Shane gets into hot waters over Veyil shoot yet again

Things refuse to cool down on the sets of

Veyil

. One month after ironing out their differences before the Kerala Film Producers’ Association, Shane Nigam and director Sarath Menon are at loggerheads again, putting a stop to the shoot and prompting the association to flex its muscle again to reprimand the young actor.

It is enforcing a clause, first imposed after the spat last month, on the actor from shooting any more films, before completing work on Veyil and

Qurbani

. If he does work on a film, the association will not allow it to be released, says a source from the producers’ association. But the association does not want to impose a ban on such an upcoming talent and a possible star of tomorrow, says the source, though allegedly, the actor has said he is not bothered about a ban as his next project is a Tamil film.

While last month Shane accused Veyil producer Joby George of threatening him for cutting his hair and not maintaining continuity, among other things, the latest spat arises over Shane raising allegations of being mistreated on the sets of Veyil when he returned to shoot the movie on November 16. In a social media post, Shane says that he “saw a different Sarath when he arrived for the shoot”. “I am making art, but (his attitude) was more than the artiste in me can bear,” he says, adding that he was making him shoot up to 16 hours.

After the earlier spat, the producer said that Shane had been paid in full, and now the debutant director Sarath Menon has accused the actor of not cooperating and lowering morale on the sets. “I am someone who believes that there needs to be a good working relationship between the actors and director. We did everything to cater to him.

He would arrive after everyone else and much later than stipulated on the schedule, so the shoot had to be timed and planned around this. We have the call sheets that show this. While I needed to take 10 shots, I would do just the minimum necessary to accommodate Shane,” says Sarath, adding that the whole crew would say that this was the most stressful shoot they had worked on.

Also, the producers’ association and AMMA representatives were monitoring the shoot, so they were aware of the problems on the sets, says the director. Sarath says that he has had to make do with the shots from a scene at Viyyur Central Jail, though he is not satisfied with it, as Shane arrived just before the time permitted for the shoot was up. Also, while he wanted to do one shot with two real-life policemen, to “get their body language right”, he had to forgo this too as even after they waited for a long time, Shane did not arrive for the shoot.

The shoot had to extend into the night because they needed the right light. Sarath had to then call Shane’s mother to complain of his tardiness. “I had conceived Veyil, a story about the relationship between brothers, shown over two eras, completely as a Shane movie, at a time when producers did not consider him a bankable star. Since I began the shoot in May, I have shot only 26 days with him. Now, after the latest incident, the crew has been dismissed. We need the producers’ association to get us about 26 days from Shane to finish the shoot,” he says.
Shane was unavailable for comment till the time of going to press.