Director Rajesh's Oru Kal Oru Kannadi just finished its 100th day run in Tamil Nadu and is being dubbed to be released in Telugu very shortly. The director who worked for an advertisement company in Mumbai joined Ameer who made Paruthiveeran, Raam, Yogi and learnt the intricacies of filmmaking. Then he worked with actor Vijay's father too before announcing his debut project Siva Manusula Sakthi ( SMS ) which was dubbed with the same abbreviation here.
It was followed by Boss Engira Bhaskaran that was dubbed as Nene Ambani and the third one was OKOK or Oru Kal Oru Kannadi . In an upbeat mood, the director says, “This is a romantic comedy and I expect it to run better in a multiplex. Oru Kal Oru Kannadi means one stone one mirror and it a verse from the famous song in my film SMS . It is written by Na Mutthu Kumar and the music is by Yuvan Shankar Raja. Even people in Tamil Nadu started calling the complete title in an abbreviated form so I thought it was best to retain that in Telugu.”
In the film, the hero Udaynidhi Stalin and Santhanam who have been friends for 15 years face problems with the entry of Hansika into the former's life. There comes a point when Udaynidhi has to choose between friendship and love.
We ask, doesn't Hansika look obese in the film? “She reduced a bit for my film and once the shooting started again she gained weight so in some scenes we had her reeling off some self-deprecatory dialogues about her weight gain.
The film is particularly challenging for me because I was keen on giving a hattrick and I wanted to give a big hit with a newcomer. Santhanam is a good friend and he takes the film to a different level with his presence. He helps the film run for long in the theatre. People do ask him when he will turn hero and hopefully something good should happen soon. Stalin is a well-known producer and he never interfered or pressurised me to have any political dialogue in the movie. I got to know him well when he released Boss Engira Bhaskaran and that was when he told me he would love to debut in a soft romantic comedy. We did a lot of rehearsals, kept tracking his work on the handycam and finally got a fabulous output. Currently I'm doing a film with Karthi and Kajal for Studio Green and this time it will be a bilingual, not a dubbed film.”
Rajesh takes pride in writing his own dialogues and screenplay which gives him immense satisfaction. On his affinity for fun movies he adds, “I like all kinds of films but I have a fetish for fun movies in particular. When I go to the theatre I want to laugh and enjoy and I want others to do the same when they watch my movies. I couldn’t experiment with my first two films due to commercial limitations but now that I have proved myself with three films, I guess I am in a position to experiment. With Karthi's film I can say I'm trying out something new."
