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| K,Balachandar and Sureshkrissna |
Sri: How did you manage tummy shots of Kamal in Indrudu-Chandrudu for the role of Mayor Rayudu where does he gets a massage from the character Veena. The tummy looked so real then!
Suresh Krissna: The credit should go to the cameraman P.S. Prakash who did the job so brilliantly. We used mask shots for that scene as we did not have graphics or other such technical resources back then.
Sri: You worked for three films on Suresh banner (Prema, Indrudu-Chandrudu, Dharma Chakram), and Venkatesh won the Nandi Award for Best Male Actor for both the films you directed him (Prema, Dharma Chakram).But then, why is there no film after that?
Suresh Krissna: There isn't any problem really, but the right kind of script didn't come our way to do another film. If we do a third film together, people would expect a lot out of it. Venky and Ramanaidu gaaru always wanted to do another film if I have a good script that suits Venkatesh. When I met Ramanaidu gaaru last week at the audio release of Mesthri too, he was saying that we should be work together for a good film. ...This is what's happening with Kamal or Rajini sir too, in fact!
Sri: Speaking of Rajini, you did three films with him - Annamalai, Basha, and Baba. Again, the former two were super hits, and the latter was a disaster! What went wrong with Baba, which I see as a good film that was close to Rajini's real-life personality?
Suresh Krissna: First thing I'd want to clarify is that Baba was a not disaster but was a super hit film! The film was made under 10 crores and collected between 25-30 crores. At that time, the government permitted raising the ticket rates during the initial days of film's release, and the tickets went up rates as high as Rs. 500/- to Rs. 2000/- in most areas! The film collected more than the complete run of Annamalai in just three weeks because of this! Also, it opened with maximum number of prints. The reason people say it was a disaster because they over-expected the run and bought the film at a very high price. When they didn't get that much money, they said it's a flop, though it wasn't. As you said, Baba was a good film with story and screenplay by Rajini and is thus definetly close to his heart.
Sri: And, Basha was a free-make of Amitabh's Hum! I also heard that the film was plannd to have a linear narration first but that Rajinikant and fight master Vijayan suggested that the flashback episode should come later. Is that true?
Suresh Krissna: I agree that Basha had shades of Hum, and that the film was definetly inspired by Hum but had a completely different treatment. Basha went on to become such a huge success that every hero wanted to do a clone of it, and that trend is still continuing even now! Rajini and Vijayan suggesting the flashback episode is not true. The film's basic plot starts with Rajini going to get a seat in the Medical College for his sister. From there on, the film tempo starts off and that was how we planned it originally too.
