SAN Francisco-raised filmmaker of Indian origin Ben Rekhi wants to be known more than

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as the son of Kanwal Rekhi, one of India’s first and most successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Rekhi’s claim to fame as filmmaker is restricted to a few movies. In 2005 Rekhi directed Waterborne, his first feature film, which was also written and produced by him. Car Babes (2006) and Bomb the System (2002) are the other two movies he produced. Hollywood actor George Clooney hired him to shoot the behind-the-scenes documentary for Clooney’s directorial debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.

Since the time Rekhi won the right to make a feature film based on the popular novel Keep Off the Grass by Karan Bajaj, he has been visiting India several times to research and explore shooting locations, identify production partners and choose members of the cast for the film. Rekhi had already managed to get Mosaic Media Group, the producer of blockbuster international hits, Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, Talladega Nights, Get Smart etc. to collaborate with him in the big screen adaptation of the novel, which has sold 25000 copies within 10 months of its release.

Along with Mosaic, Rekhi was hunting for an Indian production house as a co-producer. “We have short listed three productions houses and now the task is to select one of them, which we expect to announce within a month,” said Rekhi. Though he refused to name them, he said all of them are “big companies” in the Hindi film industry”. According to him, the shooting is scheduled to begin in July this year and he expects to release the movie by the end of this year or early 2010.

According to him, the script is ready. Though some final tweaking remains to be done. “It has come a long way from the book to script. There are significant changes—like characters eliminated and dialogues been contained,” said Rekhi who is a graduate from the NYU School of Film and Television. Perhaps the tweaking is just what is required because Rajkumar Hirani is directing another film 3 Idiots, based on the famous novel, Five Point Someone by Chethan Bhagat. While Bhagat’s novel is set in an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bajaj’s story takes place in an Indian Institute of Management (IIM). However, Hirani chose to shoot a significant portion of the movie, starring Aamir Khan and Kareena Kapoor, at the IIM-Bangalore campus. “I think it is not the best place to shoot this movie,” said Rekhi. This has forced Rekhi to look for other campuses, though he visited the Bangalore campus and interacted with a number of students as part of his research.

As for the cast for the movie, Rekhi has consulted seniors like Hrithik Roshan and Abhishek Bachchan and the new breed of young stars like Ranbeer Kapoor and Imran Khan. “We might even discover someone from college campuses,” he added.

Rekhi does not want stars who are melodramatic and doing very surface level acting. “My bigger goal is to get someone who wants to act. There is a different style of acting that I want to do with this film. I want someone who can go deeper into the role and that is what the film demand,” he said. He would like to cast Irrfan Khan as one of the professors. “He is a genius.”

As Rekhi keeps a close watch on what Hirani and his team do for 3 Idiots, he is working hard to make sure a watertight script. As Hirani’s movie is scheduled to be released in December 2009, Rekhi, may even have to tweak with his release schedule to avoid a box office clash. The last thing Rekhi and his producer wish.