The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : In this film, Chennai's autodrivers are cool

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 13, 2006

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

In this film, Chennai's autodrivers are cool

N. Venkateswaran

Ad filmmakers Pushkar and Gayatri hit on the idea ofAutoa year ago Ad filmmakers Pushkar and Gayatri'sAutois a tribute to the city

SHOT IN REAL LOCATIONS: The husband-wife team of filmmakers Pushkar (second from right) and Gayatri (second from left) with actor Arya (extreme right) on the sets of `Auto'.

CHENNAI: Autorickshaw drivers won't win any popularity contests. Especially in Chennai.

The average citizen has zillions of complaints about their attitude, tampered-with meters, fleecing and crass language. And we don't even want get into a discussion of their driving skills.

But Pushkar and Gayatri don't think so. "The autodrivers in Chennai are very different from those in Mumbai or Delhi. They have a cool attitude. Even though they work under trying circumstances, they have a keen sense of humour."

And the husband-wife duo decided to take this rather unusual fascination to its logical conclusion by making a film about autodrivers.

When it all started

The ad filmmakers hit on the idea a year ago while returning home from a friend's house late at night. Their bike broke down and they had to hail an autorickshaw. Their chatty driver entertained them with quite a few interesting tales about his tribe.

"Why not make a film on autodrivers?" they thought. It wasn't much of a surprise that they decided to call it `Auto'.

The movie, which stars Arya, Pooja and Lal, is being produced by A.P. Film Gardens.

Nirav Shah is the cinematographer, and the music is by G.V. Prakash.

Pushkar and Gayatri are perhaps the only husband-wife team of filmmakers not only in Kollywood, but in the country.

They met as students of visual communications at Loyola College, and have worked together ever since.

Working together

"We edited the college newspaper together, did a lot of freelance work while in college, and have also worked together on all our jobs. That is why we had no problem; we are very comfortable working together," says Pushkar.

After passing out from college in 1998, they moved into the world of advertising, making films.

Two years later, they got an offer to work on the multi-crore budget Chiranjeevi-starrer Return of the Thief of Baghdad.

They started off as assistant directors and then took charge of the motion control wing. "After that, I handled motion control for Kamal Haasan's Aalavandhan and Gayatri worked on a French movie," says Puskhar.

Their next step was a trip to the U.S. where they took courses in filmmaking. Coming back, they resumed making ad films, and got married in 2004.

After getting inspired to make a feature film, they started work on the story and developed it together. "The screenplay went through a couple of drafts, and then we worked on the dialogues with a friend," says Gayatri.

They took the bound script to Arya in February when he was doing Pattiyal, and he liked the story so much he said it would be his next project.

"We wanted Arya to do it as he is a natural charmer. He has local appeal, and we wanted to utilise this feature," she says.

In love with the city

The filmmakers love their city "in spite of the heat, dust and corruption," and think "autos are the symbol of Chennai."

Their movie has been shot in real locations in the city, and "the idea of Chennai is there throughout."

"We always wanted to make interesting cinema based on the common man's life in Chennai. There are good movies about Mumbai, but none about Chennai. We wanted to showcase Chennai — its sights, sounds and colours.

"The city has an old world charm in spite of globalisation and it becoming increasingly cosmopolitan. That is what we wanted to bring out; this film cannot happen anywhere except in Chennai," the duo says.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail