Nandu’s Joke is a hit!

As he continues to receive praise for his outing as Vikram in ‘#Pellichoopulu,’ Nandu on Thursday night sprung a surprise by releasing a short film ‘Joke’ which he directed (besides featuring in it). Within 24 hours, the short, besides being applauded for its content, performances and direction, managed to get 1 lakh views.

The actor, speaking to Talkies, says he wanted to release ‘Joke,’ a romantic thriller which narrates the tale an upcoming actor who gets mysterious calls from his dead girlfriend, without any hullabaloo. “I was afraid. I was not keen on hearing people say ‘does he need direction?’ I wanted the product to speak for itself. Even when the producers broached the idea of a preview show, I opposed and told them it’s better to hit the YouTube directly. I only wanted people who like it share it,” he begins.

Ask him whether direction was always on his mind and he says yes, indicating that whenever directors narrated him their stories, he would go home and narrate the same story to his family to seek their opinion on whether to green-lit it or not. “They used to get excited with my narrations but you know some stories don’t turn the way they are told. On seeing such stories unfold on screen, they (family) used to get upset slightly. That was when I realised I can visualise the story better than the guy who narrated it to me. I was like, ‘Let me see how I can translate my visualisation to images.’ And ‘Joke’ was a step in that direction.”

His industry colleagues like Manchu Lakshmi, Gopi Mohan, Sundeep Kishan and Nyra Banerjee had good words about the short which was wrapped up in three days with a script and screenplay from the actor himself. “To begin with nobody knew that I was making a short film. Even my friends were unhappy that I didn’t inform them. Nyra Banerjee was like, ‘You could have cast me na?’” he points out, further revealing that when he decided to wield the megaphone, nobody except actor Sri Harsha Basava (of ‘Kotha Bangaru Lokam’ fame) believed in him. “He was the guy who made the producers to invest Rs 75,000. No actor was paid for the film. Ajay Ghosh, who played a cop, did the film out of his love for me.”

In fact, he says that his editor Chota K Prasad too didn’t charge a penny. “I never knew Chota personally. When I met him with the rough cut, he said he’ll scissor the film only if he likes the output. He liked the way it was shot and gave it a nice shape,” he smiles. So, is feature film direction on the cards? “I don’t know… with the kind of appreciation and love that I’m getting, I might take up direction.

But then I want to do a couple of more short films to get more experience. I want my next shot to be on a large scale. I have a story about a soldier in mind,” he responds. He adds an as after-thought, “Thammareddy Bharadwaj loved the film and said, ‘More than an actor, the chances of you succeeding as a director are more.’ He asked me to share a feature film line with him and I did so. He is fleshing it out.”