George Bush addresses nation at MGR Film City

The city’s MGR Film City was bustling with activity recently. And the centre of everybody’s attention was the President of USA addressing the nation by the lawns of the White House. No, the technicians and artistes were not watching George Bush’s speech on TV, but the shooting of a scene in Kamal Haasan’s magnum opus Dasavadharam directed by K.S. Ravikumar.

This scene, which involves the President of USA addressing the nation at the lawns of Capitol Hill and bestowing a medal of honour on a policeman in recognition of his bravery in the face of danger, was filmed recently. The focal point of this scene was a massive set of the White House, put up by art director Thotta Tharani. According to insiders, this set was erected at a cost of Rs 40 lakhs. However, it was little surprise that both the roles (of Bush and the policeman) were being enacted by Kamal himself. It is reported that the other eight avatars of Kamal in the movie would be sitting and watching these proceedings keenly. Apart from the set, the other thing that everybody was talking about was the amount of detailing that had gone into Kamal’s make-up.

It is said that Hollywood make-up specialist Michael Westmoore has done a brilliant job of morphing the actor into a totally undistinguishable form. According to sources, this scene would comprise five minutes in the entire film. Another thing is that the dialogues for this scene are in English but with sub-titles in Tamil, which will be added later during editing.