Letters from Sydney: Episode 5

“Why do you think you want to be a director?” my Head of school had asked me in the telephonic interview, way back in June. Without wasting a moment I had told him, “Because… I don’t think I can do anything else in life.” I could hear him laugh out loud over the phone. Reclining in the maroon chair in my room in the Pune house I had wondered why he had laughed like that then.

10 months after that interview, sitting on a bench in the small park right opposite my house in Sydney, I found the answer. Films are not only about talent, they are essentially about passion. They have to run in your blood; you have to be excited about the minutest of cinematic detail, thrilled to bits every time the lights go out in a cinema hall and random images flicker across the silver screen, angry as hell every time you miss even 2 minutes of a film because of some idiotic friend turning up late for a film. It’s the passion only a few possess. For most people, films are a medium of entertainment, a sheer way to pass time. For some people like me, films are life, a way to live through time. That’s the common thing between me and my head of school and most other students in school; we can’t imagine ourselves doing anything else in life. No wonder he laughed, maybe even he had given the same answer to the same question when he got interviewed for film school.

I entered the house, entirely wet from one of those highly unpredictable Sydney downpours. Sac greeted me at the door, wagging his tail against the floor so feverishly that it could put any of the PMC sweepers to shame. For those of you who don’t know, PMC is Pune Municipal Corporation and the PMC sweepers are guys who get paid for not sweeping the roads. Patting his head I asked Sac if David and Natalie were at home. He licked my right hand right from wrist to the tip of my fingers, thereby indicating that neither of them was home and that he was extremely bored of the unasked for solitude.

“Alone for dinner, again” I thought aloud as I walked up the staircase and in my room. Looking around the space that would make any normal human claustrophobic, I took my shoes off and jumped on the bed. It was when I jumped that I realized that I shouldn’t have jumped after a few very angry ligaments in my shoulder and back screamed in agony, in unison. It was a result of a crazy film shoot that I had returned from. It was just the 3rd day in school and we were asked to do a 24 hour film shoot. It basically meant that we had to write, shoot and edit a film in 24 hours.

“Nik! The boom’s in shot”, the DoP shouted. I lowered the boom, adjusted my headphones checked with the DoP if the frame was clear and got ready for the director’s orders. In school, we are divided into teams of 5 for every project and each of us performs a different role on different projects. I wasn’t directing the first film we made at film school. I had written it and was in charge of sound. Looking at the script in the lead actor’s hand, I smiled and thought about the Herculean effort that had gone into penning it.
It was a crazy, crazy project right from the beginning. I was asked to write a script about a guy who is trying to kill himself. I worked very hard on it and wrote a decent looking 10 min script in 3 odd hours. My professor came in, praised the script like it was the best thing written in ages, and then, totally out of the blue threw a bombshell on me and my team. He asked me to rewrite the whole script without dialogue and replace the indoor location with an outdoor one, albeit without changing the basic story. Almost on a verge of a nervous breakdown, our entire crew screamed at the professor asking him to explain the reason behind such a mean and inhuman demand. He smiled and said, “That’s what happens on a film set.”

Cursing the day I chose to join IFSS, I got down to writing the version 2 of the same script. We had 18 hours left to shoot and cut the film. It all depended on how quickly I could come up with the new script. Taking ideas from everyone in the team and after gulping down almost 10 mugs of black coffee, I did the whole script in 90 minutes flat and got it approved from the professor. Grabbing a few sandwiches we sat in a mate’s car and headed towards the location to shoot our first film at film school. The car was zooming along the freeway, reminding me of the Mumbai-Pune expressway, of the last time I traveled on it, while I went to the airport to catch the flight to Sydney. I was sitting next to the cab driver when my mobile rang. It was a sms that read, “You know something, Nikhil, I am really gonna miss you.” I looked back at Mom and Dad, thinking that I should tell them everything, but then I looked at the sms once again, smiled and preferred looking out of the window.

“Nik! What the f*** are you doing? The boom’s in shot again… that too for the second time” my thoughts were disturbed by my DoP’s voice.

“I am sorry”, I said adjusting the boom, “I just had gone… Some place else.”

The shoot went on fine. We managed to shoot and edit the film in 22 hours, our group finishing second only to Hasse’s group. Extremely tired with the day’s shoot Hasse and I sat at the wooden boxes for the first time ever, our legs stretched, looking up at the skies crowded with dark and rain filled clouds.

“There’s something about Sydney that makes me hate it”, she said, looking up at the clouds.

“That’s quite an extreme statement, don’t you think?” I asked her as she continued looking up.

“I guess it is. The something about Sydney that makes me hate it is something it doesn’t have.” She said, looking straight at me.

Just then it started raining, all of a sudden. It was one of those unexpected Sydney downpours. Hasse ran for her umbrella, offered me an umbrella walk till my place which I rejected.

“I would rather get wet… I love the rain… I just hope there’s someone at home who I can have dinner with… Don’t feel like eating alone tonight.” I said, bid her adieu and ran towards 66-A after a tough day’s shoot thinking about the thing about something that made her hate Sydney.

It didn’t make any sense to me then. Now after what seems to be an eternity after that evening, with the sitting on wooden boxes after class becoming a tradition for both of us, it makes total sense. She was so right when she said that. She hates Sydney because of something it doesn’t have… someone it doesn’t have. And when that made sense I realized that I hate Sydney too, for something that it doesn’t have… someone it doesn’t have.

TO BE CONTINUED