Farz' proved to be a flop for the first 10 weeks. I remember buying tickets worth Rs 5000 myself, just so the film would run in theatres longer. And in the 11th week the film miraculously picked up and ran for 50 weeks!
I hit as hard and as fast in the first week of camp as I do in the last week of camp. So it doesn't matter if it's two weeks' notice or 10 weeks' notice.
It's not necessary that every film has to hit Rs 100 crore box office, or the Rs 50 crore budget. If the film makes double of its project budget, we consider that a hit, and that also means that the film is in profit.
I cannot put pressure on myself that I have delivered a Rs 100 crore film and now I have to give it again or it will not be successful. Films that earn Rs 50 crore or Rs 60 crore are successful, too.
In film you have the script months ahead of time often, for a good film, but in television it seems like you might not get the script until a week or two weeks before you've got to film it. It's a little weird, but also quite challenging. It reminds me of repertory theatre.
I literally designed and built the sets myself, and I kind of liked it. I always gave myself eight weeks to do that - sometimes even 10 - and the shooting took five or six weeks.
If one makes a short film with reasonable technical finesse, it will cost between Rs. 50,000 and Rs. one lakh. That's a lot of money for someone starting off.
Home runs come in bunches. You can go two weeks without one or hit four in a week. Sometimes, you just feel that stroke for a week or two weeks straight.
I had just finished a run of shows in the States and went to NY to work with BenZel for a couple weeks, mainly as a different focus to touring. I didn't have any expectations or pressures with what would come out of those two weeks, and think 'Tough Love' sums this up. It was me experimenting with my voice and having fun with it. It just felt right and kind of dictated the route of the next album, much like 'Devotion' did on my first album
'Dasavatharam' is science fiction, a multi-crore budgeted film worth Rs 50 to 60 crore and ahead of its time.
Whenever I finish a film, I feel that this is the worst film that I have made. This is bound to happen because while writing, directing and editing a film, I would have lived it 5000 times. Naturally, one tends to loose objectivity.
My last experience of film-making was Tickets, a three-episode film in Italy, the third of which is directed by myself. It's not for me to judge whether it's a good film or a bad film, but what I could say is that nobody had a cultural or linguistic issue with what was produced.
I remember when I was like 19 years old and I started a desk calendar company to pay for my first short film, just so I could say one day that my daddy didn't pay for my first short film. And I really established myself in the film festival world.
I was about 10 years old. I just remember the film Enter the Dragon with Bruce Lee blowing my mind on the screen and I thought to myself, "That's what I want to do for a living when I'm older." Bruce Lee was so magnetic and charismatic and held the screen so well. It's just a very powerful performance in that film. That's the first memory I have - him in that movie.
Every day that goes by, I mean, if you don't react to Pearl Harbor for a week or two weeks or three weeks, you're behind in the war that you otherwise would have fought.
The New York theater community didn't like being invaded by reality stars - they still don't - but I got in there and auditioned just like everybody else. They hired me for 'Hairspray' to help sell tickets for a few weeks, but I ended up being there much longer than originally planned and started to carve a niche for myself.
I was in Tower Records in San Francisco a few weeks ago, buying some cassettes, and a couple of people recognized me and ran up with albums, and I just wanted to cover my face and have a seizure or something. I want people to just go away.