A still from the video. (courtesy: Late Night with Seth Meyers)
SS Rajamouli's RRR has made the nation proud by winning the Golden Globes award in Los Angeles on Tuesday night (Wednesday morning in India). The film, starring Ram Charan and Jr NTR in the lead roles, won the Best Song trophy for the duo's energetic track Naatu Naatu, composed and directed by MM Keeravani. Ahead of the 80th edition of Golden Globes, Rajamouli appeared as a guest on comedian-actor-filmmaker Seth Meyers' talk show - Late Night With Seth Meyers. On his US talk show debut, Rajamouli spoke about the idea behind RRR, the audiences' response to the movie across the world, and how the film has a connection to Quentin Tarantino's 2009 hit Inglourious Basterds.
After welcoming SS Rajamouli on Late Night With Seth Meyers, the host revealed that his face was hurting while watching RRR for the first time on Netflix as he was “grinning ear to ear.” “I had never seen anything like this film,” said Seth Meyers and went on to ask the director about the crowd's response to his films on an “opening weekend” in India.
SS Rajamouli revealed, “The fans will be tearing up newspapers all through the night, making huge bags of confetti, and they come to the theatre. The moment the actor's name is displayed or the actors come in or they anticipate their favourite star is coming onto the screen, all the confetti will be thrown into the air. You won't see the picture, and they will be laughing and shouting so loudly, you can't hear the sound.” He added, “The projector operator, who is not supposed to meddle with the sound, will be increasing the DB of the sound but still you can't hear anything."
In RRR, SS Rajamouli designed action sequences that were beyond Seth Meyers' “wildest imagination,” the host said. When asked if his “goal was to shock and delight people” with RRR on the big screen, SS Rajamouli said, “Absolutely. The initial thing (confetti) happens for almost all the star films in the beginning. What I want to achieve is that happening even after the 10th day or the 11th day or happening outside my country in the US. Not the confetti part but the enjoying part. I want my audience to be astonished and really thrilled about the astonishment.”
SS Rajamouli then went on to reveal that he always wanted to make a film that will feature two megastars together. onscreen. “I always had an idea of doing a multi-starrer (film). Not just bringing the stars together but bringing two heroes together and making up some scenes with them. Sometimes, I'd also be in that scene in my head.” Referring to Quentin Tarantino's 2009 film, SS Rajamouli added, “When I saw Inglourious Basterds in the theatres and when Hitler was suddenly shot with a machine gun, I thought, ‘Wow. This is really wow.' We know he did not die that way but it is fiction. It is a fictional movie and you can take liberties with that.”
“We are on top of the world. I essentially make films for Indians in India and across the globe. When we started getting appreciation from the west, our initial thought was that, ‘These guys must be the friends of our Indians who went to watch the film'," Rajamouli said.
The director was also asked if Ram Charan and Jr NTR, two of the biggest stars of south cinema, were “onboard” to share the screen together. He replied, “I worked with them before and we had successes. Apart from the professional relationship, we have a personal friendship. They, too, are friends outside their professional area. So, when I wanted to do this multi-star film, I knew if I called one of them, he will call the other person before me. I just called both of them and invited them to my place, they didn't know about the other one coming so they were surprised to see each other there. I told them 'I have this idea and I am telling this to both of you at the same time. I want to do a multi-star film with you. Are you both up for it'?' I didn't tell them the story or what I wanted to make. It was a nice coup and it worked.”
Rajamouli laughed when asked about the title RRR. He continued, “That's not the title we had in mind. And when we announced that all three of us are going to be working together, we had to give out some names to refer to the picture. So, we took the first letters of our names – Rajamouli, Rama Rao and Ram Charan and we just put #RRR. It was not the actual title but the fans started with the title, they loved the title, and the distributors of our film loved the title. They said, ‘This is the title.' We didn't know what to do and said, ‘RRR can't be the title.' We have many languages in India…we put a competition for the audience, saying that expand the title. So, we have that title for each region, for each language. But the common title stayed as 'RRR'.”
Rajamouli also opened up about the attention the film has received in the West. Asked if the global response was “exciting,” he said, “Exciting is an understatement. We are on top of the world. I make films for Indians in India and across the globe. When appreciation came in from the West, our initial thought was that these are friends of Indians who have seen RRR. Then celebrities, story writers, film directors, so many people started tweeting about it, talking about the film on social media. They started championing the film by word of mouth, we thought okay this is growing much more. RRR was released on Netflix and was in the top 10 list for 10 consecutive weeks. It is the highest-grossing Indian film in Japan.”
You can watch the interview here:
RRR also stars Alia Bhatt, Ajay Devgn, Shriya Saran, Rahul Ramakrishna, Rajeev Kanakala, Samuthirakani and British actors Ray Stevenson, Alison Doody and Olivia Morris.