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Joining us here on Wharton's campus is Mr. Kamill Hassan, Indian actor and producer and a legend of Indian cinema.
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Kamill, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. My pleasure. You know before we begin, I just want to share a
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quick anecdote. Uh I went to college in Bits Pilani in India and uh I remember uh way back uh you know one of the years
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our Pilani Tamil association screened Ah Shanmugi and uh you know I remember before the screening a few students uh
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walked in with a big portrait of yours and they garlanded the portrait and they did an arty and then the screening began
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and no other film no other actor got that uh kind of attention. So I know those guys and I know they did it in
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lighter vein but I it also speaks volumes about your uh fans and how diehard fans they are. So can you can
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you say a little bit about your relationship with your fans? My relationship has been very different now
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I've become from just their entertainer I've become their elder brother and sort
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of a leader to them. I was not planning to lead the or even follow but it just happened that I had
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this enormous manpower going to waste or to politics which I didn't want either happening right so we
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converted all of them into social service uh arm and now we have about 300 to 400,000
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actual workers who could go out into the field and do things on command but only
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for civic reasons not political or rabbel rousing of any other sort. I see. So we are part of a clean India movement
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also which prime minister by the prime minister and we have been doing that for the past 30 years. Oh wow. So we being
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chosen as one of the ambassadors I think is more a recognition for me than a new
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appointment. So we've been at it and we're very proud that uh I think it's
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only because of those people uh the amount of money that has been spent. M I mean in dollar terms it might mean
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little but uh it's something like uh 6 or 7 million but all from people those those
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currencies are wet with sweat they're hardworking some of them are laborers earning very little but they donate so
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we have created a habit of donating and serving among Even those who actually are making ends meet. Wow. So they they
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are uh it's sort of it's a reversal of roles. I've become their fan for all that they're doing to society.
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It's and we're working together and still hope to work together. No. Kudos
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to you. It's great to see you put that stardom into a great social mission. Yeah. When I told them about 30 years
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back that I'll be proud telling them I have done this. So please understand it
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might sound silly now but now they we are a team who have donated body parts donated eyes we are blood donors blood
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bank sch callers when they need blood special group people go out of their town to donate blood in another town
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and that that's what we have created now you know talking about your fans yesterday I had a conversation with one
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of your fans who's my mother-in-law and she is telling me that she's seen
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your first movie from 1960 when you were 3 or 4 years old. Right. And I was amazed to learn that you've had a 55
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year career in films and you've done over 200 uh movies as you become it's
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become 57 now. It's 57 now. That's right. I figured you might have stopped
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counting now after a while. Well, for for obvious reasons. It's not good PR to
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keep telling what kind of citizen you are. Right. Right. Fair enough. Uh but as you reflect on on this illustrious
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career, what were the key moments or the key opportunities that that changed your
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career trajectory? Well, people here when I see actors and even today, not only Hollywood but even
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in they scheme, they plan, they sit and decide what they're going to do. I did
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nothing of that sort. M and if I if I tell you the uh kind of coincidences that happened that made me go from one
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to another, it's unbelievable. My I was just talking on uh serious radio and I
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was telling them that my when I given up in on acting because my father thought I
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should pursue uh school and uh stuff like that. I was seven or eight and I had an accident in school while fooling
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around. fell into the well of a stair three stories down. Oh my goodness. So that notoriity gave me
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a sort of visibility that took me to theater. So I was known as a kid who survived who fell. So he was also an
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actor movie actor. So somebody looking for a child actor for his theater group found me and he became my guru and I
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became like one among the family. Then he is TK Shanmukam the Dian of Tamil theater. Right. Right. Out after whom I
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named a film a Shanmuki. All right. Oh interesting. Shanmukam is his name. So he's he's mentored so many actors in the
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time. I I was one of them. Then I became a dance choreographer. Again another accident and I thought I won't be
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performing. So I went and joined as an assistant choreographer in movies. I was only playing sound for rehearsals. Then
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they found I could dance and then he took me in and my boss at that time became a director like how Bob force say
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from choreography to film direction. He he also graduated and so along with him I latched on became an assistant
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director. I was all this happened between 16 and 19. Wow. It's probably the perfect time. It's like going to
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film school, but I wish I had gone to film school, but it was finding my way, which was very bad. But then I wrote my
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first screenplay when I was 19. And the director of the film thought I should star in that because I understand
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the character best. So here I was and then my mentor uh Mr. Baljander found me and I told him
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he liked me and I told him I'd like to become a director like you sir one day.
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He said don't be a fool take up take up acting. I see you becoming an actor and
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I was wrong and he was right. And um he said you could become a director whenever you want because you're trained
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for it. But this is something else that doesn't happen to everybody. So I see. I
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did 36 films with him which is Wow. So you're you're talking about doing 36
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films with him. So clearly he's a person who he's like a father to me. Right.
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Right. Are there other uh people or maybe other films that inspired you? And I asked because you've been an
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inspiration to a lot of actors and directors. So I'm curious to know what inspires the person. Quite a few like I
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thought the my world ended with Tarian and Divipumar's this is the where the sun sets this is
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where the moon rises kind of limitations. Then later we saw Brando we understood Brando. Mhm. Then Orson Wells
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and stuff like that I see and then my horizon broadened further. Then you saw European actors. We thought then
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Hollywood is the zenith. Then we found that various pockets of genius that you where even Hollywood picks up from right
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then we got introduced to Japanese, Chinese, uh, Dutch cinema and they've all been
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inspirations in my career. I see. Now, you talked about how you didn't have training and and you know, I wish I'd
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gone to a film school, but you also were trained as a dancer and I can see how your experience in performing arts could
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uh be a source of inspiration for you as an actor. But tell us a little bit more
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on what you draw upon as an actor. Is it sheer instinct? Is it the dance training? What is it? No, dance training
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can be only one part like if you see Christopher Watkins, I never knew he could even dance. M that's not what I
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admired him for. It was a surprise when he could dance. So dance could be just a
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part of right of uh your acting progress. As a matter of fact, Fred Aastra, they always talk about his um
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dancing. That's right. Or Jane Kelly for both of them were good actors too. They didn't focus on it as much as they
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did dancing. So I think cinema itself is a very versatile medium. To be serving that medium you have to be versatile.
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You'll have to know so many things and I enjoyed it and um since I grew up my
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eyes open to cinema. I probably understood like how a child born with a computer environment plays easily with
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it than a person who saw the advent of computer coming in and slowly touched it and got used to it. Uh it's like today's
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ch children who take up an iPad and start playing the baby games on an iPad. Right. So you grew up with cinema,
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right? that that that's probably one little uh sort of help in the gradient that I
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got. Right. So let's talk a little bit about your movies. You've made some
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amazing films like Nikon uh which I saw for a second time just uh this week uh and was blown away by the intensity but
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there's so many other the list is so long. Michael Madan Kamar Rajan Aveshan
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Mmogi Saga uh in Canada which is the language I speak Rama Shama and many others
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uh where I mean I'm curious to understand how you go about selecting your films I mean you've had this uh
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amazing set of films and I'm interested in understanding what is the process
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that goes into deciding I'm going to do this film and not that other film it's it's complicated but it's very
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simple also the way you select the film films to see, you know, and some people pick the right
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movie all the time because they've been doing only that. They love it, right?
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And they say, "Not this one." And you're wondering which one to pick. And there's
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this wise geek, a cinema geek who tells you, "Go to that one because I think
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it's going to be good." It's it's still a chance. It might but that's that's
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what I uh obey that audience and me. I think ultimately all directors are trying to become that audience they once
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were right where you could totally concentrate on the center of screen one the moment you become a technician you
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start watching the corners shakes a little you notice it pans a little you notice it so you're not actually
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immersed into the watching of the film right other details sort of crowd your mind so most great directors are
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simplifying their job and becoming the audience is probably the zenith of their wish list, you know, to become that.
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Right. Right. You just gave the perspective of the director or the cameraman and and you yourself have been
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a producer. You've uh directed, you've written. Uh could you tell us a little
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bit about what got you into producing, directing, why did you decide to do it yourself? Survival.
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How it's like being a gladiator and then starting a gladiator school and then
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becoming Spartacus. It's it's like that you know it it became truly because because the kind of
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films they were doing was not satisfactory. The kind of films I was suggesting would become
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I mean intervention. Some people were lucky like Brando got to got his say in any film he did. He
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was such a big star but I didn't want to uh risk bad PR so I put my money where
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my mouth was. Okay. So and it worked. We have now produced uh 40 films under my company and out of which we have more
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than 30 hits which uh include films like Mahan even Rama Shamabama we were part of. So
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you're not just an amazing creative person, you're a great businessman too.
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You could come teach at Wharton in that case. 30 out of 40 films. That's amazing. Yeah. That that but we we know
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the we are now concentrating on the other 10. Why and how? And we have the answers but
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a little too late. But it could be imparted to somebody else. Yes. we more than coming toward
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and I think we'll have to sit home and mull over our failures and see that it
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doesn't happen again. So come on let's switch gears a little bit and talk about
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Indian cinema in general and the challenges and the opportunities uh it faces. So if you look at Indian cinema
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you know there's some great movies that have come out of it. Of course there's
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Satya you know your own film Niagen directed by Maniratnam has been listed by Time
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magazine as one of the hundred greatest films of all time. Um and as I mentioned
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earlier I saw it again second time this week and I was simply blown away by the intensity of the movie.
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Now while we have produced these kinds of movies, it's also true that given how
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massive the market is, these kinds of movies have more been exceptions than the norm of the u industry and you also
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alluded to the fact that uh you became a producer because the kinds of films you
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wanted to make weren't being made. So can you tell us a little bit about why
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despite India being such a big film market, India hasn't been producing great cinema at the same rate? Uh the
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thing is more people with money started dictating the proceed proceedings of the
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business. Less and less visionaries were doing it. I see. when you had uh KF, I think I would put the blames squely on
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great people like KF were taking so long to make films. If they had only made it
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faster, they would have set example, set the pace, set the bar higher every time.
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And uh it was very difficult, very tough market. And there weren't any studios,
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right? They all shut down soon after independence. Everybody was an independent producer. They didn't go the
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Hollywood route. So, everybody was risking it. Like even my own company is is like two brothers running the
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company. But we we are visionaries. We we look at what we want to do and we bet our stakes are high but we bet it on
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what we believe in. And it's worked about 30 times for us. Yeah. Now my own hypothesis on this subject is that it
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feels to me like there is an underinvestment in scripts in India. So if you look at uh Hollywood for example
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development which is you know licensing a book or writing the screenplay takes up 10 to 15% of the total budget. I
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looked at similar numbers for the Hindi cinema industry which was around 1 to one and a half% and I imagine it's
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similar in other languages. No it's even less. So, so it's it's it's so reliant
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on stars and existing uh fame that doesn't try anything. They don't believe
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truly that content could become king. I see. They think they need an actual king
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with a crown in physical form. So that's why they go to stars all the time. But
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the things are changing now. And uh as I was talking it's time that India started
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making its film uh in the language that it communicates with each interstate communication is not done in
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Canada between Tamil Nadu and uh Karnataka. Interstate communication between Maharashtra and
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Tamil Nadu happens because we have one national language called English. Right? So that is our strength and we
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should start making films in that language. And what about the writers you know what
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does it take for writers to you know get due attention in the industry is that happening already or it's it's slowly
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happening like I started on my own initiative it was not by any my company did it and we had a workshop uh
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screenplay workshop more than one or two uh where we made all international writers come and
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attend and I Madras was kind enough to offer space and that's probably the one
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time where two spectrums met you know it never ever got together and both need each other that way the
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two spectrums being the creative writers the creative writers and not only that IIT is
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technical talent technical talent and it's where intelligentia is supposed to
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reside side and if that connects with uh uh Tamil film making look at the kind of
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synergy that they could create that's what I was trying to even now I'm very
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keen on um making a media school uh those opportunities that I missed should be now given to this extraordinary
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talent and we have neglected most of uh talented India Yeah. Right. Right. Like for Assam, Megalai,
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right? Northwest uh northeast frontier itself. We we never looked into it. That's right. Now, moving on from
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writing, another criticism of Indian cinema uh tends to be the nepotism in the industry that there is uh it's hard
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for a newcomer to get in and it's easier for insiders. Um what's your take on
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that? Is that fair? And more importantly, is it possible for somebody with uh new creative ideas or with great
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talent to break in even if they have no connection? It's happening like I I was
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a nobody. Yeah. You clearly were so I can go by my example and I was not even from that part of the country. Yeah. And
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I didn't even speak that language but they welcome me and I think you can say
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that yes that that's true of Hollywood too. M you have uh there I guess fewer you know
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father son type of things that you can point to. Yeah, that that's the same thing that's happening there. But well,
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like a kid who's been in cinema from three and a half benefits. He understands it better. Look at me. So
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now Shi, my daughter is in movies. She understands it better. But she didn't
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want to become an actor. She actually was a graduate from musicians institute. Oh, really? In LA. But then she came
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back and she took to acting. She she's kept her career on hold as far as music
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is concerned but now she's after becoming a star she's using it to her benefit. Got it. So on that note, what
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would be your advice for somebody who's you know wants to break in, has talent,
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has an idea but doesn't have the connections. What's the right way to approach? I think the best thing is
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that's what I'm trying to create now a media school that trains actually
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instead of going and it's a lie when people say that I'm worked under some
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somebody a director and I learned film direction from him. It it's a lie. You
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cannot teach warfare during battle. It's an interesting perspective. Yeah. You don't teach them stroke by stroke.
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You don't tell them how to defend. They just watch and pick it up. And that's
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dangerous. The best way is to learn in a ludos in a school for fighters. And that's what it
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should happen. My advice is that my career took a strange twist and turn and got me into the right spot. But um I I
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don't think that's a good example to follow because not all can be that lucky
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finding good teachers all the time. Right. For me, my teachers paid me instead of the other way around. Right.
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Right. They paid me and taught me and it's that that's not going to happen.
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That doesn't happen anymore. Right. So I think they should prepare themselves like it is serious business
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and they should prepare like any other cinematography or you can't just come in
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here and handle that camera right you have to know where the switches are what it does what what an aperture is what
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what happens when it when it becomes seamos right uh how it grabs light and what all you could do further what you
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can do on further Right? All that switch to digital red camera. You must know the earlier
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history of how we suffered and how this has gone even further ahead. All that is
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knowledge and study and that should be done. Even in acting, even in film production,
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carrying a bag bagload of money and becoming a producer is no good. Right? That's what happened to India.
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And that's what went wrong. Now is a time where even the producers will have
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to be trained. Yeah. So Kaml, let's talk a little bit about digital platforms and
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their relevance in India. So Netflix has entered India very recently. Uh in India, internet adoption is increasing,
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but at the same time, broadband speeds aren't quite the same. What's your take
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on digital platforms for uh movie and related content? I've I've both cut my
00:23:26
teeth and broken it on that platform in the sense that uh I was the first man trying to attempting day and date
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release on a DTH platform. I see. And the whole industry came piling down on me.
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Yeah. Visharup. They banned the film. They stopped the film. They did everything possible. Then I had to wave
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a white flag and said okay no DTH and I'll come back to the theater which u which is okay I guess because but uh the
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door is already open the ideas planted you cannot stop technology it will come and uh it is the way to go I mean
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Netflix is coming and uh YouTube all of them are coming in and I'd like to explore them, work with them
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and that is the future because it convenience of the customer will uh garner more money right if you supply
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to that need right and in fact these platforms in the US have also made a new kind of uh content possible uh so for
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example Netflix has produced several shows Amazon has produced YouTube has produced Netflix has had house of cards
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which was a great success and many others so is Is there a similar opportunity in India where certain kinds
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of films that have an audience but perhaps are not meant to be large scale? Not all satellite channels in India are
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held by companies. Some are held by politicians. So it's only a propaganda tool, news
00:25:09
propaganda and that's it. So they are not looking at it as a great business opportunity. The moment they do that, it
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would be great. But you think it's on the TV side, not so much Netflix and YouTube doing that. No, but Netflix and
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YouTube has a fantastic potential in uh India. YouTube already is there, right? And uh Netflix will come there and maybe
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a few more they'll try and break into the follow the pattern of success. But
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that's that's the way to go and that's because especially in a country where
00:25:47
there's no transparency in the box office, right? So this will become a a venue and I'm so happy to see the way
00:25:56
television in America is going because it's not driven by uh people who are only crunching
00:26:04
numbers, right? Somehow it's taking a very intelligent turn. So you're hopeful
00:26:10
there could be a similar renaissance of television in India as well. I hope so because but they have I don't know it it
00:26:18
should have happened by now if we're already late but I think it will copy uh but these platforms are still
00:26:28
with or without television delivering uh material direct to home is going to work now direct to laptops
00:26:38
right and gadgets is going to be the way and and the length of the film might become extraordinarily long but
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it'll become smaller like serials right uh a 10-minut short 10 the 20 minutes might soon
00:27:00
become 10 minutes and you'll do hundreds of them so it'll become a thousand
00:27:05
minute show yeah yeah we've talked a little bit about what has gone wrong and
00:27:09
what are the challenges Indian cinema faces what in your mind is uh perhaps the most important thing that other film
00:27:17
markets can learn from Indian cinema. Oh, that is the ingenuity with making films of whatever we have, right? Like
00:27:26
if I tell you the budget of uh wishup Yes. Please tell us. Yeah. You you you won't believe it because it it is a
00:27:34
little less than 10 million and that includes my remineration which is a big chunk. I see. Which means it's
00:27:41
10 million US. Yeah. Yeah. But you look at the film budget movie, right? Yeah. like it's a lot of uh special effects
00:27:50
and all that. If you want to pull off a film like that in Hollywood, it'll cost
00:27:54
you 2025 million. Right. Right. And we've done it at half the price and the quality is not bad at all. You've seen
00:28:03
Hollywood films and we've seen Vish. Yes, I've seen Vishar Rupam and clearly
00:28:07
in terms of the effects and all of that, it it it's on par. So that's that's and that's what we
00:28:14
shouldn't lose because our shaking hands with Hollywood doesn't shouldn't grease
00:28:18
it with a lot of dollars right and make us complacent. I think our quality comes
00:28:25
from our um use of budget and working hard. Right? So I think what they should learn from
00:28:35
Hollywood on the uh contrary for most of the film making industry is the um prep
00:28:42
for a film. The way Hollywood preps is astounding. I like it and it it it is all uh there's no bragging element in
00:28:54
that. It's all necessary and the way they do it and yes it looks a bit flamboyant for people who are budget
00:29:02
conscious because as you say to develop a movie to prep a movie so much money is
00:29:09
spent right and a Indian producer will still not understand why that is so important to spend money there right
00:29:18
now finally let me come back to where we began which is your 55 year uh film career After such an illustrous career,
00:29:26
what is there left for you to do in cinema? What keeps you ticking within the film world? Applause and money. So
00:29:33
you never get tired of it. No, no, not not not of both. But apart from that, there's a lot of
00:29:40
work to do as far as India is concerned. As I told you, the media school itself is a is a dream. And now we are writing
00:29:48
a script with American writers. um my friend Charles Oliver and few other writers are sitting together and
00:29:57
we're making a script in English. Hopefully films like that would happen more often and then we're talking. Well,
00:30:10
here's wishing you even more success. Thank you so much for joining us here at
00:30:13
Thank you. Pleasure. [Music]