Dutta fumbles with names at national awards announcement

New Delhi, May 19 (IANS) Bollywood filmmaker J.P. Dutta Thursday presented a disappointing picture of himself at the 58th National Film Awards when he failed to pronounce right the names of regional actors, directors and movies that he judged as the chairperson of the feature film jury for the prestigious awards.

In a lighter vein, he defended himself by saying, 'I'm sorry I didn't do my homework. I was too tired after watching all those films!'

As most top honours were swept away by Tamil movie 'Aadukalam' and Malayalam film 'Adaminte Makan Abu', the Hindi filmmaker throughout the press conference faced difficulty in rolling his tongue to announce the names of the winners.

He took the help of his jury member, Tamil filmmaker Bharat Bala, with the names, and even called a south Indian press photographer to ease out his problem.

Dutta, known for blockbuster like 'Border', faced incessant queries and requests from media persons to repeat the names of the winners, and he did so without cribbing.

But the media didn't wait a minute to listen to Dutta's broken pronunciations once the release was handed out.

'There's no use staying here - they can't pronounce a thing properly. Why should we waste time,' a reporter was overheard as saying.

The presentation just showed up the divide between Bollywood, which maintained a low key at the awards this time, and the rest of the Indian film industry.