'My son is just like Hrithik too'

By Subhash K Jha

After Harman Baweja's Love Story 2050, futuristic Mumbai will be seen in Shekhar Kapoor's Paani.

Laughs Harry, "I'm glad I was the one to bell the cat. Everyone seems to have woken up to the powers of special effects. The audience now wants to see more F-X films.

I feel after my film's release there'll be dozens of such films on the floor. This is the future of Indian cinema. Thirty years ago Hollywood got us Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone doing Terminator and Rocky.

It was all about letting the machismo hang out. Today the concept of the actioner and the action hero has changed. Overt beefy jungle-man tactics are out. Today's audience is the subtle urban multiplex audience.

The 'interiors' still exist, but only for the Bhojpuri films."

Hyper Harry halts for breath. Though Love Story 2050 moves through two different time zones and two eras, Baweja has learnt a lesson from the Jodhaa-Akbar experience.

"Mine is an epic kind of film. The story needs to move smoothly in time. The time factor was a problem. We tried to get it down to 2 hours 30 miniutes. But we'll have to keep it at 2 hours 50 minutes."

There's apparently been infinite delay in the release of Harry Baweja's futuristic spectacle.

"We started shooting on the third of September 2006 and finished in March 2007….Any special-effects film is bound to take that long…not to compare myself with anyone else. But my film has ten times more F-X that Krissh.

We've something called animatronics in our film. That took inordinately long. It required a six-month waiting period. One year before that we applied for copyrights for designs,.

We divided the F-X in Love Story 2050 over five international studios. Technicians involved with films like Lord Of The Rings are part of our film."

Harry admits this is as big as it gets. "It all depends on the star cast. If I make film with Salman, Akshay, Sunny, John or Aamir…each of these actors has a hardcore target audience. Harman is being targeted at the youth.

He's young energetic and part of the gen-X, so he's being given a launch where the audience gets to feel the excitement of a spectacle…My responsibilities this time are tremendous."

Harry tries to play down his excitement about his son's debut. "You mean now I don't have to sign outside stars and I just have to run to my son?

I was very happy making film with Ajay Devgan. But it's definitely gratifying to have a leading man at home whose career I can mould. Just like Rakesh and Hrithik Roshan.

Like Hrithik, Harman understands cinema and the camera. That really helps. He's a fast learner and growing by the day. He has been learning very fast. Even if I wasn't his father I'd rate him very highly."

Harry says it's too early to say how many prints will be released. "But after the encouraging response to the theatrical trailer we feel the print order will be far more than we had anticipated. All I can tell you, nothing like this has been attempted before."