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In the past couple of months, life has been excruciatingly tough for Kamal Haasan. Soon after he launched his new opus, Sandiyar (Kamal, Napoleon, Pasupathy, Abhirami), at an elaborate mahurat, he was down with stones in his kidney.
"But I'm fighter," he laughed, before leaving for the Cannes film festival, where promotional clippings of Sandiyar and his magnificent dream project, Marudanayagam, are to be screened. Kamal has also joined hands with INTEL Corporation to introduce and promote digital entertainment.
"A tie-up between a computer company and an actor has never been attempted before," he said. "I enjoy crossing new frontiers all the time. The sooner we understand the value of the computer in bringing cinema into everyone's laptop, the better."
While other members of the Indian delegation to Cannes are projecting cinema per se, Kamal is the only one to actually act as a brand ambassador for computer software. "I plan to distribute my new movies via the laptop computer. People all over the world can buy my movies via the Internet. Now, films can be burnt on a DVD and played on the home-entertainment system," he said.
Earlier this week, all of Chennai was abuzz with the English-Tamil song Kamal had sung for Nala Damayanti (Madhavan, Geetu Mohandas) under the baton of new composer Ramesh Vinayakam. "Hey, this isn't the first time I've sung for another leading man," he laughed. "I recently sang for Ajith in Ullasan. I must have sung five-six songs for other heroes. I've sung around 50 songs for myself; most of them turned out to be hits. I sang a majority of them for my good friend, Ilaiyaraja."
Kamal sang for Ilayaraja for the first time in Red Rose. "Since then, he has been keen to have me sing rather than just be seen."
Reacting to Dalit politician S Krishnaswamy's charge that Kamal was propagating rowdyism by making a film called Sandiyar (which means a rogue) the actor quipped, "Mr Krishnaswamy knows as much about cinema as I do about politics."