Konkona: Rohan tricked me...

The actress recalls how she ended up working for The President Is Coming

Ramesh Sippy brought stereophonic sound to Bollywood with Sholay, so his son claims. And now, his son Rohan Sippy is bringing a new digital 2K technology with his venture The President Is Coming.

That's about the gist of everything we gathered in the first 20-minutes of a press conference for the film held on Tuesday November 18, 2008.

Attended by all the actors including Konkona Sen Sharma and Shernaz Patel, director Kunal Roy Kapoor, the scriptwriter Anuvab Pal and basically everybody involved in the making of The President Is Coming, we couldn’t have asked for more from a press con, which by the way also started 'dot on time'.

Moderated by Rohan Sippy, the conference began with a trailer of the film and also a 10-minute footage of it. A very refreshing subject, the film about six ordinary people vying for the most coveted position of 'the one to shake hands with President Bush', the film looked sweet and intelligent (much like Rohan Sippy himself, may we add).

The producer Ramesh Sippy whose claim to fame had been the Big B and Dharam paaji starrer Sholay, started the conference and all he spoke about was the 'amazing' 2K technology.

Ranjit Thakur, from Scrabble, then started talking about the technology in detail. Considering that his concern has actually helped in the same, you may think he might have put some light on it. But with some superhuman ability, the man maintained a monotonous drone (his voice) which took away all meaning from his speedily spoken English, leaving us completely unenlightened.

But Rohan Sippy made up for all of that. The way he quoted dialogues from the film, told us how very involved the man must've been with the project. The director, Kunal also looked absolutely in love with his film and his partner Anuvab who had helped him transform the original play into a full fledged movie.

Konkona Sen Sharma looked thinner than before but still as energetic and sweet. She confessed that she hadn't seen the play till after the shooting got over and also that her co actors who were all from the stage knew her character better than herself. She moved on to relate how 'Rohan tricked me into doing the film.' She told us how she was just called for a 'reading' without having been informed that the entire cast would be there and it was actually kind of decided. The story though not very funny, was kind of cute, we thought.

But the more eloquent Rohan soon seized the microphone and for the rest of the session, hogged it. When asked how long his film was, he laughed saying, "This is the biggest selling point of my film. It's only 90 minutes. So you can watch it twice as many times."

Though he did not mention his marketing strategy, he explained what the film was actually about - "The film is more about India. It's a funny look at India Shining."

And then came the final question…Why release a film on Bush when he's on his way out?

Rohan called it a 'fond farewell to Bush'.

Ramesh Sippy said, "Whatever we say about George Bush, will we ever forget that man?" And we then realised where Rohan got his intelligence from…and also who the 'baap' really was!