Actor Dileep takes producer to court

KOCHI: Popular Malayalam and Tamil film actor Dileep, who is at the centre of a storm for filing a case against a producer for a bounced cheque, on Tuesday said he had done nothing wrong and had no regrets for having taken the producer to court.
"I had only asked for my remuneration for acting in the film `Udyapuram Sultan''. I do not feel that what I have done is wrong," he said.
Dileep, who arrived at Nedumbassery airport here to a rousing reception by his fans, told reporters that the case was in court since the last three years and the court will decide the outcome.
He terminated his tour of Europe at Germany where he had gone for stage performances. He later told a private television channel that only the people had the right to impose a ban on him.
On his future course of action, Dileep did not spell out anything except that the Association of Malayalam Movie Artistes (Amma) would decide. The actor said he would be consulting senior actors Mammooty, Mohanlal, Suresh Gopi and Innocent before deciding his next course of action.
Noted director Lenin Rajendran said the distributors and theatre owners had to share the blame for the industry''s crisis. It was they who were responsible for creating star dominance in films by pumping money to producers to cast the stars who were crowd pullers at that point of time.
"They are not ready to accept this fact," he said. While Tamil and Hindi cinema worlds were ready to experiment with new themes, technicians and artistes, the Malayalam film world was static for the last 10 years as this section was bent on maintaining the `superhuman'' status of the stars they created.
The cost of production increased as the paraphernalia fixed for superstars required high costs. The production cost of films which could have been completed for Rs 1 crore came upto Rs 4 to 5 crore. But of late, the films of superstars were not giving expected returns and they were now turning against actors.
New and promising artistes had come up in other language films and their industry is not facing a crisis as grave as ours. The only experiment in Kerala was the soft-porn films of Shakeela, he said.
Many feel that the fight between actors on the one side and producers and distributors on the other side is unhealthy. "It is a practice abandoned even by headload workers here. They have taken it up too late," another prominent director said.
Actors have come out strongly in support of Dileep. Thespian Madhu described Dileep''s move as `courageous,'' while noted director P.T. Kunhumohammed described the producers'' move as `barbaric.''
Actresses Nitya Das and Vani Vishwanath also said there was nothing wrong on Dileep''s part in moving the court, while state human rights commission member S. Balaraman said the ban amounted to violation of human rights.
A director said the exhibitors were in a fools'' paradise if they thought that they could run theatres by antagonising the artistes and showing films from other languages.
More than 70 uncensored films are now running in theatres in Kerala with forged censor certificates. Government, which was failing to to check this, should also have to answer for the crisis in the film industry, a source said.
Industry sources, however, said with matters remaining complicated, both sides are not very keen to get on with the confrontationist postures. Everyone agrees that the ban on an actor is not workable and AMMA President Innocent has made this point amply clear by stating that the entire artistes'' community would stand behind Dileep.