Director Pawan Kumar on how ‘Dhoomam’ almost went up in smokes before a grand revival with Fahadh Faasil

In 15 years, director Pawan Kumar has gone from ideating a project close to his heart to almost shelving it for good to finally completing it with a dream team. C10H14N2 was born as a Kannada film in 2008. On June 23, the story will come alive on screen as Dhoomam, a Malayalam suspense thriller also dubbed in four languages.

“I know that the original title is an emotion for cine buffs in Karnataka. That said, when you make a big film with popular actors and a huge production house, its title must be easy to remember and pronounce. If I say C10H14N2, it feels like another Lucia kind of an attempt, where I independently go and do bizarre stuff,” Pawan says with a chuckle.

The trailer of Dhoomam doesn’t give away much except that the film revolves around smoking. Pawan is known for his mind-bending storytelling (Lucia, U Turn) with technical nuances. “I want people to see beyond my style and think about the plot’s core theme,” he says.

Anurag Kashyap is a director he looks up to. Interestingly, the dismal performance of Anurag’s No Smoking became a deterrent to Pawan’s bid to make this film as producers were apprehensive about another film on smoking. After several rejections from stars and producers in Kannada and other industries, Pawan has successfully finished this film with a dream team, comprising actors Fahadh Faasil, Roshan Mathew, Aparna Balamurali, Achyuth Kumar and production house Hombale Films, the makers of the KGF franchise and Kantara. 

Excerpts from an interview with Pawan:

You experienced second-hand smoke during your early days in the industry. Did that trigger you to think of a film on smoking?

How does one start to smoke? That’s something I was curious about. Sometimes, you sympathise with the person who smokes because I don’t think any smoker proudly says he is happy doing it. Deep down, all smokers want to quit. But, the habit has taken over them so much that they start defending it. I didn’t want to demonise them.

Anurag Kashyap’s ‘No Smoking’ showed the perils of addiction and the difficulties of quitting a habit. ‘Thank You for Smoking’, starring Aaron Eckhart, delved into the world of tobacco politics. What aspect of smoking does ‘Dhoomam’ explore?

When you make a film only about smoking, it might not work. Of course, Thank You for Smoking was for a niche audience; it was a dark comedy, and I loved that film. However, I didn’t want to make a film that does amazingly well in festivals. The thought behind my film had to reach the masses. I intend to offer people an engaging experience, and yet, when they come out of theatres, I want them to think about the core elements of the film.

No Smoking was a cerebral film. Only a few people understood or liked it. But my point was to make the audience face the questions that I had when I experienced second-hand smoke. I can replace tobacco with cell phones or liquor and the film would still work.

Fahadh Faasil in ‘Dhoomam’
| Photo Credit:
Hombale Films/YouTube

It has taken you more than a decade to find a producer and a notable face for the lead. What made the artistes nervous about your script?

When I thought I would make this (Dhoomam) my first film, people laughed at my decision. But I am glad they did. It would have sucked if I had done that. Then Lucia happened. After that, I announced this project as a crowd-funded film in 2014. At that time, 70 per cent of the script was over. I wanted to make it with Rs 5 crore. A big budget comes only when a star is in the film, and a star comes with boundaries; he knows what his audiences like him to do. A hero with grey shades was rare at that time. After I approached many, the only star in Kannada who liked the story and spoke to me for 40 minutes about it was Puneeth Rajkumar in 2016. Sometime later, people around him told him he shouldn’t be playing such a role. Only when he decided to experiment in his career did he agree for Dvitiva.

Also, I was raw as a filmmaker back then. I thought I knew what cinema was, but I actually didn’t. It’s easy to come up with unique ideas at that age and think you can make them into a film. After working in Manasaare and Pancharangi with Yogaraj Bhat and debuting as a director with Lifeu Ishtene, I realised it’s easy to put some things on paper but almost impossible to shoot them with the budget we have at our disposal.

When you work on a script for so many years, how does the writing process evolve?

My first draft would have been a four-hour film. With experience, I learnt to be meticulous in writing. I restructured the script in 2018. For example, I would ask myself why I took three pages to convey something that needs just a line. Every project taught me how effectively you can say things. It’s also important to let go of scenes that you liked; some portions written long back might even make you cringe now!

Aparna Balamurali and Fahadh Faasil in ‘Dhoomam’
| Photo Credit:
Hombale Films/YouTube

You were adventurous with ‘Lucia’ as you pulled off a crowd-funded film. You experimented with ‘U Turn’ by making it with a shoe-string budget. Working with an established production house like Hombale might have been a different experience…

The indie nature of filmmaking remained inside me throughout the shoot. Lucia and U Turn were high-concept films done with constrained budgets. If a location cost this many lakhs per day, I’d immediately think of how I could shoot the scene more cost-effectively. My DOP Preetha Jayaraman would say, “You have Hombale backing you, so you don’t have to think like that. You can tell them what you want and they will give you.” I also had a superb art director (Anees Nadodi) who made everything possible for me. We shot the film in just 46 or 47 days.

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Tell us about your association with Fahadh Faasil; what’s your takeaway from working with him?

He is a shy guy. He told me that whenever he met his friends, sometimes, they would watch Lucia. He had also expressed his interest in working with me in interviews. Hombale happened to meet Fahadh, and he asked if I had a script ready for him. But I was sure that even he would read the script and reject it, as I’d almost given up on the project. If nobody wanted to do it for over ten years, then there is something wrong with the script, I thought. Thankfully, he showed faith in it.

I had seen him in Joji and CU Soon. I thought he would be like Marlon Brando (laughs), coming to sets with a lot of preparation. However, he approaches every film as his first. He has zero hang-ups. He is an instinctive actor and not a performer who would sit alone in a place to prepare. When I watched Dhoomam, I saw some scenes and wondered how he performed so well. Because I know that a couple of minutes before those scenes, he was in a different zone. If you ask him to give a workshop on acting, he will shy away from it, but deep down, he knows something right about acting.

Dhoomam releases in theatres on June 23