Nabh Kumar Raju in criminal's lingo!

Imagine shooting a film where the director does away with the process of writing the dialogues and simply asks the artists, (in this case non-actors), to perform scenes according to their perception. Sounds incredible, doesn't it but that's what Nabh Kumar Raju has done in his latest film, HITLIST, which revolves around the detailed planning that goes on in the underworld, before an act of crime is committed. "It is about six criminals who hatch a plan to kill and extort money from the celebrity circuit. The film reveals their modus operandi and how they go about their business in an organized fashion," Raju reveals.

The film has many firsts to its credits including the fact that the six actors, who play the lead roles in the film, are in essence real criminals whom Raju chose from among 3000 names, who had dabbled in the world of crime. "They have all served a jail sentence and have been arrested at some stage or the other under various charges and as expected their performance was realistic to the core," he smiles, adding that this factor will also attract the audience to the box-office. "I am sure the audiences would want to see real criminals enacting similar roles on the screen, despite the fact that the film has no star attraction," he says.

Moreover his idea of doing away with the process of dialogue paid off in full measure with the boys using some hard-core underworld lingo, when they started performing the scenes. One such scene required the extortionist to ask the other person to shut up, lest he would kill him. "I was told that the code word for killing was "sms bhejna" where sms stands for seedha maar dalunga. It was quite an eye-opener," chuckles the director.

He adds that neither he nor his lead actress, Sonali Kulkarni, faced any problems working with the criminals for the start-to-finish schedule of the film. The only problem if any is the several calls he has been getting from criminals lodged in jails telling him that they are available for acting. "The other day someone from Arthur Road jail called up to say, 'bhai mujhe bhi kuch role dilao'", he says. Meanwhile he reveals that a film production house in London has evinced keen interest in the film and is in the process of roping him to write another realistic film. "They have been closely following the reports about the film ever since I started it and want me to write a realistic story based in India," he says.