MANORAMA HORTUS

Decision to enter cinema was rash, says Midhun Manuel Thomas

Midhun Manuel Thomas may be a prized director and screenwriter in the Malayalam film industry, but his decision to become one happened at the peak of rashness. Speaking at Manorama Hortus on Saturday, Midhun, who had been a motivational speaker, had a word of caution for the delegates.

"I am someone who takes decisions at the peak of impulsiveness. I think about consequences only when I face it. When I wished to enter the world of cinema, I had no clue about it. I come from Wayanad, where not many films were shot, and even some of the films that were shot there flopped. I was dreaming of cinema from a place which was considered unlucky. Loaded with debts, I decided to become a filmmaker. I can't put into words the stress I went through on the first day of the shoot. I realised that being a director wasn't just a creative process; he also had to be a people-manager. Somehow, fortune favoured me. I would advise everyone that it is always good to be prepared and enter the world of cinema," said Midhun.

Writer G Indugopan, one of the speakers in the session, shared something similar. "I was someone who had no passion for films. Santosh Echikanam told me something about satellite, and I thought filmmaking was possible. I hadn't even heard of satellite rights then. Once my film remained in the box, I couldn't even look at film posters," Indugopan recounted.

Indugopan reasoned why he avoided literary adornments in his works. "I had written an article on people who worked on daily wages to scare off birds near Thiruvananthapuram airport. This was done to avoid bird hits on flights. Later I wrote a book on their lives. When one of them asked me why I didn't write any more articles on them, I showed them my book. They didn't even look at it. Buying literature was a pricey affair for people who lived on low wages. It was a shocking revelation for me," said Indugopan.

Both of them said that people have a general affinity towards crime stories. "The sense of reverberation crime stories create in the human psyche is different," said Indugopan. Even if this genre was his favourite, Midhun Manuel couldn't start off with crime stories. " My initial drafts were all crime stories. But I had to begin with a romantic comedy. This gave me a belief that I have a future in humour. But nobody laughed in theatres when the film 'Aadu' was released. People tend to peep into what is forbidden, hence the liking for the crime genre," he said.

Midhun added that some of his successful films were based on real-life incidents and people. "We have an extra emotional connect when we know that a story or a character is based on real life," he said.