Features: Magazine | Literary Review | Life | Metro Plus | Open Page | Education Plus | Book Review | Business | SciTech | NXg | Friday Review | Cinema Plus | Young World | Property Plus | Quest |

He brought Classmates closer

The bookshelf gets pride of place in director Lal Jose’s drawing room. Artist Nambudiri’s framed drawings adorn the adjoining wall. If you look at the books, you wonder what actually his interests are. There is Gregory David Roberts’ ;s ‘Shantaram,’ ‘The Treasured Writings of Khalil Gibran,’ M.Krishnan Nair’s ‘Sahithya Vara Bhalam’ and alongside these is a CD of 51 top Christian devotional songs. His awards, plaques, trophies and mementos block the staircase, for “this is a rented house,” Lal Jose explains. His apartment is not yet ready in Kochi. He is from Ottappalam, where he lived till recently. As he has to be in Kochi for work, he couldn’t be with his family. Thus the ‘temporary shifting.’

Back to the books. You see numbers on small pieces of white paper pasted on the books and you wonder if he took these from some library. No, he says. “My wife, Leena, is a teacher and she is on long leave now. So she has time to catalogue my book collection. Many of my friends borrow my books and I keep forgetting. Now Leena makes them write in a register before taking the books.” Kunchacko Boban is one of his friends who often borrow books. His collection, both English and Malayalam, is close to 1,000, bought in the last 10 years.

The hit maker whose movies like ‘Meesa Madhavan,’ ‘Classmates,’ ‘Chandupottu’ and ‘Arabikkatha’ clicked with the masses, is on to a new project, a remake of ‘Neelathamara,’ a movie that was directed by Yusufali Kechery in 1979, with script by veteran M.T. Vasudevan Nair.

Lal Jose worked his way up the chequered way. When he passed Class Ten, he celebrated it because he was rid of Math at last. But he failed his pre-degree course because he was not a science person and he had taken the science group as his father wished. His father’s friend, Prof. Francis sensed this and asked him to take humanities for his supplementary. “In six months I studied the entire new syllabus by myself and passed,” he reminisces. He always read whatever he could lay his hands on. So that explains the medley of books in his bookshelf.

While he did his B.A. (Economics) at Ottappalam NSS College, he was into all sorts of extra-curricular activities and earned his own pocket money, as a newspaper boy and stringer for newspapers. “I organised the first boys’ ‘thiruvathirakali’ at college,” says Lal with a chuckle. As Lal was in the church choir playing the guitar, he knew a bit of music too to ‘shine’ in college.

And he was into campus politics, much to his parents’ anguish. The SFI guy never really took to politics later, instead getting interested in photography. “It was a period of transition and I went to Chennai to learn colour photography processing. It didn’t work out well. Once, while on a friend’s Silver Plus, a car hit me. The people around blamed the car driver, but I told them I was in the wrong. The car owner Ranjit Shah was relieved and spoke to me. He asked me to work in his office. I shifted to this different area, where I was exposed to the film fraternity, was introduced to music director Rajamony and I became Kamal’s assistant for ‘Peruvannapurathe Visheshangal.’”

“Controlling the crowds, clearing the camera field…, the very first day, I knew this was my vocation.” He assisted many other directors in 16 movies, including Siby Malayil, Thampy Kannanthanam, Vinayan, Harikumar, Lohithadas, before charting out on his own in ‘Oru Maravathur Kanavu,’ with Mammooty as the leading man and script by Sreenivasan. He made films in different categories including an experimental one called ‘Achanurangatha Veedu,’ casting Salim Kumar, a comedian, in a serious role. ‘Classmates,’ the hit, started a trend in Kerala, of old school batches meeting in different places. The trend continues still.

Lal Jose has embarked on a venture outside his familiar territory, in Tamil, titled ‘Mazha Vara Pokuthu.’ He is director of an animation school in Kochi too. Another project is the one called ‘Kerala Café,’ produced by director Ranjith’s Capitol Theatre in which 10 directors are making short films. He is one of them.

Lal Jose is in the forefront of the movement to pull out Malayalam cinema from the economic and cultural morass into which it is sliding down.

Rubbing shoulders with Mohanlal

Once, Lal Jose, while in college at Palakkad, went to watch a shoot, the climax of Padmarajan’s ‘Thoovanathumbikal’ at the railway station. Blessy was Padmarajan’s assistant director then, and “I was asked to be one amon g the crowd at the station. Mohanlal touched my shoulders as he rushed along. I was on cloud nine. I rang up all my relatives and friends and told them to watch out for me, informing them even about the colour of my shirt. The movie was released and I rushed to get in the first day. My heart fell, for I was not there. I learnt later that it was only a rehearsal!”

He has yet to direct Mohanlal though he has directed all the other leading actors like Mammooty, Suresh Gopi, Dileep and the Gen Next stars like Prithviraj, Indrajith and Naren. Wait, next year, he will, Lal says.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail