A day after the video of ‘Evare’ song was released and Premam was trolled on social media, director Chandoo Mondeti discussed it with producer Naga Vamshi. “The producer told me that he’d rather focus on the good feedback he was receiving from distributors and exhibitors than get bogged down by trolls,” recalls Chandoo.
Settling down for a chat, Chandoo speaks with the confidence of having a good product. When he was an assistant director, he also worked with websites and has an understanding of social media. “Trolls spare no one, not even established directors and technicians. In this case, I could sense a tinge of sadistic pleasure in the way they trolled Shruti Haasan. People are entitled to their opinion. We know we have good content. Majority of Telugu audience haven’t watched the Malayalam film and our Premam is for them,” he asserts.
Casting Shruti Haasan as Malar was a conscious decision, while he wanted Anupama Parameshwaran and Madonna Sebastian to reprise their roles from the original. “Shruti is known for her mainstream films in Telugu. So those who had watched Sai Pallavi felt Shruti wouldn’t be apt as Malar. In trade circles, the very fact that Shruti is part of the film is working to our advantage. We know the audience is waiting to watch her in Telugu after Srimanthudu. In fact, we’ve had requests for special shows,” says Chandoo.
The director feels the Telugu audience is more likely to accept a glamorous, established name. “Unlike Malayalam cinema, we cannot afford to make a big budget film with new actors. The way we’ve approached Malar’s part is different. Shruti plays a character that’s partly Tamil and partly Maharastrian, similar to her real life,” he adds. Unlike Sai Pallavi who even chides students with a smile, Shruti portrays a tough exterior. “I’ve known college lecturers who were barely a couple of years older to students. They would act tough so that students don’t take them lightly,” he explains.
Chandoo’s debut directorial Karthikeya figured among the noteworthy films of 2014. His strength is writing and after Karthikeya , he approached Naga Chaitanya with a story. “At the same time, Chaitanya was being contacted by producers who felt he would be apt to star in a remake of Premam ,” says Chandoo.
Chaitanya requested Chandoo to remake Premam and put his original story on hold. “We both knew it wasn’t going to be an easy film to remake,” he affirms.
Premam , he observes, had references to at least 30 Malayalam hits which had the audience rooting for it. For the Telugu remake, Chandoo replaced these references with landmark Telugu films. He visited Cochin after watching Premam and observes that the city can lend itself to many more slice-of-life films. “The landscape and demography changes every few kilometres. We had to shoot across Vizag and Hyderabad to get the desired locations,” he points out. While Chandoo loved the ethos of Cochin, he changed a few sequences for Telugu. “Madonna taking her time to slice through a red velvet cake in a café may not work here; we’d have people walking out to eat a cake than watch the film,” he laughs.
Chandoo had always been a film buff and is a huge fan of Nagarjuna. He grew up in Chennai and studied at Sriram Engineering College. “We would watch films and have lengthy discussions on weekends. I don’t remember what we studied in class,” he says. His family was academically inclined but supported his decision to enter cinema. “I was an assistant director when I got married. My wife was already teaching at JNTU. I was lucky to have god’s grace and family support,” he shares.
When he was still star gazing and observing established film-makers from studio thresholds, many told him he should put his engineering to good use. “Back then, I didn’t know I was taking a risk. Now I realise that apart from hard work and patience, luck plays a role,” he avers.
He has three stories ready and hopes to begin work on one of them soon. He mentions reading different interpretations of Ramayana and Mahabharata and feels the epics are a treasure trove of stories and viewpoints.
In the near future, Chandoo hopes to narrate stories through web series. “When so many of us follow series like Breaking Bad , why can’t we have something new in Telugu as well?” he asks. High five to that.
