�Big B and I have not had a single fight� - Ramu

[Interview by Joginder Tuteja]

Saturday, October 23, 2010

Criticism may continue to hit Ram Gopal Varma from all corners but he continues to move on, especially so when he strikes big time with a film like ''Rakta Charitra''which is now garnering rave reviews from all over. Now that he is charged up like never before, Ram is all set to make further inroads with the announcement of his next -''Department'', a film which he loves to describe as a ''hard hitting stylish action film'' which would be ''as
commercial as it gets''. The film boasts of a strong cast comprising of Amitabh Bachchan, Abhishek Bachchan, Sanjay Dutt and Riteish Deshmukh and is all set to go on floors early next year....

Ramu, why 'Department'?

'Department' is the other side of my own 'Company' (Ajay Devgn, Vivek Oberoi). While 'Company' was about the politics within underworld, 'Department' is about politics within the police organisation itself. In underworld, there is this single person, a Don, who is the boss. In police, it is not an individual who is the boss. It is the department itself which is.

This is the reason why I am coining 'Department' as a counterpoint of Don.

Meanwhile, the announcement of 'Department' has quashed all speculations around your fall out with Amitabh Bachchan. I guess obituaries, which were in circulation for close to a year, have been torn off all over again.

(Smiles) Media has done the job of doing so 100 times and it would continue to do so. It is no more a news for me when it is written that Mr. Bachchan and I have broken up. I know him since the time when we had not even started working on 'Sarkar'. This must have been more than seven years back. Ever since then, we haven't had a single fight or shared any hint of negativity. Let people write obituaries in whatever way they may wish. As long as we are creating drama for people to write, it's fine naa!

Coming back to the core of 'Department', how was it conceived?

It was due to some real life characters that I came across. A Police Officer once lamented to me on how his department just uses him and officers like him when the going is bad and once done just wants to wash its hands off. In fact another senior Police official also told me that - 'Even though the judiciary fails, we just can�t fake encounters. There is a difference between the police system's intention and an individual police officer's interpretation of it. If a few police officers due to their ego and greed try to become bigger than the system, they are bound to end up without their jobs or even in jails'.

While you have pretty much achieved mastery when it comes to films around underworld, case in point being cult flicks like 'Shiva', 'Satya' and 'Company', how confident are you about being the best person suited to bring to fore a story about the rig

Well, with my long understanding of both the psychological and logistical aspects of both the world of police and the underworld through my various contacts and sources in and outside the Police department over the past decade, I guess I should be able to tell the story correctly.

But don't you fear that stories like these may end up turning 'Department' into a documentary?

No. On the contrary, 'Department' would be one of my most stylised action films ever though it would carry an intrinsic hard hitting appeal to it as well. I would be beginning to shoot in the month of April.