India Masala

Happy Birthday Rajnikanth

Blame it on “Robot“. Last year, when Rajnikanth’s film opened in cinemas, not only did it become a huge hit, it also unleashed another pop culture phenomenon on the rest of India — Rajnikanth jokes.

Soon, it was all you would hear — in local trains, on your Facebook feed, over lunch in the office cafeteria and in your SMS inbox — each instance starting with: this is the best Rajnikanth joke ever.

You have to hand it to them though, most of them were pretty funny, even though they were copied from the Chuck Norris brand of jokes. And what they did is reinforce to a whole lot of people who don’t live in south India — what a phenomenon Rajnikanth is, if you didn’t know it already.

My favourite one is: Rajnikanth wanted to play cricket, so the rain was delayed due to start of play (or something to that effect).

And of course, today, on Rajnikanth’s birthday, the one doing the rounds is “Happy Rajnikanth, Birthday”.

Which is your favourite Rajnikanth joke?

Six-step guide to making India’s most expensive film

Tamil filmmaker Shankar’s last project “Sivaji – The Boss” was reported to have a production budget of a billion rupees and his latest “Robot” is being pegged at 1.5 billion rupees, which would make it India’s most expensive film ever.

Starring Rajnikanth and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, “Robot” is set for worldwide release on October 1. Here’s a step-by-step guide to making India’s most expensive film – from director Shankar himself.

BRING IN AN UNKNOWN ENTITY “I had made five films. I thought I should go in for a different film. But how different can you get? Perhaps I could have done something spiritual or about ghosts, something mythological perhaps. Maybe a film on non-living objects would work and what inanimate object could be better than a robot? If the main character is an inanimate object, everything is different, everything is interesting.”

GET THE BIGGEST STAR

“I wanted to do this film in 2000 with Kamal Hassan and Preity Zinta. But our dates didn’t match. Even then, the film had a huge budget. Every time I would take out the script, dust it, make some changes and the dates would remain a problem. When I finished “Sivaji – The Boss”, I told myself I absolutely had to make this film. It was now or never. Once again, it didn’t work out with Kamal sir for some reasons and since I had done “Sivaji” with Rajnikanth, I asked him. He agreed immediately. He told me – ‘if you have confidence in you, I am ready.’”

GET A GOOD PRODUCER “Making this film was like climbing Mount Everest. But I told myself that if I thought like that I would achieve nothing. I told my team that we would take it one day at a time. This was always going to be a big-budget film — the animatronics had never been used in an Indian film, we had a big star in the film and we didn’t want to compromise on anything. We had all the top technicians working on (it). In the beginning, another company was supposed to produce the film but they had financial problems mid-way through. Sun heard about our project and they had confidence in Rajni sir and my team, so they agreed.”

SHOOT A KILLER CLIMAX

How Rajni became Robot

We Mumbaiwallahs hear so much about the big guns down south – Rajnikanth, Kamal Hassan, Mohanlal, Chiranjeevi, etc, but hardly get to hear them.

So of course, I didn’t know Rajnikanth has such a great sense of humour, in addition to being a huge star and a great actor. The veteran charmed everyone off their pants at the music launch of his new film “Robot”, and had the audience in splits with his explanation of how he came to do the film.

“If I hadn’t known Shankar (the director) before, I would have said no to the film, because it is a very tough role. You Kamal Hassan was to do the role initially, and even Shah Rukh Khan was approached, but ‘daane daane pe likha hai khane wale ka naam’ (every grain has the name of the person who is going to eat it),” he said, leading to hoots and claps from the audience.

I wonder if I have seen so much candid humour from any Bollywood superstar.

He described “Robot” as a never before seen experience in Indian cinema, and said he “guaranteed” that it would be a great film.

Touted as the most expensive film made in India (with an official budget of 1.5 billion rupees), “Robot” also has special effects similar to the one used in the Oscar winning “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, and of course the presence of former Miss World Aishwarya Rai as the film’s leading lady.

But that is not why it will be a hit, at least according to Rajni.