Hyderabad Blues
by aparnamalladi
Ok, so I am using Nagesh’s movie title as the heading. It is f**king unbearably hot in Hyderabad. I am sweating over my rewrite, I am sweating over my extreme boredom here, I am sweating over casting the role of Anushree’s dad in my film and I am just plain sweating like a pig.
Europe was a hectic ride. 5 days in Paris, 6 in Vienna, 6 in Frankfurt, 3 in Copenhagen and in Oslo. It would have been 5 days in London had the damn volcanic ash not happened. I had to endure another 10 days in London. Thankfully the weather was great and I met up with friends and saw movies from my host’s ‘Gene Hackman’ collection. Pierre came by for a couple of days and we met with a few casting directors in London and got a sense of the landscape. I may have to go back to London in a month to do some auditioning. Oh well.
The jetlag combined with the heat was killer once I got back. To top it off I got a cold. It was the pits. Well, I am back on track. And writing and meeting actors and getting to know the possibilities here.
Rewriting an entire script is a bitch. It feels bloated and now I have to slim the whole thing down. I am getting attached to scenes and characters and it is getting sticky. I try and avoid looking at the bloated screenplay by painting, or uploading my facebook with my trip pictures. I try and sleep off the depression sometimes. I try and watch Charlie Chaplin movies. Everything but deal with the elephant screenplay in front of me.
The latest diversion is to edit the experimental feature film I shot with Peggy Jo Pabustan in Canserrat. It won’t last long though and I am already worrying about what I will do after that.
I have so many things that I need to cross off on my film todo list. I have a stack of DVDs from all over Europe that I need to watch. I have to write a recommendation, listen to some CDs that Paul gave me in Vienna. I need to read Sofi Oksanen’s play that Bente send and check on the film rights. I have so much to do and in front of me is the rewrite of ‘The Anushree Experiments’. It’s intimidating to even look at Pierre’s notes from London. I need to slash the first act to 30 pages. And I need to add more funny into the damn script. It’s took much to ask of me really. Especially since I have been chewing on this screenplay for the last 2 years. Pierre told me that two drafts from now the screenplay better be ‘Pukka’. He is picking up the right Hindi words in Mumbai for sure.
The only good news is that there is now a Gym a couple of blocks from my apartment in Hyderabad. Looking forward to that for sure.
My next post will hopefully be more cheerful and will contain good news.
Aparna
Please don’t stop blogging…these entries are great to read. I’ve never previously read the perspective of a woman director in film (deepa mehta never offered much in her interviews…Bigelow is a different culture, so the experiences that inform her are a little different, if not completely). I love the self-examination in these posts.
Hi Devi (I presume),
Thanks for reading my blog. Hopefully I will increase the frequency of my blogs. I get lazy. Moreover I want to be authentic in my blogs and it’s always a battle on how authentic I can get without creating controversy or pissing someone off. I am sure I will take the gloves off sooner than later. Here’s to keeping it real.
Aparna