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‘Gods’ behaving badly

Bollywood men are so good at talking trash, they would shame a dumpster. The talk is usually aimed at women.
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Over the years, I’ve seen the good and the bad in the Hindi film industry, but there’s an ugly side that most people don’t get to see. That women are treated as sex objects in films is a cliché that you would have missed if you were blind, but outside of the big screen, it gets worse. It’s not just about the casting couch or the forced trade of sex for a small role in a film, it’s about the actual talk, the crude language used while addressing women or speaking about them, and even the prima donnas of tinsel town are in on this.

And most women – co-workers,  actresses and costume designers – quietly take this in their stride.

The following are true stories.

Many actors are sexually involved with their female co-stars. This anecdote is about an eligible Bollywood bachelor from a legendary film family, and he makes waves with his films and his serial dating. Two years ago, he had a fling with the leading lady of his film; the leading lady in question is no fool, but a talented actor. They met on the sets of a film that was later a hit. The affair didn’t last long, but as per bystanders on the sets, they could barely keep their hands off each other. And while all this is par for the course in Bollywood, this actor indulged in kiss and tell. When nudged to divulge details of her ‘performance’ in bed to a bunch of assistant directors, makeup artists and spot boys –an all-male audience – he said, “Choosti achcha hai”.

Another gentleman who makes films that he believes strip our society naked and bring forth the ugly truth – in the bargain, contributing to the ugliness in society – gave a ‘life-changing, career-making opportunity’ to a model desperate to make it big in Bollywood. Following the break – surprise! – came the nightmare. After gruelling hours of shoots outside the city, the piss drunk director would go on a rampage unless his ‘needs’ were satisfied.

On one such night, the director got so drunk that he ended up knocking on the door of the wrong hotel room. That room’s guest, a middle-aged male accountant working with the film’s production house, was not prepared for this nocturnal visit, and opened the door to find the director leaping at him. The guest guided him out of his room into the hallway, and watched him bounce from door to door in search of her.

Finally, the director found her room and when she opened the door, he yelled, “Idhar hi khol!”. When the actress tried to pull him inside the room, he refused and bombarded her with words like ran** and saali, reminding her of the “opportunity” he had given her and that she should reward him back in sex, the way he wants it, whenever, wherever he wants it.

And there is this superstar who commands the box-office like no other and is famous for his very public break-ups, apart from his abusive relationships with women. This episode occurred when he was dating one of the most beautiful women in the world, also an actress. On a bright summer afternoon, they had a fight in the middle of the road, and he didn’t care that the abuses he was hurling at her could be heard by all. The actress sobbed endlessly, while the tough dude kept lashing out at her. This lasted a couple of hours, including his smoke breaks outside the car (drinks break was inside the car). And throughout, the girl cried in silence. A few months later, they broke up and the entire country was witness to that event as well.

And the asking of sexual favours from costume designers, make-up artists or female assistant directors is as brazen as, “Vanity van mein chalti hai kya?”

For women, the dream of being treated with respect remains just that…a dream. Many of the ‘stakeholders’ in Bollywood are misogynistic pigs. I hope that some day the tables turn and then men can be treated like dirt bags, too. Till then, the ladies can just suffer in silence.

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Picture courtesy ragedindian.com. Picture used for representational purpose only)

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Film

Brand new stories

It seems like Bollywood just can’t do without brand integration in its films. The newest example is Aamir Khan’s ‘Talaash’.
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Brands and products have been used in films for a very long time now, under the guise of innovation. Terms like brand integration and product placements have recently been coined and abused ever since. While brands have been seamlessly woven into certain films’ narratives, even in films from the Dev Anand and Rajesh Khanna era, the truth is that the lone objective of these deals these days is to mint money. At times, the entire production budget can be recovered with multiple brand promotions in a single film.

Many films have tried and tested this formula but few have succeeded in carrying this out subtly, without in-your-face promotions. Don 2 deserves an honorary mention in affiliating with Tag Heuer watches and Microsoft flawlessly. The brands carry the same value associated with the characters in the film – haute and tech savvy – thus making it a good fit. Even the on-screen time dedicated to the products was not overly long.

But at other times, you wonder: why are teens endorsing bourbon biscuits for Student of the Year, when clearly they have been starving to look as skinny as poles for the film? Where is the connect? There’s an increasing tendency to force brands into films’ promotions, despite many brands not fitting in with the overall storyline at all.

Windows 8 tied up with Aamir Khan starrer Talaash (releases November 30, 2012) and the commercial has being doing the rounds of the Internet and TV. As long as the ad features an intense Aamir Khan, I don’t have a problem with it – I just don’t want Aamir, in the film, to tell the audience how Windows 8 helped him solve the mystery.

Talaash’s brand integration reminds me of an interesting anecdote – a story of a director-producer who thought of reinventing this concept.

This is a true story.

In his film, a song featuring various communication devices like phone, PC, et al in the new age presented a great opportunity for making some quick moolah. For one of the scenes in the songs, the over-confident director used a mobile handset manufactured by a leading company without striking a deal with them first – he thought he could ask for endorsement money once the film was complete and the marketing kicked in.

The brand was approached for money a couple of months before the film’s release. To his astonishment, however, the brand rejected the business proposition. The reason? The phone used in the film was out of production and they didn’t want to promote it. The deal never happened.

For another film, a handset manufacturer asked for money from the producers to use the product. This is a reverse of the concept. In this case, the film was a small banner production, so the brand had leverage. Of course, the deal never happened.

Films like Ra.One and Don 2 have set benchmarks for brand integration in the Hindi film industry, and now, every film runs after brands like they’re the elixir of life. Special agencies to look after this concept have been set up in media companies, while new ones keep mushrooming with every film. It’s almost like Bollywood’s forgotten to make money from other avenues, like storytelling, for instance.

As long as it’s done in a fashion that doesn’t mess with the entertainment value attached to the film and doesn’t annoy the audience (like the Amitabh Bachchan film Viruddh), it’s totally okay. Make all the money you want, but here’s a sincere appeal: after recovering your costs and making a profit, keep the ticket prices low. The reason I walked away from watching Jab Tak Hai Jaan was the Rs 400 ticket price; though it did turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

Moral of the story: Plot your brands before the script is frozen, and plot them well.

(Pictures courtesy koimoi.com and rateon10.com)

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M

Exporting now: Irrfan

Irrfan in Life of Pi
Irrfan is a worthy export to Hollywood, unlike some others who promise the moon and make colossal fools of themselves.
by M | M@themetrognome.in

It’s a big deal for an actor to bag a role in an Ang Lee film. Kudos to Irrfan for his role in Life of Pi. He is a very good actor and is adept at playing the assigned character with ease and skill in any film, but I do have a problem with his accent in Life of Pi. It is bizarre; part British, part Punjabi, it will stick out for its strangeness, for sure.

When packing their bags to leave for Hollywood, why do our actors forget to carry a phonetics dictionary and a diction coach? A little work on the diction would go a long way for most of our recent exports – Frieda Pinto in The Rise of the Planet of the Apes desperately needed a full-time diction coach. Also, an acting coach, I think.

Irrfan is not the first Indian export to Hollywood. From Amrish Puri in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to Gulshan Grover in American Daylight, many have left their mark on Hollywood. But Irrfan is certainly a worthy export, a man who has played unforgettable characters in such Hollywood films as The Namesake and A Mighty Heart, unlike another actor who shall remain nameless, but who made a pretty big fool of himself recently.

In 2010, this actor – one of Hindi cinema’s top actors from the 90’s – was in a film that eventually won several Academy Awards. This Hollywood outing opened the doors for a series of short stints on American TV shows and films. Soon, he was to feature in one of Hollywood’s biggest action-thriller franchises, starring a Hollywood A-lister. At the same time, our star had a home production scheduled to release in cinema halls back home.

One will never forget the hullabaloo created around this star and his role in the big Hollywood film – his ‘crucial’ scene to be shot in Dubai, that this star was shooting for one of the biggest banners in the world, how he had to travel to Dubai and then London and then God knows where else for this important role, how there was a month-long schedule for his scenes. He even featured on an Indian chat show where film celebrities sit across the host and chit-chat with him for 30 minutes over coffee.

Not that we weren’t proud of our star’s achievement, but he began to annoy us all with his constant self-praise. But the PR around the film was done so well, that at one point, we expected an Oscar-worthy role that would do wonders for his dying acting career back home.

Closer to the release of the film in India, the A-list Hollywood celebrity visited the country and our desi star played host. With a lot of expectation, especially considering that our man had looked pretty decent in a blink-and-miss-glimpse in the trailers, people headed to the cinema halls.

Our star made a fool of himself. The cinema halls roared with laughter during the miniscule scene when our desi celeb made an appearance. He was hilarious – the scene was supposed to be funny anyway, but where had that accent come from? He played a mafia guy in the film, but that accent was better suited to a guy enrolling for a Rapidex English speaking course.

We could have let this pass if he hadn’t made our ears bleed with his “Look, I am international celebrity now,” plugs in the media. Suffice it to say But his international TV series role was quite bearable.

Moral of the story: If you ever get cast in an international film, let your role do the talking or you’ll just get bi***-slapped.

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment. 

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Film

The Bollywood Book Club

Bollywood has been a good adapter – so many of our films come from classics by foreign or Indian authors.
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Life of Pi releases later this week, and it looks good. This got me thinking, how many books-to-films success stories does Bollywood have?  There are a few exceptions like Anurag Basu, who take a roundabout turn to inspiration – some portions of Barfi! were copied from the English film The Notebook, that was based on a novel of the same name by Nicholas Sparks.

Bollywood has largely been an early adapter. The first full-length feature film, Raja Harishchandra (1913) was adapted from the folklore and legends of the Ramayana and Mahabharata.  Many have since then followed suit – Dil Diya Dard Liya (starring Dilip Kumar and Waheeda Rehman) was inspired by Emily Brönte’s classic Wuthering Heights. Dev Anand’s Tere Mere Sapne was based on The Citadel, a novel by AJ Cronin. Angoor, starring Sanjeev Kumar and Deven Verma, was based on Shakespeare’s The Comedy Of Errors.

And while there have been several instances where filmmakers have failed to give credit to the author or even announce that their film is based on a book, most recent filmmakers have honestly included the name of the author in the opening or closing credits of their films. They even do some PR around the film’s release. Sanjay Leela Bhansali did this for Saawariya (based on Fyodor Dostoevsky′s White Nights) and Vishal Bharadwaj for Maqbool, Omkara, and The Blue Umbrella; the former two are based on Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Othello respectively, and the latter is a short story by Ruskin Bond.

Many times, you will also feel that the book has been wasted on the film; cases in point are Aisha, a bad adaptation of Emma or The Namesake, a film by Mira Nair and a book by Jhumpa Lahiri. But these have been few and far between.

Here’s our list of the best adaptations of books in Bollywood:

Guide: The RK Narayan classic was adapted with little difference, save for the end theatrics, for the silver screen. Dev Anand and Waheeda Raheman were brilliant in the film.

Black Friday: Undoubtedly Anurag Kashyap’s best work till date. S Hussain Zaidi’s book captures the essential details of the 1993 Bombay bomb blasts, and the actors in the film relive the characters from the book. The soundtrack by Indian Ocean is a hit!

Devdas:  Sarat Chandra Chatterjee’s masterpiece has been adapted to Hindi cinema four times over two centuries. The one to watch is Bimal Roy’s starring Dilip Kumar and Suchitra Sen.

Maqbool: Vishal Bhardwaj’s adaptation of Macbeth is very, very close to the original. The phenomenal cast of Pankaj Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri and Tabu were all critically acclaimed for their performance.

Shatrang Ke Khiladi:  Adapted from Munshi Premchand′s story of the same name; the list would not be complete without Satyajit Ray’s work of art. This film was a nominee for the Golden Bear for Best Film at the 28th Berlin International Film Festival.

Note to readers: Chetan Bhagat was deliberately not included in this list. Don’t make me say why.

M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Picture courtesy www.santabanta.com)

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M

Don’t judge a film by its promo

M writes about how film promos these days are different from the storyline, and tagged to the last Bollywood hit.

Once, in a fit of momentary madness, I decided to watch Aiyyaa on DTH. Suffice it to say that I should have been paid to watch that film, even if I did watch it at home.

Apart from being an utter and complete waste of time that I could have employed in other pursuits, I was annoyed at how the film kept drifting from the main plot every five minutes. But my disappointment was not with the film itself, or its actors. It was the way the film was promoted. The promos led me to believe that it was the story of a small town girl and her romantic escapades. Shots of two very sleazy songs in the film constantly reminded the audience of The Dirty Picture. With such a preamble, naturally the audience expected much more masala in the actual film. Instead, when you watch the film you realise that it is actually the innocent love story of an extroverted girl and a devil-may-care guy.

Marketing a film is as critical as the creative aspects of making one. The marketing peg can bring or take the audience away from the theatres. Unlike a brand, marketing a film is different. While launching a new product in the market, the brand custodians will work on solid background data and create campaigns around the footprints of their Target Audience (TA). But a film is assumed to work for the entire mass. Cinema, being a mass medium, garners interest across gender, ethnicity, age, etcl. But in Bollywood, it seems minimal efforts are spent on a film’s strategy and the sole objective is to play on the last successful film; in case of Aiyyaa it was The Dirty Picture.

There are many films that have gone wrong with their marketing, and many ‘brilliant’ ideas have also mercifully been rejected in the board rooms. One such spin-off attempt happened not very long ago. The film was a rundown romance spread across three generations, with all three pairs being played by the same lead actors. Clearly, there was nothing to go on in terms of the storyline, so the fallout plan was to create hype around the stars of the film.

So the usual gimmicky stories were prepared for release in the media – like the off-screen romance brewing between the actors, the petty fights on the sets, etc. But one of the film’s producers came up with a peculiar idea. The idea, according to him, was a two-edged sword – if implemented, it would promote the film and dilute Salman Khan’s fan following. The truth is that any producer who has not worked with Salman has tried, at least once in his life, to sabotage the actor’s staggering popularity by one means or another. So far, in vain.

So, the big idea was to play on the fact that the lead actor’s mother was of the Muslim faith. Hence, just before release, the actor would visit a famous shrine of a Muslim saint in the city and the same would be projected as the actor’s efforts towards reconciling with his Muslim mother – this would impress and sway the Muslim audiences towards this actor. Let me mention, as an aside, that Muslim audiences are seen as Salman’s key fan base.

But in reality, the lead actor of this film was a staunch follower of the Hindu spiritual guru Sri Sri Ravi Shankar. This idea had to be shot down by the other producers.

There are many recent films that have been presented differently in their promos than what the actual script is. Jism 2 and Ishaqzaade are two films that firmly fall under this category, but don’t go checking them out. With lack of good storylines, I suppose filmmakers must do whatever they can to get their films some attention; be it projecting a film untrue to its plot, adding tons of sleaze or even recreating celebrity personas that do not actually exist.

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Pictures courtesy www.ibnlive.com)

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Film

In Blade we trust

The Dabanng 2 poster is copied from Blade. And Brad Pitt was recently a body double for another Bollywood actor.
by M | M@themetrognome.in

Salmanbhai is back in action with Dabangg 2. The highly-anticipated sequel is scheduled to release soon and a teaser poster of the film was made public yesterday. Naturally, excited fans lapped it up at once.

While it is too early to comment on the merits and demerits of the film, it is safe to say that Dabangg 2 has some very big shoes to fill. Dabangg was super successful at the box office and the audience’s expectations from this one will be much higher. For now, though, let’s talk about the poster released yesterday – we are happy to note that while it is not a very creative poster, it sure is properly copied.

That’s right. Check out the evidence.

                                               

Clearly the poster is ‘inspired from Blade. Considering how most creative agency meetings go, I am sure the brief for the creative agency that handled Dabangg 2 went something like this: “We want it to look like this (shows Blade’s poster on the iPad), just replace the blade with Chulbul’s goggles and the black man with Sallu… So easy it is na! (laughs at own wit).”

In recent times, the poster for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara was copied from Lords of Dogtown.

 

And that’s not all. Check out the other poster of Dabangg 2.

Notice the slimmer version of Salman? Now, this is not just photoshopping. Since carving away a few pounds at the waistline with an edit brush is very time consuming for Bollywood, many have come up with quicker and easier alternatives.

What you are about to read is a true story.

At a lengthy and pointless marketing meeting for a then upcoming spy film, the film’s poster was in jeopardy. The release date of the film had to be announced that week and a poster was critical for the announcement. The problem was, the actor had wrapped up his shooting schedule and was on vacation with his girlfriend at a non-accessible location. Plus, the actor, who had beefed up for the role, was now out of shape and would take at least a month to be fit for the photo shoot. Given how the industry usually functions, the eventuality of the poster causing trouble was not contemplated when the actor was still in the country and fit enough to be photographed.

So one of the producers, who also happened to be the actor’s business partner, proposed a solution that left most of the people in the room shocked. To be able to release the poster with the actor looking like a million bucks, the producer suggested that the creative team use a body double for the poster and stick the actor’s head on that body.

A body double was immediately arranged for. His name was Brad Pitt, and after said Bollywood actor’s head was pasted on Brad’s body, the poster was released a week later.

There are many who struggle and strive to be as fit as their heroes on screen, sometimes even resorting to bodybuilding drugs, ignoring the side-effects that can even be permanent. Little do they know that not just the concept of the creative, but nowadays even the bodies on the posters are ‘imported’ from Hollywood.

Moral of the story: As long as Brad Pitt is in shape, our actors Khan be too.

Sharp as a tack and sitting on more hot scoops than she knows what to do with, M is a media professional with an eye on entertainment.

(Featured image courtesy www.image.buzzintown.com)

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