This is part one of a two-part interview. For part two click here.
You might expect a film director who has had 10 successful films in a row— including the highest grossing movie his country has ever seen—to be arrogant, self-congratulatory, or at least a tiny bit prideful about his work. But in my recent conversation with India’s SS Rajamouli, the master storyteller behind the war epic/romance Baahubali: The Beginning, I found him to be humble, gracious and delightfully down-to-earth.
In this, the first part of my two-part interview with Raja (as he asked me to address him), we talked about the process of making Baahubali, about his numerous collaborations with his screenwriting father, Vijayendra Prasad, and his lifelong love of India’s epics and myths. In part 2 we’ll discuss Raja’s creative process, his perceptions about the contrasts between filmmaking in India and Hollywood, and his future film projects.
Rob: One of the great legendary Hollywood stories is about David Lean spending 18 months shooting Lawrence of Arabia in the scorching heat in the deserts of Jordan and Morocco and in an arid riverbed in Spain. People thought he had gone insane because he went to such extremes. Francis Coppola also spent a year and a half shooting Apocalypse Now, worrying for much of that period that he had lost his mind. You spent double that amount of time shooting just the first half of Baahubali under extremely challenging conditions. Should we all be worried about your sanity?
Raja: (he laughs) Actually, if you look at it, traditionally the number of shooting days here in India are very high. 150 shooting days is quite normal, which is not the case in Hollywood, as I am told. Most of the big films there are done in 70 or 80 days.
That’s true, and many are even shorter. I’m producing a film now that shot in only 22 days.
(surprised) In 22 days? That’s fast. We spend a little bit less time on preproduction, and more time on production. That’s just how our practice developed here. Of course for Baahubali we spent 380 days, more than double the typical amount of shooting days. But please don’t worry about my sanity, I’m quite sane and ready and raring to go at the second part [Baahubali: The Conclusion].
I’m very glad to know that. So you’re now well into the second part?
Yes, I’m doing some fine-tuning of the script for the second part.
I saw an interview where you said about Baahubali, “This world of larger-than-life characters, larger-than-life emotions, larger-than-life environments, I have been living for as long as I can remember.” Can you elaborate a little more on that thought?
Yes, I think since I was about 7 years old. That was when I was first introduced to the comics called ‘Amar Chitra Katha’ that are published in India. They’re not about a superhero, but they encompass all the stories of India, the folklore, the mythology, everything. But most of these stories are about Indian historical figures. I was fascinated by the forts, the battles, the kings, I not only used to read those stories but I kept telling those stories to my friends in my own way. So that’s what I meant when I said I was living in the world of those larger-than-life characters.
And was Baahubali the first time for you to tell those stories on screen?
I experimented a bit with two of my earlier films Yamadonga and Magadheera which had a bit of folklore and mythology in them. Not full fledged films stories but only part of them. Those films were successful and gave me the confidence to move on to a film which is completely done in yesteryears.
When did you start developing this film, Baahubali?
It gradually filled up. It was not like we suddenly said one day “Let’s make a film called Baahubali. It didn’t happen like that. But it all started with the character of Sivagami. One day about 9 or 10 years back my father told me about this character. The first scene of the film is what he narrated to me, where Sivagami saves the child and she dies, that was very emotional. But he just told me about that character, there was no story or anything. But the character was there, then a few years later he told me about the character Kattappa, the loyal slave. And later he told me about the character of Bhallala Deva. So then about 4 or 5 years back we said why don’t we bring all these characters together to make a story. And then things started falling into place
Why did your father parse out his introductions of these characters to you over so many years?
He works like a mission, he keeps churning out characters, plot points, stories, they keep coming, almost every month he comes up with something interesting. I have to pick and choose.
You’ve worked together with your father as the writer on most of your films, right?
Yes, that’s right.
And how does that work, I mean, who’s the boss?
(laughs) I’m the boss. I’m the boss, obviously. I’m the director and I’m the boss. While working we’ll have our share of fights, of disagreements, but ultimately it’s my word that goes.
Of course, but he’s also your dad. Do you find that when you’re working together you’re able to separate your status as director from the fact that you’re his son?
Absolutely, when we’re working together it’s a writer-director relationship. That comes naturally, there was never a problem with that.
I wrote an article about him and the fact that he has written the two biggest movies India’s ever had, Baahubali and Bajrangi Bhaijaan, competing against one another at the same time, no less.
That’s right, released a week apart
I wrote in my first article about Baahubali that it is inspired by classic Indian epics like the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, but there are also references in the film to the biblical stories of Moses and the Greek legend of Hercules. Several Forbes readers said I was wrong, that I was just leaning on my own western preconceptions? Was I?
If you look at it so many epics of so many countries are identical. We don’t know how that happens. For example, if you take the story of Moses where he was left in a basket by his mother, you’ll find an exact replica in Mahabharata, where the principal character Karna is left by his mother, Kunti, in a basket in a river where he is picked up by his foster mother and he's brought up. These epics have similarities across cultures. But mostly my stories are drawn from the epics of India itself.
I’m glad to have my own preconceptions corrected.
As a film enthusiast and a lover of stories, I have read biblical stories and I’ve seen biblical films, with the same zeal as I have read and seen my own country’s stories. Most of the time the creator doesn’t know where he gets his inspiration from. It just gets into your mind, gets churned up with a hundred other stories, and when the output comes you don’t know where the actual source is from.
What drives you to make the films you do? If you had to distill it down to a single motivating force, what would that be?
It is an appreciation of the audience, to be very truthful that is what drives me, or I think any storyteller. What’s in it for him. Creating is one thing, telling the story is one thing, I see myself more as a storyteller than a story creator. So why we do it is because we like to see the response from the audience, their expressions, their feedback, how we play with their emotions, that’s what gives us a kick, what keeps us going, that’s what we strive for, the expressions on the audience’s faces.
That’s exactly what brought me to Hollywood.
That was a very good question, I'm thinking "why do I do what I do?" I just realized, I just got the clarity that I’m a storyteller, not a story creator. I strongly believe that the stories we have, the epics of India, the Mahabharata, Ramayana, all the history, we have a very rich culture and history that we’ve been ignoring for so long. We have been trying to ape western films, western thinking. I don’t have anything against it, but when we have such a treasure trove with us, it only makes sense to exploit it, so that’s the reason why I want to dig into our history and myths.
In part two of this interview we'll find out what film Raja would make if he had all the freedom in the world and no constraints. Look for part two here on Sunday.
