Mahdi Ahmed

Night before last, I woke up from my sleep at around 0230 in the morning with a heavy head as if my whole skull’s been filled with water or something like that. What happened was, in my sleep I restructured MIKOE BAPPA AADHEY AADHEY (COME MY BABY’S FATHER), the short screenplay my producing partners and I acquired last week from Ahmed Rasheed, the rookie screenwriter from L. Fonadhoo. This is a weird habitual nocturnal occurrence of mine whenever my thoughts are deeply in to writing something interesting. Not that any other screenplays I have written so far without this occurrence were less interesting. In fact, it has happened for all of my screenplays, but with different degree of heaviness.

Anyway, I hurried downstairs, pulled out the hard copy of the screenplay and started scribbling all those ideas that were developed in my sleep. All I did was stretched the original screenplay, added suspenseful events and enhanced the principal character with reference to the character’s history.

Yesterday, at Underground I met with Ravi, who will once again fill the director’s shoes. I briefed him on my take of the rewrite. Simply, he liked it very much. However, what he didn’t like was the fried chicken and fries dish he ordered. It took us a while to figure out if the chicken in that dish was actually a piece of fried chicken. It looked more like a banana fritter with fries.

To add more on this project, Ahmed Rasheed suggested at setting the production in L. Gan where he thinks a remote house there is the perfect location. He then mailed me several pictures of this house. Ravi and I think this house is really the perfect location. We have asked Ahmed if he can help us complete production there. He said it could be done. We’ll start final talks with him once I complete the screenplay adaptation. Stay tuned.

This evening, I dropped in to KIDS PRODUCTION studio to see the editing of SAZAA (PUNISHMENT) Semi has done so far. All I can say is that my smile will put the Cheshire cat to shame. Semi has done a remarkable job. He has edited the first hour of the film. The principal actors have given superb performances especially the leading lady, Niuma. Her moments of silence were topnotch. I have a feeling this is going to be her first leading role with less dialogue. Looppe in his first major role gives a praiseworthy performance keeping up with Niuma. The introduction scene of Ismail Rasheed aka Copee Issey is a real hoot. He’s simply terrific. For my viewing pleasure, Semi added natural sound to the most bittersweet scene of the film. It was so awesome. Can’t wait to see him complete the editing.

Later this evening, Semi and I went to Olympus Cafe for a coffee. There I met Youppe, one of the most prolific actor/ director of Dhivehi film industry today. I must say that it was a very fruitful meeting. And he made a tantalizing proposition. If I write him a screenplay, he would produce and direct it and would give me a profit percentage from the theatrical and DVD sales for a year. I am going to warm up on it.

Later, Movie Maldives owner, Shakeeb joined us. It was him who bought the screenplay MARUVUMEGEKURIN (BEFORE DYING) which I wrote for Suja who once worked as a producer at TVM. After buying that screenplay, Shakeeb re-titled it to VAKIVUMUGEKURIN (BEFORE PARTING). To refresh on this screenplay, it’s about two strangers who meet, unbeknownst to each other has something in common.

I tried to convince Shakeeb that he should produce that screenplay with Youppe at once, rather than keep it shelved forever. It’s been more than three years since I wrote it. Youppe said he is more than happy to begin production. Before I returned home, I did manage to strike a dialogue between Shakeeb and Youppe over it. I am keeping my fingers crossed.

In a nutshell, the whole of today was cool…