Bollywood's Tarantino and his band of outsiders

Director and producer Ram Gopal Varma (aka "RGV") has revolutionized India's tradition-bound film biz, rejecting classic costume musicals and weepy melodramas for gritty, urban, low-budget realism.

By Shailaja Neelakantan

Aug 27, 2003 | Poolside at the Sun-n-Sand Hotel, where the coolest film stars of 1970s Bollywood once hung out, a group of young, slightly nerdy Indians is guzzling beer and joking about sending Father's Day bouquets to Ram Gopal Varma. The innovative and unconventional film director, known as "RGV" to the public and "Ramu" to his fans and friends, is Bollywood's answer to Quentin Tarantino.

India's Hindi-language film industry, known internationally as Bollywood, produces 150-plus movies a year that are widely popular across South Asia, parts of Southeast Asia and Africa, the Middle East and the large Indian diaspora in the United Kingdom and North America. Varma has been thumbing his nose at Bollywood and its traditions since he entered the industry 12 years ago. In that time he has built up a band of young guerrilla filmmakers, who revere him for being the antithesis of everything Bollywood seems to stand for. He has personally directed 20 or so films (such definitions are not always clear in Bollywood) and also serves as a producer for young directors he hand-picks to work with him.

The group I'm sitting with at Sun-n-Sand, at 1 o'clock in the morning, includes Samir Sharma, the writer of RGV's latest directorial venture, "Bhoot," and American Shimit Amin, the editor of "Bhoot," who made the move to Bombay from Los Angeles when he was offered a chance to work with RGV. The song-free horror flick has scared the pants off a country that is sick of juvenile candy-floss romances, opulent family sagas about loving one's parents and terrible rip-offs of Hollywood action films.

"Bhoot" ("Ghost"), which was released in late May, became Bollywood's first real hit after a disheartening series of flops that had producers gasping for breath. Last year, the industry racked up losses of more than 3 billion rupees ($63 million) on an investment of 10 billion rupees. Only one in 25 films made a profit. So "Bhoot's" success arrived as something of a shock. Bollywood is finally realizing it doesn't have to spend millions on shooting song-and-dance sequences in Switzerland, as "Bhoot" -- set in a middle-class Bombay apartment -- has proved. The film has more than recovered the 65 million rupees it cost to produce.

People outside India are noticing. Last year, three nonresident Indian businessmen zeroed in on RGV to start a film company called Que Sera Sera Productions. Then 20th Century Fox India signed a distribution deal with RGV's Varma Corp. "Ramu is one of the few people who is up there in quality and content," says Aditya Shastri, managing director of 20th Century Fox India. "He is very progressive, which we like, and also competent and uncomplicated. He isn't convoluted like the other egotistic characters in Bollywood. He is a precious client for us."

RGV's obsession with making script-oriented, low-budget, quick-turnaround movies is unheard of in chaotic Bollywood, where films always go over budget, are always behind schedule and rely too much on overpaid stars. RGV rarely chooses huge stars to work with him. Like Tarantino, he is so confident of his scripts that he gets new actors -- or actors whose careers are on the skids -- to star in his films. In the process he has become something of a starmaker, much like Tarantino, who in "Pulp Fiction" resurrected John Travolta from Hollywood's dustbin, and in "Jackie Brown" brought Pam Grier's sexy cool blaxploitation persona to the 1990s mainstream.

Vivek Oberoi, currently Bollywood's hottest star, proved his worth in Varma's taut 2001 film "Company," about Bombay's underworld gone international. (He is currently up for a leading role in Roland Joffe's forthcoming "The Invaders.") In "Satya" (1998), another film about the underworld set at a more local level, RGV generated fantastic performances from Manoj Bajpai and J.D. Chakravarty, both until then relegated to small roles in Bollywood. Audiences went berserk over "Satya" and Bajpai began to be called "Bhikhu Mhatre," his name in the film. No such movie had ever previously been made in India.

"I had heard that someone got shot by the Mafia," says Varma, sitting in his temporary office in north Bombay. "And as people like to do, they recounted all the details of the man who was killed. How his day started, what he ate, what he was wearing, where he was going, etc. It got me thinking about the killer's day. What was that like? What did he eat or wear or do? I spoke to the police, the intelligence agencies, and I realized that they [the underworld] are like anyone else really. Something pushes them over the edge and in that sense they too are victims."

The articulate 41-year-old, who ditched his glasses and discovered the gym a couple of years ago, is a muscled, mustachioed man with penetrating eyes and a calm demeanor that belies his boundless energy. He is a pro at multitasking. In between answering my questions, he fields phone calls, sends text messages and eyeballs promotional items for his various films.

RGV loathes the namby-pamby love stories and family dramas that Bollywood churns out, so much so that he often includes cutting comments about them in his own films. In "Company," one of his characters makes a pointed reference to the Bollywood smash "Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham" (or "K3G"), a ghastly, opulent movie with the tag line, "It's all about loving your parents." A character in "Company" sardonically remarks, "It's all about loving your loving."

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