NEWS

Gautham Menon clears the air...

28th April 2012

Kollywood’s ace director Gautham Menon recently stumbled upon a controversy after making a statement. In recent interview given to a Tamil publication Gautham reportedly blamed the actors for the failure of his Hindi remakes of Minnale (Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein) and Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaaya (Ekk Deewana Tha). 

Below is the excerpt from the interview he had given. 

"My films have not run in Bollywood due to my choice of heroes and not the content. Nobody came to see Madhavan because he was overweight, while Prateik had four flops, a negative image and film did not even take an opening. If the same film was done by Ranbir Kapoor it would have been a hit."

But today the director is furious claiming that his statement has been identified in the wrong sense and he clarifies this in another interview for a different publication.  

He speaks, "Reportedly', is the key word here. I have not blamed my actors for my films not doing well. In a recent interview to a Tamil weekly, I spoke about all that went wrong with my Hindi films. There were a whole lot of reasons I had talked about, beginning with the direction, the translation to Hindi, the script not being liked, the critics reviews, my own choice of casting that finally went wrong and Prateik not being as adept as Simbu. Similarly with my first Hindi film and I had even mentioned that I had no clue what I was doing in Hindi that early in my career. I had also said that I went completely with madhavan's conviction about the film and that I kept telling him that it won't work. And that there were reviews that talked about madhavan's look in the film and the critics called him overweight. Lots of reasons for the audience to stay away from the film. So it's unfair to state that I had only blamed my actors for my films being flops. I also thought it was a pointless effort to speak to the people in the film industry and get their quotes on a non issue and also when nobody bothered to take mine."

Gautham has also written a letter to the editor of the publication which had printed the supposedly wrong interview. It says:

"To the editor:

It's unfair for a reputed newspaper to put out an article based on hearsay and constructed out of another article that itself was quite suspect and didn't report the exact words I had used. All it takes is a phone call and you would have got my views on the same before putting out the article.  I have seen this happen many times before and it's in really bad taste. Your reporters cannot say I'm inaccessible because I have always answered their calls and they have PR persons to help connect with me. It is because of reports like this that I choose not to speak anymore. My logic being, If you are going to write anyway, I don't need to speak to you ever.

Gautham"

Gautham Menon’s next venture in Hindi is the remake of the popular Tamil flick Ko wherein Jiiva played the main lead. Popular actors like Ranbir Kapoor, Shahid Kapoor and Imran Khan are being considered for the role. 

 
Tags: R. Madhavan, Ranbir Kapoor, Imran Khan, Prateik Babbar, Gautham Menon, Rehnaa Hai Terre Dil Mein, Ekk Deewana Tha, Vinnai Thaandi Varuvaayaa , Minnale,