Nobody should meeT my fate. There is no need for another Kamal Hassan. The next generation should go beyond me.

 

 

Do you aspire for an Oscar award?

I am not disappointed that I haven’t won an Oscar, but Rahman has. Unless I work in Hollywood I cannot get an Oscar. But I would be very happy if I bagged an Oscar for lifetime achievement like Satyajit Ray.

Who is your role model?

Sivaji Ganesan. He was the first step in my evolutionary growth.

What is more difficult – direction or acting?

Direction is a multidisciplinary job. A director has to concentrate on various things. But an actor just does his/her role. Direction is much more difficult.

Why have you never tried to convert your fan following into a political force?

People have used various ways to capture power. Cinema has also become an instrument to capture power here. Now TV channels have become an important tool. Every political party starts its own TV channel. One can do politics or social service without going through elections. EVR Periyar achieved much without plunging into electoral politics.

Who are the Hollywood and Bollywood stars you would like to work with?

Some things don’t happen even if we wish. I wanted to do one more film with Sivaji Ganesan but it didn’t happen. I wanted to act with Dilip Kumar. I wanted to act with Naseeruddin Shah and he acted in Hey Ram as Mahatma Gandhi. I would like to act with Woody Allen, William Hurt, Robert De Nero, and Clint Eastwood.

Throughout the world, Hollywood movies are copied…

If you see British TV serials of the 1970s and 80s, you’ll understand where the inspiration for today's US TV serials came from. Hollywood has copied so much from French cinema. True Lies, a Hollywood blockbuster, was lifted from a French film. We are making Unnaipol Oruvan. But we have acknowledged the source: A Wednesday. But America is different. They’ve been aggressors; they conquered the land by force and now treat it as their own. The same attitude prevails in Hollywood. When did you become an atheist?

I don’t remember. You cannot remember when you started speaking. I did not become an atheist one fine morning. Periyar was not an avatar like Kali. He was a great man like Bertrand Russell. He played an instrumental role in my life. He initiated a process in my life that hasn’t ended yet.

Who is the most important woman in your life?

My mother. A mother’s love is unconditional. All others put conditions. I lost my mother when I was 24. I would like to experience that unconditional love through other women. But with sex there is a little confusion here. Every male faces this dilemma. There is a story about Lord Ganesha. He was worrying about not getting married. He placed his hand on his head with grief. The head had a bulge that reminded him of breasts. That reminded him of his mother. If we have a child with a protuberance in the head, we will admit him/her in a hospital. But we worship Lord Ganesha as a god.

Who is the next Kamal Hassan?

Nobody should meet my fate. I am a great fan of Sivaji Ganesan but I wouldn’t want to be regarded as the next Sivaji Ganesan. There is no need for another Kamal Hassan; the next generation should go beyond me.

How do you participate in the growth of your daughters?

I can allow them to access my experience. That's all. Their journey and vehicle are different. I can't give my wooden stick to someone who has a cell phone. The world has changed.

What kind of bonding did you have with Sridevi, your co-star in 27 films?

Many thought we were in love and would marry. But she was like a close relative. She still calls me Sir.

Nayakan was a milestone in your career. Tell us about Mani Ratnam.

Ours was an open house. Many artists would come and discuss many things. One of them was Subbu, alias Subramani. He used to come along with another person called Kitti. Both were good storytellers and I took them to director Bharathi Raja. I thought he was from a humble family and I didn’t know that he was the son of Rathnam Ayyar, proprietor of Venus Pictures. Later he became Mani Ratnam and started directing movies. When producer Muktha Srinivasan wanted to produce a film, I suggested Mani Ratnam's name. Two stories were suggested to me and I selected the Nayakan story.

On whom did you model the character of 'Nayakkar' in Nayakan?

I knew Vardaraja Mudaliyar personally and the character ‘Nayakkar’ was modelled on him. What kind of world cinema do you like?

If I mention only Citizen Kane, I would be leaving out Seventh Seal. Even if I select 60 films like Citizen Kane and Seventh Seal, I would still be leaving out some great modern films. There is a film called Magnolia, an American classic. And No Country for Old Men. Then there is Goya’s Ghosts. It was widely seen only in Europe, not in other parts of the world. There is another American movie called One False Move, which was released 15 years ago and it hardly had any takers. There are so many other movies. John Woo’s Red Cliff is such a grandiose movie. Tell us about the film Unnaipol Oruvan.

The movie expresses the anger that I show in my conversation. If I push this anger a little bit further, I will end up in a forest with guns. So I make films. The issues in Hey Ram were like depicting current concerns with yesteryears’ events. Wherever violence takes place, be it in Godhra or Gujarat, my people die. I don’t care about the gods of either religion. I care only about people.

What about the genocide in Sri Lanka? You have failed to condemn it.

We (actors of Tamil Nadu) are condemning it. We have been conducting meetings for the past 30 years. You need two sides for a war to happen. Today we have to safeguard Tamils’ welfare. If Tamils in Sri Lanka come back with their guns again to achieve Tamil Eelam, I will support it. It is their struggle. We should not belittle it. We should not act as if we don't know their side of the story.

It seems you are keen to show kissing scenes in your films...

Not only kissing, I also often show urinating scenes. But some people make a hue and cry about kissing scenes. Don’t Indians kiss? We still tell our children that they were dropped by birds or were gifted by the gods. I will not follow the culture that belonged to my grandmother’s time, which demanded that she, as a widow, should tonsure her head and sit in a dark corner of the house.

In Hey Ram, you addressed Gandhism. Like Communism, Gandhism is a failed concept, isn’t it?

Gandhism and Communism are completely different concepts. Ram Manohar Lohia tried to evolve a sort of Gandhian-Marxism. Communists wouldn’t have liked it. They say that the chance of a great revolution in India was suppressed by land reforms and ahimsa. Gandhi single-handedly thwarted a communist revolution in India. Gandhi, Nehru and the Bhoodan movement all contributed to this. Now the Bhoodan movement is like a corporate movement. Thousands of acres of land are given to corporates for setting up plants. I wanted to make a film on these lines. You cannot call me a Gandhian because I admire Gandhi, I don’t have to become a Buddhist because I admire Buddha and I don’t need to join Dravidar Kazhagam (DK) because I admire Periyar. They were chisels who shaped me. Gandhi exists only in school textbooks not in practice. George Bernard Shah wrote 15,000 pages; Gandhi wrote 60,000 pages. We have to follow him and go beyond him. We cannot achieve this if we continue to portray him as a Mahatma. Shahrukh Khan was recently detained at a US airport. You too have faced this problem earlier.

I keep going to the US because I need their technology. If they ask about our credentials respectfully, we need not take offence. It is not like throwing Gandhi out of a train. When I had visited the US sometime ago with a beard, I was suspected of being a brother of Saddam Hussein because his name was similar to mine. I was stopped and questioned. What can we do about this? But the approach of the US is arrogant. It should not happen only to Shahrukh Khan but also to any of the pickle jar carrying ordinary Indian citizens. I know Shahrukh personally, and he is gem of a person. If they treated him like that, it was wrong.

You began you career as an assistant director. Were you low on self-confidence as an actor?

Yes. I was a reluctant actor. My happiness lies in making films. When director Balu Mahendra's Mullum Malarum was in trouble, though I didn't act in it, I spoke to the producer personally and got myself involved to finish the final scenes. I was invited to participate in the silver jubilee of that film.

In Hindi cinema, you achieved only moderate success. Any grudges?

In Malayalam also I had only moderate success. One can achieve huge success where one works continuously. I returned to Tamil cinema from Bollywood not because I didn't have chances there. I left Hindi cinema at a point when my films were doing well. In Bollywood, they take half a year to complete a film. That style and pace did not suit me. But now many Hindi films are shot faster than some Tamil films. I may go to Mumbai again.

How important is it to know a language in order to act in films in that particular language? For acting, communication is very important. I have the dubious distinction of knowing five languages other than Tamil: Kannada, Malayalam, Telugu, Hindi and a little bit of Bengali.

What are your thoughts on Indian democracy?

Universal suffrage was first introduced in France in 1944. Many people might assume that it was introduced in Greece. But Greece, the cradle of democracy, introduced it only in 1965. In the US it came into existence only in 1965 after the cilvil liberties movement succeeded. But in India we implemented it way back in 1952. So I have no doubt which is a greater democracy. But if you ask me whether democracy has succeeded in India, I would say NO. I tried to get my name included on the voters list two weeks before the elections. But I could not make it. Many of my friends have turned Naxalites. We can say that our democracy has matured only when we bring them back to vote. Those Naxalites are Maoists now. What is our answer to them? In my opinion it should not be through weapons. We should have open dialogue with them. You cannot paint me red because I am saying this. You agreed to play a physically challenged villager in Pathinaru Vayathinile (at the age of sixteen). How did you agree to act in a small piece of loin cloth?

The Lord Muruga in Palani is not ashamed of standing wearing a langot. Then why should I be shy? Millions of people along with their kids go and have darshan of Lord Muruga there. He is not shy. I have written a poem: 'The clothes you wear are the advertisements of your nakedness...'

When they talk of national cinema, they refer only to Hindi cinema. Do you think that regional cinema is being ignored?

If Partition had not taken place, the largest spoken language of India would have been Bengali. All our important national songs are in Bengali. Hindi is not a national language but it is spoken in more regions than other Indian languages. But we should not be discriminated against in India like the Red Indians in the US. Next to Hindi, Telugu is spoken by the largest number of people. What is practical is very important. In my opinion, English is the national language of India. As English is spoken all over the world, it would be our strength too. I have a lot of friends in Bollywood. I respect them a lot. But I will not accept their cinema as Indian cinema. It is not only me, no one will accept it. When a French scriptwriter came here, he said: “Bollywood is an artistically crafted mask. The real India was not there.” But Bollywood is now getting fresh blood. Talent is coming to the Mumbai industry from other parts of India.

Tell us something about Rajinikanth?

In those days, when K. Balachander made a new film, I would be nervous. I would go and ask for a role. I would be keen to know about the other actors and their roles. On one such occasion, I saw Shivaji Rao. I saw him through the glass door of the director's room. In that movie, Rajni acted as a cancer patient. I had a friend called Rajan, who was a cancer patient. He used to have a French beard. So I suggested that Rajni should sport a French beard. He did. Rajan died before the film was wrapped up. Rajni replaced Rajan in my life, and our friendship got cemented.

Please tell us something about your guru, K. Balachander.

Only now we are trying to understand each other. Though we have done 36 films together, we didn’t have time then. He would often shout at me in anger. I used to show a little bit of resistance back then. But I always respected him. It took a long time for me to understand that only those who love us would get angry at us. After seeing Pathinaru Vayathinile, he wrote a generous letter to me. I have kept it framed. These are my degree certificates. He has been guiding me since I was only 18 years old. At the beginning of your career in cinema, you worked as an assistant to dance master Thangappa.

He could speak English, Malayalam and Tamil. He had a humble background. He worked as a porter in the Tiruvananthapuram railway station. He worked as a dhobi as well. When he was young, he was brought to Chennai to wash the dresses of a film crew. When the dancers were getting trained, he used to stand behind and imitate them. When the dance girls laughed at his antics, the dance master asked him to dance. Thangappa danced extremely well and he was brought into the dance profession. He danced in the film Chandralekha as one of the drum dancers. Then he went on to become a film director, and even produced movies. He ran a chit-fund company also. The scenes regarding a chit-fund company that I had shown in my film Mahanadhi were conceived keeping in mind the experiences of Thangappa master.

The late writer Sujatha also had a profound influence on you.

I knew him since I was very young. He used to come to our house to smoke secretly. We had been reading his stories in magazines without knowing that he was the author of the stories. We even wrote a letter to a magazine asking the editor to stop a story written by Sujatha complaining that it was a copy of another story. When I told him about this after we became close, he laughed and aserted that it was an original story. Magazines used to write about the inner circle of Kamal Hassan, which had a lot of intellectuals.

It just happened. They became my friends because of what they were. It is an insult to say that someone has got a position because he is a Tamil. Saying that Shruti became a musician because she is the daughter of Kamal Hassan is a big insult to her. Not everyone who lives in the same street with Ilayaraja can become a music director. Those that are in my inner circle came here only because of their talent not because of their address.

Films normally reflect the realities of the times they are made in. But Tamil cinema had failed to reflect the days of the Emergency.

Tamil cinema never dealt with political issues boldly. Even in Parasakthi (scripted by M. Karunanidhi and starring Sivaji Ganesan), social issues were dealt with ‘cleverly’, not with any strong conviction. People were imprisoned for making movies on the Emergency. My friend Snehalatha Reddy was also thrown behind bars. Even newspaper editors didn’t risk criticising the Emergency.

Even later no one reflected on it.

If our people could not bear even my movie Hey Ram, how are they going to bear issues like the Emergency? In Hey Ram I raised certain issues as strongly as I could. We did not show any disrespect to Gandhi. But the first voice of objection came from the Congress Party. I criticised RSS much more in the film, but the RSS did not object. Moreover, many Communists misinterpreted the film completely. Hey Ram was a film in which I posed relevant questions by standing at the centre. I did not try to say what is wrong and what is right.