The dusty resurrection: Indian-American director Naveen Chathapuram speaks on ‘The Last Victim’

Express News Service
Chicago-based Indian-American filmmaker Naveen Chathapuram’s debut movie, The Last Victim, has an attention-grabbing again story. The thought of the movie – set in a small southwestern city within the US – was delivered to Chathapuram by his buddy Neal ‘Doc’ Justin, an anthropologist.

The script was accomplished in a few months and prepped for manufacturing in 2002. But the first location – Mount Lemon – burnt down in a forest fireplace, and the undertaking was placed on the backburner. Literally.

Fast ahead 16 years and The Last Victim beckoned the first-time director from the dusty cabinets the place it had been left untouched for over a decade-and-a-half. Ashley James Louis, an up-and-coming author, introduced out the primary draft of the screenplay in just a few months and the crew obtained right down to work. The movie is now slated for a summer season 2021 launch.

A neo-western thriller starring Ron Perlman (Hellboy, Blade 2), Ali Larter (Resident Evil, Final Destination) and Ralph Ineson (The Witch, Chernobyl), it examines isolation, disillusionment, desperation and violence.

With modern-day outlaws, terrifying and decided criminals, an ageing native sheriff, a married couple drawn into the sport of vengeance, survival right here is the one precedence. It is co-produced below Chathapuram’s movie and tv manufacturing firm in Chicago known as Immortal Thoughts. 

Given his Indian origins, comparisons with M Night Shyamalan are inevitable. But Chathapuram, who has been a part of numerous tasks, together with Brown Nation (a sitcom on Netflix), the animated movie Night of the Living Dead and Haunted, believes there can’t be one other Shyamalan. He considers himself fortunate to have labored with individuals from a various set of backgrounds.

“Professionally, issues regarding race and/or ethnicity are rare in my circle. The hope is one would judge my work for its quality and not for my background. As an artist, I want the freedom to tell the stories I want to tell, regardless of my ethnicity. Having said that, I’m extremely proud of my Indian heritage and I’m honoured to be representing their voices in Hollywood,” he says.

When you are a Hollywood director, one has the great fortune of working with actors you grew up watching. In Chathapuram’s case, the nostalgia and pleasure got here within the type of Perlman, who performs the function of Sheriff Hickey.

“I remember watching his Golden Globe-winning role in the Beauty and the Beast (TV Series, 1987-1990) and The Name of the Rose (with Sean Connery, 1986). To have him accept the role was surreal,” says the filmmaker who needs to comply with greats equivalent to Stanley Kubrick, Akira Kurosawa, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, Kathryn Bigelow, James Cameron, and lots of extra in his Hollywood journey.

With the second coronavirus wave rearing its ugly head, one is reminded of how leisure was one business which was hit onerous by the pandemic. But it introduced some welcome modifications too, believes the filmmaker.

“The biggest impact was the acceleration of the adoption to streaming. It expedited the process by almost 10 years. Another significant change is how technology helped improve the post-production work-flow. I could edit a film sitting in my office in Chicago, while my editor John Chimples, sat in his summer home in Montauk, at the tip of Long Island, New York. We used software with screen sharing and cloud streaming function, where the editor and I could simultaneously watch the footage without any latency. The same went for sound,” he explains.

Regardless of the movie’s field workplace collections and what ‘critics’ may say, it’s at all times good to listen to of an Indian in Hollywood.