My attitude has helped me stay sane: KS Ravikumar

With Tamil cinema currently focusing its shift towards small budget movies which has new comers, filmmaker K S Ravikumar believes mostly in superstars. Having directed some of the classics like Muthu (1995), Avvai Shanmughi (1996), Padayappa (1999), Dasavathaaram (2008) and so on — he’s clear about what he wants. Though his last outing Rajinikanth-starrer Lingaa (2014) bombed at the box-office, he doesn’t seem to care much about his success and failure. “My aim is to keep entertaining the audience with mass commercial entertainers,” he tells. 

After two years, he’s back with Mudinja Ivana Pudi, a Tamil-Kannada bilingual, which was released recently. “I know my strengths and weaknesses and I do things accordingly. My forte is family entertainers. As a director, I want to make more commercially viable films. After all, my job is to satisfy the producers and the audience. At the end of the day, cinema is all about money and business,” he elaborates.

Mudinja Ivana Pudi is Ravikumar’s first bilingual, which has Sudeep and Nithya Menen in the lead. Ask him about his experience on helming the film, he says, “It was challenging because it’s like making two films at the same time. The film has all the commercial ingredients in the right proportion. We had to shoot every scene twice.”

He tells us that Mudinja... was supposed to have been made three years ago. “But somehow Lingaa happened in the middle. The highlight of the film is its well-etched characters. The best part of shooting Mudinja... is that the movie was made in a right tone; the youth is my target audience,” he says.

Ravikumar, who has worked as an assistant director to leading filmmakers for more than a decade before his first film Puriyadha Pudhir (1990), a crime thriller, says big films with big banners are easy to make and ensures profit. “I put in 100% effort in every movie I direct, but when it fails at the box-office, a director alone isn’t responsible,” he explains. 

Quiz him on how he handles failure, he responds, “I have worked with Rajinikanth, Kamal Haasan, Suriya and Ajith, etc. I don’t let success of a film get to my head, nor do I let failure affect me much. I think my attitude has helped me stay sane. Each star has some image, which he would like to incorporate into the story. It has been a wonderful journey so far to understand and write scripts for them. To me, the friendship that I share with stars matters the most.”

We hear that Panchathanthiram (2002) sequel is on cards? He laughs, “Kamal and I were discussing it, but it didn’t materialise. We teamed up for Manmadhan Ambu (2010) again. I don’t know...anything may happen. Let’s see how it goes.”

And what’s next? “Still undecided. Talks are on with Vishal and Raghava Lawrence, but nothing has been finalised yet. I’d love to work with Karthi. He once asked me if I could write something for him,” he grins.

(The piece was originally written for The New Indian Express)