Here are two more interviews of Kamal, done as part of Dasavathaaram publicity. Sample some excerpts before enjoying the whole interviews at DNA and BusinessOfCinema.com.

I have spent 500 hours doing make up itself and it takes a lot of perseverance and belief in what you are doing to keep doing it. If I spent that much time inside a cockpit I would be a successful commercial pilot.

“I can alter my life, you can’t! You can criticise it, comment on it, but you can’t change it. That is a great advantage to have.”

“…There is a downside to everything. If we take ourselves too seriously, we actors will definitely need a psychiatrist.”

“…I make sure that I get my privacy. I demand it and sometimes I steal it. It is sometimes taken for granted, but I maintain that my privacy is nobody’s business.”

“…Spirituality makes you rest, makes you content. I will only settle down when I am in a coffin, under the earth or inside the fire. Till then I will keep myself active and alive…”

“…I think every actor has a responsibility. One cannot say I am an actor, I will do my job and not care about what’s happening in the country.”

From the perspective of international standards, money and talent is being invested in the right direction and I feel that in two years from now nothing called Bollywood will exist.

[With input from Ananth]

Just as we were rejoicing the audio / trailer launch and waiting eagerly for Dasavathaaram comes the dampener. Minor and insignificant political organizations continue the dangerous and irritating trend in India of gaining publicity at the sake of big movies. Of course, Kamal has been a favourite target due to his non-conformist / controversial ideas. One is worried about the negative publicity affecting the movie, similar to the ‘anti-Gandhi’ charges preceding Hey Ram

The matter has already reached the court! Here is the extensive media mileage derived by VHP, Hindu Munnani and other outfits that have sprung out of the blue: Behindwoods 1 | Thatstamil 1 | ChennaiOnline | MSN | Thatstamil 2 | IndiaGlitz | Buzz18 | Dinamalar | Dinathanthi | Behindwoods 2 | News Today | Webdunia.

As if politico-religious folks aren’t doing enough, we have undue criticism even in the blogosphere, without even the movie being released!

[With extensive inputs from Ananth]

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

Kamal seems to have a done a whole set of interviews in Mumbai, as part of promotion for Dasavatharam. None of the interviews mention Dashaavtar though. Here are two more of them, one each for Hindustan Times and Times of India. The North Indian press seems to be obsessed with his personal life more than anything else, but Kamal is unfazed. Here are some highlights from the enjoyable interviews. As usual, Kamal proves to be a “quote factory”!

Both the times when you separated from your wives, there was another woman involved. Sarika led to your split with Vani and Simran caused a rift between Sarika and you.
Unless it’s a gay marriage, there’s always another woman involved.

All I can say is that marriage is a folly that is slowly becoming redundant. I have four vaccination marks. In our time, they were a necessary ordeal. It’s different today. I’m hopeful that one day like the vaccinations, the institution of marriage too will go away.

A broken marriage isn’t an offence or crime. Today I am happy, yes, but my idea of being settled is only inside the coffin. Till then everything is mobile.

Planning a comeback to Hindi films?
Oh definitely. There’s plenty of money. But I’m a sucker for applause. I want to reach out to a bigger market.

So where do you think you went wrong?
I didn’t try hard enough. To succeed here, I needed to live in Mumbai, make films consistently, not have a release every four-five years. Still, the audience was kind, they didn’t forget me.

But I make occasional appearances here when I want to reach out to larger audience. It’s a different story in Tamil Nadu. There a film sells on my name alone.

Ten roles, isn’t he increasingly becoming self-indulgent in his films? “Who isn’t,” asked Kamal defensively. “Aren’t great actors like Yusuf saab and Amitabh self-indulgent? Who else should I love more than me? Brad Pitt?”

My politics is private like sex. I don’t want to spoil the fun by talking about it.

There have been several conjectures about my 10 get-ups complete with graphics. I could use them for some other movie.

I liked Om Shanti Om and might have liked it even more had I been less informed about cinema and wasn’t looking into unnecessary details like focus and colour. I’m like a cook who cannot savour a good dish without checking on the salt and sugar.

We believe in two different kinds of cinema. It’s unfair to pit one against the other. Would you ask Marlon Brando what he thought about John Wayne’s films? Or compare (Arnold) Schwarzenegger’s biceps to Woody Allen’s brains? Come on! Mr Rajnikant has made some good films. I’ve done some commercially successful films too.

…Unless Rajnikanth and I agree to work for free and later take the trade collection, I don’t see it happening. But, yes, it will be interesting to work together.

It’s being said that your next film will be with Walt Disney studio.
We’re in talks.

Apparently, Mallika Sherawat threw a lot of tantrums.
I wouldn’t know. I was the writer and star of the film. ( Smiles ) Everyone treated me well.

We have been waiting for long to hear stuff from the horse’s mouth and here it comes! Kamal answers several questions lingering in our minds presently, through an interview to Mumbai Mirror. Highlights:

Jackie Chan is coming down for the music release of the film?
The producer Oscar is an old friend of Jackie and it is because of him that Jackie is coming down.

It took a long time to conceive?
The basic thing was that all of us, especially the director and I, had to decide to concentrate on just this film and we were ready to face the lack of averages. We both could have done four films each in these two years instead of Dasavatharam, but I must say that it was quite rewarding. The producer is already assured of making twice the money he has spent in Tamil Nadu itself and that’s quite an achievement.

It is said to be the costliest film in Tamil Nadu.
Yes it is the costliest film in the Tamil film industry. It has already managed to break even. I just hope that now it lives up to the expectation of audiences. It is a costly film as its stars, music director and the director are being paid a lot. The best part is that the producer was smiling at the start of the film and he still is smiling when it’s complete - which is very rare.

You were not very confident of Himesh earlier.
It’s not that I looked down upon him but yes, I wouldn’t have agreed to him doing the music at an earlier point. But he gave us what we wanted and that too in a very short time. I have no complaints now, whatsoever.

You have signed Hema Malini for your next film. Tell us more about the film.
Yes, I have signed her for the film. All I can say right now is that it’s a period film set in the 7th century. It will be a bi-lingual in Hindi and Tamil and I am writing the entire script in Tamil and Atul Tiwari is writing it in Hindi. Rahman will score the music.

There is always this talk about a war between you and Rajnikant over who is supreme in the South industry.
(Laughs) We decided to wage this war when we were very young. We always meet and take each other’s opinion about each other’s work. We give advice to each other too - though we don’t necessarily follow it. I always tell him what I am going to do next. So does he. We work like a team.

But does it pressurise you when his film and your film are up for release together - as in the case of Sivaji and Dasavatharam this time?
I guess the media plays it up. I think I play cricket and he plays football. It is not even the same field. We may be in the same arena but we play two different games.

But Mani Ratnam had a project for you two.
It was not for both of us acting together, but for one producing and one acting. Rajnikant and I act together? If Rajnikant and I act together what will be left to make the film with?

Enjoy the whole inteview!

Balakumaran is another literary personality with whom Kamal has colloborated. Though not as much as Sujatha, Balakumaran too has made significant contributions. The most notable among them is Nayakan. Then, there is Guna, where his spiritual / religious inclination would have come into play.

In Balakumaran Pesukirar, a blog dedicated to him, there was a piece recently on his impressions of his work in movies. He specifically talks about Rajnikanth, Kamal and Ajith. He starts off on Kamal with:

Kamal Haasan is a wonderful artiste. Any person who sees him at close quarters for 10 minutes will certainly be astonished.

He goes onto to narrate an experience during the making of Guna. He talks about how Kamal continued a story discussion of the previous day, right from the moment he arrived (stepping out of his car), to illustrate how engrossed Kamal is in his work.

It is about creativity every moment. It is about movies every moment. That’s how Mr. Kamal Haasan thinks. Working with him is a pleasurable thing to do.

He ends saying that Kamal has high expectations of people working with him. Kamal himself admitted that he gets angry at times when he is disappointed with co-workers.

I am not an angry person. I am just fast.

Speaking about Ajith, he describes an incident when he explained a scene and Ajith refused to do it that way, saying that it was reminiscent of Kamal.

Enjoy the full post (if you can read Tamil).

[Via Ananth]

Kamal was interviewed for Puththagam Pesudhu (Tamil magazine on books), in its special edition released for the Chennai book exhibition held in January. Bubbling with enthusiasm and ideas, Kamal covers a wide range of topics related to books, movies, religion and society. In the end, the reader is astounded with his depth of knowledge and wisdom. Though we are unable to reproduce this very long interview or provide a link to it, here are some highlights.

• He encourages the efforts of the people behind this magazine.
• He talks about an aborted attempt with writer Balakumaran to provide meaningful stories as comic strips. He puts forward an idea of narrating stories through FM radio!
• He talks about his early inhibition to write in Tamil and how RC Sakthi helped him overcome it. He first wrote a short story titled “Ninaivugal” (Memories).
• Talking of the influences of books in his movies, he mentions Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. He says that Saket of Hey Ram was influenced by the character of Raskolnikov.
• He openly talks about his fascination for women and obsession with sex-related books during his adoloscent years. He also speaks about how he evolved into an atheist.
• He goes onto talk about his literary heroes incluing Jayakanthan, Jeyamohan and Sundararamasami. Regarding movies, he mentions his “Close net film society” efforts and is confident of changing the nature of movies in India.
• He praises fellow actor Sivakumar for not having a fans’ association. He also elaborately evaluates Sivaji Ganesan’s acting.
• During the interview, Kamal quotes a censored dialogue from Mumbai Xpress, which is based on Gandhi’s three monkeys!

Translation of some snippets:

• Since profound literature was boring, readers stuck to trivial magazines. As we forgot to mix it with honey, only honey bottles are being provided nowadays.
• Is the side-dish alone enough? Don’t we need to eat the main dish? People imagine that the side-dish alone would fill stomachs. That’s sad.
• There is this book called Tao of Physics. I like such ones…I promise I didn’t understand it.
• In my house too, there were people who read books. But in Brahmin households, English had the first priority. Only women used to talk about Tamil novels. Due to the interest of my mother and sister, I too got introduced to Tamil.
• I’m a pedestrian politician. I’m not searching for my leader in Delhi, but on the streets.
• When Ananthu died, two boxes full of books came to my house. I leaned on the box and cried out loud. That is my relationship with books.
• Great writers do contain themselves due to their desire to feature in Ananda Vikatan and Kumudham (top Tamil magazines). Sivaji did the same.
• Shouldn’t Sivaji and Satyajit Ray have worked together? Language is a reason. We don’t have a national language.
• Rajni came (without knowing Tamil), isn’t it? No one puts in efforts like his these days.
• The air-conditioner in my office runs because movies have become a business.

Let’s end with some seemingly outrageous statements on one of his pet topics, atheism:

• It is difficult to make me believe in God after all these years.
• If the religious heads didn’t keep dancing this way, a person like me wouldn’t have come to atheism.
• Ramanuja was an atheist too. Christ was an atheist too. In their times.

If you can get hold of the issue, enjoy another of Kamal’s dimensions.

[Via an unassuming source who wishes to remain anonymous]

Below are Kamal’s comments on The Name is Rajnikanth, the book on Rajni that is about to be released.

Dr Gayathri Sreekanth has a unique viewpoint. An angle Rajini fans most cherish. A low angle shot looking up at their hero.

Dr Gayathri has not destroyed truth for the sake of sensationalism.

A book of this sort in English is long overdue.

Precious, little, private details about the superstar fills the book. Though I know most of them, it is still a good read.

The rise of Rajini is a notable achievement and will be remembered in Tamil commercial cinema history. So will Dr Gayathri’s book.

Have a good read.

Dr. Gayathri Sreekanth’s interview in Mid-Day also features one question about the rivalry:

So does Kamal Haasan address their so-called rivalry in his note?
Oh, the two are thick as thieves. It’s just been us foolish fans fighting over them all these years. In fact, when Rajini wanted to quit the movies in the 80s to be a sanyasi, it was Kamal who made him come back.

Last week, Kamal was seen at the launch of the Indian edition of the Rolling Stone magazine in Mumbai. He was there along with his family to cheer Shruti, his daughter, who performed there. Check out the news and photos at Buzz18.com and MSN.

The sorrow is evident on his face in all the photos. Kamal participated in the homage function organized for Sujatha on Sunday, March 2.

Many of Kamal’s literary friends too can be seen in photos from Behindwoods. IndiaGlitz has photos and a video, featuring Kamal’s speech (with bad audio quality unfortunately).

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]

[Click image to view larger version]

As expected, Kamal has sent out a press release paying homage to Sujatha. Here is the gist in English from The Hindu.

[Picture courtesy: BehindWoods]