Ram Gopal Varma Blog about Chitti’s Bar

Ram Gopal Varma Blogs
Chitti’s Bar

ram gopal Varma

9 November 2009

The year I had the idea of making “RAAT” a cousin of mine called Chitti had an idea of opening a bar & restaurant on Mehdi Patnam Road in Hyderabad. He reasoned that there was a huge colony on that road and not a single bar was there 5kms either way of the location he has chosen for the bar. With just an investment of 20lakhs on paper he showed that he can make a crore the very 1st year. It sounded fantastic and I wished him all the best. By the end of the year he lost even his investment and closed down the bar for lack of business. Then with a sad voice he reasoned that since it is a residential colony none of the residents wanted to drink in a bar nearer to their homes and they preferred to do it far off and that’s why nobody ever put a bar there in that locality.

Whether his reasoning was correct or not, the truth was that both “RAAT” and “Chitti’s Bar” flopped with the difference that me being a part of the spotlit film industry everyone knows about my failure but no one except me knew about Chitti’s failure.

In the run up to the Iraq war so many countries and people including Americans were against America attacking Iraq. They all questioned on the validity of the information of Saddam Hussain stock-piling weapons of mass destruction and they said that innocent women and children will die in the war. But nobody ever had a doubt that America might not be able to conquer Iraq.

After the attack happened, the war got over in a week, Saddam and sons ran and the US President gave a speech with the backdrop of a banner screaming “Mission accomplished” and now 6 years later the war is still continuing with no end in sight and US is not knowing how to get out of Iraq without making it worse than before. If less than 200 Americans died in the war before they over-threw Saddam’s regime, more than 12,000 Americans died since then and are continuing to die.

The interesting point here is that let alone a super power think tank like America, not even a single so-called super opponents of the war including statesmen and common people I remember hearing or reading who envisioned this post-war scenario. But now after the fact even a street corner paanshop guy sniggers at America’s flop. I call it “America ki Aag”.

Coming to films, over the years I meet so many people who ask me in surprise how I could have made a such and such flop. What these questioners don’t realize is that a film is made on a series of decisions taken over a long period of time and each and every one of those decisions will be taken on different days and different periods of time and also influenced by a set of certain very specific factors relevant to a particular context at that time.

Otherwise why would any filmmaker however good or bad he is, work for more than a year and some times for years together on a film which every tom, dick and harry viewer realizes in 2 hours is crap.

The reason for that is, there are a hell of a number of things which can go wrong between the intent of why one wanted to make the film to the execution of the said film to how the film is realized eventually to how the film is perceived by others namely the audience who again are coming from a different time period and a mindset and influenced by factors markedly different from the mindset of what the filmmaker thought in years ago.

I have always maintained that all my flops are by intent and all my hits are by accident. That is because any of us will only act upon anything in life if and only we are convinced on our intent but what comes out of it and what works in, what comes out of it and what does not is rarely in control.

Sunil Gavaskar once told someone that if he failed in a match and when he comes back to the pavilion even the attendant removing his knee pads will comment that he should not have hit a so and so ball. It is another matter that the attendant might not even know how to hold a bat but he will feel free to advise and give gyan to Gavaskar since he flopped.

Coming back to Chitti, believing in his reasons his family backed him financially. If the bar was a hit he would have been called a visionary and since it flopped now he is remembered as being blindly stupid by his family who could not afford the loss he got them into, whereas in my video library case my family thought I was being blindly stupid and hence they did not support me financially and I became a visionary since the video library became a hit. But with what reason I intended the library to be successful was not the reason why it worked and with what reason Chitti intended was not the reason why his bar failed. So Chitti failed on his intent and I succeeded by accident.

We all think that we live by intent and die by accident but whether any of us have the courage to accept it or not, whether to others or even to ourselves, the truth is that we all live by accident and die by intent.

Note: Thanks to Ram Gopal Varma for giving us special permission to republish his blogs in idlebrain.com (visit rgvzoomin.com to visit Ram Gopal Varma's blog)

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