Aravinnd Iyer says the sure-shot way to not find work is to say you need to be paid as an actor

Aravinnd Iyer had a good start in Kannada cinema with films like Kahi and Kirik Party, but 8 years hence, he does not have much of a filmography to show as follow up. There was Bheemasena Nala Maharaja that came directly on OTT during the pandemic, as well as his web series debut, Hate U Romeo. A cameo in Tatsama Tadbava and then, weeks ago, his big screen launch as a leading man, Bisi Bisi Ice Cream. The Arvind Sastry directorial did not work at the box office, even though Aravinnd’s performance as a down on luck cab driver was quite good. What went wrong?

“My film choices, if you look at it in retrospect in terms of what’s been a hit, then it should have started with Kahi, Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu, Kirik Party, Bheemasena Nalamaharaja and then 777 Charlie. I had not spoken about this, but since it’s come out in an interview, Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu was supposed to be my film and one night before it went on floors everything changed. That was supposed to be my filmography, which, due to various turn of events did not happen. Technically, I had chosen scripts that were potential hits,” says Aravinnd.

But the film’s slipping out of his hands apart, the actor says that one sure-shot way of not finding work in the Kannada film industry is saying that you need to be paid as an actor. “I don’t do free work. I have lost out on big projects for this reason, but I have no regrets. I will not work on a janitor’s salary,” he says. Is the reason for this abysmal payment structure put down to a lack of marketability for Aravinnd? “If the story has marketability, you don’t need a hero with that range. It’s when you are not confident in your story that the market value of an actor comes to play. Honestly, audiences don’t come to the theatres to see an actor’s face,” counters Aravinnd.

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The actor says that he is not unreasonable in his demand. “Give me a respectable amount is all I am saying. If you are paying your crew well and spend lavishly on technical aspects, including lights, cranes, cameras, and then say that your lead hero is not effective enough to get that much a payment, then you don’t know my work ethic. I am okay to take that stance; I’m educated enough to earn elsewhere,” says Aravinnd.

His failure as an artiste, concedes Aravinnd, is not in his craft, but his ability to raise money. “I have tried and failed miserably. I have written scripts and tried to raise money for it and have not been able to get anywhere. I am the kind of person who will tell a producer exactly how much it will cost and not make false promises of a finished product in, say, Rs 30 lakh, and then overshoot the budget multi-fold, so much so that it then takes them years to arrange that money, complete it and release it. I will not go to a financer, because that is bad business model. I am looking at raising my corpus from corporates, which I have not made much headway with yet, but I am sure I will get there and make a film,” says the aspiring filmmaker, whose debut venture behind the camera was a Sundance Film Festival award-winning sports documentary called 175 Grams.

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Has he considered taking his script to another industry perhaps? “I had an offer from a production house for one of my scripts, which they wanted to make with Dhanush in the lead. I was okay with that, but it would take four years to get his dates, so, I preferred to keep it with me and look at other options. See, I have been asking for a relevant budget in the Rs 5-6 cr range and with each passing year, the cost is going to go up. I have not hit the nail for that and that is completely on me,” Aravinnd admits.

The actor and aspiring filmmaker adds that he is keen to make his films in Kannada though. “All the stories I have are inspired by my growing up years in Bengaluru. My thinking and emotional language is Kannada, so, I would want at least my first film to be in Kannada. I have written something in Hindi-English, but to take it to a scale I want it to, I have to show some work – proof of concept; not just as an actor, but also as a writer and director. Also, as an entrepreneur, the biggest gap in the market is in Kannada; it’s a wide gap. Just look at the content in Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil and the number of people vying to be in the top 2-5% percent of the industry; I feel the biggest gap in that is Kannada. Your chance of making it to that segment is more in Kannada and at a lesser cost. If you mount a good enough project here with marketing, your chance of getting picked up is more and with lesser competition,” argues Aravinnd.

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As an example, he cites the success of Hostel Hudugaru Bekagiddare. “They spent ridiculous amounts on marketing and they had a great campaign. They knew what their costs were for recovery and made 2-3 times of it. It is considered a hit in that tier and a hit film is usually in the top 2-5 per cent and that’s my goal. This low to mid-cap films used to be the cash cows in Kannada cinema before the pandemic. That has almost vanished. After the pandemic, Badava Rascal came in that segment and made money, as did Garuda Gamana Vrishabha Vahana. There is data to validate what I am saying and that is my logic,” he says.

Aravinnd firmly believes that the mid-cap segment is where one can make a theatrical impact and have return on investment. “That’s the gap in the market as these are few and far between. The market is, right now, flooded with low cap movies, but you don’t see them making money. They may break even because of OTT, which may take them up to 2 years, but eventually they all do. If you make a low-cap film under 1-1.5 crore, it will take you 2 years to break even. How many theatrically viable stories have we seen at that cost point? I haven’t; it takes a certain amount of input to make a theatrically viable film. You need to have something larger than life in the story so that people are enamoured to come to the theatres to watch it,” he opines.