The old-fashioned love story has now been made three times — in Tamil as “Vinnaithaandi Varuvaaya,” in Telugu as “Ye Maaya Chesave” and now in Hindi — by Menon himself.

 

In a recent phone interview from Mumbai, India-West asked the director how he kept his enthusiasm fresh making three versions of the same love story.

 

“To be honest, I think in the mornings, ‘Why am I doing this?’ when I set out for the shoots,” Menon said with a laugh. “I’ve done this already twice, what am I going to do to keep it different?”

 

First, he said, he worked with a new cinematographer (M.S. Prabhu) and kept in mind that “the actors were totally new, and the locations were totally different.

 

“Also the whole film was built around Mr. Rahman’s music, so even if I was doing it the third time around it was interesting to see how the music would work,” he said.

 

Asked about the popularity of Hindi remakes of South Indian films, Menon — the director of 11 films in Tamil, Telugu and Hindi — said fans in the North were getting the wrong idea.

 

“The kinds of films they pick up from the South and make in the North are not the kind of films that we actually make these days,” he explained. “The kinds of films we make now are totally different. They’re much more classy and more meaningful, and they get noticed and appreciated and they get a commercial value attached to them. The films they pick to remake are the mass entertainers that we’re done with!”