Well the Bombay film wasn't always like how it is now. It did have a local industry. There were realistic films made on local scenes. But it gradually changed over the years.
A lot of times black actors get stuck in a box. They're up against a lot of limitations for the kind of films that they get approached about. It's easy to get stuck in a box and just be approached about nothing but urban films.
I had the opportunity to go cast for a Hollywood film that was filming in Thailand called 'Mortal Kombat 2.' Out of 100 people, I was cast to be the stunt double for Robin Shou.
I am going to produce a movie of my own. I am not going to stick to the time-tested formulae of Hindi cinema. I want to make a film for the present generation. So there will be a lot of new faces in the film.
I did not make this a long film for its own sake. I wanted to make an entertaining film and offer it out there for those who want to see it. If word of mouth suggests there is an audience out there, hopefully their cinema will show it.
I'll need every ounce that I have to drive it through. Film and TV require that energy. Sometimes fight scenes can be pretty intense. When I was shooting 'Heaven' it was truly guerrilla film-making.
I majored in screenwriting and playwriting in school - and wanted to make films as a career. But when I directed my first short in college - which was called 'Extras' - I lost thousands of dollars and made an unsatisfying and incomplete film.
For whatever reason, every project I do becomes sort of a cult, or a cultish show, you know, like 'Battlestar,' or even a film I did years ago, 'Kalifornia,' people refer to it as a cult film.
I think sci-fi films have become rather bleak, and understandably so - I think we've made some big mistakes globally with how we're developing, and we deal with that guilt by creating these very dystopian futures in films.
I like the days when all the filmmakers had was a film roll, a camera and a gangster. The Mack Sennett comedies were all like that. They'd create little teams to go out and shoot films.
Film-makers should remain true to their principles and never compromise, there is a real revival in the British film industry but there is a danger that we will become colonial servants of Hollywood. We need to maintain our own integrity.
I decided to do advertising, as ad films were made in only 10 days, and started assisting Sanjeev Sharma and Mansoor Khan. Surprisingly, I was a whiz kid and soon learnt to edit films and became an expert at it.
My films have become bilingual. When everyone saw 'Chennai Express,' they said it was a bilingual. But I am proud that 'Chennai Express' is the highest-grossing Hindi film down South.
To me, score is really important. I would rather not have any score if it's something that's going to detract from the film. So often when I watch films, the score is what really bothers me.
I'm a fan of films in general; I mean, I don't think I've ever considered myself specifically a horror fan even though I do enjoy horror films, find them really entertaining.
I think that people who make films and think they're changing the world are sorely mistaken. If that really is your goal, there are far better ways to do it. I'm making politically observant films for audiences.
I want to make a film that is commercially successful because that means that the larger cinema-going audience around the world like the movie, which is my goal. That's my job, to make films that people respond to.
Often times people complain about the lack of time in television, but I have to say, you don't have any more time to film in feature films then you do in television. It's just a question of how many scenes you'll be doing in the course of a day.
Sometimes you read a script, and you just think, 'Wow, I would love to go and tell that story, and I don't even care what happens to the film, I would just love that experience.' And often, that mentality makes a great film.
I asked the producers when I was doing 'Y Tu Mama Tambien' if they could give me a VHS recording of the film that I could show to my family, because in Mexico and Latin America, when you do a film, you don't expect anybody to see it, especially not i...
I grew up in a family of filmmakers, so I always wanted to make films about animals, especially comical films. Something about animals amuses me. And they have a great mystery. It's the same mystique some people might feel looking at the stars or the...
