It was a date with nostalgia for Kamal Haasan and fans, for the actor-filmmaker recalled that some memorable experiences from the past, during an online session to pay tributes to late dramatist-actor Crazy Mohan.
“I had written ‘MMKR’ (‘Michael Madana Kama Rajan’) script like a kolam that you teach a child. There were just a few dots and crosses. Mohan was the only one who truly got it. We are fans of Oscar Wilde and PG Wodehouse. And it might be surprising, but ‘MMKR’ has its origin in ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’,” he said
According to Kamal, “The ‘Aboorva Sagotharargal’ you see is the fourth version of the story that we were trying to do. We sought the advice of Panchu Arunachalam, and he suggested that we should make the dwarf character the hero of the film, and make it in the vein of ‘Yaadon Ki Baaraat’.
Mohan and I grasped what he was suggesting, and reworked the script. But I’d call that as a rehearsal for ‘MMKR’, because with ‘MMKR’, we used to fine tune the scenes like crazy. Like grinding grains, we ground it so well that you could see only the fine powder and not a single grain.”
Kamal, who said that he had Crazy Mohan stand in for a character, stated further: “He fell headlong from a height of two feet while rehearsing one of the sequences in the climax. I still do not know how he managed to fall that way from such a small height,”
At the event organised by the Tokyo Tamil Sangam, Kamal said, “I was first introduced to him not in person but on page. I happened to read the script of ‘Crazy Thieves’ in Palavakkam when I was unwell; I had typhoid or something. I immediately asked, ‘Who’s this guy? I need to see him right away.’ The writing was so impactful that I used to repeatedly talk about the jokes with my family. So, I should say I was a fan before I became a friend.”
On Nagesh, he said, “Nagesh fought (playfully) with me on why I had given that role to him. I asked if he wanted mine, and he remarked, ‘As if you’d give me that if I asked you for it!’ Then, he said that I should have at least given SN Lakshmi’s role of the thieving grandmother to him. In fact, he used to tease her, saying, ‘If I had done that it would have been at a different level.”
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