/> Ram Gopal Varma Speaks Candidly On Sholay

Pooja Bhatt apparently thinks those who care about what's happening around us wuld rather see her Dhokha than your Aag.
I'm sorry, I don't buy that. We can't decide what the audiences want to see. They aren't animals in a zoo, caged labeled and ready to be transported at the zoo-keepers' command. Today the audience is so wide and so open to every kind of cinema. I don't see why they'd want to choose the one above the other.

A sense of disappointment that film's title and the characters have changed?
I'm not worried about that. Let people see what I've done.The point is, I never intended to remake Sholay exactly the way it was. Sholay had created a benchmark for technical excellence, background, score, sound design, etc.

If Sholay catapulted Hindi cinema into the new age it wasn't because of its plot which had been done earlier in films like Mera Gaon Mera Desh and later in Karma,China Gate and the Sridevi film Army. I can think of 25 films with the same theme. It was the genius of Mr Ramesh Sippy and the finesse with which he put together the plot that created an enduring impact.

The story of a man taking revenge by hiring mercernaries in a genre done earlier in Japanese in The Seven Samurai and as a spaghetti western in The Magnificent 7.

Sholay is a full-on formula film from Dharmendra and Asrani's comedy to Sanjeev Kumar and Jayaji's intense performances. Gabbar's character almost verged on melodrama.

The cumulative impact was stunning on the whole country, most of all me. I've never met anyone who has interepreted Sholay better than me. I'm the biggest aficionado of Sholay. However I've not set out to make Sholay.

You haven't?
No. Like I said the same theme has been done umpteenth times. It's not the story that gets dated. It's the packaging. Aag takes in view the new times, new technology and new tastes and proceeds from there.

My idea is to take the theme into a different direction. I'm not trying to out-do Sholay. I'm doing a homage to Sholay. And it would be foolish of me to think I can better the original. No!

See, when Sholay came cinema was the only source of entertainment for the public. Today the options are unlimited. Even if I made a film on a par with Sholay I can't expect the same audiences. But yes, as far as a homage goes I'm happy with Aag. It has some strong emotional moments.

The characters are apparently interpreted differently.
Of course they are. How can you expect the Basanti of 1975 to be replicated in the Ghungroo of 2007? Basanti was a voluble village -woman. Ghungroo is a street -wise city girl with sharp retorts.

Likewise, even if I wanted to make Sushmita play the widow's character as docilely as Jayaji did in Sholay I couldn't. Sushmita isn't capable of looking submissive or of accepting the wrong that's done to her.

So why did you name it Sholay earlier?
I wanted to draw ettention to my intention of paying a homage. But because of the legal hassles I decided to call it Ram Gopal Varma Ka Sholay, just as Devdas was Sanjay Leela Bhansali's interpretation of Devdas. But then the legal procedure would have taken time.

And we couldn't hold back the release. So I decided on Aag which denotes the Inspector- character (Mohanlal)'s burning desire for revenge. But we couldn't get the title Aag either. I think a film by that title with Govinda in the lead was released 7-8 years back.

So we had to go by RGV's Aag. I'm told Aag sounds very old-school. And I say, thank God for that. RGV's Aag is an old-school entertainer.

You sure there won't be copyright trouble with RGV's Aag?
So far no one has come forward to claim it. Jab hoga to dekha jayega. The title gives the project that formulistic feeling which I wanted. The whole film from the background score to the dialogues and characterization has a very retro- feeling. See, so far I've only made the films I wanted to make. For the first time I've made something I want to see.

Please explain.
Aag is the kind of cinema I grew up on. So I've applied new-age technology to age-old formulas of filmmaking. The reason why those earlier films were called 'formula' films was because they had something for everybody. I believe Aag has it too. I wanted to recapture that old lost feeling of enjoying a full-on formula flick.

A poprcorn film?
Yeah, that's what it is.

If you knew all these problems would've cropped up would you've avoided calling it Sholay?
Yeah I would have avoided it. I never expected so many problems. My intentions weren't underhand. I owe my bread and butter and whatever I am today to Mr Ramesh Sippy. If he didn't make Sholay I'd have never become interested in filmmaking. I'd have remained a civil engineer. That's what I did for one year.

It's another matter that I was thrown out of that job....When I saw Sholay in 1975 at the Ram-Krishna theatre in Hyderabad and saw Ramesh Sippy's name on the posters I decided then and there that this is what I wanted to do.