Veteran filmmaker and experienced line producer of many Hollywood movies in Sri Lanka, Chandran Rutnam’s ‘A Common Man’ is to be released in Hollywood as the first Sri Lankan movie to the world’s leading cinema industry. Rutnam been inspired by the 2008 Hindi film ‘Wednesday’ completely rewrote its script to make ‘A Common Man’ with [...]

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The Sundaytimes Sri Lanka

‘A Common Man’; first Lankan hit to Hollywood

By Susitha R. Fernando
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Veteran filmmaker and experienced line producer of many Hollywood movies in Sri Lanka, Chandran Rutnam’s ‘A Common Man’ is to be released in Hollywood as the first Sri Lankan movie to the world’s leading cinema industry.
Rutnam been inspired by the 2008 Hindi film ‘Wednesday’ completely rewrote its script to make ‘A Common Man’ with a strong conviction that his film with a new exciting plot would be accepted by Hollywood the biggest movie market in the world.
Chandran Rutnam spoke to TV Times on ‘A Common Man’ which is to be released in Hollywood in February and thereafter to the Sri Lankan cinemagoers in general.

Sir Ben Kingsley, Ben Cross and Chandran Rutnam

Sir Ben Kingsley as Common man

The thought of producing ‘TCM’ was conceived when I viewed the Bollywood production namely ‘A Wednesday’. Although the movie did not impress me its plot looked extremely good and unusual so I improved on it to give the world cinema an English version of the story I enjoyed, said Rutnam his reason for producing ACM.

The next step was to get an actor who could bring out the powerful character of ‘Common Man’ and Rutnam’s choice of the Academy award winner for ‘Gandhi’, Sir Ben Kingsley was given the green light by his producer Mano Nanayakkara of Asia Digital Entertainment

“Sir Ben Kingsley was extremely happy with the script and he was prepared to give 14 days to get prepare to shoot the film in Sri Lanka. We wanted to get somebody of equal standard to play the opposite role of Deputy Inspector of Police (DIG) and after considering a list of names we finally selected Ben Cross who acted in Chariot of Fire,” saying the above Rutnam described how two names beginning with Ben were brought to play in his massive film project.

When questioned on the idea of making a Hollywood movie from Sri Lanka, Rutnam said “All my life I have been making films for Hollywood so what is the difference. If I can do it for a Hollywood company why can’t I do it for the Sri Lankan film industry,”
“I think it is the fear that prevents us. We have to eliminate that fear and it comes through experience,” the experienced filmmaker summed it up. A strong believer of a solid powerful story, Rutnam says that the key to success of any good film is the writing of the script.

“David Lean spent two to three years writing a script and that is why his films are so good. The key to everything is a good story. Best actors, best location and a bad story will not work. A good story, with a good script and good actors have to succeed,”.
Shifting from Hollywood to Sri Lanka, Rutnam, a man who has had experienced on many seasons of local cinema industry says that just as there are highs and lows to everything in life, Sri Lanka’s filmmaking is facing the same realities.
A great believer in young talent Rutnam, is optimistic about the future of the country’s cinema industry given the young talents that have come forward using low cost technology.

“I believe that today is a real golden era for young filmmakers in Sri Lanka. I really believe in it and I do not believe that the film industry has hit a low patch. The film industry is lively and developing. Look at the films that are being made today by young filmmakers,”

There are many talented people that we even don’t know of, because they never had the opportunity to produce films. This is because they were unable to raise sufficient capital as filmmaking is an expensive business involving the purchase of expensive cameras, lighting and raw stocks. Today the knowledge of cinema has changed and anybody can become a filmmaker with the new digital technology where you do not use any raw stocks but you can exhibit your talent by making a film even with only your phone.

“We must encourage talent and we must have a national policy for cinema and a fair distribution of facilities those are the things that are lacking not the talents” Runtam analysed the present situation of the Sri Lankan cinema.

“Now the opportunity is open for anybody to produce a film. So what most young people do is to focus on producing short films. Today is the day for young filmmakers. The film industry is just starting,”.




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