'Java is simple, powerful and robust'

COLUMN: LOCATION DIARY

Actor Vinay Forrt talks about his experiences in the films, 'Premam' and 'Shutter'

Photos: Vinay Forrt; as teacher Vimal in Premam

By Shevlin Sebastian

At the location shoot, at UC College, Aluva, for the film, Premam, in January, 2015, director Alphonse Puthren gave a piece of paper to actor Soubin Shahir, on which was written a definition of the Java software. He then asked Soubin to memorise it so that he could teach a class the next day.

However, Soubin pointed at actor Vinay Forrt and told Alphonse, “When people look at Vinay, they will feel that he is a bit educated. On the other hand, I don’t look like a teacher at all. So I will become the PT instructor, while Vinay can play my role.”

And that was how Vinay played Vimal Sir. But when Vinay saw the dialogue, he told Alphonse that the definition of Java was not interesting. Agreeing with the actor,  Alphonse allowed Vinay to improvise. When the shoot began, Vinay opened a textbook and said, “Java is simple. It is powerful. It can be robust, too.”

A student suddenly said, “Sir, is it like the Robusta (banana)?” Immediately, all the  students started laughing. However, Vinay felt puzzled. Alphonse was supposed to call ‘Cut’, a minute into the shoot, so that George (played by Nivin Pauly) and his friends could barge into the class. “But Alphonse did not say anything,” says Vinay. “In the end, the entire sequence appeared on screen and became one of the most popular scenes.”

So, popular did it become, that when people met Vinay, they would call him Java. “I had done 25 films before Premam,” says Vinay. “But it is this one sequence that established my name. Before that, I played serious and intense roles, and people stayed away when I moved around in public. But after Premam, people found it easy to approach me.”

Again, in Premam, Vinay had a scene where he sang a Tamil song, ‘Ennavale Adii Ennavale’, during the college festival. At the conclusion, he clutched the mike, got an electric shock, and fell to the ground. However, when the shoot was going on, Naresh (name changed), the man who supplied the mike, ran to the stage and shouted, “There is nothing wrong with my mike. It worked perfectly well till yesterday. It is not my fault.”

It took a while to calm Naresh down and tell him that this was part of the script, and Vinay had not suffered an electric shock. Meanwhile, the crew had a big laugh.

Vinay had a completely difference experience during the shoot for Shutter (2012). He played an auto-rickshaw driver, Nanmayil Suran, who locked his friend, businessman Rashid (played by Lal), and a prostitute inside a room, which had a shutter, so that they could experience bliss. Unfortunately, soon after, Nanmayil is picked up by the police and locked up. As a result, he could not open the shutter. When he was released, the next afternoon, he looked disturbed. To show that mood, a scene was set up on a railway bridge, up a steep stone embankment, with water on both sides, in Kozhikode.    

“A camera was tied to my body, facing my face,” says Vinay. A red towel was placed around his shoulders. The only other person present was Hari Nair, the director of photography. Vinay started walking beside the track. A train came from behind. It went past with such speed that the towel rose up and enveloped Vinay’s face.

“This turned out to be one of the best scenes in the film,” says Vinay. “People were sitting on the edge of their seats. They were wondering what was going to happen to me. Was I going to commit suicide? When we were shooting the scene, we had no idea of how it would turn out. But now I know that, sometimes, the best scenes happen when we least expect it.”

(The New Indian Express, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram and Kozhikode)