How actors cock a snook at contracts

After going hammer and tongs against actress Shruti Haasan and creating a sensation of sorts by even filing a criminal case against her for reneging on her commitment to allot dates and causing Rs 10 crore loss, for their multilingual film starring Nagarjuna and Karthi, the leading production house PVP Cinema silently announced a few days back that they had withdrawn the case and left the actress off the hook.

• Producers helpless when actors violate agreements
• No legal recourse possible; trade body only saviour
• Small-time producers often discriminated against
• Trade body helpless if actor is not a member of MAA

“Surely, legal course takes a longer time in comparison to arbitration by trade bodies. In fact, trade bodies would arrange a meeting with aggrieved parties and sort it out across the table in just two or three meetings,” opines Mohan Vadlapatla, joint secretary, Telugu Film Producers Council.

He elaborates further: “Since an actress is involved, producer concerned should file a complaint with Telugu Movies Artistes Association and in turn the actors’ guild would approach producers council to address it. We would form a co-ordination committee overnight comprising 5 members each from actors guild and producers guild and resolve it. We have resolved many disputes since apex body has the right to extend non-cooperation that is equivalent to ban on an erring actress who refuses to comply with our orders and that could spell doom for her career.”

It’s true that disputes between producers and actresses have cropped up T-town even before and the co-ordination committee sprang into action and eased out deadlocks between producers and actresses. Even leading actresses like Tammanah, Samanta and Yami Gautam faced the ire of producers for not allotting committed dates or backing out at the last minute, with some lame excuse.

But unwilling to be banned, the actresses’ representatives attend the co-ordination committee meetings and saved their careers. “It’s true that Tammanah had to face a situation of dates clash sometime back, but it was not her fault; it was a particular producer who re-scheduled his shooting which resulted in date clash with another film, otherwise her professionalism remains unquestioned in Tollywood,” defends Bhatia, the father of Tammanah.

However, producer Nattikumar has a different take on trade bodies’ arbitration too. “Honestly, these agreements are toothless and sound good only paper and do not stand a chance in court of law. Even co-ordination committee members are biased towards big producers. For instance, I had an agreement with actress Yami Gautam for my Telugu ‘Yudham,’ but she blatantly ignored our film and allotted those dates to another Telugu film being made by a big producer. So I had to run from pillar to post to wrap up my film and incurred huge financial losses.

So trade bodies should come up with more stringent measures, to make it a level-playing field for big and small producers” he laments. Adding a new twist to the arbitration, Shivakrishna, the former executive vice-president of Telugu Movie Artistes Association, discloses: “First we have to check whether the particular actress is a member of MAA. Only then we can mediate, otherwise we are helpless since many actresses haven’t enrolled themselves in our actors guild.”

By B V S Prakash