Over 40 years in Kannada and Telugu cinema, veteran director Om Sai Prakash has built a career on sentimental family dramas, mother-sister emotions, and devotional hits. Now past seventy years of age, he is back to helm his 106th film, Common Man, returning to direction after a six-year break while simultaneously shooting a multilingual biopic on Puttaparthi Sathya Sai Baba. As for Common Man, produced and written by Dr N Narasimha Murthy under the Surabhi Films banner, the idea took root during a casual talk with Murthy, who wondered what would happen if a common citizen filed a legal case directly against the Vidhana Soudha. That thought grew into a political drama featuring Gowrishankar SRG in the lead alongside Shona Ladwa, Sabby Suri, Bala Rajwadi, and Prakash Thuminad, where an ordinary man, inspired by a father who fought social battles through street plays, unexpectedly finds himself in the Chief Minister’s chair.

"Every person on the road has this satirical thought inside them: 'If I were in power, if I were the corporator, I would fix these potholed roads,'" says Saiprakash. "In politics, leaders have rights, while we carry duties. The moment they win, they forget the public; the moment people vote, they think their job is finished. But the common man has every right to ask questions. If he accidentally lands in authority, does he become selfish like the rest, or does he think of the people?" Looking back at his early years, the director points out how drastically political culture has transformed. "When I was young, politicians ate home food, boarded regular government buses with seats marked for MLAs, and asked for votes on bicycles. Today, it is all about fleets of luxury cars. Once they gain power, all their energy goes only into saving their chairs and seats. They are constantly worried about when they might fall, leaving no time to think about the people."

He is equally troubled by the daily reality on the ground. "Youth come from villages to work long hours at petrol bunks or security counters for four thousand rupees. If this continues, who will do agriculture tomorrow? In our film, the common man as CM gives a call back to the villages. The government should treat farming as a recognised, salaried job with uniforms and tags so our youth stay on the soil." Turning to the film trade, Om Saiprakash rejects the claim that audiences have moved away from theatres. "The audience has not changed; we in the industry ruined it ourselves," he states plainly. "In our time, films were budgeted strictly. We made comedies for ten lakhs, action movies for twelve lakhs, and star films within forty lakhs. Financiers and distributors took genuine responsibility to run the film. Today, distributors have no stake, and producers bear every burden alone."  

The biggest blow, he feels, is how cinema became unaffordable for ordinary workers. "Earlier, an entire family could spend two hundred rupees, carry meals from home, and enjoy a movie. Today, tickets cost five hundred rupees, popcorn costs a thousand rupees, and high taxes are added on top. How can an auto driver, a daily-wage worker, or a middle-class family afford that? They wait for mobile screens, OTT platforms, or TV instead." Saiprakash then reflects, "There is a world of difference between a white sheet of paper and a stamp paper; today’s films are like blank white sheets where nobody knows who is making what or why anyone should watch them. With Common Man, we want to return to that stamped authority, an honest story made within sensible limits that speaks directly to the working-class families who stood by cinema and kept film halls alive for generations," he concludes.