A TRUE STORY

Last week one of my friends had gone to have a meeting with a producer and a director for a project to work as a Cinematographer.

The following is what he narrated to me about the incident.

One of the assistant directors who is working in that project, whom I know (he was assisting production coordination in my earlier project) called me up at 2 AM .He said that, he met a director who has screenplay which is going to be made as a film, the shooting starts next week, they are looking for a Cinematographer, and he recommended my name, this film will change the History and Geography of Tamil Cinema forever.

I was not so excited about Changing Tamil Cinema forever, because twice every week I have been hearing such statements from people in the industry, but I was excited that I’m getting a new project to work, but i had a small doubt about why they are looking for a Cinematographer, just one week before the shoot, its very short period.Then i convinced myself saying 'who cares'. Next day I went to meet them. I found the address easily. As I went there I saw a dark man in White dhotis wearing some 13 sovereigns of gold in his neck and hands sitting in the front office, I somehow understood he is the producer. I used the ‘S’ (Sir) word which is very familiar in the industry. He directed me to a room, it was dark and cloudy inside, as they saw the producer everyone got up dropping their cigarettes.

The assistant who had called me introduced me to the director and producer. He gave a very big build up about me, I was happy  . The Directed asked everyone to go out, as he is going to narrate the screenplay to me. I was alone with the director in that dark room with a 0 Watt bulb. I asked him, if I can have the Tube light on, he said ‘no, it’s a very dark story, so we need that feel’ .First bell rang in my mind to leave the place, but still I had some hopes and I din want to argue with him on this.

The director spoke for some 20 minutes about the story. Please note ‘about the story’ not the story. He gave the usual speech of how well this film will run and how they are planning to get the national award for the film and stuff.
In the last sentence he said ‘ I wrote this story in 2001’ , and I have been pitching to a lot of producers, only now someone has agreed to produce the film, because he understands the value of the story’, the second bell rang. But still I had some hopes.

I cut short the conversation and asked him to give a copy of the screenplay so that I can read it at home and may be come back tomorrow. He said ‘no’. I thought, he didn’t want the story to go out, maybe he doesn’t trust me, so I said ‘ you can trust me, I know one of your assistants very well and nothing will go out’. He said ‘no boss, it’s not like that, the reason is that, we don’t have a written screenplay.’

I was shocked, not because he doesn’t have a written screenplay(because most of the films are made in the 'yellam mindla irruku sir' method), I was shocked because he had noting in written as a document, and they had decided to go for a shoot in a week’s time and there is a producer sitting to support them by funding.
But I still had some hope, the reason being, sometimes they use Hollywood film DVD as their script book. So I immediately thought that he is going to make some Hollywood film in Tamil, and some where I was appreciating him thinking that, lot of directors when they copy a Hollywood film, they write a script separately again, I was thinking that he is so smart that he must have made a lot of DVD copies of the Hollywood film and distributed to all technicians and artists.

Now I have to select proper words to frame my question ‘Which Hollywood film is this’. I selected the most commonly used safe word, the ‘I’ (Inspiration) word. My question was ‘What was your inspiration‘. He was offended suddenly, he said ‘I don’t get inspired or influenced by others films; people should get inspired by seeing my film’. I somehow managed to convince him that I din mean ‘Which Hollywood film is this’. The conversation continued.

THE SCREENPLAY OR THE SCENES HE TOLD ME CANNOT BE WRITTEN HERE, BECSUE IT’S NOT PROFESSIONALISM. HE NARRATED ME A STORY.

Then he said ‘do you know any new- face girl to do the lead role in this film. I’m a decent guy, but she should be adjustable to the producer and the financier. By the by you never said anything about the story, or the project as such all the while’

I said ‘ALL THE WHILE I WAS LAUGHING THROUGH MY ASS’

Aftermath: I never picked that assistant directors call, ever.I deleted him from my friends list on Orkut to Facebook and told Dawood to write about this incident on his blog, without even bothering that he will laugh at it through his ASS

a small story from the unknown world

there was a small village named Siaung near the old mountain Kinad in South China in the ancient times .This village is famous for people who do sins.Its said that ,even a newborn baby commits a sin only then it can be a part of the village.One fine day the amount of sin mounted so much that the Gods were angry on the people and flodded the village with deadly disease on every one.Every one in the city were dying out of pain .It was getting worse and worse but they never stopped commiting sins.People were still stealing and killing each other ,men were still raping women and wat not.The heads of teh village saw the whole thing and decided to ask people stop doing what they were doing,because they felt that God was angry with them .People stopped commiting sins,still the desease had not stopped killing poeple.They were saying thats ,its the punishment for what u did earlier.People started becomeing good and try helping others to burn their Karma, still they were dying.The heads decide to go meet the saintly medicine man Yung,who is said to have give medicine even for Gods.They went and met him and explained everything to him and said that they have all become nice so he should defanately help them.
He agreed and came to the village,he tried giving medicine to people, nothing happened.
The next day the saintly man stayed back in his hut in the village and never came out.There was a roumour that ,he had spoken to God that day night.He din come out for two days, wen the people went to see him in his hut they found him with his body getting rotten,the same day the people started getting cured of the desease.
As days went his boddy was just getting rotten and he was still alive.The heads of the village decided to put him out of the village so that the desease will not spread.They threw him out of the village that night.Every one in the village started cursing the medicine man that he must have done some big sin to have such a disease and spitting on him.A elderly saint was pasing by and saw this and stood there for a while closing his eyes and said "this man had spoken to God and God agreed to free this village from disease if he agrees to take all the disease over him from u guys, and u guys are apitting on him"