First Karan Johar, now it's Sanjay Leela Bhansali who has caught never-say-die Ram Gopal Varma's fancy.
After micro-blogging lavishly on KJo's style of cinema and his various productions from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham to We Are Family, Ramu has trained his sights on Sanjay Leela Bhansali (SLB).
Commenting on one of the promotional trailers on air for SLB's Guzaarish Ramu writes, "Just can't stand the close-up of Hrithik's teeth being brushed by Ash.
Anyday will watch Dhoom 2 ten times again." But to be fair, he also take potshots at himself and says, "But then I am the maker of Aag."
The comment has not only been posted on Twitter but also been passed around on SMS by Ramu to many people on his contact list.
This is the intrepid filmmaker's habit whenever he feels strongly about a film or a filmmaker.
The comment took time to reach SLB's ears since he's neither SMS-friendly nor Twitter-savvy.
Unethical
In fact, Guzaarish co-producers UTV were the first to take note of what they saw as one filmmaker's unethical attempts to comment on another's work on the basis of a short clip without seeing the film.
While UTV has not taken kindly to Ramu's comment, SLB is more annoyed and amused than angry.
Neck-deep in mixing his music and post-production of Guzaarish, the director says, "I really have no time or patience with this sort of behaviour.
Ramu has always met me with much enthusiasm about my films in the past. So if he had an opinion on Guzaarish he should have shared it with me instead of putting it on Twitter.
And by the way, doesn't he have a release coming up (Rakta Charitra)? He should just focus on that instead of worrying about the content of other people's films."
Interestingly, Ramu has always declared himself to be a major admirer of Bhansali's work. After seeing Devdas, Ramu had gone into raptures about the the film, going as far as to including a couple of references to Devdas in his film Road.
Says an irked source close to SLB, "Ramu should just stop discussing other people's works in public. Karan Johar might give Ramu tit for tat and move on. But Sanjay is a different person.
He won't take kindly to premature observations about his film. He believes that if he doesn't comment on other people's work, why should they?"