His middle name is prolific. But director Priyadarshan –— who has churned out three films every year for 31 long years — says he needs a break. He is tired, he stresses, of playing to the gallery.

The Bollywood filmmaker, who made his debut in Malayalam cinema, has directed 86 films in five languages — comedies, action films, thrillers, satires and social drama.

“Cinema is my life — it has given me my bread, butter, glamour and pride,” stresses Priyadarshan, current chairman of the Kerala Film Academy and recently bestowed with the Padma Shri award. “But you are appreciated only when your film collects at the box office,” says the director, who made his name in Bollywood with the Anil Kapoor-starrer Virasat in the 1990s.

The director is seated in an air-conditioned office in his sound-editing and preview theatre company Four Frames in Chennai. In his mid-fifties, he is clad in jeans and a grey Polo T-shirt.

Priyadarshan is in a brutally honest, self-analysing mood. He admits that he ventured into Bollywood from south Indian cinema for the money. “I went to Bollywood to make money and I made lots of it,” he says disarmingly.

His last films, including the new release Kamaal Dhamaal Malamaal, however bombed. The director, earlier known for his Midas touch, is smarting, acutely conscious that he’ll be relegated to obscurity if his films continue to fail to get box office returns in commercially conscious Bollywood.

“I am taking a year off from making films in Bollywood. A new generation of filmmakers and viewers has emerged and I want to watch the new films to figure out what people like,” he says.

“I’ve been making films for the gallery and I’m not enjoying myself. I want to make more quality films such as my critically acclaimed Kanchivaram. Though there is nothing in the world I enjoy most in life than making films, I am going to take a backseat for a while,” he adds, dragging deeply on his cigarette, as if trying to convince himself.

Priyadarshan has had his share of success, of course. Trophies line the shelves of his office. Two large black-and-white photographs adorn the wall — one is of director Bimal Roy and the other a line-up of foreign technicians beside a film camera from the first film ever made in India.

“These photographs bought at an auction were presented to me by a south Indian director,” he says, even as he proudly points to a small glass door section on one side of his office in which he has lovingly preserved an old, outdated editing machine.

Most of his hit Hindi films are remakes of his south Indian films for which he was often criticised. An ardent fan of the British film director David Lean’s epics such as Doctor Zhivago, Priyadarshan made a name for himself in Bollywood with his slapstick comedies Hungama, Dhol, De Dana Dan and Malamaal Weekly, and for having revived actor Akshay Kumar’s sagging career with four hits in a row — Garam Masala, Bhagam Bhag, Bhool Bhulaiyaa and Hera Pheri. He also won audiences over with films such as Shah Rukh Khan and Irrfan Khan’s Billu, the children’s film Bumm Bumm Bole and the award-winning Kanchivaram, set among the silk weaving community in Tamil Nadu.

But will Priyadarshan be able to go off work for a year? After all, he has just admitted that even though he often rushes back to his home in Chennai from wherever he is shooting to be with his wife Lissy and two children, in a day or two he’s itching to get back to work.

The director stresses that he knows the hazards of not “updating” oneself. Having come up the hard way — as a struggling scriptwriter, Priyadarshan stood outside Madras studios waiting for directors and producers for hours — he knows the perils of the game.

“I’ve seen bigger names than mine just fade out because they didn’t keep up with the times,” he says.

Despite the flops, Priyadarshan is still sought after in Bollywood. He is believed to have signed five films with big production houses. And though he talks of self-exile, he also adds that he is working on a film an AIDS which he plans to take to the Cannes and Toronto film festivals.

Everything is entertainment in Bollywood,” says Priyadarshan, who has just wrapped up a remake called Rangrez. There’s no scope for meaningful cinema,” he holds. He cannot help scoffing at “south Indian film remakes” currently dominating Hindi cinema. “When I made south remakes, the critics ridiculed me. But now they are silent because big Bollywood filmmakers are desperately doing the same.” Not seeing any consistency in new filmmakers, he dismisses films such as Gangs of Wasseypur and Barfi! as foreign film copies.

“I realise that I have to go south if I want to make meaningful cinema,” he says.

The south has been Priyadarshan’s backdrop for long years. The librarian’s son who dreamt of becoming a cricketer grew up in Kerala. His ambition was quashed after he suffered a serious injury which almost blinded one eye. So Priyadarshan Soman Nair, who used to read passionately, turned to penning short stories and film scripts and yearned to join the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) in Pune. He used to steal money from his father (the only bad thing he has done, he says) to watch films.

“My father wanted me to join a bank and was clueless about what they taught at FTII. Is filmmaking a profession, he would ask me. He despaired of me, wondering how I was going to earn a living to even eat one meal a day. He thought I was useless,” Priyadarshan recounts with a laugh. His entire family works in the field of education, he says, giving the example of his sister who is an English professor at Kerala University.

Later, when he received his first national award, his father held his hand with tears in his eyes and said that he was proud of him. “I really wanted my father to see my success since he never believed in me,” he says.

Priyadarshan advises his own son who is studying visual effects in the US to “believe completely” in whatever he does. “If you want to be a scavenger, be the best one, I told him,” he says airily.

He believes that “if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”. His film career, he adds, was unplanned. “It just happened. At first, I wrote a screenplay for an art film with a few of my friends which included Malayalam superstar Mohanlal,” he recounts.

Mohanlal and he together went to Chennai to try their luck in the movies and stayed in a lodge which later Priyadarshan wanted to buy for sentimental reasons but found the property under litigation. “We thought if we don’t make it in three years, we would go back to Kerala,” he recalls.

The actor made it big before him, and Priyadarshan used to visit him on his sets. That’s how he met Jijo Punnoose, who directed India’s first 3D film Chhota Chetan. “My career took off after that. It was purely luck,” Priyadarshan says. “You can never tell when the wheel turns in someone’s life.”

Priyadarshan stresses that he never underestimates anyone in cinema. “If somebody comes to me saying he wants to be an actor, I don’t ignore or discourage him. I just send him away saying I cannot do anything right now. Who knows, tomorrow I may have to stand outside his house begging him to do my film!”

He knows about an actor’s struggle because he has gone through hard days. He remembers how he used to read out his stories to a famous film producer — who always turned them down, saying that they were not workable. After many months, a highly frustrated Priyadarshan narrated a story which the venerable producer rejected again. But Priyadarshan insisted he could prove that the script would work. How, the producer asked. Priyadarshan replied that he had just summarised the script of the then runaway hit Yaadon Ki Baraat. The furious producer turned him out — but signed him up later after Priyadarshan became a hit director.

“The main problem in Indian cinema or the world over is a scarcity of good scripts. Americans also do not have any stories to tell and they are turning to fantasy and technology. If you ask scriptwriters what they have read, they have no answer. People say Salim-Javed copied ideas but I think they were great scriptwriters because they read a lot,” he points out. “I tell my children to read rather than watch films if they want to be filmmakers.”

His style of zeroing in on a script is to ask script narrators for the end of a movie. “It is easy to start a story but only if you have the end you have a good subject,” he says. Priyadarshan too sometimes starts his scripts backwards.

Perhaps that’s what he is doing right now — penning the end before he can move on to the middle. After all, this is the man who has to be in the midst of a dhamaal!