When you leave the theatre, the film should stay with you: Kunchacko Boban

What according to you do today’s audiences want?
Ultimately a film has to entertain people. People can cry out of sadness, but they can cry out of happiness also. I want to make people cry out of happiness. If that happens, the people are happy, the actor is happy and even the producer is happy. Making movies is a fine mix of art and business. You need the business end to bring more entertainment on to the screen, but for that to happen, you have to first entertain the people.The same holds good for artistic films too. When you leave the theatre, the film should stay with you. It shouldn’t leave your mind. That’s how you measure the success of a film.
You have done 62 films in Mollywood. Have you ever thought of doing other language films?
During my first stint in films, I did get offers from the Tamil film industry. But as I said, I wasn’t too serious about films and didn’t take it up as I didn’t want to get too busy! (laughs) What if the Tamil film I did becomes a hit then I’d get too busy! I didn’t want that happening to my otherwise carefree life. But now when I want to do Tamil films, no offers are coming my way. I haven’t really tried to get into the industry, but yes, I would like to do a Tamil film. I know the language. I can read, write and speak Tamil fluently. Sometimes when I’m shooting in Tamil Nadu, when people come to me for autographs, I sign it with an ‘anbudan’ (with love) in Tamil.
How is Malayalam cinema different from other industries?
Malayalam cinema’s reach is comparatively less when pitted against Tamil, Telugu or Hindi, but Malayalam films have always been known for quality. But our timeline and budgets are very small. We wind up everything in about 60 to 70 days. Many a time we comfortably finish a movie in 30 days. By way of an overseas market, we have fairly large market in UAE and then some in UK and a bit more in Australia, but that’s about it. In India, outside Kerala, we have a very small market. Even though we have very good technicians, they are not able to exhibit their talent because of limited budgets. We have Ravi K Chandar, Santosh Sivan and directors like John Mathew Matthan, who did the Aamir Khan film Sarfarosh, they are all capable of increasing the scale of films and giving it grandeur, but our budgets will not allow them to realise this potential. Most of the time, they get big only when they go to other language films.
What do you think about the satellite issues?
It’s a give and take. If the channels entirely depend on big names to buy movies, that is a big mistake. They should have an idea of the product. They should know the storyline. The sad thing is that 80 per cent of the films are doing badly because of the subject. The situation now is such that even when we approach them with a film with a good subject they are skeptical. That’s the bad news. Now, the number of films being picked and made is coming down. Last year 150 films were made but this year only about 75 will be made. But that’s all we need actually. It’s a cleaning up process. Like in computers you clean up the virus, in our films the bad ones are being weeded out. It should have happened long back, but it’s happening only now. It’s a welcome change. Even the technicians and actors have become serious. They are no more going for numbers. They are going for quality.
What do you have to say about the women centric films that are being made?
We have been dealing with this clichéd term called women power for long. This has been used both in a proper and improper way. But in a film like How Old Are You, it has worked positively. It’s a woman-centric film with a very nice theme of empowerment and organic living. Such films should be made to change the situation of women at large in Kerala. In my life, three women have played a very crucial role – my grandmother who laid the foundation for me to take up acting by making me learn classical dance, and made me take part in elocution competition, theatre etc. I wasn’t interested at all, but would do it just to make her happy. Then my mother, for giving me my character, and my wife for making me come back into films. It’s these three women who have actually made me what I am today. Their role cannot be belittled. We should understand the power of a woman.
Tell us about your next outing, Bhaiya Bhaiya.
I’m back again with my all-time favourite ‘heroine’ Biju Menon (laughs). We have done a lot of work together like Seniors, Ordinary, Mallu Singh and Romans, which were out and out fun and hit films. We are back again with Bhaiya Bhaiya. The film has a wide star cast with Biju, Suraj Venjaramoodu, Innocent, Salim Kumar, Nisha Agarwal and Vijayaraghavan. The first schedule was shot in Changanassery, second schedule in Calcutta and some portions in Bangalore.
After How Old Are You, there’s word that you are dabbling in organic farming?
I have been doing organic farming on my terrace for a year now. We buy the seeds from Vegetable and Fruit Promotion Council Keralam. I have one acre plot beside a river at Aluva and I am going to do organic farming in a proper manner. I told my wife not to look into the profit as the profit is the hospital expense, which we might incur later on.
I love doing cultivation. I am from Kuttanad, which is the rice bowl of Kerala. So basically we come from a family of farmers and farming is there is in my blood. I love playing in the mud, climbing trees, plucking mangoes... I am a hardcore fan of pearl spot fish too.