Sreeram Venu showed a great deal of resilience when his debut project Oh My Friend tanked at the box office. It wasn’t an easy journey; the director had written various scripts and bounced off ideas to filmmakers, without much success. Some of his projects got cancelled after coming close to taking off. Naturally, he is quite emotional as his film Middle Class Abbayi (MCA) starring Nani and Sai Pallavi releases this month. He talks of his producer Dil Raju, his core team and technicians who stood by him when there were initial hiccups as the project continued. He appears calm, composed and is brimming with positivity as he talks about his film. “Nani liked MCA instantly, he seemed to fit into it perfectly.You will be able to make out the difference from the rest of the roles he had done before.”
Speaking about the inspiration to the film, Sreeram says, “The idea germinated when I moved to Hyderabad with my brother and when I got married. The story is from a purely personal experience. Rest of it is fiction. My brother is my hero and we were very close, stayed together in the city before my wife came into my life. I noticed the small and tiny insecurities in him and found it really cute. I selected a script which is not completely out of the box and also something that not many have worked on. It has a nice screenplay.”
The trailer which released shows Nani moving to Warangal with his sister-in-law (Bhumika) who keeps harassing him with household chores.Bhumika Chawla returns to the big screen after a long time. Their relationship is sure to evoke laughter and will also bring in an element of seriousness. The director concurs, “If good content is complemented with a better casting, it will surely help the film. Bhumika was my first choice. I had to make her wait one entire day for only a single scene being shot on her, but she was so understanding.”
He adds, “The conflict point in the film is simple, how we understand, misunderstand and misinterpret relations. Despite the egos and misunderstandings amongst family members, I tried not portraying it as a melodrama.”
So is his brother aware of the plot? “My brother is clueless, he saw the trailer and remarked mana katha laga undi . I said, ‘Not really, wait till you watch the film’.”
He terms Sai Pallavi as the best part and entertaining part of MCA . When he signed her, Fidaa had not released. He admits of getting tempted to make her speak Telangana again as the setting is in Warangal but he resisted it. Most of the films in recent times like Arjun Reddy, Fidaa and parts of Pelli Chupulu had the artistes talking in Telangana dialect, which is why the director chose to do away with it.
The reason for choosing Warangal as a backdrop is for a visual difference, he says. It is a historical place with a unique texture — the rocks, the old buildings and most of the visuals haven’t been used in films. Also he is very familiar with its topography. He avers, “I wanted it to be shot in a town. There is a different kind of emotion that comes from a village and there is a different emotion from the city. One fights for bread, other for spaghetti. We wanted to capture the essence of those emotions.”
Sreeram adds, “I am the story writer but I am assisted by two talented dialogue writers, Thiru and Sreekanth. It is a blessing to have Sameer Reddy handle the camera. We shot on roads and real locations and his experience helped me. Devi Sri Prasad had given all crowd-pleasing numbers and the lyrics are a reflection of my thought process, especially the first song.”
