Kay Kay Menon: Sometimes I wonder I should just stop doing offbeat  films

Kay Kay Menon: “It’s Frustrating When Critics Don’t Understand The Compulsions Of  Small-Budget OffBeat Films”

For 22 years the vastly under-used actor Kay  Kay Menon has been romancing the fringes of Bollywood cinema with performances that define peripheral brilliance.

But  Kay Kay is embittered by the absence of endorsement for his talent.

“Sometimes I feel I should just do the normal run-of-the-mill commercial films  and play the  filmy hero.I can do it very convincingly, I’m sure of that.  It gets very lonely when  one is  perpetually trying to do something  unexpected something  out of-the-box. The critics  judge the off-mainstream films  by the same yardsticks as  the  big commercial films. That’s not fair.Only we know what odds we work against.”

  Kay Kay is  wounded  by the  lack of fulsome appreciation in his career. “Do the critics realize  what  it takes to go from Reema Kagti’s Honeymoon Travels Pvt Ltd  to Ram GopalVarma’s Sarkar  to Shourya? Then  you read  the reviews and you see you are barely  mentioned. Even for Haidar the critical acclaim was  reserved  for the stars Shahid Kapoorand Tabu. I was  a mere incidental  attraction. That’s why I am sometimes tempted  to  just play the star-centric characters, ” says KK without a wry laugh.

 His latest film a thriller entitled Vodka Diaries  is out in the market.

KK whose earlier  triumphs range from Hansal Mehta’s Chhal  to  Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haidardraws attention to the nearly-insurmountable  troubles he had to face. “We had a measly budget  for Vodka Diaries  and we were  given just twenty days  to shoot in Manali. We somehow had  to complete the film during that time. When the snow-level fell we had to make do with whatever we had at our disposal and just leave.Do the critics realize how tough  it is  for us to shoot small-budgeted  films? They  judge us by the yardsticks of  the  big blockbusters and find us  lacking. This is a really sad.”

Kay Kay  feels  it’s time for a  more enlightened audience to respond favourably to  a different kind of filmmaking.  “In our country if an actor plays a negative character his  performance  is  disliked. This  is a  very dangerous situation for any thinking actor. Sometimes I wonder I should just stop doing  offbeat  films and concentrate  on  mainstream entertainers.”