Celebrating 13 milestone years of Mr Kamal Haasan’s Dasavatharam

Unsurpassable! A mile stone in Indian and Tamil Cinema! That is how
synonymous this can get with Dasavatharam! How can someone even
think of such a grand, glossy, brilliant, mind blowing screenplay at a
time when film making wasn’t developed enough to visualize its actual
potential? But we do have a polymath who’s one of his kinds to do this
and he did. The name is Kamal Haasan rightly called fondly by his fans
as “Ulaga Nayagan “Celebrating 13 years of Dasavatharam here is an
exclusive from his archive on the making.
A coveted file which makes more sense when released today than
yesterday. When you make art for posterity do not expect sponsors to
be in agreement .They are temporary and would think only for the
moment. The greatest sponsors are artists themselves fortunately in
history sponsors have also been connoisseurs for instance and hence it
helped art. You cannot expect that from corporations in a hurry who
work for a quarterly review. People with vision register in history. For
instance the Mogul Emperor, the German Monarch, Ashoka ,Chola and
many more down the line in history.

Thus spoke Kamal Haasan.
Dasavatharam -The Thought and Process:
Talking about embarking on this journey of making He begins by saying
Dasavatharam was a script which was declined by many directors who
said they didn’t understand it, and quite unexpectedly Mr Ravikumar
jumped at it. He immediately claimed it a winner on cards and was
surprised that it was turned down and asked to make the film while on
a telephonic conversation with me at Eldams road. That’s how the
movie came into being!
Most of the time I work alone and like to take the opinion of seniors
and well wishers while on a project. For Dasavatharam it wasn’t any
different and thus I wanted to take Mr Mukta Srinivasan’s opinion as he
has string instincts and is a brilliant short story writer. In Nayakan,
thanks to Mr Mukta, the Heroine’s character was beautifully written as
a young girl who prepares her exams while being an inmate in a
brothel. He heard the Dasavatharam script and he said “Kamal you
must watch over the film closely as its your idea and goes further and
says foster it like your child. They will kill the child otherwise if you only
decide to walk in and out of shoot”. I took his advice and spent all my
time on it.

Once I finished the logline with Mr Mukta Srinivasan, the director wasstill skeptical about the way the script was written. We had Mr Sujata,
Mr Madhan, Mr Ramesh Arvind, Mr Crazy Mohan all sit with us for a
narration and I answered all the questions they kept asking. It was a
very important exercises as they are all are experts and have the
expertise to analyze the script. My biggest support was from Mr Sujatha
who said “you got it bang on man”. The rest were new to the ideation,
scale and budget .
The Beginning:
Any producer would have found it ridiculous that the director and I
went to the US for 21 days to do make up tests for all the looks, but we
did it. Mr Michael Westmore bent over backwards and did a
stupendous job during the trial. Every day for 21 days was hard work
and one time Mr Michael also pushed himself in helping me with wiring
me for a photo shoot held me too as I wanted to try a kick a certain
way. Sometimes I did two different looks /make ups as we were
building the makeup in layers and it was done in a lab. During the
process Mr Ravikumar realized the full scope of the looks and
immediately engaged a photographer for $250 a day to record each
look.

Our producer was enthusiastic to immediately release all of the 10
looks in the media. However I had to stop him by telling him that
people would not find a need to go to a cabaret or a strip tease if the
advertising posters had images from the final climax and there is
nothing further to entice them in! I knew we had something precious
and convinced him to hold back and am grateful he understood then. I
had taken to heart the advice of Mr Mukta Srinivasan to closely guard
my baby and just kept doing that.
Towards the ends of the filming, during the tsunami sequence we
realized we needed a crore more to achieve the visuals written by me
for the climax. Now people nonchalantly talk about 20 to 30 crores ,
but back then it was huge . I offered to rewrite the script without the
tsunami and end it with the train sequence, but the butterfly effect
would have been lost. But I was willing to do it’s I had to have an
alternative our producer You must remember here that I once made a
film named Vikram which was then called ‘oru kodi rubai kanavu’, but
within two decades it was about a crore more for just one sequence,
but that’s the evolution of cinema with technology. However, Mr
Ravikumar had fully understood the script and fought tooth and nail to
get the climax done as scripted originally and we spent the additional 1
crore. I gave Mr Ravichandran some of my rights to the film as I
ALWAYS invest in my movies and we were partners in the film and he
had seen my vision to fruition and we pulled off what was near
impossible then.
That’s how Dasavatharam was made and saw completion.

The Technicians :
Everyone was pushed to their limits during to achieve the project ; Ms
Gauthami’s contribution , art director Mr Sameer Chanda did the first
10 minutes of the film and left , Mr Thota Tharani picked up from there
followed by Mr Prabhakar who did the airport sequences they all did a
fabulous job . I remember that Mr Jeeva was supposed to be the
cinematographer but couldn’t take up the project. We had so many
other good technicians who weren’t able to come on board.The entire
concept of the film was new and challenging, like just the first 10
minutes sequence in re creating a period cost 2.5 crores which was new
to everyone. I am not being myopic to budgets, it is just that I am
grateful to each and every technician who stood by me and made me
achieve my vision. Be it art directors, stunt directors as some of the
Stunt sequences were like never before, the CG team who we used to
quarrel with over budgets as they wanted 2 million and we used to ask
them to show us a khadi Gramodyog way of achieving the output and
that’s why due the lack of budgets some portions of CG might not look
the way it is supposed to have looked. All of my technicians helped me
complete the project through all the insults, quarrels, stressful
environment etc and I am grateful to them and on the other hand, I
would never forget or forgive those technicians who gave up and ran
away like rats ditching the project. If you believe in something, it can
always be achieved and example from way before is Aboorva
Sagotharargal. It was not done by just a number crunching producer,
but a visionary too. So also Pushpak, which had two visionaries and a
businessman as producers helming it and hence it was done in a small
tight budget and yielded great results.
The looks and the makeup :
Mr Westmore is a master of his craft and believes in least intervention
with reality while creating a look and I consider him my Guru. He delves
into the script completely and works on the looks. So much so he asked
me why I had decided to name the samurai Shingen Narahachi and I
had to explain to him how I am weaving in mythology and this
character was an analogy to the Narasimma avatar and hence ‘Shingen’
like ‘Narasinghar’It was amazing how he made my round eyes into
beautiful Asian flat eyes to give me the perfect look for the character.
Naidu was so simple yet went up a notch because of the accent. Mr
Westmore’s contribution to the film is equivalent to mine. Mr
Westmore was the 11th Avatar of the film, without him the other 10
would not have been possible. The easiest to carry off was Naidu and
the most debilitating was Krishna paati. For the latter he gave me a
cataract eye and I couldn’t see. I was like a tortured animal and wanted
the scenes with the paati character to finish soon. It used to
excruciatingly painful everytime there would be a delay due to
technical issues.
Those apart now am going to talk about the actual “FIRST LOOK” of a
few of the characters
I preferred this Bhuvaraghavan but the team were too surprised or
probably they did not recognise me at all,but I have many friends who
look like that too but this was denied for various reasons .Though it was
a personal favourite of Mr Mike and me but we ended up having a
more handsome looking Bhuvaraghavan .For me personally handsome
was never about that face but that is what cinema loves so we decided
on a slightly more cosmetic look for Bhuvaraghavan.
The cliché look of what a scientist looks like in Tamil cinema was a
bespectacled nerdy guy almost okayed a wig slapped on head that
looked more like a scholarly cap than hair. Mike and I decided not to
tamper with that and I felt that’s the only part where I play myself but
for various other characters I had to shave my head based on schedule
so unfortunately I landed up with a wig well done for the days I can see
through it now but then it seemed convincing, so went with that.
otherwise I would have settled for Govind who was balding which Mike
would have pulled off like a wizard that he is.
Balram Naidu wigs took 2 redos and finally ended up taking 2months
making us nervously teeter on the edge of breaking a schedule but it
landed on time. My personal trainer who’s been with me for years did
not recognise me as he stood beside Balram while the shot was being
prepped. I wore the least prosthetic pieces for Naidu. Applause to the
wig maker and Michael Westmore once again.
The director wasn’t happy with this version of Mr Bush because he was
looking for a hero with every character I was also looking for villains as
a writer and Bush was an international villain according to me.
Unforgettable moments:
Most unforgettable was the first sequence where in I had come up with
a lot of the designs as the others didn’t know how to visualise or
present it but I already had lessons out of experience from
Maruthanayagam and taking notes from on not over building anything
unrealistically but keep it believable. For example the two guards
standing on either sides of the elephant was designed by me. It was
novel for us, but done in history where in the bodyguards would
protect the king while on an elephant. It is basically two footboards on
either sides and the elephant actually felt very comfortable with the
footboards pressing into it. We wanted to make a masterpiece and we
didn’t look at money or fame, just our contribution to the art of cinema.
We had various Stunt directors supporting us which can be seen in
various styles portrayed through the film as Fletcher’s stunts had to be
different from the Samurai and tat from the first and all this within a
shoe string budget.
The Music:
Lots of music directors found the script uninteresting and I was
confused by their reactions. Worried by this, the producer said he will
suggest names and suggest Mr Himesh Reshammiya and added on Ms
Mallika Sherawat too as his suggestion. Mr Himesh did a wonderful job
with the music when it was a time the press wasn’t very supportive of
him. He delivered surprises like Mukunda Mukunda and Kallai matum
kandal which were big hits and wasn’t like anything he did before. He
allowed me to render the palandu palandu bit and added it as a overlap
to his music. I was very embarrassed as I was conducting a group of
singers here to record it and send it to him. We never worked together
again, but he proved a point with his good work then. The BGM was by
Mr DSP who was a bundle of energy and fun to work with. Exemplary
points were when Naidu realizes Srinivasulu is Telugu where it isn’t
subtlety but on the top humor. We had so much fun working together
that we decided to carry on the collaboration with him, the director
and myself on to Manmadhan Ambu.
We did not have good budgets for any of the artists/ technicians who
came from overseas as with the conversion rates it was much lower to
what they would get otherwise, but no one complained. Everyone
worked with enthusiasm and enjoyed the process of being a part of a
novel project.
But going back on the memories now, Dasavatharam was a master
class for me on every technical aspect . There were many masters to
teach and learn from and cinema was the ultimate master and very
forgiving when we failed in some parts, definitely more forgiving than
the audience who made it a hit. I can say I learnt democracy during the
making of this film. The project would not have been possible with just
me , or just Mr Ravikumar or Mr Ravichandran or just Mr Westmore. It
is all of us together that made it happen.