I'm not sure who I am. That's why I keep saying I'm an adventurer that goes out.
As a director, my job is to spend money, and the producer's is to save money. Masoom, Bandit Queen and the first Queen Elizabeth have been my most uncompromised films.
I had no interest in history classes. In fact, I used to sleep in history classes, I used to bunk classes. But that is how students are supposed to be, no? I developed an interest in history much later. I have made a few films based on historical facts.
The question is - did Richard Attenborough have a right to make 'Gandhi?' And did Danny Boyle have a right to make 'Slumdog Millionaire?' Quite honestly, if they didn't have the right to make these films, I had no right to make 'Elizabeth.'
I think that I altered history in 'Elizabeth,' and I interpreted history far more than Danny Boyle or Richard Attenborough did to 'Slumdog Millionaire' or 'Gandhi.' They took Indian novels or Indian characters and very much stayed within the Indian diaspora.
In this universe, and this existence, where we live with this duality of whether we exist or not and who are we, the stories we tell ourselves are the stories that define the potentialities of our existence. We are the stories we tell ourselves.
Film is drama. You've only two hours, so you lie by exclusion, and try to make up for it by portraying the environment.
My own feelings of where I am in this world and the questions that I am asking myself, I started to explore them through the story 'Four Feathers' and through this actor called Heath Ledger. I knew that I had to find a 21-year-old who could play wisdom at the end. He's only 21 or 22, and I tested him.
I've never looked at film-making as a career. I've looked on film-making as an adventure. When you come down the mountain, you get ready to climb again.
Heath Ledger is someone I know and would like to do a film with.
It was expected of all good middle-class Indian people to build India and, as you know, Indians - when we say, 'build India,' it was all about being an accountant, a lawyer, an engineer. So it was this idea that professionals would build the country.
There's a lot of imagination in Asia, and I believe that the next Google will come from there, and the next Pixar. I believe that the great new media companies will come out of Asia and surpass the big media conglomerates that exist right now in the West.
Not knowing whom to fall in love with is like not knowing which film to make next. Life is pretty chaotic; it's just an illusion that one has control over one's life.
I am not possessive at all. In every relationship I have had, the girl has left me. And the fundamental complaint has been that I am self-contained. I am just comfortable with myself and am always on an adventure.
When I go out to direct a film, every day we prepare too much, we think too much. Knowledge becomes a weight upon wisdom. You know, simple words lost in the quicksand of experience.
I often wonder when I make a film - I'm thinking of making a film of the Buddha - and I often wonder: If Buddha had all the elements that are given to a director - if he had music, if he had visuals, if he had a video camera - would we get Buddhism better?
