April 6, 1998

With a budget of Rs 20 crore, Tamil director Shankar's latest film is the costliest Indian production to date.

By Anand Natarajan and K M Thomas

Cavorting around the Leaning Tower of Pisa in Italy, posing next to the Statue of Liberty in New York, dancing in the depths of the Grand Canyon, flouncing about California's orange orchards, singing atop the Great Wall of China -- you name it and former Miss World and green-eyed stunner Aishwarya Rai and newcomer Prashant are there. And they aren't taking you on a world tour, merely shooting a song for what is probably the Indian film industry's biggest venture ever -- Jeans.

With a Rs 20 crore spent on its production, mechanical engineer turned director Shankar's latest offering is already making waves. As is the "around the world in one song" formula that the director of three major hits -- Gentleman (Rs 3 crore), Kadalan (Rs 5 crore) and Indian (Rs 7 crore) -- has adopted.

The film's storyline isn't much to write home about -- an eligible bachelor, NRI hero Prashant falls in love with a phirangi (foreign)-looking but very much Indian girl Aishwarya.

But Shankar tries to make up for a tired plot with some superb special effects. The Kodambakkam grapevine has it that jeans is the Indian film industry's most expensive project ever. Its mega budget simply beats all Bollywood records. The film's producer Ashok Amritraj, a successful Hollywood director of The Hunt for Red October fame (it cost $25 million or Rs 7.5 crore approximately to make and starred actor Sean Connery), is evasive about the budget. But his track record gives credence to the speculation that Jeans involves big money. The project is also Amritraj's first foray into Tamil filmdom. The movie has all the ingredients of a blockbuster -- exotic locations, special effects, technical brilliance and A.R. Rahman's music.

While filming in the Grand Canyon, the film crew had to hire helicopters for the shoot. This cost a packet. Especially since the crew went around the world in 45 days -- the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon in Iraq. Even the Taj Mahal back home.

After three hits in a row, Shankar's Jeans promises to be the dessert after the main course. But why the unusual title? "I was attempting to portray rollicking youth in the film," he says. This might not sound too convincing, but for the fact that he has a penchant for the unique -- like transforming actor Kamalahaasan into a 70-year-old man in Indian and using a fibreglass bus in Kadalan.

"When it is a Shankar film, the audience comes in with great expectations," he says rather pompously, "I have to live up to them. This time I have shown the seven wonders of the world." He also lined up a hundred junior artistes for months and insisted on a single song sequence featuring the seven Wonders.

Shankar turned out to be a bit of a wonder himself in Los Angeles. The local police had to be called in to control the crowds which had come to see the shooting. And when Shankar was in New York, the popular American star Michael Salmon came with his wife Luciana Balusia (the Italian actress who acted in the James Bond film Thunderbolt) to see the shooting. When Salmon introduced Shankar to his wife as the director of Jeans, she couldn't believe it. "He looks like a baby," she exclaimed. Says Shankar, with a chuckle: "After this, I seriously thought of growing a beard to look more mature. But I gave up the idea soon because it refused to grow on my face."

What exactly makes the baby-faced Shankar tick? Director Bharati Raja says Shankar can blend extravaganza with aesthetics. However, there are critics who describe his works as techno-fire with zero artistic finesse. Shankar dismisses their comments as unfair to his art and claims that his entire crew commends his meticulous efforts to achieve perfection.

It wasn't an easy climb to the top for Shankar, though. In his mid-30s now, the turning point in Shankar's life came after the 1982 strike in the Halda company, which rendered him jobless overnight. In desperation, he decided to take a shot at acting. But after marginal roles in a couple of flop films, he gave up acting altogether and decided instead to concentrate on directing.

His inspiration came from music channels like Channel V and MTV with their technical excellence. Shankar duplicated the formula to come up with spectacular special effects. However, for Jeans, the special effects were created by the Pentafour company in Hollywood. With Rahman's fusion music and choreographer Raju Sundaram's mesmerising movements, the music in the film promises to be evocative. As for the exotic costumes, they're a visual treat. Characters change their outfits as frequently as if they were models with barely two seconds left to go on to the ramp.

When asked whether Jeans would end up as a wonder of the Tamil film world, Shankar just says, "Please wait till April 14." The film is scheduled for release on the Tamil New Year's day. As for becoming India's wonder filmmaker, he says, "I am not sure I can last in this field for more than 10 years." At least on that score, Shankar the showman is modest.

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