Sound and confident

While Rajesh M Selva always knew that he would direct a film for superstar Kamal Haasan’s production house Raaj Kamal Films, never did he imagined that he would mark his debut with a whodunit. “I thought I will direct a comedy but never expected Kamal sir to give me a thriller like ‘Cheekati Rajyam’,” he quips. “Even I never thought I’d be directing him but when I was finally told about it, it took some time for me to get over it. Nonetheless, I always wanted sir to write a screenplay for me, which he did.”

‘Cheekati Rajyam’ is the official remake of French hit ‘Sleepless Night’ but Rajesh avers Kamal gave a unique spin to it. “We had long discussions and moulded each character differently because the way we react to a situation is completely different to that of French. Even for sir’s character I had an idea and when I saw the final script I was happy to see him incorporating it into it,” he reveals.

Made as a Tamil-Telugu bilingual, the film was wrapped up in flat 60 days. Kamal plays a Narcotics Control Bureau head Diwakar, torn apart between work and family. While Rajesh admits it was a delight to see Kamal, one of the most decorated actors of the country, act to his directions, he was never afraid to say ‘cut’ even though when the former was in full-flow. “That’s my job, right? I cannot… just think that Kamal is acting and I should not say cut. I should say cut, one more and all these happened during the shoot. I think he believed that I have that confidence and hence handed over me the project,” he insists candidly.

Billed as an edge-of-the-seat thriller, the film’s running time is close to two hours seven minutes. Explaining that they’ve indeed shot the film under two hours ten minutes, he shares, “We used software called final draft; it’s a single-column international format. One page of it approximately measures up to one minute. When we wrote the film it was for 130 pages and after trimming, it came down to 120 pages.”

Rajesh is firm a believer that ‘two perspectives’ are required on a script. “I will be more than happy to write a script for another director. In fact I’m working on a screenplay for my friend currently. But if I’m going to direct a film and even if it’s my script I want someone else to write screenplay for me,” maintains Rajesh, who will be associated with the planning and execution of Kamal’s yet-to-be-titled next with national-award winning Malayalam director TK Rajeev Kumar.

By Nagaraj Goud