10 Burning Questions We Hope RGV’s Biopic Answers, Film Companion

Ram Gopal Varma deserves a biopic. No two ways about that. Few artists have managed to be both the best and the worst in his field, both a master and a joke in what he does, in a career spanning nearly three decades. But maybe it shouldn’t be produced by Varma himself, and it should definitely not star him. Unfortunately that’s the only Ram Gopal Varma biopic we are getting. Ramu, a three-parter, promises to be, as the filmmaker puts it on Twitter, “very, very controversial”.  Honestly we can’t wait. Will Ramu finally end the draught of good biopics in Indian cinema? Is it going to make us revaluate the misunderstood genius of his more recent films like Climax and Power Star? We have some genuine–and some not so genuine–questions that we hope the biopic demystifies.

1 Did RGV simply get so bored of being good that he deliberately decided to be bad instead? Is this inexplicable phase – 15 years and counting – maybe a part of some ambitious and pathbreaking social experiment where he turns his whole career into a case study only so that his life becomes the ultimate work of art? Has he actually forgotten how to make films or is he just pretending to forget? Are we already part of his masterpiece and we don’t even know it?

2 Who is his target audience for films such as Climax, Naked Nanga Nagnam?

3 How did people perceive RGV when he first made his entry in the Hindi film industry with Rangeela? How did those perceptions change through the years, especially when his films started failing. Have people written him off or do they still expect him to make a comeback?

4 At what point did RGV “course correct” and turn from a filmmaker into a “Company”. Will the film explore the trigger?

5 His own biopic? In which he act as yourself? Isn’t that a bit too much of self-indulgence, even by his standards?

6 What is the last film he felt really proud of making? What is the last film he watched that he wished he had made?

7 Many artists say that they instinctively understand whey they are working on a dud but they continue to put in their best as a professional. RGV has had dozens of commercial and critical failures.  With any of these, did he sense that the project was derailing as he was working on it?  Like with RGV ki Aag.  Or did he always believe that he had made a good film?

8 Why is there a big protruding ass in the poster for Arnab : The News Prostitute? Is he planning on Mia Malkova-ing a newsroom story?

9 His films sexualize women so much, the men rarely if ever are, are you afraid of isolating them as an audience entirely?

10 Also, who was his one true love…Urmila, Antara or Priyanka Kothari?

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