RGV shares unique bond with Vijayawada

Film director Ram Gopal Varma seems to share a unique bond with Vijayawada. It was this bustling city with a rich film culture that ignited the creative spark in Varma to take up movie-making on a serious note. Varma, as a student of Velagapudi Ramakrishna Siddhartha Engineering College in the early 80s, used to spend best part of the time frequenting film theatres.

“During my five years of stay in Vijayawada, my favourite theatre was Vijayalakshmi at Kanuru, situated close to my college. Whenever I had no money to watch a film, I used to stand outside the hall to listen to the sound track,” said Ram Gopal Varma, in a tete-a-tete with The Hindu during a visit to the city on Saturday to promote his new film ‘Raksha’.

“For watching English films, I used to set off to Leela Mahal, Navarang and Urvasi theatres. I used to walk from Kanuru to Leela Mahal, as I used to loath travelling in crowded city buses. Some of the films that struck me most were Jaws, The Man with a Golden Gun and Damien II. I watched the last one thirteen times. In fact, I used the opening sound track of Damien II in my Sarkar Raj,” said Varma. The ever-busy Besant Road and the Benz Circle were the most sought-after places for Varma for jay walking. “With friends I used to walk up and down Besant Road, just looking at the bright shops and, of course, the pretty girls,” said the maverick film director.

Varma said those days the popular restaurant was the Eagle bar and restaurant in Governorpet.Varma, while narrating many interesting episodes during his study in VRSEC, said it was a casual remark made by one of his friends by name Mohan Krishna, which inspired him to take up movie-making as a career. The friend remarked once that if he ever had money, he would make a film with Ram Gopal as director. “He saw the potential in me. I used to narrate the films that I watched to friends frame–by-frame in my own style. After watching the film, they used to tell me that my narration was better,” said Varma.