Tarsem

Award-winning commercials director Tarsem is currently editing his second film, The Fall, which will be released later this year. Here, he shares his views on life, happiness, Pepsi's Surf spot and the 1% of everything that zings.

I go by one name because my full name is Tarsem Singh Dhandwar. Want to try that? Singh is a middle name… it's like saying Glenda White Person, it just means you are a Sikh. First, I opted for Dhandwar, but nobody could pronounce it. People always called me by my first name, so I said, fine, go by it.

My father died and I wanted to have babies. I said to myself, I will impregnate the next girl who can pronounce my last name - and then ask her name. I've been an atheist since I was 10. For me your genes are what you live for.

There is absolutely nothing unique about me. I think there's about a billion of me in India. The only thing unique to me was my environment. I grew up in great places, from the Himalayas to Iran. I was exposed to a variety of stuff.

I found this book called Guide to Film Schools in America. It changed my life. I looked at it and said to myself, they teach this in colleges? I just thought you went to college and learned something that you hate and your dad loves, like accounting. For me this book was the educational equivalent of 101 Ways to Fuck a Blonde. I said, I'm there. I'll do overtime. And it was fantastic.

Only when you're starting out do you really get a chance to define your sensibility. You never get that chance again. Life will happen to you - kids and wife, and this and that - and that becomes your sensibility.

I've always been very happy. When I arrived in America I thought my life was made. I was the only guy who got a visa and when I arrived there I was like, I made it! We were four guys staying in a one-bed roomed place, two guys worked at night and two in the day. But I loved it!

In the beginning I was really tense while doing jobs. Then, one time, on a Smirnoff commercial, I thought, just chill out. It went so smoothly, I kind of realised that none of it was required - none of the baggage, none of the being tense, none of the giving pressure to people. Just let it ride.

I never give money to any organisation that has a religious affiliation. I support anything that aims to control population growth. Most organisations you give money to don't look beyond their noses. Good, sweet Samaritan stuff isn't enough. I think education is the answer.

When you're making a film like The Cell you become inured to what you've shot. After a while, you sort of lose touch with what you've made. You just think to yourself, oh, in the tub, I remember being worried that the little sponge that's supposed to look like liver wouldn't fall right. But the audience sees it and they're thinking, he pulled her liver out!

My mother didn't see a single frame of The Cell. At the premiere she covered her face and all I could hear was click, click, click - all her beads were going. And every time the volume went up she'd click even faster. All she said at the end of it was: 'Next time don't make a scary movie.' She's never understood what I do for a living.

For me, the film that did the worst damage to children, or to girls, forever was Pretty Woman. You try telling that to parents, and they don't think so. But you look at the statistics - how many girls from the Mid-West ran away to become hookers, thinking that was going to happen to them?

With Pepsi Surf I used a technique to make it look as though the athletes were on a beach. They gave me the guys, including David Beckham, for three hours each in a hangar outside Madrid and I put some sand down. Then I went back and forth to Fiji. When Victoria Beckham watched it, she asked: 'Where did you go with him?' But we hadn't been anywhere.

You never want to apologise to people when they are doing fine because if they are then they always think, ah - now he wants something.

Actors should say anything to get a part. Afterwards, they can go away and learn it. You say you're a horse rider, you go away and learn it. Then you come back and ride a horse.

I love location shooting. I spend a lot of time just putting pins into maps and saying find me something that looks like this but nobody's filmed there. And when you go there you find out why they haven't. In the end, I think it pays off. People always say: 'Where did you go for that?' And then they look into how difficult it is to go there, and they say: 'Fuck it, we'll shoot in Aylesbury.'

What is not in your back yard you find romantic. You go to LA and you see palm trees and you're amazed. You grow up in LA and you go: 'Palm trees? What's the big deal?' Then you come to Europe and you think cobbled streets are the greatest thing you've ever seen. Wherever I go, I take a Polaroid because after a week you forget what first made you go 'Wow!'.

I love books but I don't read fiction. It bores the daylight out of me. It has to be about science. Or a biography.

The first and only time in my life I went to a museum was two years ago. I cannot go to places like that. I can't see the attraction. And theatre - I've only seen Fiddler on the Roof and a thing at the National. I don't know what to tell you, it's the truth. I like paintings, but I like them in books. I don't like somebody to put it up and then tell me how to look at it.

Most of the people I know that do advertising or film hate the process of filming. They love it when they're editing, where the control is. I am the only moron who loves the filming aspect of it. I just live for it. The act of being on a set and figuring out what we are going to make out of this, how are we going to tell this story, this doesn't work, all that. I love that buzz.

When I see ads on TV, I'm like most people - I just zone out. I just think, get on with the programme. Most of the ads, like most music or most films - 99 per cent are rubbish. It's that one per cent that zings that you want to look out for.

About two years ago, after my girlfriend and I split up, things got really dark. I don't want to go there again. It's the only time in my life that I got kicked in the teeth. No amount of fun or love was worth that pain.

I've never really interested myself in the product. It's like how much did Michelangelo have to believe in angels to paint them so beautifully? He probably didn't. I mean, even if he did believe in angels, the church was telling him he was going to burn in hell for buggering guys. But they're good ads - that ceiling is amazing.

I can't write. I can't follow my chain of thought by writing, so I don't do any treatments. I just talk and someone writes it down. I do the same withdrawing. Storyboard artists sit in front of me and I'll draw these things out quickly, and then I have to explain it to them because my drawing is also so bad that within two or three minutes it doesn't make sense to me either.

In India, we weren't diagnosed for problems like Tourette's Syndrome. They just beat the shit out of you until you stop cursing. It's only in the West that you have names for diseases like this. I remember the first time they explained to me about something called hay fever, and I thought, in India if you have any allergy, you'll die by the time you're three.

When I talk to students, I'm not interested in seeing their work and telling them what they should do. I'll go in and I'll tell them what I did - the journey has to be personal. They say: 'My school is shit, the equipment's bad and there are dumb people around me.' I tell them this is a microcosm of the world. If you can't deal with it here, you're fucked.

I don't drink alcohol. I've never tried any intoxication in any form, never smoked. When I was about 10 I think I realised I had a very addictive personality. And I just said, don't go to intoxicants or chemicals, because you'll never come back if you like it. But I can't stand people who don't drink, because it's usually either religious or they're recovering alcoholics and I have nothing in common with them. So my friends can do all the drugs that you can imagine and all the drinks, and that's fine by me.

I always say that when I'm 64 I'll try alcohol. Or maybe in my nineties drop acid - that's when you want to get out of your body. I can't understand young kids dropping acid. I want to say, your body's cool right now. When you turn 90 you'll want to get out of it. Not now.

I just did the absolute no-no and put all my money in a personal project. I've had the idea for The Fall for about 23 years - it was eating me alive. My brother said to me 'If you don't make this movie, and just concentrate on the Hollywood stuff, then, when you're old, you're going to sit around and go on about the film that you never made.' I said 'Okay, let's make it.' So now it will either be the biggest piece of shit you ever saw and everybody will say good, he lost his money. Or it will be fucking brilliant.