TRADE TALK – Film Industry’s Reality Show

In all my years in the film industry, I’ve seen a lot changing. The way the films are made, how they are released, the attitudes of stars and technicians, everything but everything has undergone a metamorphosis. While some things have changed for the better, there are other spaces in which the industry finds itself worse off than what it was before the change occurred.

However, there’s one thing that has not changed at all. And from the look of it, it doesn’t seem, it’s going to change in the weeks, months and years to come.

People simply can’t accept that their film has flopped or gone wrong. Whether they are producers, directors, writers or actors, they will just not like it if you tell them that their film, which is running in the cinemas, is not doing well or that the audience is not happy with it. They will look at you with such scornful eyes that you will regret why you opened your mouth in the first place. Every person in this industry has his group of close friends or confidantes who insulate him from the harsh realities of the outside world, especially when his film has released. This group of cronies takes it upon itself to filter all information about the film before passing it on to the connected person.

The maximum filtering happens when the person is either the hero, producer or director of the film. Strange as it may sound, even distributors, who pay crores to buy films, happily lie about the box-office performance and camouflage the negative truths with such cliched one-liners as: “Oh ji, koi fikar nahin, Sunday se collections badh jaayenge”; “Arre, media ke reviews se kya hota hai? Public toh paagal ho rahi hai – and that is what matters!”; “Hit hai ji, hit hai!” The more ‘concerned’ distributor will even say, “Don’t believe anybody else, main jo aap ko bol raha hoon woh solah aana sach hai.” Saying this, he will then go on to speak lies about a film which may have flopped. The aim is to not give the producer/director/star a 440-volt shock.

But this very distributor will do a volte face four weeks later. He will visit the producer’s office with a fallen face and matching collections to drive home the point that he has suffered heavy losses in the film and that the producer should consider refunding him part of the MG royalty paid, to compensate him for the losses. If the producer’s next film looks interesting, the crest-fallen distributor may even prompt him to sell the distribution rights to him at a concessional rate to take care of the losses in the already released film. In fact, the distributor’s sweet talk in the week of release, about how the flop film was a hit, may have as much to do with eyeing the next one as with not giving him a heart attack by bombarding him with the genuine box-office collections of his film. Though, it fails common sense to understand how a producer can reach the ICCU on his film’s failure when he could take the crazy star prices, equa­lly crazy technician prices and the crazier star tantrums in his stride. But that’s the way it is!

Reviews of new films in the media are double-edged swords.  A glowing review for a film is welcomed with lavish words of praise for the reviewer by the people associated with that film but that very reviewer becomes a “frustrated” man or woman if he doesn’t like another film of the same star/producer/director. Three, four and five stars by critics and reviewers are flaunted by producers in press advertisements of their films issued post-release in a bid to woo the audience, but if the media hasn’t been kind, the most convenient line is: “Who cares about the reviews? Finally, it is the paying public for whom I’ve made the film, not the paagal press!”

This fascination for positive reviews has reached such maddening heights that some producers don’t even hesitate in extracting favourable lines from unfav­ourable reviews and printing them in the press advertisements of their film to give the potential audience the impression that the film has been given the thumbs up by the media. Unethical as it may be, there are reviewers who write patently glowing lines in the review just so that their names may figure in the film’s advertisements! Making TV/radio channels, newspapers and media groups media partners of their film, producers hope to get positive reviews for the films. More often than not, their hopes turn into reality when the media partners un­deservedly praise the films which they are partners in.

With close friends, distributors and, often, even the press painting a flop film as a hit, is it any wonder that a producer/director/writer/star finds it difficult or sometimes impossible to believe that his film is a flop? In fact, not accepting that one has made a flop could be one of the main reasons why people in this industry fail with such alarming regularity. No doubt, filmmaking is not an easy job. It is very difficult to first understand public tastes and then cater to them by making films which they want to see. All that is fine.

But if there is something as learning from one’s own mistakes, that path of acq­uiring knowledge is often not available to the film people, whether they are producers, directors, writers or stars. For, to learn from his mistakes, a person has to first accept that he has made a mistake, that he has failed, that he has gone wrong somewhere, that he has erred. But when the film people, so full of themselves, treat everybody who talks – even wrongly – good about their film as a friend, and anybody who criticises their film, as a foe, you can’t expect them to improve. Oftentimes, in a bid to fool the world that they’ve made a hit, the persons associated with a flop start believing their own lies.

Akshay Kumar and Kareena Kapoor went on and on when their Kambakkht Ishq was released, about how huge a hit it was. Of course, the collections were in contradiction to their comments but they were in no mood to see reason. Finally, many weeks after the film was pronounced a flop by the trade, Kareena reportedly ad­mitted in an interview that the film had failed. Other actors may not even do that – admit neither before the world nor to themselves – that their film was a flop!

If there is no escape route and a producer, director or star is forced to accept facts and agree that his film was a box-office bomb, catch him blaming the failure on either the weather or the opposition or the riots that may have broken out when his film hit the screens or on any thing else that may seemingly make sense. For instan­ce, Mumbai Mantra, the corporate which acquired Onir’s Sorry Bhai!, to this day blames its failure on the terrorist attacks in Bombay on 26th November 2008. It’s true that the damp squib was released on 28th Novem­ber – but it’s also a fact that box-office collections wouldn’t have been very different even if Sorry Bhai! had come in the most peaceful atmosphere in the country.

The powers that be at Mumbai Mantra must be asham­ed of their folly in acquiring the film which not many would have picked up, and it is to hide their guilt that they may be playing the terrorist attack card everytime they are confronted with its dismal box-office collections. But the fact remains that they are yet to accept that the film was a box-office bomb and not merely because terrorists exploded bombs at strategic locations in Bombay two days before it was released.

If Mumbai Mantra can’t accept that Sorry Bhai! was indeed a disaster because of reasons intrinsic to it, how can you expect its director, Onir, or stars to accept that they went so drastically wrong. Sorry, bhai, everyone’s waiting for a reason to blame his debacle on something or someone else and here, Onir and company didn’t even have to try too hard. Mumbai Mantra was their biggest saviour – before release, when it acquired the film for distribution on payment of a price; and after release, by trying to convince the world that the film was a victim of circumstances.

In his or her own way, every actor behaves like Akshay Kumar and every actress, like Kareena Kapoor after the release of Kambakkht Ishq. No filmmaker is any different from Onir, and it would be difficult to find a corporate which doesn’t behave like Mumbai Mantra. For, it suits them to feign ignorance. For them, reality is a word that only sits pretty when it precedes a show on television. Or when it comes to another’s film!

- Komal Nahta

Issue dated Oct 18 – 24, 2009

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