We have been talking about Chachi 420 aka Avvai Shanmughi quite a bit lately. So, this may not be a bad time to look back at an interview from that period. Yes, we had a Screen interview too; but let’s see what Kamal said on Rediff.com:

“The film will do well, I hope,” says Kamal Hasan, who is in Bombay for the release. And if it does become a hit, he hopes he will have a longer tenure in Bollywood than he did after that mega-grosser Ek Duje Ke Liye.

“It was a big mistake but let us not talk about all those controversies,” says Kamal Hasan.

“See, she had come in time; there were others waiting too. In fact, everyone had to wait for me to get ready because my make-up took quite some time to happen. There were all these senior artistes also waiting for me. They never cribbed. Then who is Ashwini, sir?”

“Sorry for the outburst,” eventually he says, contritely.

Flashback to 1958 or so…A little boy comes along with a doctor to treat a woman who is ill at the home of movie mogul A V Meyyappa Chettiar of the AVM Studios. Suddenly a man on the first floor of the bungalow begins shouting into a phone. The doctor is discomfited, but not young Kamal Hasan of Ramanathapuram. He strides up the stairway and tells the astonished noisemaker, “Please keep quiet. Don’t shout over the phone like that. Someone in the house is ill.”

“I have notes for every department, telling them what they should be doing for that particular shot. That makes things a lot easier,” he says.

“As a professional I may have achieved something, but I am an ordinary human being. I laugh, I get angry easily and do things much as others do. I’m not a star, I’m not different from others. Even if I like to think I am someone special, the fact is I’m not.”

“I have just been making films I want to. The audience has been pretty kind, watching and appreciating my films.”