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 Rohan
Sippy relates his sense of style to Zelig, a character
from Woody Allen's pseudo-documentary by the same name-a
human chameleon who becomes whoever he is with, and
finds it really hard to settle into a particular style
or persona.
"Depending
on the current company or the environment, I go with
the flow. Of course there are a lot of things I love
wearing, like boots, leather jackets, fun hats- but
find it impractical to do that in Bombay," says
the director of films like Bluff-master and Kuch Naa
Kaho and co-producer of Taxi No. 9211. Pink, incidentally
is his current colour and shoes are his all-time fetish.
"I buy footwear every time I go shopping."
How he manages to keep all of them intact with his chewy
canine companion Dylan around is a wonder.
Back from the New Orleans Jazz Festival, a dream holiday
he would love to go back to, Rohan is brimming with
sounds of Macy Stars, Belle & Sebastian, Nouvelle,
George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. "I am
totally envious of musicians," he says. "That's
real talent. It is absolutely flabbergasting to watch
genuine creativity coming together through music. I
would love to be a musician; sadly, I don't have the
talent," he laments.
The much pedigreed Rohan (he is the son of Ramesh Sippy
and grandson of G P Sippy) certainly has the nose for
it though, going by the trend-setting music he has managed
to create, for Bluffmaster and Taxi No 9211. Currently
collaborating with Vishal-Shekhar and Abhishek on another
album, where, he says, "We have just put 3-4 songs
together and are working without a brief-that's the
only way to create music on a passionate level. We still
don't know what it's going to become."
But then, Rohan has always loved to work on things that
terrify him. "Not knowing the answers, not being
able to see things clearly is a great reason for me
to do things. Though I have an inherent sense of what's
good as far as films go, I never have it all in my head-each
person who works on it brings something to it."
So it is not surprising that he doesn't believe there
is a unique formula for success. "The goal is never
to consciously go out and make a successful film-but
if everyone who has collaborated on it is happy with
the film, that's success. The question to myself would
be: Can it connect to an audience universally? Can it
sit on a DVD shelf anywhere in the world, where people
don't know who is in it, who made it?," he says.
 Having
said that, he still reads audience feedback and comments
on websites like imdb and sulekha.com - "a lot
of it is harsh, but it is a great levelling experience-it
keeps my feet on the ground. And every once in a while,
you hear something touching, like Bluffmaster! was comfortable
in its own skin, or that people could relate to the
story of a single mother in Kuch na Kaho, and it feels
good!"
Collaboration seems to be his favourite word, and he
is doing a lot of that currently-with Vikram Bhatt on
a supernatural thriller with an all-new cast, with Sridhar
Raghavan, who has just finished a script that "I
can almost see tht scene which is the nucleus of the
film in my head." Besides, there are productions
with Sujoy Ghosh, Sriram Raghavan, Rohit Shetty and
Anurag Basu.
It takes a human-chameleon to wear the producer/director,
music producer hat so interchangeably. "It is something
I learnt from my dad; shifting gears into production.
Sometimes, directing becomes very personal; especially
with critics and the media hype. While it is always
easier to bat for someone you believe in, you can be
a facilitator as a producer, and don't have to bring
to the table what the director goes through."
Ask him one thing he would like to change about himself,
and he says, almost too quickly, "Dealing better
with commitment." His ideal partner, he feels,
"should be able to understand that I can't deal
with commitment. That films will always be the mistress."
Zelig is at work again.
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