 Mumbai,
21
Nov
"This is my experiment with truth. I only hope people don't think I've twisted the truth." A sample of Kamal Haasan's dry humour, which is evident through the press conference, held at The Leela in Mumbai. Kamal is in town today, with music director Ilayaraja, for the recording of Hey! Ram. "While the music for a regular Hindi film is recorded in India and shot abroad, we have shot in India and the background score for the first time is being recorded in Eastern Europe. The principal shooting of the film is over and the music will be released in January," the actor-director announced.
Hey! Ram being made in Hindi and Tamil has both talent and stars in it. Besides Kamal who plays the lead role of Saket Ram, a Madras born archeologist, others in the cast include Shah Rukh Khan, also an archeologist, Naseeruddin Shah as Gandhi and Rani Mukherji as Saket Ram's wife. The film has the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi as the pivotal point and the story covers the period from 1948 to 1999.
More in first person from Kamnal Haasan on the hows and whys of his much-awaited Hey! Ram:
"The story did not happen earlier because I met Mohini Mathur now who as a little girl was an eyewitness to Gandhi's assassination. The story idea is 10 years old but having someone who could recreate the whole incident and put us right in visualising it was a big help. Also she was the right age to play Shah Rukh's mother and who had a clear idea of the period...
"The film is an entertainer. We have not tried to be cerebral about it. I have not tried to do any icon bashing in the film. I know it is a great sport in any country but Gandhi is part of every Indian psyche. Whether you like him or not you accept him as a great human being. That's what my film eventually conveys...
"Since the film is being simultaneously made in Tamil, I have Sha hRukh Khan, Sourabh Shukla, Girish Karnad (who is multilingual) and of course Hema Malini saying their lines in Tamil. We have live sound in the film, or almost 90 percent of the film.
I discovered that we have a whole generation of technicians here who don't have the discipline of working in a sound studio and it was difficult convincing them that it could be done here if it can be done in Hollywood. They spent their energies in trying to make me change my mind all along-every time somebody sneezed or dropped something on the set. So top stars would sometimes need about 30 retakes because we weren't getting absolute silence...
"Shah Rukh Khan and Rani Mukherji are in the film because Hey! Ram is a commercial film and an entertainer. They were also chosen because of their birth, which suited the roles of Shah Rukh as the Pathan and Rani as a Bengali woman. Music is by Ilaya Raja, for whom this will be his 785th and 786th (Hindi and Tamil) films. There is no one more suited to compose the varied kind of compositions that we have in the film. As the film travels through time, so does the music. Of the six songs there is a happy, raunchy number sung by Hariharan and me. Asha Bhosle sings the theme song, plus there is a lavni and a mantra...
"I saw Gandhi Vs Gandhi where Naseeruddin Shah played the role without the aid of prosthetic make-up and that decided the role of Gandhi. I'm happy I didn't choose Ben Kingsley who was my original choice. This Gandhi is very Indian in spirit..."
Kamal just hopes that the film will also be taken in the right spirit. Why, is he excepting a controversy? To this he shot back with, "How do I know? Here people will make a controversy out my face, so why not this film?"
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