Kamal Haasan pays tribute to Dr D Ramanaidu, who passed away on Wednesday:
Mr Naidu was a super-sized producer with a passion to match and, surprisingly, very low strains of hubris for glories achieved.
Without any bias, I can say that the truly national film producers -- moguls if you must -- came from South India.
Though we had giant filmmakers on the northern side of the Vindhyas too, they were content to indulge in making cinema only in their language, with a few exceptions like V Shantaram, who went beyond his borders into Hindi cinema.
But in the South, the biggest, like Vijaya Vauhini, Gemini Studios, Pakshiraja Studios and others, have produced films in almost all Indian languages. They thought of the whole of India as their own.
I am sure that was not purely out of avarice for larger profits but from having a larger mindset and ambition.
Mr Naidu came from one such house, the biggest in the south. As a young producer under the aegis of Vijaya Vauhini banner, he produced one hit after another.
He rose to be almost as big as the stars he worked with.
He later obviously and wisely moved to form his own banner outside Vijaya Vauhini.
I was a small technician hoping to work in his company. That opportunity came much later in life when I did the Telugu version of the badly dubbed Mayor Saab, which is what the Hindi audience will remember of our coming together.
He was the only producer I know who, in spite of not being the director or the writer of his films, remembered every aesthetic and commercial strength of his scripts.
He tried to look upon good and intelligent cinema, which was called parallel cinema then, with empathy. A rare quality in a mogul of the 1970s and 1980s.
The Rama Naidu banner will fly on for a long time to come under his able sons.
