Can an
Actor’s Manager influence National jury to give an award to his client who is
constantly expressing views that oppose Central Government policies?. YouTube film
critic Blue Sattai Maran has tweeted that another YouTube channel Valai Pechu
had raised this doubt before the award announcement that the manager in the
jury would ensure awards for the film produced by his client or for the actor
itself. As it has come true, Maran has asked for a reply. Meanwhile a Tamil
film Thaen which was critically acclaimed was omitted out of the final shortlist
and Valai Pechu Channel alleges that the director had got a call from DIFF
asking his details etc but later dumped it. Reason being that Tamannah agreed
to act in the film overlooking the advice of Thangadurai who is also her Manager.
It is alleged that the Manager saw that Tamannaah did not do the film and hence
he torpedoed the film’s chances at the award committee.
A FB post
by senior journalist Meeran says
that Anupama Subramanian of Deccan Chronicle
who was in the panel of National awards
was instrumental in getting several awards for Tamil- Malayalam films. . Out of
ten awards for Tamil films, five went to Suriya
and his film Soorarai Pottru.
BJP Tamil
Nadu should be in state of disbelief. Suriya after Kamal Hassan, is most vocal
in opposing the policies of the Central Government. BJP Youth wing threatened
the actor with legal action if he continued with his anti- NEET tirade. Even
his film ` Jai Bhim’ was attacked by no less a leader than H Raja. The last
outburst by Suriya was against the proposed changes to
Cinematography Act. He termed it as a move to strangle the voice of expression.
The New Education Policy bill too was opposed by Suriya. An interesting tweet
by H Raja of BJP who asked – You opposed children studying three languages
under NEP and you release Jai Bhim in five languages. Suriya just clicked the
Like button. Some of the utterances by Jyotika about the Big Temple in Thanjavur
did not go well with BJP.
Actor
Karthi ( younger brother of Suriya) recently criticized the Environmental Impact
Assessment Draft. BJP’s leaders from film industry like Gayathri Raghuram had
slammed the actor brothers. Rajinikanth as usual in his diplomatic way lauded
Suriya for making the Education policy a topic of discussion and in the same
breath asked him to stick to films and not enter politics. Actor Shivakumar
discourses on Hindu scriptures and promotion of Yoga is the only sound from
that family that is music to BJP.
Thangadurai
is synonymous with FilmFare in South.
Filmfare did not allot much space to South Indian films and close to the
South awards, it did a token attendance by devoting a few pages to the winners.
Later it started printing separate covers with regional actors for each South
language and had it distributed in that region only . Coming back to Thangadurai, somewhere along the line,
Mumbai girls landing up in Chennai were imported by him. Many actresses (remember
Nagma- Kiran being one among them) who hit big time had Thanga as manager. He
was the man with Midas touch. Film Fare
award shows in South became synonymous with Thangadurai.
Though, he
was successful with heroines, in the hero category, it was not the same. After almost two decades in the field, it was
with Suriya that he got a STAR hero in his client list. Here again, it was
Jyotika for whom he was the manager, that helped him.
On record,
Thangadurai has a service record of being with Film Fare for more than two
decades and is in every way qualified to be on the national award jury. The moot question is – Can Thangadurai get 9
others in the jury to toes his line, if BJP does not approve it ? (means the
I&B ministry ). So, BJP has bought the silence of Suriya ?. Counter argument
could be that BJP does not interfere in such matters.
The Thaen
film allegation is probably an outcome of it being shortlisted by the South
panel and send to national jury and it being rejected. All those who asked that
if Thangadurai can get Suriya the best actor award, then why did he not get his
other client Tamannaah the best actress award ?. She had only Telugu films releases in 2021 . For your information, her manager
for Telugu is not Thangadurai.
