Troubling times for Kollywood personalities

Chennai, Oct 16 (UNI) Real life happenings in the Tamil film industry or Kollywood, as it is also referred to, of late resemble the many 'scenes' it has been cobbling up in reel life tales.

After the recent tales of actors Prasanth's and Srikkanth's controversial marriages, which was nearly on the rocks, a young director Samy 'portrayed himself the villain indulging in a beastly act of slapping the heroine of his latest film 'Mirugam', reasoning that the actress Padmapriya could not emote well for a scene, in which she needed to cry.

The enraged actress, 20 films old, by her own account, did not take kindly to this and let lose a barrage of serious accusations at her director.

Refusing to apologise in public as the actress demanded to bury the hatchet and get on with the making of the film, the director had to pay dearly for his spontaneous emotion of anger at the actress' inability to emote. Acting on a complaint by Padmapriya, the Tamil Nadu Film Producer's Council, Film Federation of South India and the Producers Council retaliated strongly, slapping an year's ban on Samy.

This was despite the director tendering an apology for what was seen by the top brass as a piece of Samy's own 'over acting'.

However, the beleaguered Padmapriya's accusations against the director were as predictable as the moth eaten storyline of a commercial potboiler: that the director had been harassing her and 'misbehaving with her'. She also went on record alleging that on the day when the real life 'dramatic scene' that was enacted on the sets amidst the filming of 'Mirugam', the director had asked her to stay back after asking the unit to call it a day and tried to misbehave with her.

Luckily for the actress, the Producers Council and the Federation gave credence to her 'story line' and slapped the ban on Samy that he should not 'spin out any tales' for an year.

In a similar tale of a row between actress and her director last year, popular star Kushboo and other female artists demanded an apology from Thankar Bachchan for his derogatory remarks against actresses. The Director had to take back his remarks at the instance of the South Indian Film Artists Association, headed by actors Vijaykant and Sarat Kumar.

UNI