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| C.L.Narasa Reddy |
Related Links : Retrospect on Geetanjali
Geethanjali has a special place in the history of the Telugu Cinema. Who can forget the melodies of the movie or the camera wonders of P.C. Sriram who did an awesome job without any DI! The producer of this classic is none other than C.L. Narasa Reddy. For the last twelve years, he was not in touch with the industry much. In fact, he was not even interested in giving interviews or talking about movies. As he was not a member of the Film Chamber any more, his name and contact information was not even listed in the MAA diary that's updated each year and released. His being in Chennai made it harder to trace him. Finally, I got his office number with the help of Sree Pulagam Chinnanarayana. His office opened after 10:00 a.m. each day and it was tough time for me to contact them as it'd be past midnight for me on the East Coast of the USA. At last, when I was able to get in touch with his office, I learnt that he was in the USA and that they cannot give me his number without his prior consent. However, they did take my number and told me that they'd pass it on to him. they informed that he is in USA and they cannot give the number without contacting him but were kind enough to give my number. To my surprise, Narasa Reddy
gaaru called me and we spoke at length! Here are the excerpts from the interview, exclusive to TeluguCinema.Com:
Sri: The routine question first - about your background...
C.L.N.R.: My father is a noted financier in Nellore. I did most of my schooling in Nellore, Chennai, and Bangalore. After my graduation, I wanted to continue our business but in a different area. So, I came to Chennai where I had friends like Late Satya Reddy (director of films like
Daaku,
Dongalostunnaaru Jaagarttha,
Heccharika,
etc., and brother of Dr. Mithra, Chiranjeevi's political advisor), and Viswanath of Purna Pictures. Thus, I started a film finance business under the name "Sree Satyanarayana Film Finance" in 1983. It was Satya Reddy who wanted to make a film with all new talent. Thus, we did the film
Heccharika with Bhanuchander. The film marked the debut of six technicians, including the Diwakar Babu as the cameraman, Stuntman Horseman babu, Editor Ramogopal Reddy, Music director Sivaji Raja etc.. The film was a hit and we made good money.
Sri: How did your association with Maniratnam happen?
C.L.N.R.: Our cameraman brought some stills of
Mounaragam and showed them to me and suggested that we should watch the film. I went and saw the film, and I liked it immediately ...
Sri:
Mounaragam is a big hit, but it had the shades of Suhasini's first film
Nenjithai Killaade (
Mounageetham in Telugu) and also the role of Karthik was almost same of Anil Kapoor in the first movie of Mani's himself (
Pallavi-Anupallavi)...
C.L.N.R.: True, but because of Karthik, the film is a big hit in Telugu, I believe. After that film, I saw Mani's
Agni Natchattiram and want to remake in Telugu with Nagarjuna and Venkatesh. Venkatesh was ready to do it, but Nagarjuna was not really keen on doing a remake. He offered to do a direct Telugu film with us. So we dropped the idea of remaking it and just dubbed the film and released as
Gharshana.
Sri: I remember seeing the film in Devi 70 mm in Hyderabad. It's a big theater and used to cater only direct films. How could you release a dubbed film there?
C.L.N.R.: (Laughs) Actually, the distributor was not happy with my decision to screen the movie there. He refused saying that it is the dubbing film, like you said, and does not have so much potential to be a hit in such a huge theater. I took him to the theater in Madras and showed public response to the Tamil version. He was still not convinced, since he believed that the film had Tamil stars and the craze was because of that factor. I pursued him still to release in that theater and agreed to cover any losses that he may incur because of this decision of mine. ...And, you know the result of the movie later - it became a huge hit!
Sri: How much did you pay for the rights?
C.L.N.R.:
(Laughs) You'd not believe if I say that I got the rights for just three lakh rupees! It was really a big success and I made a lot of money in that venture! It ran beyond 100 days in Devi and we celebrated that function in the sets of
Geethanjali
. Nagarjuna gave away the shields for that function.
