19 July 2022
Hyderabad
In an exclusive interview with idlebrain.com, writer-director Vikram K Kumar opens up on the reason that led him to pick Thank You script, Chay’s growth as an actor, why he wants to extend thanks to Ramoji Rao, digital debut and giving time for family
Eight years after casting a spell on the audience with Manam, Vikram Kumar has reunited with Naga Chaitanya for Thank You. The film’s trailer, which was dropped recently, has received thumbs up from netizens, with praise coming from all corners. Vikram admits the response was quite a confidence booster in the run up to the release. “Absolutely! Nowadays, it’s the trailer that’s gonna get you the initials. Prior to the trailer, Thank You has been on a low. Yes, people knew about the movie but there was no buzz. I think the trailer has given a shot in the arm for everyone associated with the film. It was cut beautifully by Navin (the editor) and the entire credit should go to him. He conveyed the spirit of the film in the best way possible,” the director begins.
For someone who is always teeming with new ideas, Vikram, in a first for him, has directed Thank You from an idea of writer-director BVS Ravi. On what sealed the deal for him, he elaborates, “As a writer, I strongly believe that any screenplay is about the soul. I had to own Thank You to make it mine, so I told both Raju garu and Ravi garu that from the treatment and the way it is told, I need to own it. And they gave me the freedom. I had a wonderful team with me. My own assistant directors. Ravi was there. So were Kalyan and Mithun. When Ravi narrated the story, the first thing I felt was, ‘Shit, I should have thought about this idea’. That’s what made me do the film. Firstly, the idea was so powerful. Secondly, it was something that needed to be told now. I think it is a movie for the present times. Post the pandemic, all of us had time to reflect on those one-and-a-half years. We are just rushing with our lives; we are too busy trying to get from point A to point B. We never had the time to sit back and reflect. The pandemic gave that. It also gave me the time to explore the film’s idea in detail.”
Thank You, which traces the journey of Abhiram (played by Naga Chaitanya), who from humble beginnings makes it big in the corporate world, is about gratitude, Vikram maintains. “All of us, wherever we are in our lives, we always think we got here through our struggle. I struggled. I had to push through. I had to do this and do that. I had to bend. I had to suck up. Because of all these, I’m here where I’m right now. Actually, that is not true. There are so many people in all our lives who would’ve played a very important role to get you where you are right now. Taking credit for it is stupid. The thing is the moment we start giving them credit, our ego intervenes to say, ‘What are you doing? Giving them credit for half of your success?’ Ego doesn’t allow it. We never go ahead and do that because of ego. I think we should. In the film, we are trying to say that thank you is a beautiful and powerful word. But I believe it’s been carelessly used repeatedly. Like if someone opens a door for you, we say thank you. Yes, you have to say it but you have to say it for the bigger things as well. Before I started making the movie, I was sure that I cannot be a hypocrite and direct the movie. I had to thank the people that I needed to thank first. Only then could I honestly make the film the way I wanted to make it. If you look at everyone around you— everyone who is healthy and walking around—almost 90 percent of the meals they have eaten must have been cooked by their mothers. They are basically doctors who kept all of us healthy. When we become unhealthy is when we eat hotel food. All the nourishment that we have is because of our mothers cooking. Not once did I thank her. I’m 45 years old right now. 90 percent of the food that I’ve consumed and that is keeping me healthy has been cooked by my mom. I’ve not even once thanked her for it. I’ve certainly thanked chefs when they whipped out a delicious meal for me. But not once did I thank my mom. And I had to do it before I began this film,” he reveals.
Continuing in the same vein, he goes on, “Your life is not just about your career. It is about so many other things. It could be a beautiful book you read which changed your life. Or it could be a beautiful movie you saw that prompted you to do something. You are inspired in so many ways. Gratitude should be given to all those things. The movie is about saying thank you for the best things. Another key secret that I can tell you is that we always feel that if we say thank you, the other person is going to feel fantastic; it’s actually the other way around. You’ll feel great. It makes your life more fulfilling.”
From the career point of view, Vikram also had to say thank you to celebrated cinematographer PC Sreeram, who is his “friend, mentor and guru”. “I had to thank him. Whatever little I know about cinema, I learnt it from him. Once I finished narrating Thank You story, I hugged him and had to thank him. Meeting him and spending time with him has been one of the best things that happened to me,” he states.
Mr. Ramoji Rao, producer and Ramoji Group head, is one more person he would like to extend his thanks. Rao’s Usha Kiran Movies produced Vikram’s Telugu debut, Ishtam. “I made my debut when I was just 21 years old. When he saw the film’s final copy, I was not there. I met him only once in my life— that too when I narrated the script. He was such a busy person at that time. I always wished that I could tell him thank you for letting me start that young and for giving me the confidence that I could make a movie at that time. I have a lot of gratitude for him,” the director avers.
Vikram believes that Chaitanya has “grown unbelievably” as an actor over time. “He’s come out of the cocoon. He has opened his wings. He is going to fly to greater heights. It’s just the beginning stage of his career. He is one of the best actors we have right now and he is going to get better and better. I just can’t wait to see what he will be doing five-six years from now on. He will be pushing the envelope. I’m looking forward to seeing which idea he is going to back next. He’s gonna go a long way and I’m glad that I’m a small part of his wonderful journey. He is a dear friend of mine. Apart from being a big star, he is a great guy and that’s what I love the most about him,” Vikram rhapsodizes.
The pandemic has changed everything for the industry. With the audience now exposed to a wide variety of content thanks to multiple streamers, Vikram feels that it’s “making filmmakers push harder”. “Earlier, the audiences were watching a certain kind of material, so we had to work within those parameters. Now that they are enjoying different kinds of material, it is giving us the freedom to explore further things for sure,” the director observes.
Vikram is making his digital debut with Amazon’s Dootha up next. He informs us that moving forward, it will be one foot in digital and another in feature film space for him. “I’m enjoying both. The digital space is different. It’s a totally different school of writing. Having watched a lot of web content, the long format storytelling suddenly became exciting for me. The first challenge for me was whether I could write something that long, which will also be engaging. I thought, ‘Let’s write and see’. By God’s grace, it has come out well. I got super excited with it. When I went to Chay with it, he was like, ‘We got to do this thing’. Once I got him on board, things started falling in place pretty quickly. I have finished shooting Chay’s portions. I have another 20 days left to complete the shoot. Probably by September, I will go to post-production. By early summer, you guys will be able to watch it. I can confidently tell that in the web space, it will make a mark,” he promises.
With his schedule filled to the brim, naturally there’s a grievance from his family that he is not spending enough time with them. He wants to “change that a little”. “It’s going to be a priority right now. There’s too much time that I’m spending on cinema and that is unfair on my family. I’m going to make a conscious effort to spend a lot of time with them. I really miss being with them because a lot of my work happens in Hyderabad, while my family is in Chennai, so that geography itself is a bummer,” Vikram ends, signing off.
-NAGARAJ GOUD
