I may have got a little carried away and many critics found fault with some aspects of the film, but as a coming of age film of a character, 'Vaaranam Ayiram' worked with the audience.
I put my heart into 'Vaaranam Ayiram.' I lost my father when I began the film, and the tragedy turned my entire script around.
I had many years where I just worked from film to film to film. And then all of a sudden I went: "Where did I put my bags down? Where's my little place I call home?"
I know 'Dabangg' has some pre-requisites. Every film has some requisites that you have to fulfill. I sat down with my writer and discussed what as an audience I want to see in the second part of the film. We worked towards that and we hope what we thought connects with the audience.
I am not a character who gets carried away with good or bad performances and I won't get carried away by bigger or lesser critics. It's the same when you get praise. You can't get carried away with that.
I think all writers of my age who are brought up on films probably by the age of 16 have seen many more films than they have read classics of literature. We can't help but be influenced by film. Film has got some great tricks that it's taught writers.
There are some directors who actually fear the possible success of music. They fear that the audience or the critics will think the film has worked because there was a very good music score.
I have cultivated a little crew of people whose opinions I understand. It's like the way you'd follow certain film critics because you know what their criteria are, and you may not agree with them, but you can glean from their opinion how you will feel about a film.
One thing that the audience, and perhaps critics, aren't aware of is that, especially in a film like 'Moonlight,' you always shoot a lot more footage than makes the cut of the film.
My father was an engineer, .. But I found out that the film critics for the Stanford Daily got free passes for all the films. So I became first an assistant critic and then the main film critic. Those free passes changed my life.
I think the biggest challenge was being aware of a certain audience that was going to see this film [lone survivor]. There's a big difference from a typical movie, journalists and critics and film goers that go see it find that, that's the general experience you have as a filmmaker. So that just kind of proves my point that there's a really different audience.
Getting the audience to cry for the Terminator at the end of T2, for me that was the whole purpose of making that film. If you can get the audience to feel emotion for a character that in the previous film you despised utterly and were terrified by, then that's a cinematic arc.
I was at the New York Film Critics Circle Awards one year - they called me up when somebody canceled two days before the thing, and asked me to present some awards. So I went, and one of the funniest film moments I've ever had was when they introduced the New York film critics. They all stood up - motley isn't the word for that group. Everybody had some sort of vision problem, some sort of damage - I had to bury myself in my napkin.
In America, instead of making the audience come to the film, the idea seems to be for you to go to the audience. They come up with the demographics for the film and then the film is made and sold strictly to that audience.
Film festivals are a great vehicle for gaining an audience for your film, for exposure for the talent in the film and for the film makers to leverage opportunities for their films. I love the energy that film festivals bring.
When critics love your film, you love critics. When they hate your film, you hate critics. It's the same everywhere, but maybe especially in France, where we have pretty good critics, except for three or four newspapers that are really dogmatic.
It's very important that a film that intends to play tricks on the audience... has to play fair with the audience. For me, any time you're going to have a reveal in the film, it's essential that it have been shown to the audience as much as possible. What that means is that some people are going to figure it out very early on. Other people not til the end. Everybody watches the film differently.