Srikanth Vissa.This is the name that is currently doing the rounds in the Telugu film industry. The prolific, young writer is churning eight projects this year (18 Pages, Khiladi, Pushpa and Pushpa 2, Puneet Rajkumar film (screenplay), Devil, a film with Sudheer Verma and a ravi Teja starrer Tiger Nageswar Rao. Srikanths’ first film released in 2014; It was a political thriller and when he narrated the story to the producer, he liked it and directed him to Chaitanya Dantuluri. He thus wrote dialogues for Basanthi. Currently, he is working on Sri Vishnu’s film with the same director titled Bhala Thandanana. The story is written by him. In a chat with Y.Sunita Chowdhary of Klapboardpost.com, Srikanth talks about his origins and states that re-writing scripts is not a waste of time, it enhances the writing skills.
“I was born and brought up in Kakinada but once I was done with my primary academics I was globe trotting. By the time I was 18 years old, I had written my first novel which was a crime thriller. That was barely an age to know about the publishing process, it was published by EMESCO. I never read books before I wrote the novel. Once my brother went through what I had written, and he suggested I read more to be a better writer. So I began reading and became a voracious reader. I like to read books but these days I am on Kindle (e-book). Even if I find ten minutes, I read. I was academically good and would always score 97 or 98 percent.” Srikanth had an urge to express himself from a very early age. So when he took to writing, the first person he showed it to was his brother. He went to Vijaywada to write an exam and took the opportunity to meet a publisher. He sent a copy to him and every month he would call him and ask if he read it. He was exasperated and said that they get books like that every other day, and it will take time for them to go through it. One day when he almost gave up, he got a call from them. After reaching Vijayawada to sign and declare he had written the book, the publishers wondered if he was really 18 years old. They were in disbelief that a young man could write so well like an established novelist. Srikanth adds, “It changed my perspective of life, the more books you read, you see the world in different ways. I finished engineering in Chennai and wrote the second book, it was published. Post that I didn’t write for eight years.
Did he travel, socialise, observe a lot? Where did he draw his ideas from? “Until recently, I didn’t believe that I could make a living with writing i.e even after my first film was released, I couldn’t register that I had already become a writer. The Tipping Point author Malcolm Gladwell ..said that a research was done on ten thousand people and that seventy percent who followed passion and chose career became millionaires. The rest who went after money didn’t prosper. Money is just a byproduct. I met very good people in the beginning of my career like Chaitanya Dantuluri for Basanthi. I took time to grasp the grammar of film writing, as I never saw enough films. Now I do watch films. The passion I had for reading books wasn’t there for cinema. When I first narrated a story to producer Konda Krishnam Raju, he liked the story and asked me where the interval was. I just went on and on. I was supposed to work on a film for Nani and now Sree Vishnu is doing it. I wrote Kittu Unnadu Jagrattha, dialogues for Venky Mama and Pushpa. I have written dialogues for Khiladi, 18 pages, Bhala Thandana, Rakshasudu 2 (Devil is my story).” Does Srikanth write for films that he doesn’t like too? “Venky Mama is a successful film but that is not the genre I prefer writing for. I did it for other reasons associated with the film. Now I decided that I will work only on scripts that I am comfortable with. It is a struggle working on genres that we don’t like. For the ones we like, there is a free flow of ideas and words,” he shares.
He adds, “Every time we write, we are conscious about what the audience will say, and will react. Most of the time we are aware of things that are not in our control. Our first target is to satisfy the director, he is the one who approves. Unless he approves you can’t go to the audience. We keep re-writing.” Srikanth is next working on a story that he had written. It is a historical/period film set in 1945, pre-independence era film and is being made with Kalyan Ram as the lead. He throws some light on it, “I studied world war based books. They already had a story and it is a story of a spy. I gave a different story as the backdrop was identical. It will go on floors soon.” Director Sukumar is known to be re-writing his scenes a zillion times, we ask him if that isn’t a waste of time. The writer says, “Sukumar does that for every film, he gives 20 drafts for every scene. It isn’t a waste of time, we keep writing the same script. We began writing for Pushpa in 2018 and I say with conviction that the director challenges himself, and us too. He keeps us interested. An important quality to be noted is that be the director or any technician, they are never happy with their work and they have the drive to outperform themselves. I am a story writer basically. Most directors come with their story and not many write dialogues, so they require dialogue writers. I do a lot of dialogue writing. I read newspapers regularly and I get a lot of story ideas from it. I do selective reading, I read what interests me but I don’t watch TV, it is an idiot box, we have to consume what is given to us.”
