'I am standing on the shoulders of a giant'

Twenty-four hours before Rohan Sippy's debut film Kuch Naa Kaho is unleashed at the marquee, the director is not getting much sleep. He is at his office in Juhu, a northwestern suburb of Mumbai, which he shares with his illustrious father Ramesh Sippy, who made classics like Sholay, Saagar, Shakti. This is Rohan's story:

We hoped to make a film that is different from the usual.

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I hope I have managed to go beyond teenybopper romances. My protagonists, Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, aren't teenyboppers. It is not a film with a message, nor is it an offbeat film. It is not even a typical love story. With ticket prices touching the sky, no one would go for just another romance.

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All I will say is, audiences will be pleasantly surprised when they see what I have done with Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai. I don't want to build unnecessary expectations beyond that.

Being the son of Ramesh Sippy is a huge privilege. To be the son of the director of Sholay and to have Amitabh Bachchan's son in my first film is a double honour. It would have been so much harder to make my film if I weren't his [Ramesh Sippy's] son!

I am standing on the shoulders of a giant. I saw Sholay when I was four. I must have seen it at least 40 times. No one else could make a film as big as Sholay, not even my father. Sholay is now an epic. It is quoted as the gospel of mainstream filmmaking. For me, there is no question of achieving that kind of success.

I look on comparisons [between my father and me] as a privilege. 

As the producer [of Kuch Naa Kaho], Dad never put any kind of pressure on me. I was more anxious about delays than my father. I couldn't have hoped for a better producer. Do you know he chose not to make his own film until I completed mine?

As for Abhishek, he and I share a lot of common ground. We both spent a lot of time away from home. We went to the same school in Switzerland, though he was my junior.

I saw Abhishek as my lead character. I knew I could connect with him on a personal and creative level.

It never felt like work on the sets. We were always on the same page. Abhishek's presence really helped during the shooting. He is as much his own person as I am. We worked towards making his character utterly believable. He has such dignity as an actor. Eventually, he went beyond what I had written.

Aishwarya, too, is far removed from [her role in] Devdas. We have worked towards making her less exotic, more 'everyday'. In Devdas, she was almost lyrical. In my film she plays a contemporary working woman. I think she is quite underrated. She understands her own personality and the camera very well. Her chemistry with Abhishek is the film's USP.

As told to Subhash K Jha

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