Chandran Rutnam - Biography

Biography

Chandran Rutnam was born to a Sri Lankan Tamil father Dr. James T. Rutnam and a Sinhala mother Evelyn Wijeratne, who gave him all his yearning for freedom and adventure. Rutnam was 16-year-old school boy when David Lean arrived in Sri Lanka to shoot his Second World War epic, The Bridge on the River Kwai. The film crew hired a house that belonged to his parents for the shooting, and Rutnam hung out at the sets volunteering odd jobs until finally, he got hired as a stand-by props assistant and gofer. His big moment, Rutnam recalls, came when it was time to shoot the blowing up of the bridge — the film's finale — on location at the scenic Kitulgala river in central Sri Lanka. The crew had laid out only a couple of yards of rail track on either side of the bridge, not enough to show an approaching train. Rutnam's job was to run through a stretch of the jungle on one side working up smoke with a pair of smoke bellows. Of course, those who saw the film only saw the smoke, synchronized with the chugging sounds of a rapidly approaching train.

Due to this exposure, to the consternation of his parents, he dropped out of school and went to London to pursue his dream of a career in films. He later moved to the United States and attended the film school at the University of Southern California and the San Fernando Valley College of Law. While working in Hollywood studios, Rutnam's break in selling Sri Lankan locations to international film-makers came when he managed to convince John Derek, director of "Tarzan the Apeman", to shoot the film starring his wife Bo Derek, in Sri Lanka rather than Africa.