OPM appears in the Thursday edition of Bangalore BIAS and previews a Friday release

OPM*
Presents – Ram Gopal Varma has a tummy ache


It is a slithering, sultry, whiney bas*ard of a night in the summer of 2006 at Hyderabad. In the dark underbelly of Ram Gopal Varma’s Factory headquarters in the city, RGV has begun to suspect that the biryani he is stuffing himself with isn’t very fresh. ‘Why?’ you ask. Well, the dark innards of his belly have begun to ache. The pain isn’t discomfiting enough to make him stop working, but bad enough to send him regular reminders of its existence.

Why is he at work so late you ask? Ever since his film Company released to a rare combination rave reviews and big box office collections, his company has only churned out one flop after another. His financiers have told him that they will no longer play dice with their money on experimental films that explore just the kind of things that Karan Johar’s films do not.

But just what can RGV do? He can’t make straight-laced romances like Johar does. (Lace he feels, is not for straight men) He is only interested in underbelly stories. Preferably dark underbellies.
Having directed or produced films about the Underbelly of marriage (My Wife’s Murder – Anil Kapoor’s life goes kaput when he whacks an irritating Sunita Krishnamurthy), the Underbelly of a peaceful house (Kaun - Urmila Matondkar does a Tendulkar on everyone visiting her house), the Underbelly of a Ghost (Bhoot – How to reboot your house out of a ghost) and the Underbelly of an Underbelly story (Shiva – A remake of his own film) he still aches to make more experimental films, on the way to his life’s ambition of making a classic on the Underbelly of a Belly Dancer.

But aching bellies be damned, all that the audience seems to want is Karan Johar’s stories that concentrate on the chest..er the heart. Romances, with all their skippety-twirly-go-round delight, bah! From RGV’s point of view it looks like the heart is the only anatomical unit that seems to translate metaphorically to hit films in Bollywood. (On a separate note, the chest and parts under the belly are well covered, or uncovered by the porn industry)

Now with his financiers all but backing out completely, RGV is in trouble.
But he feels energized, as he is at his best as a storywriter/director while he is uncomfortable; like the sort of living-the-story exercise that some actors go through to improve their performances.
Now with things falling apart around and inside him he feels that, finally, cause-effect variables have tossed the coin in his favour and his pièce de résistance will soon be engulfed in a flurry of awards and adulation.
As soon as he comes up with his pièce de résistance, that is.

By the wee hours of the night he figures out a way to make underbelly movies which fetch an initial. (Initial, Box Office terminology - Unlike the postprandial cigarette which is always satisfying and more like post coitus analysis which could go either way)
Remake a classic and season it with underbelly sauce! The Factory engine goes into overdrive to decide which classic Bollywood film to remake.

After considering films like Mughal-e-azam (rejected as Dilip Kumar refuses to play Akbar), Mr. India (rejected as Anil Kapoor refuses to play Mogambo) and Baap Numbri toh Beta dus numbri (rejected as Shakti Kapoor refuses to play, except on a couch), the Factory finalises on Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay after a call to Amitabh Bachchan.
Amitabh will play Gabbar Singh. And ensure an initial.

RGV works day and night, stuffing himself with umpteen biryanis-gone-wrong, firing up his innards to complete a masalafied script for the New Sholay. He will have Malayalam superstar Mohanlal play a Thakur equivalent, mouthing immortal lines in exquisitely Malayalam flavoured Hindi. Lines like “Loehhaa geram hei, maar tho hataudah”! Sushmita Sen will play Radha the widow, but will dress in black and will want Gabbar to hang as much as Thakur does and Saambha doesn’t, thus making her a vengeful modern day spiderwoman, albeit of the black widow kind.
He gets to the place where Ajay Devgan’s Veeru is telling Basanti “Basanti, in kutton ke samne salsa mat karna” while Amitabh’s Gabbar is laughing at his bad dialogue delivery when RGV gets a notice from Ramesh Sippy’s office saying that none of the names from the original can be used in his remake.
The uncomfortable setback rejuvenates RGV who is tired of Amitabh’s silly Gabbar-grin and he gets down to reworking the script again.

Dhano the horse tranforms into an auto called Laila with low horsepower and Hema Malini’s Basanti becomes a tepid Ghungroo played by one of RGV’s Urmila-clone muses. Veeru becomes Heero (???!!?) and Jai becomes Raj (a tribute to SRK’s loverboy roles). Thakur becomes Narasimha, an encounter cop whose fingers are chopped off by Gabbar(now Babban Singh), who can’t get over the fact that he can’t give anyone the middle finger in Bombay’s peak hour traffic.

Will RGV, who has renamed the movie to echo his perennial stomach condition succeed in breaking his underbelly jinx in the same week that Bhojpuri superstar Ravi Kissen releases his Ravi Kissen ke Jhaag (soapva banaike ghar ley jae)

Find out when you watch RGV’s Aag releasing tomorrow. But don’t forget to carry some ENO.

* Objects in the Preview Mirror may appear sillier than they are.

Disclaimer: Characters in the above story are not based on any characters in the film. Any resemblance or humour is pure luck.