The latest episode in our series called ‘One Film, One Facet,” where we speak to ONE person responsible for ONE facet of ONE film. This time, the film is Mersal, and the facet is production.
Hema Rukmani, the producer of Mersal, explains what a producer does. How the company (Thenandal Studios Limited) makes decisions about which films to produce. How Mersal, the Vijay blockbuster directed by Atlee (and with music by AR Rahman), came about. She speaks about her involvement in the various stages of making the film, and about the controversies that came about. About the pluses and minuses of making a mega-movie like Mersal versus making several smaller films for the same amount of money. About what it takes to keep a studio running for over four decades. About the studio’s shift from small films to big productions like Kaatru Veliyidai, Mersal and the upcoming Sanghamitra. Finally, she talks about the lessons learned from Mersal.
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Baradwaj Rangan 
Raju
November 23, 2017
Hey BR! Great work with the thought-provoking questions. Do you ever find it a bit awkward when the person you’re interviewing makes a reference to your reviews and write-ups?
Like when Hema made a reference to your Mersal review (which wasn’t exactly all-praise towards the film), saw that awkward smile from you when she referenced that 😝
On that note, have your reviews ever stopped you from being able to directly tackle issues you had with a movie when discussing it with the creative team behind it?
Is that perhaps something you would consider when interviewing the script writers (/directors) of such projects? Or do you intend on keeping things fairly diplomatic to maintain good relations for future opportunities for interviews?
Great work as always!
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JalabulaJugs
November 23, 2017
BR, This has to be one of your weakest interviews, more because of the interviewee than yourself. I could see you trying to cajole honest, insights and admissions but to me the answers were really over-diplomatic and boring. Nearly spilled my coffee when she said Mersal had good content!
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Akash Balakrishnan
November 23, 2017
Your question about the lack of screenwriters in Tamil cinema is worth a thousand discussions. It was left partially answered by her. However, had to agree with her point about the director’s vision influencing the quality of the movie. Look at Hollywood, recent disasters such as bVs, Justice league (sorry for quoting only comic book movies. They are big disasters) suffer from the same scenario. Though they aren’t good scripts, the executions were worse compared to the screenwriter’s vision. As your mentioned in your review/rumination, bVs is an example of filmmaking showmanship. But the critics were true about Snyder making the film too dark, more than the script demanded, which made the movie intolerable. Justice league, especially, is a great mess with two directors fucking up the overall tone of the story(was there one ?). Joss Whedon made it worse by his reshoots with a conflicting vision to that of Snyder’s. This also creates a conflict in their shared universe. Whedon made Gal’s Wonder Woman a romantic interest to batman, sexualized the amazons and made Gal look like a hot hookup kinda chick and disrespected her positin in the tean with the flash constantly flirting with her and later fall on her breasts, while Patty made her a symbol of hope and inspiration in her origin story – an example of complementary views of the writer and director resulting in a good movie.
Her(Hema) point about the director and producer working together also applies to the concept of a screenwriter collaborating with a filmmaker. “Most screenwriter are directorial talents themselves” – she said. I partially agree on that. Can you imagine a movie like Locke made by someone else ?
Unfortunately in Tamil cinema it is a badge if honour for filmmakers to roll – kathai, thiraikathai, vasanam, iyakkam,.. By xxyy – in the opening credits. And those who are mature enough to understand that a good story matters despite credits – eg: Gvm, Mani ratnam – don’t find good collaborators at their level
To conclude, it greatly depends on the similarity of tastes and views of the collaborators. You can either create a Pather Panchali or destroy it by collaborating.
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Niranjan
November 23, 2017
Somehow, her answer when you asked about the lack of proper roles for women in Tamil film of late, was a non-answer! Maybe it is true (and even that seems a wishy-washy excuse of an answer) that there are certain characters that have a place in cinema, but the larger question is , why then do film makers not think of anything beyond this stock characterization? You seemed too nice to not pin her down further on this!
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AK
November 27, 2017
Even though she had a smart answer for arm candy female leads in tamil movies, I can’t seem to remember a handsome male character in a Tamil rom-com movie who appears as just that. Some english movies do seem to have that, for instance, Meg Ryan s fiance in Sleepless in Seattle or Chris Hemsworth’scharacter in Ghostbusters was handsome and dumb whose main purpose was comic relief and the character seemed to be a deliberate caricature of the dumb blonde secretary. But I can’t remember a tamil movie that has done this well, unless you count, say the America Mappillai movie trope which exists to purely give a romance movie some narrative tension (Alaipayuthe and Meyaadha Maan).
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Bharath Vijayakumar
November 29, 2017
AK: I think Arya in Inji Idupazhagi might qualify as one
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