Sandalwood Shettru mattu Samachara

Tuglak ge irlilla luck. Simple-aag ondh love story success simple aag irlilla. Ulidavaru kandante na yellaru tam tam version nalli kandaru, kelavaru yay andru kelavaru moogu muridaru. But adene aagli, nam Udupi Shettru Sandalwood ge lagge itirodantu nija, monne taane Switzerland inda Bhatru sets nalli shooting mugskondu banda Rakshit Shetty, ondu bindaas interview kotru.

K: Sandalwood says instead of “Ulidavara Kandanthe” you should have named it “Shettru Kandanthe”, nimma abhipraaya?

Hero: Ha ha. Who says that? Well I never planned it that way. In fact when I realized that there were too many Shetty's on board, I consciously tried not to take anymore, but again wouldn't that be wrong? Rishab was there with me since my Tuglak days. He was the only one who stood by me when Tuglak failed. We have been best friends ever since. So he was already on board even before I penned Ulidavaru Kandante. He helped me with Kunda Kannada while translating the English script to Kannada and hence he was a part of the Direction team as well. 

Yajna and Sheetal were not the first ones I reached out to for their respective roles. I had approached many other artists for those roles but it dint workout for multiple reasons. During our Pre Production in Udupi, while we were desperately searching for both the female leads, a local channel played a pirated copy of Yeddelu Manjunatha and then it struck us. It couldn't have been better we thought and tried contacting Yajna who was more than happy to play Kishore Sir's love interest and hence we pulled her in. But we couldn't find anyone who could play Regina until we actually started shooting. I had planned to shoot Regina's portion in the end. I was looking for someone who fits in to the character and could also speak Kannada perfectly because we were shooting with Sync Sound. 

One day after shoot, when we reached our apartment, we happened to switch on the TV and there she was, reading her daily bulletin on TV9. That was the first time I saw Sheetal and I din't even know she was a Shetty. When I called Suni, he told me that she was a Shetty as well. You see it was fate. Suni approached her the next day along with the script and she came on board as well. Rest of the star cast went through audition before getting selected, including our own Democracy, Suhan Shetty :-P 

K: If SOLS wouldn’t have been a hit, would you still go ahead and make “Ulidavaru Kandanthe”, if yes how and if no why?

Hero: I had written Ulidavaru Kandante even before I got an offer for SOLS. I was in search of a producer when Suni approached me for SOLS and it was a script which I couldn't say no to. So I thought Ulidavaru Kandante can wait for a while. Success of SOLS gave me an opportunity to make Ulidavaru Kandante at the right time with the right budget. If SOLS had failed at the box office, then may be my search for a producer would have continued unless I came across another script which excited me as an actor. If not, I would have followed Pawan's path of crowdsourcing funds  to make Ulidavaru Kandante within a smaller budget. I had done that earlier for two of my short films. I knew actors and Technicians who would work for free. I knew studios who would back me up too like they did for one of my short film. I knew a lot of them who believed in me. So I wanted money only for the production which I would collect from people. But then the movie would definitely not look like the way it looks now. 

K: Techie, Actor, Director, Audience – arrange in ascending order of your preferred roles in life

Hero: Actor, Director, Audience, Techie.

K:  “Script different ide”, “I play a different character”, “The role is close to my heart” bittu how do you choose your movies? Or do they just happen? 

Hero: Firstly I should like the script and the character I play. Then the Director. Then the Production and then the team as in the Music Director, Cinematographer and other technitions. If these things are in place, I am game. I think it is as simple as that. I choose the best among what comes to me.

K: Next Directorial scripts ready ide anta gothaitu? At least the concept? Ondu line nalli jhalak please?

Hero: Its gonna be a pre independence fictional story surrounded by real incidents from history set in R. K. Narayan's fictional village Malgudi. Its gonna be about the thugs. Its gonna be shoot shoot bang bang. I call it 'Thugs of Malgudi' :-)

Answers yella Vastu-Prakaara ide, nimge ishta aagidre good else shoot madbekagute!!!