Interview With Singeetham Srinivasa Rao

A good horse runs even at the shadow of a whip and true to the adage, at 79, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao is the most agile, trendiest and wittiest director around in the Telugu film industry. He subscribes only to The Hindu, reads the rest of the newspapers and film news, gossip on the net, is on Facebook, has an email and a huge net work of friends and informers and is constantly multi-tasking till his eyes droop.

A film writer says if you happen to call him to inform about the prospects of a just released film, the senior most director will give you some extra info about the film you didn't know. He is that fast in gathering news. Singeetham says that people take a brief rest if they are tired at work, but he switches onto some other work to beat the stress and monotony if he senses boredom creeping in.

Young at heart, bereft of ego and open to criticism, he narrates a story with a childlike enthusiasm. At a time when audiences sought comfort in familiarity, Singeetham touched all genres and gave a hit to various stars despite the built-in aesthetic limitations of his stories. Variety is his second name, never follows formula and panders to no one.

"To put it crudely, formula is like eating what you vomit. Formula runs not because people like it, it's just that they are addicted to it like opium," says the director. Blessed with a beatific smile, the grand old man says he is young at heart and loves challenges. When he made Pushpak, lot of people called him and asked him to make something similar.

He was aghast, he replied them with a futuristic Aditya 369 and a folk tale named Bhairava Dweepam. He doesn't want to reveal much about his upcoming film Jesus being made with children. Pawan Kalyan is instrumental in bringing out the story of Jesus in the film which is replete with sanctity, purity and charm.

"You would feel a lot of violence in Jesus, it is acted by children and will be seen by adults," he adds. Next on his mind is Traffic Jam which is a big hero subject and finally his dream project a musical film.

He asserts that he does make different films but not so different, highly psychological or Freudian that people don't understand. He is trying to get a better percentage of success. He adds, “Why is Monalisa only popular and not other Da Vinci works, similarly a different film has a better chance of success." As he says this he is winding up writing a full-length play, he is truly a master at multi-tasking.