can take 8216;I don8217;t like your ideas8217; or 8216;I don8217;t like your talent8217;, but there8217;s nothing you can do if someone tells you they don8217;t like your face.8217;8217;

It must be difficult when Everyman comes knocking. After all, Varma loves real people, beauty no bar. Every paanwallah knows that if he ever wants to make it in Bollywood, Varma is his best bet.

And so they track him everywhere. For the last eight months his first SMS every morning is a greeting or a cheesy quotation from Neelam. When he drives to work, there8217;s a man waiting to wave at him outside his home. A guy from the nearby ICICI bank, who stands in front of his office every day, recently broke down and sobbed so hard that Kumar had to hug him. There are other regulars who have been greeting Varma from across the street for the last three to four years. He never acknowledges any of them. 8216;8216;Why give them unnecessary hope?8221; he asks. 8216;8216;I get at least 150 SMSes a day, mostly from unknowns.8217;8217;

These days, he rarely finds the time to watch movies. Yet he8217;s acquired a DVD of Mughal-E-Azam, and seen part of the classic that released on the same day as his Naach. 8216;8216;The people who are saying it8217;s brilliant saw it 10 years ago. It8217;s going to be a disaster,8217;8217; he predicts.

Not for him is the thrill of seeing Madhubala in colour. He rarely lives in retro mode. 8216;8216;Your data constantly keep getting updated,8217;8217; says Varma, and for a second he sounds like the civil engineer he once was.

His take on Veer-Zaara, the other biggie that released last Friday, is that Yash Chopra may have made a mistake. Instead of sticking to a candyfloss crowd-puller, he picked an epic that might have been better suited to a technophile like Sanjay Leela Bhansali.

For RGV, a movie is like a mood, a conversation. 8216;8216;I conceal the philosophy under the narrative,8217;8217; he laughs. 8216;8216;If you get it, great.8217;8217;

Philosophy aside, ask him why women always stick their butts out in his movies, and he says it8217;s because he likes butts. 8216;8216;I like aggressive women. I hate cute and bubbly girls. You8217;ll never see them in my films,8217;8217; he adds.

He8217;s in a good mood today. Anshumaan Swami calls and Varma tells him, 8216;8216;I don8217;t plan my life like corporates. Drop in any time.8217;8217; The CEO of Applause Entertainment, the film-making arm of the Birla group, wants Varma to make Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Chakri, or JD Chakravarthy, is hanging out in the corridor. It takes a second to recognise the 32-year-old who was Satya in the 1998 ballbuster. He8217;s shaved his head for the upcoming D, supposedly the prequel to the 2002 hit, Company.

Chakri8217;s been with Varma since his first movie Shiva 1990, but says he still hasn8217;t figured out the director. 8216;8216;But he knows me inside out.8217;8217; Now Chakri wants to direct an adventure; he8217;s got two scripts and is waiting for the go ahead.

In the galleys, Shimit Amin looks pensive. Veerappan is everywhere8212;a book about the bandit lies on the desk, there8217;s a clipping of him on the wall, he8217;s in the faces of all the hopefuls at the ongoing auditions, and he8217;s certainly got prime space in Amin8217;s head. 8216;8216;Once it gets inside you, it just stays with you,8217;8217; says the 35-year-old who8217;s got an unkempt look going these days. 8216;8216;It8217;s too much of an effort to shave, and I keep forgetting to cut my hair.8217;8217;

The movie will be shot deep within Mumbai8217;s Sanjay Gandhi National Park and Medha, in Maharashtra. Amin knows it8217;s going to be tough to find a Veerappan. They8217;ve tried everything8212;one day his team even stuck a moustache and fatigues on the wardrobe man Chandru. The likeness was amazing but, of course, Chandru can8217;t act. The director, whose first film Ab Tak Chappan got rave reviews, doesn8217;t seem as excited as Varma about Babu,the morning8217;s catch.

He says the best part about The Factory is that its inhabitants think movies all the time. Varma, says Amin, is unpredictable. 8216;8216;He keeps you on your toes.8217;8217;

Upstairs, Veerappan doesn8217;t occupy centrestage. Here, movies are 8216;8216;software8217;8217;, there is talk of tie-ups with Sahara, UTV, multiplexes, you name it. There are plans to set up distribution offices across India. Chandrashekar Varma, a cousin who once ran an audio company in the South, is now the head of business development here. 8216;8216;The Factory moves at breakneck speed. You have to keep up with Ramu,8217;8217; says the 29-year-old.

Ask Jugraj. The ebullient director once chased Varma8217;s car and asked him to take a look at a film he had made. Soon after, he was assisting the director on Bhoot.

Sitting in the reception, the MBBS graduate recounts how, about a year ago, when operations had just shifted to the Versova office, Varma once strolled over to a group of people and began: 8216;8216;I have story ideas, I have films, but I don8217;t have directors8230;8217;8217; That8217;s how Jugraj got James, and a chance to try his hand at 8216;8216;guerrilla film-making8217;8217;.

Just then Varma walks up and raises an eyebrow. 8216;8216;Trying to get the dirt on me, eh?8217;8217; As if he cares. Jugraj remembers the time when he found a piece of paper with a single sentence scrawled in Varma8217;s handwriting: Mujhe kaunsa sau saal jeena hai.