To want what is not given
My new movie Pancharangi opened with a bang! Did my team and I anticipate it? NOPE! I am Pawan Kumar, the story and screenplay writer of Pancharangi. I am the ‘Lucky’ character in the movie. This post is a little in detail about how we made Pancharangi. This document is called – ‘To want what is not given’
In september 2009 we released Manasaare. We anticipated the success of Manasaare to an extent. The movie was praised a lot and I was in cloud nine, I personally feel that manasaare had a lot of wonderful moments, it was very cinematic, and the journey of making the film was very exciting to me, the constant changes in the screenplay, the philosophy blended with humor etc etc made me feel alive. Post manasaare I was constantly thinking of how to recreate that experience again. But it was not as easy as it appeared. We went on a promotional tour around Karnataka, I remember going to a theatre in a remote town and we were meeting the audience there, I was looking at the people and I was feeling like I cheated them. These people were very innocent, they see the movie at a very surface level and they must be touched emotionally and not intellectually. Manasaare had an over dose of intellectuality. After meeting the audience outside Bangalore who in fact are the majority of our audience, I felt that we should tone down our scripts, that our next movie should be more entertaining than thought provoking. It is with this hangover that Yogaraj and I started working on our new film.
We must have written about 20 movie scripts before we stumbled upon Pancharangi. I almost started slipping into depression. Everyday we’d find mistakes and loop holes with what we’d have discussed the day before. This led us into circles. I almost gave up and decided that I was not meant to be in movie making. Its not a simple thing to come with 20 different thoughts and keep rejecting them. We were in this limbo state for 3 months. And suddenly one small coffee discussion changed everything. Jayant Kaikini had come over to our office and we were telling him about how we were suffering to write. He being a writer himself, he understood our plight pretty well. For a long time there was silence and then he said that he felt manasaare was enjoyed by so many people because there were so many characters in it. Then he unintentionally used the word ‘community’. He said that for a viewer it is a very enjoyable experience when they see a lot of people on screen, they will then connect to different shades of different characters and feel complete. He said – ‘there must a sense of community in the story and on screen’. Yog and I were so mind fucked, we simply nodded and said whatever and left for the day. But he had planted that thing in my head. All night I was thinking of all my favourite movies and I realized that Jayant was 100 percent true. Most of these great movies have very well defined characters. That was the first thing I decided – we must make a movie with characters, who will give that sense of community to the audience. Next day morning I conveyed all of this to yog and he agreed. But the question was, what is our story to put this community in? It almost felt like we had comeback into the cycle again, going nowhere!
Few days passed. Usually we write a story and then cast actors. My new idea was to work the other way around! I made a list of characters and actors we like working with. Then I started thinking what can bring all these people together. The first thought was marriage! But then we have seen way too many movies that deal with marriage. I was more and more convinced that the reason for the characters to come together was not going to be very important. Yog said that if the reason is not strong then there would be no story. I was almost going to drop the idea in the bin when we suddenly had a weird thought – LETS EXPERIMENT. Then we discussed the whole thing again and again, and finally decided that we were going to construct a small story but a detailed screenplay around these characters. What followed for the next few weeks was constructing a screenplay with 16 characters. If you observe this method, our exercise was not to construct a story but to derive one in the process! But philosophy about life, about mundane happenings, etc doesn’t leave us so easily. So the thought of simply making an entertaining film was getting slowly corrupted with some philosophy about life.
When we finally constructed a shooting script we had about 150 mins of screenplay, but where was the story? At this point there were two teams within our minds. One day I’d feel that this was the biggest mistake and on the other day Yog would feel that. We both would convince each other off it. The whole movie was shot in this state of confusion. Either of us would be sad and worried most of the time wondering if we were making a disaster. The only saving grace was that the actors were enjoying acting the scenes out, that was giving us hope. We completed the shooting pretty fast. We had shot about 100 mins of content in Mangalore and had about 30mins more content to shoot in Bangalore. We came back and were working on the shooting schedule. Yog in his impatience, sat with the editor and edited a version of what we shot in Mangalore. And this is the point in the making of this film where drastic decisions were taken.
We all sat and watched the 100 mins version of the film. Jayant and his son were there to see the first cut and give us a feedback. Both enjoyed the film, they laughed and laughed. We were wondering why they were laughing, I am not kidding when I say how unsure we were of what we had done. Then we told them that 30 more mins of the film was yet to be shot. One question from Jayant, his son and our editor was – WHY DO YOU NEED THOSE 30 MORE MINS? We kept arguing that the 30 more mins is what was going to add some story elements to the whole film. All 3 left saying that they were happy with what they saw and they didn’t want to see anything more. We put a hold on all shooting schedules. We were back in the office with the script and with arguments. Had we narrated a story in 100 mins? We didnt know. We did lot of reworks on the sceenplay again. And we figured that we had made a film with a very thin story but very strong characters going through a lot events, and that was enough to entertain. Should we leave it at that? What if the audience feels that the movie is incomplete? Should we invest another 50-60 lak and shoot the rest of the script? These were these confusions that were hounding us for many days. Finally we decided to go with our instinct, to give the audience what we were all enjoying rather than giving them a formula storyline. We decided to take the risk. We shot the 4 songs and few scenes that tied up the loose ends, all this added up making the movie of 128mins duration. That day onwards Yogaraj and Subramanya hardly slept, and I was making elope plans, making resumes to hide in some BPO job. It would be a huge blow on our personal and professional lives if the audience didn’t accept our experiment. Till we got the first copy of the film, we were constantly thinking about what we had done. The premiere show happened and I saw audience enjoying, but I was not convinced, I had my doubts, I wanted to see how the innocent audience with little expectations and some with no expectations, would see the movie. I am extremely satisfied with the result.
Now coming to the point of why I am writing this post, why it is titled the way it is. The one thing that we have been hearing constantly is that the movie is good but it lacks a story. But I think you find the movie good only because it is lacking that story. And the truth is that there is ofcourse a story – Its a story of a boy with skewed philosophies of life and a girl with very simple way of life, they both happened to meet in a event, they both rub off each other, in the process they are attracted to each other, but the boy’s messy mind creates a problem, the girl offers him a solution. Who says this cant be a story? Why must a story have very big big things happening in it? As long as there is a character journey, a conflict and a solution; there is nothing to complain about. Isn’t it? I am not justifying my work, I dont need to. If it was a mistake then I’d gladly learn from it. I am just asking you all to open up your mind and see the movie without the desire of wanting a ‘mainstream’ story. Its not needed, at least not in THIS movie. If we had shot those 30 mins and put it in the movie, the same audience would have said – ‘same old story with Blah Blah in it’ – ‘Second half is boring’ – ‘Boy loves girl, loses her and come back for her’ etc etc. We would have simply got reactions like this and it would not even have got the kind of positive reactions it is getting now.
Please enjoy the movie, ponder over the thoughts it provokes, simply laugh and move on with your life. Don’t hunt for a regular story and ruin your experience. We were not trying to make the movie of the century or a master piece – we don’t know how to make that. We were trying to make you laugh, to make you feel happy and to put a small thought about how we all live. That was it. We are getting that, everybody who has seen the movie is giving us these 3 things. When the movie is not intending to tell you a story, why are you complaining about not hearing one?
But that is human mind – To want what is not given. Lifeu Ishtene 
by Pawan Kumar – Story and Screenplay writer for the Movie Pancharangi.
I finally saw the movie. And I can proudly call myself the fourth idiot. It was all about me. Many scenes I could relate to, I am forcing my parents to go see it asap, would love to see their guilt ridden faces when they get out.