Making of a Kuthu Paattu

Kuthu Paatu is something like an item number particulary targetted at the not so sophisticated audience. A kuthu paatu is an essential ingredient of any minimum guarantee movie in modern Tamil cinema. A Minimum guarantee movie is one which is taken with a bald headed fifty plus hero (like Sarath Kumar, SathyaRaj, etc) being shown as a middle aged man with the help of a lot of a makeup and who will be shown romancing with a first time heroine not more than 18 to 20 years old. These movies make their collection from the B & C centers.

Interestingly kuthu paatu is only like an item number but not an item number. The differences have to be well understood:

1. A good looking heroine/model/babe dances in an item number (Malaika Arora, Isha Koppikar, etc), someone with an ugly face but big assests and lot of flesh around their waist (Padma Priya, Gumtaj, etc) dances in a kuthu paatu .

2. The song in an item number will be good music sometimes a hit one too (Chaiya Chaiya in Dilse), the song in a kuthu paatu will have beats of only a thavil and will be good with a quarter patta saraku and oorugai (pickle).

3. In an item number the dance will be good (like Chaiyya Chaiyya in Dilse) or sometime seductive (like Kalaas in Company), in kuthu paatu the dance is only the shaking of the big assests and hips.

4. Item numbers usually will have the hero romantically dancing with the girl or some more models dancing behind (again Chaiya Chaiya in Dilse), kuthu paatu will have hero, comedian and the other unsagikables (refers to someone whom you can't bear to see paying money) along with a few shabby dressed and sweating extras jumping around the main girl (Kundrathula Koyilu Katti from Nesam).

Now that you have got all the essential differences, let me now highlight what all are required to make a kuthu paatu:
1. Song (lyrics)
2. Music
3. Main kuthu girl
4. Some side actors
5. Choreography

Once you have done the above then you can go ahead and shoot the song. Let me now walk you through some of the steps on how to create a kuthu paatu with ease. I will walk you through with an example.

It is very effective if the music and lyrics are composed together. What is essential in a kuthu paatu is the beat and not the wordings. You need to have a proper rythmic beats to keep the listeners happy.

(fast paced) Dandanakada takada takada....Dandanakada takada takada.... (imagine it being played with a tavil) (Note - there needs to be a stress in the n in Dandanaka as in Dannndanakada...)

This will be the beat which will repeat throughout the song and on which our lyrics will be based. Any other piece of music that comes in are just fillers. So now to have lyrics to go with it.

Now that we have the first piece of lyrics we need to see how to fit this into the beat that we developed. Look carefully at each word. Each of them can be split into two. At the start of the second half give a stress. Then in between each word give a small gap. Now try singing and you will see it will fit the beats. Now lets mix the beats and the lyrics and we have the first piece.

This forms the basics of our kuthu paatu. If the listeners can tap to this then the rest of the song can be made. Its just about making lyrics in the same tune. So we go and fill the lyrics up.

Now if we want we can add some music inbetween sets one and two so that the song comes for a few mins. Apart from instruments we can add some good hummings. So we add them.

(whistle)Peeeeeeeeeeeep..peep

(With whistling)Tanku chakum..Tanku chakum..Tanku chakum..Tanku chakum..Tanku chakum..

(male voice)machi...dhool kelapurama nee.....

So we are now almost done with the song. Since this is a fast paced song, we need some start. Basically it will be a set of uncorrelated lines - sung in the song by some side singer and in the movie it will be uttered by one of the extras (like "bandu bandu..." in Chinna Veeda varatuma song of Arjun). So we add that as well.

North(u) Dakotaaaa

South(u) Dakotaaaa

Innaku Night(u) Varattaaaaa

Mutham Tharattaaaaa

With all of the above the song can be recorded.

There is no dearth of actresses (who satisfy the conditions in the points 1-4 above) and the extra dancers from whom you can choose your cast.

And now for the last part - Choreography. This is perhaps the easiest. The girl has to shake her chest and hips. Make sure that she wears a tight and low cut blouse and that the flesh around her waist along with her navel is visible. The rest on screen can simply jump.

Mix everything together and you have your minimum gaurantee kuthu paatu.