Anupama Chopra sits down with Venky Atluri for InFocus, days after he won the 72nd National Film Award for Best Dialogue Writer for Lucky Baskhar, and ahead of the August 14 release of Vishwanath & Sons - his Tamil-Telugu bilingual with Suriya and Mamitha Baiju, produced by Naga Vamsi and Sai Soujanya for Sithara Entertainments. Venky describes going numb on a Chennai set when the award was announced, and then walks through the eleven drafts it took to land the film's central relationship - an older man and a much younger woman, a premise he traces back to Lamhe and Cheeni Kum, and one he says only works if it stays playful. Casting, he argues, was the real barometer - Suriya was willing to put his age on screen when most stars avoid it, and Mamitha brought the cheerfulness that turns a girl loving a man into a girl admiring one. The conversation also covers his long-running creative core - editor Naveen Nooli, who gets the first narration and delivers verdicts in two words with no filter, cinematographer Nimish Ravi and composer G.V. Prakash Kumar - and why finishing a film in one continuous stretch keeps actors in the skin of their characters. Venky talks about the discipline he sees in Dhanush, Dulquer Salmaan and Suriya, why he'd take a three-month break to study a Hindi set before ever shooting there, and how he'd expect the same respect from anyone walking onto a Telugu set. He also makes the case that Telugu audiences have changed faster than the industry - pointing to Sing Geetham, Rao Bahadur and Little Hearts as proof that fearless writing is finding backing - and lays out what's next - a cop drama, a Home Alone-style kids film, and a Lucky Baskhar sequel he wants two more years to get right.