Anbudan... Gauthami

I'm not a big fan of interviews of movie stars on our Tamil channels. They usually feature an uncharismatic interviewer asking cliched, predictable and uninteresting questions while sitting in gaudy sets. Clips and bits of song sequences from the actor's movies, seen a million times before, are screened at regular intervals, further reducing the time the actor has to actually talk. So once the initial excitement of seeing the artists in a real setting(as opposed to the movie screen) wears off, the programs become very pedestrian.

Ofcourse a big reason for this lack of enthusiasm about such interviews is the overload of them. Ever since the satellite channels debuted, every important festival day is filled with interviews with the stars (usually the same stars, whose movie is being released that day, on all the channels!) under a variety of names. Apart from this, we also have the actors appearing in regular programs on other days. So the aura associated with seeing an actor being interviewed has been lost. It wasn't always this way though. I still remember those days when I eagerly looked forward to Malarum Ninaivugal on Sunday morning on Doordarshan, even though it mostly featured old actors who had been around long enough to have a lot of memories.

The latest actress to jump on this interview bandwagon is Gauthami. Her new program Anbudan..., where she interviews actors (atleast so far, its been just actors), debuted 3 weeks ago. Gauthami's star status(any actress who debuted as Rajni's heroine, went on to become a leading heroine, acting with all the major actors and is currently dating Kamalhassan has a very high star status, IMO!) and the high-profile nature of her subjects(so far, she has interviewed Kamal, Simbhu and Karthik) made me check out her program. Unfortunately, she hasn't brought anything new to the table and I didn't make it through the full program both times I caught the show(I missed the first episode with Kamal, which got some good praise).

Like most interviews, the questions were real safe(and hence, uninteresting). The one good thing was that they didn't show clips from the actor's films. Instead, they had clips of the actor's acquaintances(friends, other actors, a film's crew members, etc.) recounting their experiences with him. Though I didn't last till the end of the program, I heard from my wife that the show ends with Gauthami getting a cast of the actor's hand.

From what I heard from my parents back in India, the show is Sun TV's answer to Vijay TV's popular show Coffee with Anu (Sun TV seems to be doing this kind of copying rather blatantly now since they also have a show called Asatha Povadhu Yaaru, which is a copy of Vijay TV's Kalakka Povadhu Yaaru. They haven't even bothered to have a name that sounds different!). The casual nature of the interview, the clips of the actor's acquaintances and the final touch of getting a souvenir from the actor(in the end, Anu Haasan gets her coffee mug signed by her guest) are all apparently borrowed from Coffee with Anu.

As far as the interview went, Karthik made for a good interview subject. He was very casual and easygoing and managed recover nicely when Gauthami stumped him at a few places. While I knew he did his MS in the US, I did not know that he worked as Manirathnam's assistant. His experiences about that stint(when someone called out "andha thottiya eduthitu vaanga", he said he looked behind him before realizing that the order was directed at him!) were fun. But he didn't reveal what film he is doing next.

I'm just hoping that Gauthami manages to nab Rajni for 1 interview (maybe a special episode coinciding with Sivaji's release?!). Now that would be an episode I would definitely watch fully :-)