Director Jeethu Joseph went apprehensively into the shoot of his Tamil directorial debut Papanasam, remake of his hit film Drishyam, because of the rumours he had heard about Kamal Haasan. But now, with the film set for release, he calls it a revealing and learning experience.
“A lot of people narrated instances of how Kamal Haasan had interfered with the direction process in previous films and warned me that it would not be easy to work with him as he is a director himself. So, on the first day, I told Kamal sir that we would begin the shoot at 7.30 am, expecting everyone to be a couple of hours late as it was the first day. But he reached the sets sharp at 7.20 am. After giving his shots, he would go sit in a chair, talking to the crew and singing Carnatic songs. He didn’t even go to his caravan! After the third day, since he hadn’t made any suggestions yet, I went to him with the script and asked whether he wanted any changes.
He said, “That’s your job. You can do whatever you feel is right.” So, shooting with him was a pleasant experience for me. He came into the film industry as a child actor and today, at 60, he is every bit as enthusiastic. Usually, by the middle of the shoot of every film I feel exhausted, but this film, it was impossible because of the energy levels he brought. The greatest experience for me has been watching the same character take two shapes at the hands of two legendary actors. People keep asking me who portrayed it better? But I can’t answer that as both Mohanlal and Kamal Haasan have portrayed the character in their own style — Georgekutty had quiet mannerisms, while Suyumbulingam is emotional. However, the story line itself has very little changes,” says Jeethu.
Jeethu also picked up some Tamil during the shoot. “I can understand Tamil now, but speaking is another matter. I have completely murdered the language during the promotion of Papanasam as I tried to perfect the slang and ended up making a mess. During the shoot itself, however, we had no problems as Kamal sir speaks very good Malayalam and I spoke to everyone else in a mix of Tamil, Malayalam and English inventing my own language in the process! But, as long as you can communicate what more do you want...” he says laughing.
Life of Josutty, his upcoming Dileep starrer, is currently in post production. He says, “It is nothing like Drishyam and has no mega-twists. It’s a simple family entertainer with a straightforward narrative along the lines of Mummy and Me.” The second schedule of the movie was shot at Rotorua, New Zealand. Getting permissions to shoot, even on empty meadows, is mandatory. But it’s easy to acquire permissions and people were very co-operative. We had some shots that had to be taken at the domestic airport and you could say the entire airport was in our hands for a couple of days. They even offered to move the planes around the runway for us!”
Jeethu adds, “Very few shoots happen in that part of the country and, while we were there, Shah Rukh Khan happened to pass by the area. Noticing the film set, he stopped his car to enquire which film was being shot and was pleasantly surprised to find that a Malayalam film had gone to New Zealand to shoot. The shooting was wonderful. However, it is the weather prediction system that is amazing. I have no idea how they do it, but they can predict weather accurately one week in advance. One morning, we went to get a shot of a church at 8 am, though the weather was predicted to be misty till 10.30 am. We ended up waiting till 10.30 am for the mist to clear.
Similarly, because they predicted that it would rain at 4 pm, we shifted an outdoor shoot to morning and sharp at four it started to rain! Thanks to the system, we could plan our shoot efficiently. Over here, on the other hand, they still tell you ‘It may or may not rain today,’ he says sarcastically. Jeethu also has three other projects — with Mohanlal, Prithviaj and Kavya Madhavan — in the pipeline which is still in its scripting stage.
