“There was this actor, Prem Nazir … if you remember him,” said Mamukkoya, Malayalam cinema’s character-comedian. “Today, the industry has no such stalwarts. If any of his films bombed at the box office, Nazir would help the producers cover their losses. He would bail them out with his money. It’s sad that there’s no such noble soul today,” said Mamukkoya, sharing his thoughts with Onmanorama.
One is not quite sure whether the ace actor was ruminating on the evergreen hero’s little known acts of kindness or whether he was bemoaning the loss of a value system which was once the hallmark of Kerala’s film industry.
The industry is going through troubled times and with Dileep’s arrest, the cinema business has been thrown into a deep crisis. There’s a definite shadow over everything and almost everyone associated with cinema has come under a cloud. Each day’s news brings out new allegations against some actor or the other in the February 17 attack on the young heroine.
The air is now thick with reports of actors boycotting Onam specials of TV channels.
Have people started bidding farewell to cinemas? Mamukkoya does not seem to think so.
“All such reports are baseless,” he said. “Bring out a good movie and you can see folks heading to the cinemas in droves. There lies the crux of the matter … a movie with a good story never flops. Only a well-taken compelling story can attract people to cinemas. There have been controversies in the past too,” he added.
“I never switch on my TV just to listen to all the reports about Dileep. They are all in the dailies, which I read. I’m seldom drawn to such reports and stories. When I’m not at a movie location, my family gets my undivided attention. Not many from the industry are on my contacts list and I am not in the habit of calling them regularly,” the veteran actor added.
“A wrongdoer will be punished. What goes around, comes around - that’s the law of the universe.
“If Dileep has indeed committed a crime, let the court punish him. There’s corruption everywhere and corrupt people too. Do we not have corrupt politicians? But can we say that all politicians are corrupt? The world of cinema garners more attention because a lot more glamor is associated with it,” Mamukkoya added.
“One can’t just dump all the blame solely on the film industry – there is this mad rush to make wealth. Nobody has ever said no to money. Perhaps, Prem Nazir was the only sterling exception.
AMMA meeting the press“We are mature enough to regard all actors and other supporters as part of one great fraternity. I could not take part in the recent AMMA meeting as I was in Dubai. However, I called up Innocent and cautioned him against discussing the actress attack case, as I believed that we could not take a stand on such an issue. The case was not discussed at the forum. Things went out of hand when the media started grilling AMMA,” he explained.
The young actress was waylaid and assaulted in a moving car in Kochi on February 17. Dileep was arrested on July 10 for plotting the conspiracy.
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