PART I

History rewards victory, not ambition. Pyaasa, Mughal-e-Azam, Sholay, Deewar, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and, now, a Happy New Year, are likely to be celebrated decades after their release. There will be endless analysis around what made them hits or critical successes, nostalgia pieces on their 50^th anniversaries, new books around their making, and interviews with ageing stars and filmmakers

Not that these aren’t useful. I would really like to know, for instance, what made Happy New Year a hit. All I have to thank the film for, after three painful hours, is that it brought back memories of Shalimar, a 1978 movie quite unlike anything Bollywood has ever seen, and a financial and critical disaster.

In a tribute to Shalimar, Happy New Year revolves around a group of people trying to steal diamonds by beating the ‘Shalimar Security System’, introduced to viewers with Shalimar’s title song—Mera Pyaar Shalimar—playing as a hat doff.

Also, the bunch of thieves in Happy New Year are described repeatedly as “losers” who’re trying to be “winners”. This is reminiscent, perhaps unintentionally, of Shalimar’s maker, Krishna Shah.

A creature of lesser Hollywood, the filmmaker has to his credit smaller genre movies (comedy and horror) such as Hard Rock Zombies, Evil Laugh, Ted & Venus and American Drive-In. A UCLA and Yale graduate, before Shalimar Shah had adapted the play The River Niger, and directed on and off Broadway theatre (one of them Rabindranath Tagore’s The Dark Chamber which won two Obies). He’d written for TV too (Six Million Dollar Man, The Flying Nun and The Man From UNCLE) and produced the animated Ramayana in 1992, and one of India’s early ‘indie’ films Hyderabad Blues.

Yet Shah never made it to the Hollwyood A list. Shalimar was his only attempt at a big blockbuster. Indian papers were full of news about him then, especially after he signed Rex Harrison. But everything was forgotten soon after the movie bombed.

The plot of the film involves four master thieves entering into a contest with one another to try and steal the “Shalimar ruby” from the biggest master thief of them all. Four master thieves and Bollywood strongman Dharmendra, who gatecrashes the competition.

It’s atrocious, but has an audacity to it that’s endearing: it features Hollywood actors like Rex Harrison, Sylvia Miles and John Saxon alongside Hindi film stars Dharmendra, Zeenat Aman and Shammi Kapoor— something no other Hindi film has done to this extent. It was released in Hindi in India and in English in the USA (as Raiders of the Sacred Stone). Both versions failed.

One really wonders what prompted Rex Harrison—Tony, Golden Globe and Oscar winner for Best Actor—after having played the iconic parts of Julius Caesar, Henry Higgins, Pope John Paul II and Dr. Dolittle, to agree to portray a Bollywood arch-villain. One imagines Harrison—now, sadly, no more, then nearing 70—would have prepared for Shalimar alongside Staircase (with Richard Burton) and Crossed Swords (with Charlton Heston). So around the same time he was essaying the considerably more complex roles of an ageing gay Londoner running a barbershop and the 16^th Century Duke of Norfolk, Harrison also played Sir John Lockheed— a retired but paranoid master-thief living on an island, with many tribal slaves and Dharmendra to handle. Not that the other two movies did much better. Both were critically panned and turkeys at the box office. Harrison himself reportedly hated Staircase. It would be interesting to find out what he made of Shalimar.

Then there’s Sylvia Miles of Greenwich Village. If you ask around New York, the story you’re most likely to hear about Miles involves her throwing a plate of food on critic John Simon’s head. Simon, now 89, remembers it being steak tartare. Miles, 82, remembers “steak tartare, coleslaw, potato salad, and cold cuts.”

The provocation for this was that Simon had referred to Miles as “one of New York’s leading party girls and gate-crashers” in a review. “How could I crash anything? I was invited to everything! I was the Gwyneth Paltrow of the day,” Miles has said.

This isn’t true. Miles won two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actress that she received for minuscule six and eight minute appearances in the movies Midnight Cowboy and Farewell My Lovely respectively. And she had a role in Andy Warhol’s underground film Heat, a parody of Sunset Boulevard, written and directed by Paul Morissey, where she plays a has-been Hollywood starlet, seduced and used by an LA Hustler.

True to her ‘party girl’ reputation, Miles was seen at so many public events with Warhol and Morissey that ventriloquist and puppeteer Wayland Flowers remarked in one of his shows: “Sylvia Miles and Andy Warhol would attend the opening of a sewer.” Also, that Miles herself would “attend the opening of an envelope”. Flowers used his puppet, ‘Madame’, to express these thoughts, now subsumed in Manhattan lore. Clever way of sidestepping the tartare.

Miles had spoken about Shalimar to Roger Ebert, in between chewing a honey dew slice and lighting a cigarette, at a 1980 LA brunch. Interestingly, she referred to it as the film with Harrison and Saxon without mentioning any of her Indian co-stars, not even the film’s protagonist, or maybe Ebert didn’t care to report that she did. She was in her mid-forties then. She plays a trapeze artist and master thief called Countess Rasmussen. Shah establishes this with a flashback that shows Miles trapeze into a museum, wearing a bright red outfit to steal Van Gogh’s Sunflowers. Later, the Countess swings like Tarzan to access windows that seem as if they could simply have been climbed into. For the purpose of knocking out a guard, or avoiding capture, she prefers summersaulting to simple hit and runs (where Dharmendra scores).

The original choice for Miles’ role in Shalimar was Gina Lollobrigida, Italian actress, photojournalist, sculptor and sex symbol of the fifties and sixties. In The Shalimar Adventure, a forgotten 1979 book on the making of the film by publicist Bunny Reuben, a chapter titled The Battle of the Boobs reports a cleavage contest of sorts between Zeenat Aman (in her late twenties) and Lollobrigida (touching fifty at the time) at an early press conference for which the European actress had traveled to India. One doesn’t know what the import of this is. Anyhow, Lollobrigida finally walked out.

The third Shalimar actor from the Hollywood circuit, the now 79 year old John Saxon, is best remembered as Bruce Lee’s comrade-in-arms from Enter The Dragon. Saxon, born Carmine Orrico, was set to be Hollywood’s next big thing when he broke into the movies with meaty roles in Running Wild (he was 20 then) and The Unguarded Moment (21). But this was not to be, and Saxon acted, instead, in innumerable sci-fi, action and horror movies and TV shows. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Golden Globes for his portrayal of a Mexican bandit in Appaloosa. He played a similar part in Joe Kidd, co-starring with Clint Eastwood and Robert Duvall. Saxon also went on to do Italian spaghetti westerns and police thrillers.

Saxon was just past 40 when he was signed on for Shalimar, though he looks as if he is in his thirties. He plays a master thief called Colonel Columbus.

Dharmendra and Zeenat Aman, both pretty much at the top of their careers, and Shammi Kapoor, the ex-hero who had aged by then and become a prolific supporting actor, made up the Indian end of the cast. Reports say Shah had approached Amitabh Bachchan to play Dharmendra’s part, but the superstar kept delaying things still Shah gave up.

Also, Shalimar had OP Ralhan, the producer-director and sometimes actor behind big Bollywood grossers like Phool Aur Patthar and Talash. Ralhan plays a character named KPW Iyengar, alias ‘Romeo’, a master thief who has robbed the Bank of Singapore. Kapoor’s character, Dr. Dubari, is a thief who poses often as a religious figure, who has stolen St. Timothy’s precious cross from Jerusalem (like the Shalimar ruby itself, this is fictional). He cites religious writing from the faiths to justify crime. Aman plays Sir John’s (Harrison) nurse and Dharmendra’s ex flame.

Shalimar is full of bloopers and irrationalities but then such problems abound in other successful heist films of the yesteryears too, such as Topkapi or The League of Gentlemen. What really does the film in is that it’s overlong, has dully paced scenes and a plot that’s just plain boring: devoid of well-conceived twists and turns and utterly predictable.

It does have some memorable Hindi film music from RD Burman. Hum Bewafa Hargiz Na Thay by Kishore Kumar, for instance, or One, Two Cha Cha Cha—by Usha Uthup—a longish cha-cha-cha number and dance sequence that the film begins with.

There’s also Asha Bhosle’s Mera Pyar Shalimar a title-track that sounds as though it belongs to a Bond film. And like with the Bond movies it should really have been played during the opening credits. Instead, it has been used, wastefully, in sporadic bursts, in laughably futile attempts to drum up pathos or fear.

There is one well-executed sequence in the film: where Dharmendra (Spoiler Alert) paints himself in black and white to blend in with the walls and floor of the hall where the Shalimar ruby lies, as a kind of camouflage. Harrison realizes the big chequered blob inching towards his ruby is Dharmendra upon staring at a chess board with a game they’ve left unfinished. Believe it or not, it’s actually pulled off quite well.

And there is a clever reference. The fictional island, in the Indian Ocean, where the thieves meet is named Saint Dismas, the name assigned to the penitent thief crucified with Jesus Christ, as per the Gospel of Luke.

PART II

Besides these, Shalimar throws up quite a few treasures for lovers of camp. There are Hindi masala film tropes that have been used here like nowhere else. This makes for novel ‘oh-it’s-so-bad-it’s-good’ moments, as opposed to Happy New Year where, for all its eighties Bollywood references, there is mostly only the ‘it’s-so-bad-it’s-bad’. Here are some gems (Many Spoilers Ahead):

1.

Rex Harrison’s voice, in the Hindi version, is dubbed by the one and only Kader Khan— who has penned dialogues for the film as well.

Yes. The same that wrote and said:

“Dukh jab hamaari kahaani sunta hai toh khud dukh ko dukh hota hai.”

A feeble attempt at translation: When sadness hears my tale, then sadness itself feels sad.

And:

“Whiskey mein soda ya pani milane se uska taste kharaab ho jaata hai. Whiskey mein Whiskey milaake peena chahiye.”

Translation: Mixing soda or water with whiskey ruins its taste. One should mix whiskey with whiskey before drinking it.

And:

“Tumhaari yeh baat sunkar mera dil Hyderabad ke tarah aabaad ho gaya.”

Translation: Impossible.

Some perspective. A doyen of eighties Bollywood dialogue writing and delivery, Khan has played a significant part in propagating the ‘angry young man’, Hindi Cinema’s most remembered stereotype, that Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar created for Amitabh Bachchan. Ganga Jamuna Saraswati, Sharaabi, Coolie, Lawaaris, Suhaag, Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Amar Akbar Anthony, Mr. Natwarlal, Satte Pe Satta, Hum and Agneepath are some of the famous Bachchan films Khan has written dialogue for.

As an actor, Khan was Prometheus Unbound, set in Hindi film masala. So over the top, even for an industry that routinely demanded a degree of overacting, that he made Dolby Surround seem altogether unnecessary when it came to India. Here, however, the ham extraordinaire displays remarkable restraint, almost as if he wore a horse bit for the dub. Khan’s ‘Sir John voice’ for Harrison is understated and alternates between quietly menacing to a sardonic murmur. To discover this avatar—Kader Khan The Murmurer—can be such a delight for followers of eighties Bollywood that they could watch Shalimar for this reason alone.

2.

I’m not quite sure who dubbed Sylvia Miles’ voice—or whether she did it herself—but she sounds like Helen trying to sound like an Italian trying to speak in Hindi. This is coupled with political incorrectness. In one scene she greets Ralhan with “My Idlee, Dowsaaa!” punctuated by (what else) a summersault.

3.

Two foreign master thieves communicating in Hindi is more than enough, perhaps, so Col. Columbus, John Saxon’s character, is left mute. Saxon speaks in sign language throughout the film and only Dharmendra, or S. S. Kumar, understands sign language. So he translates for others. This raises a question. Dharmendra was never meant to be on the island in the first place. He cheated his way in, taking another invitee’s place. How exactly had the master thieves planned on communicating with Columbus without Dharmendra?

In the latter half Saxon’s character acquires an added shade of complexity. He dies and because the tribals on the island feel they heard him scream after his death they dress up the dead body and worship it as their god. He still doesn’t get any dialogue though.

4.

Let’s address the question of how Dharmendra gatecrashed the gathering. One must give credit where it’s due. Shalimar is possibly the only Hindi movie where Dharmendra doesn’t fool anyone by disguising himself as a Sikh. Yes, he dons a fake beard and moustache and wears a turban, pretending to be the son of Raja Bahadur Singh— yet another master thief who was invited but, sadly, shot before he could make the trip. However, after a day of watching him conspicuously pilfer trinkets from under their eyes everyone bursts into laughter when he claims to be royalty. Why they then allow him to enter the Steal-The-Shalimar Contest, instead of sending him off to be treated for kleptomania, is a mystery. Must be the sign language.

5.

Coming back to voices, when Dharmendra says “Sir John” he sounds either as if he is saying “Mausi (Aunt)” in Sholay or “Kuttay (Dog)” in every other movie. Aman is less versatile. She addresses everyone in that sultry whine she had perfected in her time in Bollywood, a studied mix of complaint and seduction.

6.

Harrison displays so much serenity in the middle of all of this that one wonders whether he was wearing earplugs. There is mild amusement writ on his face, which may have come naturally, and a detachment that makes you suspect he was actually mentally rehearsing lines for the Duke of Norfolk.

7.

The Shalimar ruby itself is assigned an intriguing fictional history. Existing since Vedic times (whenever that may be), it was taken by Alexander and then returned to Chandragupta Maurya by Seleucus I. Then it went missing and was discovered in Srinagar’s Shalimar Gardens by the Mughals. From here it went to the Portuguese and then the English. Then it went missing again. The newspaper clipping that informs us of this is from UK’s Sunday Mirror. The headline reads: “Who Has Plucked The 100 Crore Rupee Plum?”

The “100 Crore Rupee Plum” which actually looks like a snazzy red disco ball that got cut all wrong. This makes for great tragicomedy when juxtaposed with expressions of anguish on the faces of people who die trying to procure it, to the tune of Mera Pyar Shalimar. They don’t look like they’ve lost it because of the stone. They just look mad.

8.

In the end, Dharmendra is a CBI officer. We learn of this because he tells Aman that he had squandered her life’s savings and eloped with some American girl not because he didn’t love her, but because he had to get the Shalimar ruby back for the CBI. He tells her this casually, before saying into the phone purposefully: “This is Agent 3694”.

9.

The tribals under Sir John’s command—he saved 45 of them from death so now they’re his slaves for life—are a cosmopolitan lot. Some of them resemble Africans, some East Asians, and one of them is Mudhu B. Shetty. Shetty, better known as Fight Master Shetty, or, simply, Fighter Shetty—an iconic Hindi film stuntman and action choreographer—would often appear in the action sequences he created as a dark bald hulking goon who would be beaten up by heroes half his size. Here he merely glowers in snatches, in a ridiculous outfit that makes him look like a Red Indian at a fancy dress ball. There is no explanation for this, and viewers unacquainted with the cryptic genre that is the Hindi masala movie may be at a loss as to why, in the middle of so many scenes depicting tribals in ridiculous ways, they are repeatedly confronted with shots of Shetty glaring at them angrily.

Enlightenment arrives at the climax, which comprises a fight between Dharmendra and Shetty who ambushes him—and the audience—with a sword in one hand and a spear in the other. It then dawns that the previous shots were simply Shah’s way of saying: “Here is Shetty. He may be dressed like the next enslaved tribal but wait and see.”

Not that the tribal dress code is uniform— those higher in the hierarchy wear headgear reminiscent of Greek legions while lesser ones wear single feathers. They paint their bodies, light up torches and chant “Jhingalala Hoon Hoon” while marching to nowhere in particular. This makes Dharmendra break into a song, in rhythm with this chant, about his failed relationship with Zeenat Aman.

10.

To be fair, tribals aren’t the only constituency Shalimar offends. If the movie is to be believed, erstwhile rulers of princely kingdoms committing themselves to grand larceny was a worldwide trend in the seventies. Two of five master thieves invited to try and steal the Shalimar—Countess Rasmussen and Raja Bahadur Singh—hail from nobility. And then there’s Sir John. The last government in possession of the Shalimar ruby was supposedly British. Has anyone told Queen Elizabeth II she’s being shown to have knighted someone who ran off with England’s most precious jewel?

Last year, TBIP documented the work and lives of some of India’s best known ‘character actors’, through a series of photographic portraits and in-depth interviews. In the second part of that series, we present Alok Nath.

Alok Nath, 58, is one of Hindi cinema’s most recognizable ‘character actors’. A National School of Drama alumnus, he is well known for essaying the role of a kindly patriarch in many Bollywood films in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, among them the blockbusters Maine Pyar Kiya (1989), Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! (1993) and Hum Saath-Saath Hain (1999). Also, Nath has won acclaim for his turn as Haveli Ram in Doordarshan’s television series, Buniyaad.

Last December, jokes and memes based on characters played by Alok Nath—mostly on the ‘sanskaari’ (morally upright) and ‘kanyadaani’ (father of the bride) nature of his on-screen avatars—went viral on Twitter and Facebook, leading to the actor’s name trending on social media for no apparent reason, prompting online marketing case studies on the phenomenon.

The shoot and interview takes place at his apartment in Lokhandwala, Mumbai. We sit on velvet upholstered sofas in his sitting room, chatting about the highs and lows of his journey as an actor, interrupted occasionally by the snores of his pet Boston terrier sleeping on a chair nearby.

One of your first roles was in Gandhi. What were your thoughts while working on the movie with actors like Ben Kingsley, Roshan Seth, etc. Do you have any special memories of it? How did you get the role?

When I joined Hindu college, at Delhi University, I was very active in college theatre as well as in the Ruchika theatre group. I also kept doing television. After college I chose to take up acting professionally. My parents had wanted me to be a doctor—my father is a doctor—but they stopped interfering and left the decision to me once I took up humanities instead of science in college. After graduating I joined the National School of Drama in Delhi. I did three years there and even in my spare time and during the holidays continued with professional theatre and television in Delhi. Towards the end of my time at the National School of Drama (NSD), in 1980, Dolly Thakore from Bombay came to our school looking for actors for small character roles in Gandhi, being directed by the great Sir Richard Attenborough. We were told to represent the National School of Drama in the auditions and have a nice bath, wear clean clothes, shave, oil our hair… Getting the role or not was immaterial. Just to see Richard Attenborough in the flesh—he used to do theatre too and we were in awe of him—was a big high. When I met him at the Ashoka Hotel I was shivering. He looked me over and seemed to contemplate, as if he was buying a horse or cattle. His eyes were piercing into me and I was dying, frankly, because I wasn’t getting any reaction that revealed whether he liked me or not. He finally said, “Yeah Dolly looks good.” Dolly lead me into an adjacent room and said, “You’re on Alok. So this character is called Tyeb Mohammed, one of Gandhi’s associates and friends when he was in South Africa and involved in the coal miners’ agitation. So you got the role.” I said, “That’s great. But what do I do for it?” And she said, “See you look the role, that’s why Attenborough chose you.”

Later I realized I must have been chosen because I had that mean hungry look those days, the look of a frustrated theatre actor who is a committed revolutionary, a Commie theatre enthusiast.

She asked me “How much will you charge?” In those days, in television, for a play for which you had to rehearse for a week or 10 days and then record, we would get 60 rupees. Nobody had asked me what I would charge. I was just given whatever pittance and I took it. So I was like, “Madam Dolly…” Dolly was a nice looking young woman, very Westernised. And here we were, the lesser humans visiting a posh Delhi hotel, who had never been to a five star hotel suite, and my feet were like jelly but I couldn’t say that I haven’t done a film before so I don’t know how much to charge. Also I couldn’t say I used to get 60 rupees or she’d give me 100 rupees or something. So I just kept quiet. She finally said, “Okay will over 20 be alright?” I almost got a heart attack because I used to get 60 and now 20? Then she said, “Twenty thousand rupees. Should we close the deal?” My expression was like… I literally shat in my pants. I was like, “Yeah 20 is fine, it should be good.” And as I was calculating how much 20,000 rupees was, she took out a wad of notes for 10,000 rupees. “Here is an advance and you’re on.” And she made me sign some papers. So that was how I got Gandhi. I went out of the room, kept the money in my pocket, left the hotel, then took the money out and checked if they were real notes. I kept the wad under my armpits and the whole way back I took an auto-rickshaw (I used to travel by bus normally). I went home and gave the money to mom. My parents too were shocked. “Thank God you didn’t become a doctor,” they said. Because my father didn’t earn 10,000 rupees in a year.

You had only one film as a hero, Kamagni. Why were you not considered for the lead more often back then? Because I’ve seen younger photos of you. And…

Just say it. That I was good looking.

You were good looking. Why were you not offered leads?

Between Gandhi and Kamagni there were five to six years. I struggled in Bombay for almost two years and got nothing but constantly kept doing theatre at Prithvi Theatre with Mrs. Nadira Babbar, Raj Babbar’s wife. Raj, an NSD alumnus, had suddenly become an overnight superstar and signed some 30 to 40 odd films. That was also one of the reasons for this exodus of a lot of Delhi actors to Bombay. They wanted to get into the gold rush of cinema by which Raj Babbar, a Delhi theatre actor, had become a hero.

During that span of doing theatre in Prithvi with Nadiraji, a lot of film people used to come and watch our shows. I got some small roles in films. My first break was with Mr. Yash Chopra in a film called Mashaal with Anil Kapoor—it was also one of his first films—and Dilip (Kumar) saab. I played a journalist and he later gave me a role again in his film Lamhe and then I got a role in Aaj Ki Awaaz, a B. R. Chopra film.

Also, in those days the TV serial business had begun in a big way here. There was a serial made in Delhi called Hum Log, the first Indian soap. And people lapped it up like crazy. In the wake of that, more serials started getting made in Bombay. So 26 and 30 episode serials were being made. I started getting work in these serials starting with one by Basu Chatterjee, then by Nadiraji herself doing a serial and then Mr. Ramesh Sippy’s company making a serial on journalism, a caricaturist kind of show called Chapte Chapte. I played a cranky, grumpy editor, and then Buniyaad happened.

Buniyaad was a major milestone in my life which catapulted me into the acting space. I was compared to the greats of those times. The press suddenly put me on this pedestal and I got great acting offers but the condition of Buniyaad, also made by Mr. Ramesh Sippy, was that you had to give one year to them in which you would concentrate on this one show. With Buniyaad it was like I had gotten my voting card for Bombay, that read: ‘Alok Nath, Actor’.

And yet the irony of Buniyaad was I couldn’t do other work, so a lot of offers went rejected. And while people wanted to work initially, things changed. Let me explain. When I started Buniyaad I was 26-27 years of age and it started with me playing a young revolutionary, an honest, good looking guy, falling in love with a woman. Then we married, had children, they grew up, they got married, they having children and we became grandparents. All of this in one year. So in one year I lived 60 years of my life. In that one year the younger Haveli Ram, the character in the serial which got all these offers, was forgotten and at the end the image of a masterji, growing old, remained in the audience’s mind. The last shot of the serial, that has lasted in people’s memory, was that I am walking with two grandchildren into the horizon. An 80 year old man, balding, with white hair. That was the lasting image of Alok Nath.

Hum Aapke Hain Koun.. ! established you as a sort of household name. What was it like working on that film? Hum Aapke… also affected the tone of movies made in Bollywood in the nineties. Did you anticipate the effect that it had?

Before that was Maine Pyaar Kiya and even before that was Saraansh in 1983, produced by the same Rajshri Productions. In the early eighties I was doing doing a play at Prithvi called Sandheya Chaya. It’s about an old couple in their late 60s or 70s, whose children have left them for their work, staying abroad. And how they make friends with people who visit them, or the postman, or the next door servant or some person who’s dialed them by mistake. So I was playing one of the old couple and Raj Babbar was doing some Rajshri film. The people from Rajshri saw a performance. So the next day Mr. Babbar had left a message with the paanwalla asking me to call him immediately. We never had phones in those days so the paanwalla at the corner would take our messages and paid him a little extra in return. So I called Raj Babbar and he asked me to turn up at the Rajshri office.

When I landed up I was shown into a room and it was Rajkumar Barjatya, Sooraj Barjatya’s father’s room.

I introduced myself, saying: “My name is Alok Nath. Mr. Raj Babbar has asked me to come and meet you.”

He said, “Lekin par kyon (But why)?”

I’m amazed at this man. He has called me all the way from Juhu and he’s not even recognizing me.

A little agitated, I said, “Sir I am Mrs. Nadira Babbar’s actor. We have a group called Ekjute. Yesterday some people from your office came to see the play and then I got a call.”

He said, “You were in the play last night?” I said, “Yes sir.” He asked, “What were you doing in the play?” I was on the edge, also reaching the end of my patience. “Sir I was acting in the play, playing the lead.” He said, “Tum toh… lekin woh buddha tha (But, he was an old man)!” I said, “Sir, he was an old man, but I am a young man. I was acting in that play as an old man. But I am 25 years old.”

He finally recognised me, then said, “Good, good. But very sad.” He said he couldn’t give me the role. “This film we are making, we need an older man in this. But don’t worry Mr. Alok. We will always work with you.” So this is my history with Rajshri. I didn’t get that role, Anupam Kher got it. Bastard! He is just one year older than me. The only solace I got was that he must have been looking older than me. They gave me a small role in that film, a sadhu’s role. And since that film, I have worked in every film of theirs except Main Prem ki Diwaani Hoon.

Were you wary of getting typecast? Did you try to resist it?

I was aware of it, not much initially because initially there was the thirst of getting into the groove of films, being a part of this cinema world. I accepted what I was offered. Refusal would mean that the offers would stop coming, because it’s a small industry and people take offence if you refuse them.

When I was in it, I was doing it with all my honesty. By the time I realised no yaar, I think I’m on the wrong bus, I could not change things.

There were some offers, but they were not out and out different. A good man turning villain in the end, at the climax, so people will not think that he’s a villain— those kinds of roles. But even they did not work with the audience. The films worked, but I didn’t get any recognition, so I was stuck in this scenario where I would do only goody-goody roles, older roles, big brother roles, the uncle, the father, now the grandfather… It’s ok. It’s paid my bills, I’ve bought my own house, my car, I had the courage to get married, have children, give them a good education. At the end of the day, the creativity got a little dejected but survival was funded by these films.

In Hindi cinema it’s not just an actor but also a role that gets typecast. What have been the characteristics of the traditional Indian father? Is that image changing today?

A father is a person who is always looked upon as a positive person from the hero’s point of view because we have an Indian tradition of following in your father’s footsteps. So if the father is good the hero is good and the hero is always good so that means the father should always be good. If the father is bad then there are influences of that in the hero which get corrected during the process of the film. Goodness prevails. But the father figure is mostly pujya. Pujya matlab (Pujya means) a respected person. Whether he is poor or rich he is listened to, his values are cared for, his directives are obeyed.

But now, also, over the last decade our cinema has gone through a lot of churning. The whole genre of filmmaking has changed in which the family has suddenly taken a back seat. There’s less of pitaji or bauji or babuji, and more of ‘mom-dad’. The ‘Yo!’ kind of generation has emerged. And the generation gap between children and their parents doesn’t seem to show much, even literally, because of facilities such as beauty products, various options in clothing, technologies like hair weaving etc. So the parents look young and happening now, which is a kind of role I don’t fit into.

Also the heroes of the last two decades have now become fathers, though they still want to be heroes. But unfortunately their children have become heroes too, so they have had to graduate to fathers. So automatically those fathers have taken up more cinema space and left little for outsider fathers like us.

Finally, there are ‘lesser parents’, for subjects where parents are not really required. Here they are just like furniture in a film, with small roles. Maybe just passing by or with two or three scenes. Or they’re shown in albums or photographs, things like that. So, often, parents are now not an integral part of Indian cinema.

You once mentioned some particular mannerisms or thought processes that you may have that make people cast you as an older person? What did you mean?

You can’t defy age, though I did do so in the opposite direction. I played father to heroes elder to me. I’ve done almost 500 films till now in my 30 to 35 years in Bombay and almost 95% of them have been in older roles— older than my present age. And I have never said no to a film. The only film I refused around 20 years ago was one from Madras. I was asked to play Mr. Jeetendra’s father to which I said nahin (no) yaar, this is too much. He must be about 15 years older to me.

You also mentioned in an interview that you had certain goals when you came to Mumbai but you hadn’t achieved what you set out to do. If you could re-do your innings as an actor, what changes would you make to it?

In any sphere of life you have to have a goal post and you have to aim well to score. Anybody who comes in at an early age, wants to become a star, a hero. When you brush or shave in the morning there’s nobody better looking than you. You’re the ultimate. You’re Don Juan. I also came in thinking like that. But your dreams get shattered slowly, till you realise you need to face the world, face reality. This is it, accept it or leave it. At this one stage of life you’re a beggar so you can’t be a chooser because it’s a question of survival. In addition you have your family’s baggage: What the hell, you’ve left us! You’ve gone to Bombay to become a hero! What’s happening? No news! Nothing’s happening! Everybody’s shining, you’re not shining!

You get frustrated, you’re in a foreign country and you lap up the first opportunity just to prove to somebody back home that: No, no. See, that show is coming, or that film is coming. Watch. It’s me. So in doing so you accept a little defeat thinking that if you prove yourself in that little role maybe in the next film the same people will say, “He performed well, he’s a good man. He behaved well while shooting, let’s give him a better role.”

And things keeps improving too but, in doing so, time passes. To relive the past, to recycle, to change goal posts, is not easy. Obviously anybody would want to be a star, live young like a hero, sing nice songs, dance with beautiful girls, fall in love with them on screen, different women, different films, different directors. That karishma (miracle), that aura, the almost demi-god feeling… that I missed.

Bollywood can limit actors like yourself and yet you have been a part
of it for many years. What keeps you going?

With acting the biggest reward was that it was my hobby which turned into my passion and then my passion turned into my profession. And it’s paying you, with money, recognition, adulation, love and respect from the audience. The money makes it a very cushy life that way.

You’ve done work recently with well known online comedy groups. What was it like exploring this new aspect? Also, did your newfound spurt of fame on social media affect your life in any way?

Comedy is not an integral part of an Indian household. We don’t laugh too much or too often unfortunately. There is a lack of humour in our lives. When I was in school, in the initial stages of theatre, I used to do a lot of comedy in school functions because you are young and your audience is young. There was laughter, gaiety and even more slapstick, bizarre and over the top comedy.

But then seriousness happened to me, age happened, so the comic aspect of my personality got buried. People think: He’s a serious bugger, he doesn’t laugh much, he doesn’t make people laugh much.

So with people making fun of me in the social media what can I do? It’s good! It takes a lot of work to squeeze out something funny from a serious wood like Alok Nath. Why take offense? I laugh at jokes made on other people.

Now my daughter, who’s studied filmmaking abroad, was working with AIB (All India Bakchod). One evening, she seemed very serious. “Papa, they’re making sketches and caricaturish stuff on you and Kejriwal. I don’t think I’ll be assisting them on this one.” When I asked why she said, “They’re making fun of you. You’ll be saying funny things to him and your voice will be speaking from your portrait.” I said, “So what? So much of that has happened already (on social media).” She said, “Yeah but doing it to your own father, I’m not feeling quite good about it.” I said, “That’s your call. But it’s your work. I’d say go ahead and do it.”

Then I said, “Suppose I do it? Instead of the portrait, if I was there? Then would you do it?” She immediately called those people: “Hey my dad says that you can take him.” And they went crazy. Really? Alokji will do it? Then they called me and thanked me. I went and shot it and I enjoyed it. It went viral, got some 35 lakh views. Then some other company called Gray made some jokes, some rap songs to promote some project. Then the 9X people, Comedy Central, Channel V… So I said, chalo karo (come lets do it). That hidden bug of comedy is coming alive so let’s give it a different shape. I’m enjoying it.

Yash Chopra has been making films from the last thirty-five years. Most of his films have been successful— from Dhool Ka Phool, Waqt, Ittefaq, Deewar, Trishul, Kala Patthar, Noorie, to his Mashaal, which has been favourably received by both the public and the press.

Your film Dharamputra (1961) was close to the partition experience. How were you personally affected by the events during that period?

I studied in Lahore, but I had to come to Jalandhar after my primary school. Things happened on both sides. Hindus were killed there, Muslims were killed here. I saw massacres with my own eyes and lived through the frenzy, the foolishness and the madness of the time. It was not necessary to be in Lahore to experience the trauma. What I saw in those days I used in Dharmaputra, but I didn’t make Dharmaputra because of what I saw. When I read the novel, something of that experience must have spurred me to make the film. The scenes in the film looked realistic because I had witnessed those scenes myself. Today, if an Indian director has to portray war, it would be based on what he has read about it, or heard about it or as he has seen it in the foreign films. In India, in the recent past, we have not experienced war.

The thematic content of your films have usually been something new and original. Even your earliest films, like Dhool Ka Phool (1959), Dharmaputra (1961) and Waqt (1965), broke new grounds in terms of their themes which had not been tackled by filmmakers in India till then. 

At that time we had a story department. They would come up with stories and if we liked the stories we would turn them into films. Now that set-up has gone. Different writers come to us with stories from which we select what we like. I feel that even after I branched out on my own, after Admi Aur Insaan and Ittefaq, I showed in Daag how a man under certain circumstances is landed with two wives. The treatment was emotional and romantic but what I wanted to say was that fate plays a decisive part in our lives and that we have to make compromises with it. In the film, the three people, who had each other, had to make a compromise and decide to live together. Life is a compromise. In Kabhi Kabhie, I wanted to say that the social binding of the tradition should be broken. When a couple gets married no one has the right to go back to the girl’s past, and drag it into her present. No one does that to a man. If a man has an affair before marriage it is not held against him. Why should we hold it against a woman? Deewar was a very well written script; and in Trishul, I showed the conflict between father and son and the son’s obsession with destroying his father. The film has a new angle of revenge. I think that was the first film with that theme. Others followed. Sometimes people do not see the newness in a commercial film with a big cast. Similarly, Silsila presented a different subject— extra-marital relations, which has been followed by Arth, Yeh Nazdeekiyan and others. So, from ’59 to ’84, in the twenty-five years that have passed, I have come out with new subjects as society changed.

Would you have achieved your success without your brother’s support?

I don’t think so. Whatever I am, I owe to my brother…

Your films are usually clean. You avoid rape and cabarets. How did you bring in these elements in Joshila?

I think that was the only film in which I showed those scenes and I’m not happy about it. The film was made at a time when I was at a crucial stage in my life. I was making the film for Gulshan Rai and something of Johnny Mera Naam must have influenced me. Also in those days I had separated from my brother and was emotionally upset and unbalanced. A stage like that comes in everyone’s life, I suppose. I had this feeling of insecurity. But in all my romantic films I don’t find the need for a villain or a vamp. Life itself plays a role, in a strange way. The theory that directors have is that for any victory there has to be a powerful negative force. I like to make a film which the whole family can enjoy watching together. Even the romantic films should be done with aesthetic taste.

Ittefaq was a well-controlled film. Why do you not make more films in this genre?

I feel a suspense or a comedy film is not a very lasting thing for a filmmaker. The moment the suspense is over, the next audience knows what it is all about. Very few suspense films are made in the world today. Films where basic emotions are involved last longer. Suspense films involve a lot of technical gimmicks. The heart is less there. The basic plot should be emotional, action should come later. We should not have action for action’s sake.

Love is predominant in your films as well as ‘Punjabiness’! Could you comment?

I love to make romantic films. I don’t like crime films. My projects are all based on emotion. In Mashaal I showed slum boys, and the underworld mafia, so action was in-built in to the film. If I take a film like Kabhi Kabhie, the atmosphere changes. You can blame me for the ‘Punjabiness’. I know more about Punjabi music and culture than I know of other languages and this I present because I know it best. I may not be able to handle what I don’t know.

How did you come to make Mashaal, which is neither a commercial film nor an art film?

I liked the basic theme which was expressed in a dialogue. It referred to the reversal of roles. The good had turned bad, and the bad had turned good and their goals changed consequently. The situation is compared to a football game where, after half-time, the goals change. Secondly, I was influenced by the likely emotional impact of Waheeda’s death in the film. I think the central idea is important, both for a commercial filmmaker, and an art-maker, to train the film’s appeal. I had made a soft film, Silsila. I wanted to make a hard, realistic film.

But it was risky?

I felt the film would run. Of course the inherent risk was there. Kabhi Kabhie was a risk. I had a new idea. But a soft film with a small idea, with a small budget, may not look risky. Silsila was risky. It was the first film on extra-marital relations. But it did not seem risky because film was filled with big stars. My mistake was in the casting which made the audience look for something which was not there in the film. If the girls were different in that film, people would have taken the film as any other film.

How do you view reality in Mashaal? Events are apparently shown to extract the maximum dramatic impact.

I don’t make very realistic films, or art films or experimental films. By reality, I mean that everything in the film should look normal. You should feel you know the characters, that you’ve seen or met the people. In Mashaal you should take the sequence into account which shows that his (Dilip Kumar’s) press has been burnt and his house taken away. These are cinematic liberties taken as we want to make him look isolated and alone. The rain delays them. Now I have witnessed the following scene many times. On a rainy night, if you try to get a lift, you are not likely to be successful. The reality is there, but we have taken cinematic liberties. Given the circumstances, I feel the subsequent events can happen. It rains, they go for help and are alone on the road. Please don’t stop to give them a lift. His wife dies. I don’t think the events sound unreal.

How closely do you work with your scriptwriter?

I cant work unless there is a close and complete rapport with anyone. Kabhi Kabhie and Silsila were my ideas which we developed. Deewar was a complete script given by Salim Javed (Saleem Khan and Javed Akhtar). Trishul and Kala Patthar we worked on together. Mashaal was suggested to me by Javed and we discussed and developed it.

Except for Dharmaputra, you have not based any film on a novel.

I feel we don’t have good writers or stories in Urdu or Hindi literature. Copying English novels would be foolish. There is really a dearth of good writers.

What about Vijay Tendulkar, Mohan Rakesh… and others?

When the script takes the shape of a film then one realizes the extent of the risk. Why take the risk when one is spending big money? These scripts are suitable for small-budget films. The scripts have new ideas, but because the film is made in a small budget, the risk is reduced.

What do you think about small-budget films?

There is only good cinema and bad cinema. Everything finally boils down to commerce. A small-budget filmmaker will feel that he can take only so much risk and so he reduces his budget, takes his cast accordingly, calculates his likely earnings and is satisfied. A big-budget filmmaker thinks if he takes small people he will not get the kind of success he is spending for. All filmmakers finally come down to commerce. Even the art filmmakers.

What about the new language of their cinema?

I beg to differ. I have seen the work of Govind Nihalani, Satyajit Ray and Shyam Benegal and they are good but there are some filmmakers whose so-called new language of cinema is an insult to cinema language. Cinema is an art and it is a combination of all the arts. I must have some aesthetic taste for photography, dialogues, clothes, poetry, music, scripts, song, acting, screenplay, locations. I have no right to abuse this art. They just want to be different. People bold enough can change the language of cinema.

Have you seen their films?

I have seen them all. Ardh Satya, Junoon, Ankur, Manthan say something brilliant. They are not abusing language. The subject has to be good. Not the technical shots— that is gimmickry. See the last shots of Ankur. I take my hat off to Benegal. 36 Chowringhee Lane was good. Even Baazar said something.

You have been in the film industry for twenty-five years. What kind of memories do you have?

Twenty-five years is a long time. I have tasted the mixture of good, bad, indifferent, bitter and sweet memories. I have only one love and that is film. I don’t have many diversions except for poetry, music and reading. As long as I am making a film I am on top of the world. I have worked with everybody and it’s a matter of good luck that most of them have been nice and kind to me. I’m not involved in any politics or controversies; in calculations and manipulations. The moment I get my script and my casting, the other world fades out. I have pleasant memories and only a few which are bitter, but they are of a personal nature.

Cinema is a gift that keeps on giving. Over time it becomes more than itself— a part of collective and individual memory, personal histories, common language; a phantasmagoria of images that reflect what we know of life, love and loss. There are films we go back to and films that find their way back to us. These journeys also measure the distance we have traveled as people.

The Dreamers

I was an undergraduate in Cardiff when I first saw Bertolucci’s The Dreamers. Set against the 1968 student riots in Paris, the film evoked everything I had learnt to idealize as a child growing up in post-Naxalism Calcutta. It fueled my belief that everything is political, that middle-class morality is anathema to imagination and that poetry is petition. It reminded me that it is important to rebel, to put your life on the line even if it counts for nothing. It also convinced me more than ever that there were answers to be found in the French New Wave and that films should only be seen from the first row. Six years later when I saw the film again it had shifted from being the manifesto of my life to a nostalgic mood piece. I had a more nuanced understanding of the past and of politics by now. This time around I saw Bertolucci less as an uncompromised ideologue and more as an artist who couldn’t tell the follies of youth apart from glory days. It made me question every generation’s need to romanticize its revolutions and wonder if we will ever know the truths of history. It also made me miss the comfort of being able to see the world in solid monochromes.

Pyaasa

I was 13 when I first saw Pyaasa and was instantly in awe of Guru Dutt’s character, Vijay— a great poet first rejected then exploited by an opportunistic, bourgeois society. It was around the time when I had begun to wonder why I identified more with male protagonists in most Hindi films than I did with the women. It must be me, I thought. I am different. Of course I was not. The problem, as I now see, wasn’t with me but with the abysmally shallow portrayal of women in most Hindi films. Even in the eyes of a master director like Dutt, a woman could either be a prostitute-fan or a changeable, greedy heartbreaker— both created as mere circumstances in the hero’s narrative, with no stories of their own. Over time I also began to see through Dutt’s fetishization of suffering, self-pity and victimhood a little.  The world is what it is and it will give you ample opportunities to change your narrative. Ye Duniya Agar Mil Bhi Jaaye To Kyaa Hai is beautifully written, composed and shot. But it also signals clinical depression, which you ought to take to a doctor. I certainly wish Dutt had.

Casablanca

When I first saw Casablanca at the age of 18 it broke my heart. I wanted Rick and Ilsa to end up together so bad I began to feel the design of its narrative was intentionally perverse. How could anyone walk away from Bogart? For the life of me I couldn’t understand why Ilsa would leave with her husband, Victor. She still loved Rick, she said, then why should anything else matter? In my understanding of things love was one of life’s great causes and true lovers could never separate of their own volition. But of course, I knew very little of relationships then. Now when I see the film I can fill Ilsa’s silences with things she did not say. That romantic love is a luxury, an indulgent pleasure, so inconsequential in the larger scheme of life. That conscience is a greater cause than love. That loyalty has nothing to do with attraction. That the relationships you desire and the relationships you can sustain are usually not the same. That Casablanca is a place we must all visit but hold on to the letters of transit that will bring us back to reality and our larger purpose eventually.

There were many reasons for making Gulabi Gang. The most obvious reason was to look at a women’s movement in one of the most backward parts of the country. I wanted to profile the members of Gulabi Gang. The majority of them are poor, old, unlettered and from backward castes. The film is an ode to their courage, humour and resilience.

Bundelkhand has thrown up very strong women—some celebrated, some notorious—Jhansi Ki Rani, Phoolan Devi, Mayawati and Sampat Pal Devi, the leader of Gulabi Gang. Ironically, women are forced to become masculine in order to fight machismo and patriarchy. I can talk about it from my own experience of growing up in Delhi. Travelling in public transport meant we had to be in combative mode all the time. We often had scuffles with men who violated us. We had to raise our voices to be heard. And we had to be vigilant. My whole body language and attitude changed once I moved to Mumbai. I realized that only people living in equal societies could afford to be soft-spoken. They don’t need to be shrill or aggressive. It’s with this consciousness that I travelled with my camera to the charged and conflicted spaces where Gulabi Gang functions.

We know so little about what’s happening in our rural areas. These areas reek of neglect— not just governmental neglect but neglect of the intelligentsia. Women have no one to turn to in these areas. There was one known NGO, but in the several months we were there, we didn’t manage to meet anyone. The extent of gender and caste violence that goes unreported is shocking. It was absolutely crucial for me to present this heartless milieu in which Gulabi Gang is attempting to bring about a change.

In January 2009 when I started making my film there was no feature documentary on Gulabi Gang. There was a book but it was in French (Moi, Sampat Pal: chef de gang en sari rose). And there were only a couple of written pieces about the gang on the Internet. It took me some time to raise money for the project but when I was ready to shoot I learnt that another crew had landed there so I had to wait. I finally began shooting in September 2010. I shot for five months, edited for over a year and it premiered in June 2012.

I chose to shoot in winter because of the winter-light. It might sound strange that documentary filmmakers should have considerations like this over and above the content but my documentaries are not reports or newsreels. There’s conscious planning of what stories we’ll be pursuing and why. For me, the visual aspect of the film is equally important. This is a visual medium after all. The composition of shots, the light, the movement— these are all elements that enrich the narrative. But I don’t blindly lust after the image either; it’s not about capturing beautiful images but about capturing the right moment in the right way.

Often people ask me whether the members of the Gulabi Gang cooperated with me. I think people don’t realize that documentaries shot for such long periods of time cannot be done without the permission or cooperation of the protagonists. People also wonder about how the women opened up to me. I don’t have an answer to this question because it happened organically, I didn’t have to try. Looking back, I am inclined to say I was closer to the two Lakshmis— the protagonists of my previous two documentaries (Lakshmi and Me and Call it Slut). But perhaps that is not entirely true because all relationships are different and they also change and evolve over time.  My relationship with Sampat took a different trajectory. At first she would get very impatient with what she called my ‘NGO-urban-feminist’ views. She could sense my reserve. But still she was generous enough to allow me access. I grew to admire certain qualities in her, especially during editing when I could closely observe what she had said, how she conducted certain negotiations. It’s only when we travelled in Norway during the theatrical release of our film that we got a chance to relax and unwind a little.

When it comes to making a documentary, I believe editing is the most important stage because documentaries actually take shape on the editing table. We shot approximately 200 hours of footage, which is not much given the kind of film it is. The final running time of the film is 96 minutes. That is roughly a 1:125 ratio. There were very interesting cases that we pursued but some were too complicated to include in the film and we also had to keep the final duration in mind. But now I would like to put back some important stuff, which I had deleted to bring the film to its current length. There’s always a trade-off between detail and attention span. The initial feedback was that the film is too long so we had to reluctantly cut some portions. The new length worked for everyone but at the same time some people would ask why I didn’t show this or that. It’s difficult to please everyone with one film. But I’m still hoping that I can bring out the longer version for outreach purposes.

As regards my views on the ideology of the gang, I don’t know if there’s any homogenous discourse around feminism or whether that’s desirable. The Gulabi Gang is doing what they can within the limitation of their understanding, means and circumstances. I strongly believe that we should allow room for different voices to exist. If India as a nation has survived this long it’s because of its ability to resist homogeneity. Let us not try to kill that with the dominant urban western views and paradigms. There are other lessons to be learnt out there, let us not dismiss them without examining them.

Are they vigilantes? What’s my opinion about vigilante justice? In her personal capacity, Sampat Pal does arbitration in marital and inter-personal cases, but not as a Gulabi Gang representative. People come to her with their problems, largely related to their marriages or inter-caste, inter-religious love affairs and she makes the two parties come together, makes them reach a settlement. She makes them sign a paper and acts as a guarantor. She claims 90% success in these cases. These are non-criminal cases.  A lot of people come to her because they can’t afford long, drawn-out legal battles. These settlements have to be understood in the context of a non-functional and corrupt judiciary. But also Gulabi Gang as a group doesn’t dole out vigilante justice. They hold rallies and protests against malpractices. Gulabi Gang’s protests are no different from people’s protests in any part of the world.

Of late, I haven’t kept up with the activism and politics of the gang in as much detail as I would like to. I don’t have the means to travel there as exhaustively as I did while shooting. But I know what happened to the particular cases I followed in my film.  About the gang’s activities I know from what I hear from them or from the media reports, though one cannot fully trust what is reported. The kind of access we got during the shooting is impossible to repeat. However, I would like to take my film to the far-flung villages where it was shot and share it with as many Gulabi Gang members as possible. I hope that there’ll be a spin-off from the theatrical release enabling me to do this.

As Told to Tanul Thakur

An edited transcript:

WHAT IS A PRODUCER? 

I’m going to start with asking you how you define the term ‘producer’? Also how has the Indian definition been different from the West and how is it changing now?

Sure. I think the best way to define the term producer, really, is a creative catalyst. I think it’s someone who doesn’t get in there and do the writing or do the directing themselves but ensures that the creative people have got the wherewithal and all the means to do whatever it is that they need to do.

So I’d say that’s probably the best way to define it, you know, someone who makes things happen from the outside rather than sort of, rolling their sleeves up and doing the creative work themselves, but understands creative, has a point of view, has a commercial hat on and a creative hat on, is able to manage relationships, is able to manage crisis, is able to manage situations that need managing so that the creative people can just focus on getting the movie made. And then give the film the platform it deserves, market it and distribute it in the right manner and really take it forward and give it the scale that it deserves. So I think that would be the best way to define a producer.

And how, traditionally, has the definition been different in the West and in India?

I think the term producer in the West really refers to… In India you have got a combination, like we (Studios – Disney UTV) are, of a studio-cum-producer. I mean we’re a little bit of a unique model in that sense, where we’re a production house as well as a studio. Whereas the way it works in the West is really you’ve got individual producers who do the job of, firstly, raising finances, getting the whole creative team together, putting the whole package together of the film, talking to talent, talking to directors, talking to technicians and then going to a studio and selling it to a studio and then working on the best deal possible. That model does exist in India as well. But we follow a model where we produce our own movies and then we go out and market and distribute them. So, effectively, we are the producer as well as the distributor, or the studio. But when we’re doing co-productions with other talent or probably with another producer then it follows pretty much the same model as it is in the West.

Okay. Name three qualities that you think a producer must have.

Perseverance and tenacity. I think that’s one, sort of, joint quality. I mean, each term is different in its own way but it really talks about the same thing, which is going forth and doing what you need to. Also I’d say definitely a creative bent of mind where you’re able to understand creative people and able to understand creative work. And an understanding of the way the commercials (the commercial elements) would work where filmmaking is concerned. So I think it’s really these three things that might define what would make a successful producer.

WHICH FILM TO PRODUCE

How do you pick a script? And what at stage do you usually pick a script? What are the factors? Is trends one of the factors?

You know I think things like trends etc. come into the picture later once you’ve reacted instinctively to a script. I don’t think you can start off reacting to trends. You really react to the creative work. You react to the story. We actually come in early in the process where… I mean, one could be, of course, someone’s done a final screenplay draft and we’re reading it. The other could be that we really like a story, or we’ve read a newspaper article that we really like, there’s just a one line story idea that we really like and then we work with the writer to develop it into a screenplay. So it really depends.

You know, a lot of people have been talking about the aggregator-to-aggregator model. Is that something you guys are using as well? And how do you approach it?

What exactly is… I mean I haven’t heard that term before.

Basically when you pick a portfolio of films rather than picking up one film. Each one sort of feeds of the others, economically.

Right. Well, you know, we actually call it our slate of movies for the year. So when we’re building a slate for a year we’re pretty genre-agnostic. We make romance, comedy, horror, drama, historicals— any sort of film, as long as it’s entertaining and it moves us creatively. Sometimes we’ll go right, sometimes we’ll go wrong, but hopefully we’ll go more right than wrong. So that’s how we define our slate. We don’t define it by budget or genre or star cast or… you know… But we know that we’ll be making approximately 10 to 12 movies a year. We know roughly that maybe four will fall into what you call your ‘tent-pole films’ which are your big ticket productions. Four might be in the medium zone and four in the small zone but we’re pretty flexible about four becoming five or three or whatever. And that’s really how we do it. And then when we are going out on a business to business basis—if you’re going to broadcasters, you’re going to exhibitors, you’re going out to distribute your movie—I think the strength of your slate, as a combined entity, is really what they react to. And they’re like: ‘Okay, I’m getting all this great content from one studio. So obviously the commercial terms that I’ll negotiate with them will be in accordance with understanding that they bring a certain heft year after year.’

Okay. So you’re saying it’s roughly divided into big, medium, small films but you don’t say ‘Maybe this genre or that genre… ‘ Everything else is wide open?

Well we do and there may be a time when we realise that, you know, we don’t have any romantic films in our slate. But we’re not going to make one because we have to. We’re going to make one only if we come across a great script. But we will actively then try to develop one. And if we really like it, then that would be a priority to do. But it’s really defined by the sort of material that we are able to react to and…

So you’re a lot more open. So, for example, if you had already had a horror film and you were more inclined towards a romantic film but you came across a fantastic horror film you would go ahead and make it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.

You know, there used to be a way of talking about films which was ‘pre-Friday films’ and ‘post-Friday films’. I’m talking about way back where this depended on whether you could sell the film before it was released or not. Is that an outdated concept? The second question is, of course, the changing equations between distributors and producers and producers, like you said, turning distributors themselves. Of course, there are advantages. You don’t have to undersell, you get a lot more revenue. Are there any cons to it? Is there something to watch out for as well? What are your thoughts on that?

So, to your first question actually, where you talked about the pre-Friday and post-Friday, I wouldn’t quite say it’s an outdated concept. I’d say that probably still exists. You know, stars have a value and at the end of the day if your film is a film with a star, then you’re more likely than not to be able to pre-sell it. If it’s a film without a star and if it’s a high concept movie that is really being made because of your courage of conviction in actually making it then you’re more likely not going to find someone who backs your vision in the way you are backing it and you’ll be out there on that Friday figuring out whether you made the right call or not, not being able to de-risk. But the benefit of being a studio is, like I said, when you’re going out into the market with your slate and you’re going to broadcasters, they’ll invest in your slate of movies. So you might actually be able to de-risk in that sense. But if you’re an individual producer with a smaller film that doesn’t have a star cast you either might have to undersell because someone is only going to react to saying, ‘This is the genre of the movie, this is the director’s track record, your stars don’t have much of a track record. If you want me to buy a pre-release, this is all I can offer you.’ And then you’re probably better off, if you have the ability, financially, to withstand it, to go ahead and take the risk. You have made the movie, right? So you might as well take the risk all the way through.

To your second question, regarding producers turning distributors, the studio model in India used to be around in the twenties and thirties and forties. And after that it got fragmented once again and you had individual directors and then producers for those directors and then 14 distributors across the country paying you an advance so you could get your film made and then… But it has changed over the last decade or 15 years where you had Yash Raj really developing a studio model. You’ve had us developing a studio model and now we’re The Walt Disney company which is a studio. You’ve got Fox, you’ve got Viacom, you’ve got lots of players out there today who are effectively studios. So a few years ago, the fragmented distribution model was undergoing a change because there weren’t that many movies out there for individual distributors to go out and acquire. Having said that, today I think the water’s reached its own level where you’ve got smaller individual distributors in various territories who go out and acquire movies from studios at a price that the studio is happy to dispose it off at, because they’re able to de-risk at that point of time. So I think that’s something that every studio looks at tactically, on every film, where you’ve got a certain estimate of what you’ll do theatrically and if someone’s willing to offer you more than that pre-release you’d rather sell and repent rather than not sell and repent. That’s just the way that I think the studio would look at it.

EXHIBITOR ISSUES

Okay I’m going to talk to you a bit about exhibitors. I will come to the commercial end of it but this is purely on the creative level. How have the attitudes of the exhibitors changed, if at all, when it comes to films? Because, of course, a lot of studios, a lot of production houses, like your own, are making very different kind of films now. In your experience, the exhibitors here, in tier one, tier two cities— how have their attitudes changed? Have they changed enough? Have they kept up with the way production is happening today?

I think the multiplexes are pretty much on the cutting edge of knowing exactly what is going on. I think when it comes to single screens, of course, you have some people who might be old school and might think in a certain manner and some who have moved with the times and digitized their cinemas and are now looking at much more movies being released in their cinemas because of digitization. Whereas earlier, because physical prints were involved, studios or producers had maybe stopped sending physical prints to certain cinemas because the returns from there didn’t justify the cost of the print. So it’s a mix. But, having said that, today 60 percent of your revenue, whatever type of movie it is, is coming from multiplexes across the country. So the term that had been coined a few years ago, that it’s a ‘multiplex film’ is really irrelevant today because every film is a multiplex film in that sense. More than 50 percent of revenue of even a Rowdy Rathore is coming from multiplexes, which means that even your massiest film in that sense is still getting more than half its revenue from the multiplexes.

See that might be for several reasons, which we’ll come to later. One is digitization, which you mentioned. One is, of course, the screen density which is abysmal. But I’m talking about purely on an attitudinal level, on how they perceive cinema. Is that not changing? Because that can be a block in itself.

Well, it’s changing to a certain extent. But having said that, if you’re asking about whether they are open to looking at a smaller film, having reduced ticket prices through the week, being given a platform release and being allowed to grow and therefore being given terms in subsequent weeks which will be equivalent to the previous week’s terms because it’s the first week in that particular centre… things like that haven’t happened and I think you can’t blame them also, to a certain extent, because they’ve invested a lot of capital in building these massive multiplexes. The returns have got to be justified. They’ve got an installed capacity of ‘X’ number of seats and they’ve got to basically juice as much as they can from those seats. Now if they had to do that they would rather give more screens to a bigger film rather than giving it to a smaller film in its fourth week of release where they’re not that sure what’s going to happen. So, I think it’s a bit of chicken and egg and it’s really baby steps we’ll be taking as we go along making cinema like that towards everyone realising that cinema like that can also be commercial— which I think we’ve seen last year. Last year was really quite a watershed year in that sense. And I think it’s going to take its own time. So as long as everyone’s appreciating everyone’s challenges. I think it’s very important to do that because we can bemoan the fact that it’s not happening but the reason we’re able to distribute our films so widely today is because these people have invested hundreds of crores in building these massive multiplexes.

Now coming to the commercial side of it, INOX, PVR, BIG (Cinemas), they own almost 75 percent of the screen space in India today. Is an exhibitor’s strike like what happened in 2009 likely again and how far have the negotiations that happened in 2009 gone?

No I don’t think a situation like that is likely again. I think everyone today is dealing individually. Every studio is dealing individually with every multiplex operator and striking a deal that makes sense for them. I think it’s going to be dictated by supply and demand at the end of the day. And depending on how badly each one needs a deal, as I said, really water is going to find its own level, and a deal will be dictated by one studio talking to one multiplex chain and sort of doing a deal with them.

So you’re saying that this sort of stand-off, which is them versus us, is not likely.

I think it came to a flashpoint at that point of time and then there’s been a cooling off period after that and naturally when there are commercial terms involved there is going to be some friction, right? But that’s in any deal. I think you ultimately realise that they need to screen movies and you need to get your movies screened. So you will reach an understanding.

You know there has been a lot of talk of exhibitors wanting a base revenue of 30-35 percent. Distributors are not very happy with that, nor are producers. So what you’re saying is that this is not going to be a joint struggle anymore? This is more going to end up playing out on an individual level?

I think everyone is going to be negotiating individually with everyone, which is the way it should be in any free market. Really, the intention is not for any one side to join together and cartelise and start negotiating as a group because that’s just not the way it should work in any market dynamic.

And there are pitfalls in that as well. I mean you may be able to pull off a deal that a smaller producer may not be able to pull off. But if you are setting that standard. I mean there can be…

Except that’s the way a free market needs to work.

Sadly, yes.

There’s got to be competition. Otherwise, if you’re talking about everyone coming together every time, then you are talking about two monopolistic entities negotiating with each other which, I think, is against any rules of free market economy. So I think we’re all very clear. Everyone’s got their own scale and based on that scale if you’re able to reach commercial terms which are better than someone else, that’s just how it is.

Okay. Now a lot of exhibitors have also tried to go into production instead of going up. PVR has tried it. BIG has tried it. PVR hasn’t done as well as BIG has. But are tie-ups and consolidations like this the future or do you feel like there could be a stagnation if there is too much of consolidation of power? Maybe it’s too early to tell but…

You know, we haven’t even scratched the surface of how wide we can go with the number of screens in the country. So I think there has been a period of consolidation within the exhibition space but that’s only going to fuel the next level of growth. It has to. And things have to grow from here. And you’ve got other players. You’ve got Cinepolis which has come in and which is also making strides. You’ve got, as you said, you’ve got BIG, you’ve got PVR, you’ve got INOX. You’ve lots of other smaller multiplex players as well. You’ve got a whole plethora of single screens. So the consolidation has happened, there’s no doubt about it. But it’s happened in order for them now to be able to invest in future growth. So I’m pretty bullish about that happening actually.

REGIONAL FILMS

Okay. You know there is a notion that regional films tend to be more experimental. Do you feel one of the reasons is because the production costs are low or that they run longer windows at the box office— perhaps because they can be released in stages as Hindi films used to be released earlier. Do you think any of these factors contribute or do you feel it’s actually maybe not even true that regional films are more experimental?

You know there might be some truth in it when it comes to the more marginalised regional cinema. If you look at the big commercial regional cinemas like Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam, Kannada, they’re doing pretty hardcore commercial cinema and they do have the odd experimental film as we do, but I don’t see that much of a disparity. But I suppose if you’re looking at Bengali cinema, if you’re looking at cinema of that nature which has got a lot of crossover with Hindi cinema… Because you’ve got to look at cultures where Hindi is also a second language. Most Bengalis do also understand Hindi whereas in South India it’s just not where anyone would want to go watch a Hindi movie, because they don’t get the language. They have their own stars, they have their own star system. It’s different. So when that tends to happen, I suppose, the one route that they find they can use for their expression, creatively, is by making something that’s different. Because they are competing with a hardcore commercial Hindi movie which their viewers also want to watch. So if they want to make a Bengali film it’s got to be offering the viewer something different because they can’t offer them Ranbir Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra and Barfi!, right? And that’s a, sort of experimental but commercial Hindi film. So they might as well look at something so unique to their culture and sensibility that people really go and watch it because it’s something that appeals to their regionalism.

DEALING WITH STARS

I want to talk you a little bit about star prices. First question I’m going to ask you here is, how is the balance holding up of the draw that the stars get at the box office today and the kind of prices they command?

Well the draw is huge. I think there is no doubt about that. Stars are very, very important and stars do draw in audiences at the opening weekend, however the film is. Friday, Saturday, to some extent till Sunday, are dictated by star power, and then the film takes over from Monday. So I think that’s the reason they’re paid the fees that they are. Having said that, as I said, last year for example, you saw a lot of films that were star-less that did spectacular business given their budgets. So I think, right now, you’ve got an environment where both sorts of movies are working. If you look at Hollywood, their top 10 movies are without stars but that’s because they are still making massive, million dollar, blockbuster franchise movies. It’s not because they are making experimental cinema or non-commercial cinema without stars. They’re making blockbusters that don’t need stars anymore. I think we’re also going into a phase where we’ll have to both co-exist. You’ll have your big star-studded vehicles and they’re not going anywhere but you’re also going to have a whole different economy of films that are not star dependant, which is great.

In India what do star fees end up depending on? How does it actually work, to whatever extent you can share with us? Does it depend on their last release? Does it depend on the kind of director or producer they are working with?

I think it’s really supply and demand. So if you’ve got 10 saleable stars in the country and you’ve got many studios and producers and they are wanting to make many movies with them. Then there’s limited supply, there is massive demand, and the prices will be what they are and they’ll be dictated primarily by the stars. And obviously it needs to make economic sense in the overall scheme of things but it will be on the higher side. So that is just the way that the star fees are dictated in that sense.

You know there has been a lot of accusation that UTV initially, when they came into the business, they hiked up star prices because they were signing on so many people and they wanted so many. I want to ask you if it is still making economic sense. It’s not a question of are they overcharging or not, but is it affecting the economy in any way? Of course there are quotes from producers saying that almost 35 percent of a film’s cost ends up being star fees. There are also debates about whether they should pay their own staff more etc.— which means prices being hiked. So what I am asking is is it affecting, is it challenging the economy at this point or is it a comfortable balance?

Well I wouldn’t say it’s a very comfortable balance because the fact is that there is a certain value that you have to ascribe if you want to make a film with a star today and that just is what it is. Now the question is whether that’s on the back end, a sharing on the back end and maybe a lower payment upfront, or whether it’s an overall fee and there is no sharing in IP or on the back end. So star prices are definitely pretty high. But it’s interesting because it challenges you then to think of some vehicles with stars and some without. And we still have to make commercial cinema and that’s what I think a lot of us have been doing over the last few years. I mean we’ve made ABCD and Kai Po Che just this year. Both movies released in February. They did spectacular business for films without stars. But we’re also making films with stars, we’ve also made Chennai Express. So it just helps you to have a balanced slate that’s not completely star dependent but accepts that we are a star driven film culture. People love their stars on screen. And if you want to make commercial movies, we have to make some of them with stars.

Sure. That’s a given. That’s a given in any… No, I was just wondering if you feel that the way stars are thinking will also need to change. And I also actually want to do add that…

You know, why should it? If someone is willing to pay them a certain fee, I don’t see why they should change the way they are thinking.

Because of the larger picture? You know everybody is part of the …

I think we’re in a capitalist economy that is dictated by self interest. So at the end of the day everybody is part of the system where they are in it because they have certain ambitions for themselves. And I don’t think any of us are in here for social cause, you know, at the end of the day. So I think it’s fine.

Okay. Stars. You spoke about the back end of paying stars. A lot of stars are becoming producers. Either they are tying up at the back end and co producing a film or they’re turning producers in a full fledged way. Two questions here. One is, is the back end model a good substitute for having to pay upfront fees or is it more of a gamble? Two, do you feel stars bring in value to promoting a film? Say, John Abraham is producing a film which he is not starring in. Does he have an edge over other producers in promoting that film. I mean, is that a…

You know, honestly, Vicky Donor  was such a great film that I think it would have worked regardless.

Yes. Of course.

But John had faith in the film to put his name on it and get the movie made. So he added a tremendous amount of value in just getting the movie made. But, frankly, in the promotions, whether there was a video with John or not, I think would not have been that relevant because the film worked on its own. Now sure, if you’ve got the ability to have a music video with John in it and he’s promoting it, why would you not do it? He’s a producer of the film. Anything that’s going to sell. But honestly, when it comes to promotions for movies where the star’s not in the film, it can help but maybe not all that much. Except with someone like an Aamir Khan where the fact that he’s producing a movie adds so much value to it and so much dignity to it and actually adds a lot of commercial value to the project as well because there’s a certain brand that he’s built that stands for quality. And you always believe that: ‘Okay, if Aamir’s producing this film, we’ve just got to go on that first day.’ But, you know, other than that I think it’s pretty important for stars to back movies. And like if an Akshay Kumar backed an Oh My God! And it was a great thing that he did because honestly the business of that film would probably have been 15 percent lower of he hadn’t been in it. But it would still have been a massive hit.

And the back end thing where …

So back end. I think it’s a good model if the upfront fees actually do come down. I think if the fee is going to be higher and the back end is also going to be there, then it’s a bit of a self-defeating proposition. But I do believe that if someone’s willing to put their neck on the line and say ‘We want to put some skin in the game as well and we’ll be willing to cut our fee and earn from the profit. And we believe so strongly in the movie that we think that we will actually get much more than our fee because it’s going to be a really profitable movie.’ I mean, it’s something that Aamir does, something that Shah Rukh does.

SCREEN DENSITY

Okay now I’m going to come to the screen density. How acute is the shortage? I mean you know the numbers but numbers don’t really explain the on ground reality. It’s around eight screens to one million people as opposed to 117 in the US.

Yeah it’s around 130 screens per million in the US as opposed to 10 screens, 10-12 screens here in India.

And what I also want to ask you is why is the shortage so acute in a country where cinema is perceived widely to be the biggest thing?

I guess we live in so many Indias, right? And we talk about one India and probably this is not… I mean we shouldn’t be looking at screen density here because when you have got such a large proportion of the population below the poverty line I don’t think you can consider them as a denominator in that equation because they’re struggling to just make ends meet. So I think cinema really wouldn’t come into the picture there for them, right? So if you had to look at it that way our screen density is probably higher than is reported because we can’t look at the entire 1.3 billion population. Having said that, even if you look at say half—that are people who can afford a cinema ticket, a really cheap cinema ticket—it would still be abysmally low. It’s not that 3 Idiots  has not been watched by a vast proportion of the population but they’ve watched it on Doordarshan, they’ve watched it on satellite television, they’ve watched a pirated DVD and so on and so forth. So only three crore people have actually watched it in the cinema but a whole lot of people have watched it not in the cinema. A state like UP has a population of 18 crores and they’ve got 150 screens— that’s the sort of disparity in terms of screen availability. So as I said, I don’t think we’ve scratched the surface of that. And we have the burgeoning middle class with everyone getting richer and having more disposable income over the next few years. I do think we need to keep pace with the number of screens we are putting out there too. And as I said, I feel the exhibition sector… usually a market consolidates when it’s reached a certain level of maturity. I don’t believe we’ve reached that level of maturity yet to really talk about consolidation. So one or two players have bought each other and that’s fine. But I do hope that that signals the next phase of growth because it has to.

And I also want to get a sense of… we know, like you agreed, that there aren’t enough screens but I also want a sense of how acute is this problem? How fast does this need to give?

Well, you know what’s happened is that the metros have gotten pretty saturated. So there are many, many screens across your top 15 to 20 to maybe even 35 cities, but after that there is a massive, massive gap. And that’s really that tier two, tier three city that needs to be looked at in the next phase.

Which is what everyone is talking about right now.

Exactly.

Do you feel that that’s just about to happen? That’s just around the corner? Is that also something you guys are gearing up for in some way?

You know, I have to say, I don’t see it around the corner. I don’t think you’ve got players looking at that level of capital investment right now. But I’m hoping that they are bullish enough in the next few years to be looking at that as the next phase of growth because one player buying the other and maybe saturating the metros even more is not going to be an answer.

And everyone does seem to understand that?

Absolutely. I think the exhibition sector is acutely aware of it. It’s just that the economics for them need to work out. I think the real estate business has also been going through a bit of a phase right now where it’s been tough for them to make that investment in places in order for it to be justified in terms of the returns that they are going to be seeing from there. So it’s an interesting time. I’m pretty optimistic about it and I think that we are going to grow. But I can’t say I’m seeing something imminent in the next 12 months or so.

THE MULTIPLEXES

Okay. Multiplexes. Undue focus on multiplexes. I want to get a sense of how much or how that has distorted both the market and the content?

When you say undue focus…

As in, we are depending a lot on revenues from the multiplexes. Like you said, it’s not called a ‘multiplex film’ because every film is a multiplex film. This is a fact we all know but what has been the real import of this? How has it distorted the market or the content in any way?

I guess I think it’s been a positive distortion, if you ask me. The sort of cinema that was not getting backing seven or eight years ago has now gotten the backing because I think studios are seeing that, because of the higher ticket prices in multiplexes and because of the sort of people who are visiting multiplexes, I can make movie that’s maybe rarefied in its sensibility and still expect it to give me returns. So I think it’s actually helped cinema to a very large extent. So I don’t believe a film like Dev D or a film like Kahaani or a film like Gangs of Wasseypur would have gotten made if it wasn’t for studios now seeing that actually even if these massive multitudes don’t start thronging the cinemas, as long as in my key metros I’m able to get the multiplexes at a certain capacity, then I know it’ll pay out if I invest in this movie.

This is great and we’ve all been celebrating this, but isn’t there a sort of danger that the kind of movies… that if the economy is depending too much on multiplexes cinema might stop reaching out to other parts of this country?

See I’ll tell you what, if we’re talking about multiplexes in metros then I would agree with you. But multiplexes exist everywhere. A multiplex is basically more than one screen. Now that can be Bhilai or it can be in Bombay. Actually if you’re asking that if the exhibition sector focuses only on the cities, then there’s going to be less growth? Sure. Yes. There will be. But I’m looking at multiplexes going as far and wide as possible and hopefully looking at no frills options as well where you have a scaled down version of what you would get in a Bombay or a Delhi. It’s still a two or three screen multiplex and you’ve got decent seating and good air-conditioning and good projection and all that but it doesn’t have to be state-of-the-art like some of our cinemas are. But as long as they are looking at penetrating the heart of India, I’m fine with multiplexes going as deep as they can.

DIGITIZATION

Okay, digitization. Both in filmmaking and in distribution. How fast are we moving and are we moving fast enough?

In filmmaking, we’re moving pretty fast. I think most people now look at digital as a first option. It’s faster. You don’t need to light that much as you need to do for film. You don’t need to be obsessive about wasting raw stock. It’s just a great medium to shoot in. I mean as long as the director’s comfortable and the DoP (Director of Photography) is comfortable in that medium, then it’s something that everyone is exploring today. When it comes to distribution I’d give it another year and a half before we may not have a physical print which exists anymore. You might still be making it…

Well, that’s great news.

That’s great news.

Because there was a feeling, at least a year or two ago, that the initial cost might be a deterrent. So people may not have been looking at the larger picture when it came to distribution and when it came to filmmaking also, because they felt they had to sort of…

No, I think cinemas are definitely digitizing really, really fast and it’s happening very, very quickly. So I don’t see that as being something that’ll… It’ll be another nine months to a year and a half away and there might be only 20 physical prints of a massive film that we need to release all across the country.

And filmmakers and DoPs, they’re not worried about… you don’t feel like they are still not creatively hung up on film?

Some of them are. Some are. But if you look at, compared to two years ago, the number of people using digital today has gone up significantly.

Okay. And you feel like it’s keeping pace. That’s actually…

It is keeping pace. I think it’s the responsibility of everybody to really educate each other about the medium and about shooting on digital. Obviously now there is a certain charm to shooting on film and everybody’s going to be feeling that way for a while. As with any new technology that comes into the picture you tend to romanticise the earlier one. But I think as we go forward, I do believe digital will be the medium to shoot in.

CO-PRODUCTION

I want to talk a little bit about co-production. It seems to be picking up. I mean, at least, it seems that most films are co-produced at some level or the other. I want to understand how that works, especially for you guys. How does the revenue sharing happen and at what stage do you guys come in? And why is it so attractive? I think you should start with that.

So, I think, starting with the fact that movie-making is about looking for the next great idea or the next great story. And really, every deal then works its way around that proposition. So if someone comes to you with something superb and you really want to make that movie and it’s going to be… the nature of that deal is going to be a co-production because they are the ones who came to you with it. Then if there’s another production house, or their director, who also has a line production unit, then you are open to it because you want to make a great movie and if the economics work out, you are happy for it to be a co-production. On the other hand if you have got movies that you have developed and incubated yourself, then it’s your own production. So we don’t like to stymie our growth by saying we’ll only look at one model because ultimately we’re all in the search for great stories to tell. And if they are coming from a prospective co-producer, why not?

And you haven’t developed any sort of working model or formula for yourself that… you’re just open to whoever is coming in, at whichever stage the film is in?

Well, we prefer to be involved very early because I think the idea really is that we do want to add value to the creative process in a collaborative manner and in the best way possible.

Say like for a film like Udaan. You guys came in pretty late. I believe the film was offered to you guys in the beginning and then you came in…

Absolutely. Well I’m not aware of it being offered to us in the beginning but I know when I saw the rough cut, I hadn’t read the script before that, and when I saw the rough cut I loved it and we said that we did want to back it immediately. So, yes, that was one film we got involved in on the edit. But there are movies like… I mean Dev D  was our own production but I’m trying to think of an example of a co-production. So, like a film like Delhi Belly. That’s a film that Aamir showed us the script for. We loved the script and said, ‘Absolutely. We’re on.’ And we were on from the start.

And the revenue-sharing, the profit sharing, is there a set way which it works? Or is it like each…

So each deal is different. Each negotiation is different. So it really depends from deal to deal and depending on the deal that you strike with your co-producer. But we have one general template model and then that sort of undergoes modifications, depending on who you are dealing with.

DATA ON CINEMA

I want to talk to you a little bit about the information available. At least to an outsider, there isn’t good information available on how a film has done. You can’t trust the figures that you are reading. Or how much is being spent on a film. Do you guys have all the information that you need or do you guys have to go out and conduct your own survey?

It’s really unfortunate that we don’t have the equivalent of a Rentrak or an A. C. Nielsen in India and hopefully that’ll get corrected in the next few years. And that’s mainly because we’re still a 40 percent single screen market and data from there tends not to be computerised, it tends to come in bits and bobs from here and there. Some of it tends to be understated sometimes but that really depends on who you are dealing with. And no studio is obliged to share their information. Even if they are a public company you are not obliged to share your movie by movie figures with anyone. So people tend not to do that. So when there is this opaqueness involved…

Sorry, so then there is a case to be made for greater sharing at this stage when the industry is evolving.

I think it needs to come the other way around. I don’t think studios are going to do it voluntarily. But if everything is out there and computerised and all your theatrical business is out there on a server because that’s just the way the business has evolved and everything is there to be seen, that I think is the best way for us to go about it. I don’t think anyone is going to obligatorily share their theatrical information if they are not obliged to. But the moment we get into a Nielsen situation or a Rentrak situation where the figures are just available to everyone, that would be a nirvana situation I think for all of us.

AN OPTIMAL RELEASE

This is related to the information question. Have you guys been able to figure out your optimal release? How many screens should you release a film on and what is your maximum? Do you know your optimal or is that being impacted by…

Well, we think we do. We think…You know, it’s been 60 movies in the last seven or eight years. We’ve made mistakes and we’ve done things right as well and I think we’ve come to a really good understanding having mapped out the entire country and having mapped out the cinemas across the country. Which sort of audiences that frequent which cinemas for which type of movie, what our own numbers have been and now we’ve gotten a pretty decent amount of empirical data on our own films, across genres—big star cast, non-star cast—for us to come to an optimal release strategy which I think we’ve been adopting now for the last few years. On a film like Barfi!, for example, I mean a Ranbir Kapoor film can go to 3000 screens today. We decided to go to a thousand and we decided to build capacities, build a word-of-mouth and then go wider. And I think that was a really smart strategy because we didn’t overspend on prints and at the same time we got into situations where the film was housefull. And there is nothing like watching a housefull movie. When you are not able to get tickets it just adds to the word-of-mouth and it builds the interest and excitement around a movie, and then your movie tends to run much longer because of that positive halo around it. So I think we do that from film to film. And on a film like Rowdy Rathore we just went to 3500 screens because that was the nature of the movie. It was a really mass oriented film and we wanted it to go as far and wide as possible. So, yes, I think we do think of optimal release strategies rather than flooding the market with prints.

And you think you’ve built them irrespective of how much of data is available?

Yes, because we have done a lot of competitive mapping as well. I mean, one is obviously looking at every cinema in the country and looking at its capacity and looking at the business that we’re able to get from our own films obviously, as well as the information that is available out there in the market. So mapping that, mapping what other movies have done in the same genre of the movie that we are releasing and, yes, I think from all our trade sources we have managed to get a fair amount of data to take those calls well.

Okay, and what about when to release a film? What are the factors that go into that? I mean, are there seasons for particular films? And, of course, I also want to talk to you about conversations with other producers and distributors to avoid clashes— how is that working? How is that changing?

Well it’s really crucial. It’s one of those five or six really key factors that really affect the success of the movie. And, obviously, seasonality, cricket matches, school holidays, weather, religious festivals, non-festivals, Shraadh, Eid (Ramzan), all those obviously impact your release strategy across the year. Fact is that there are 52 Fridays in a year and you have 250 Hindi movies that will release every year. So there are going to be clashes; you can’t avoid that. But I guess you just have to pick the right dates for your movies and move on. And with the smaller ones you might have to be quite flexible about hopping from one release date to another depending on which other big movies are announcing. But with your bigger ones you tend to lock them in advance and then just not change them because once you’ve decided that’s the right date for your movie then you stick with it.

And are there conversations across platforms? Do you guys also negotiate with other producers and distributors?

Not really.

Or is it just about timing?

We just… yeah. And then I think everyone, if you take ego out of it, I think, everyone realises which film is a bigger film and then takes their own call about whether to clash with it or not. And I think that’s fair. As I said, it’s a free market.

And with the market changing and becoming a free market, are the egos going down as well? Because this used to be quite a major thing, the egos…

Well we’ve taken ego out of our equations completely. I mean we just take a decision based on whether it makes sense for our movie or not. I mean the movie is the most important thing. The movie has to work. Who cares if you’re moving your release date? No one is going to know, except the five people in the trade who are going to talk about you having gotten scared of this bigger film and moving your date. It really makes no difference to anyone. Everyone is finally going to look at the business of that movie and how well it did. And why would you because of your own ego not move a film if it just deserves a better release date? I mean, I can speak for us. We definitely are not in that situation.

HOW TO MARKET A FILM

I want to come to marketing, which is going to be a big section. Again, first I want to begin with information? Do you guys now have really good information on how marketing works and how much you should spend on marketing? Before we come to specific models, how much should you spend on marketing overall?

We have a really good sense of how much we should rationally be spending on marketing. What tends to happen is as you go into the media noise corridor two months before your release and you are competing pretty aggressively with maybe 15 other movies that are all shouting out at the same time, and not just competing with them but competing with all the other brand messages that are going on around you plus a fragmentation of media that has happened, you tend to have to attribute a little bit more to your marketing budget just based on… Say rationally I know should be spending this but I do need to shout out a little bit louder— that might on paper not make sense because I’m hitting my reach and my frequency parameters on my media plan. But I do need to shout out a little bit more, purely so that I can project my movie bigger.

And do you tend to use a lot of pre-release surveys to see how much information is available…

We do. We track our movies very, very closely. So we’ve got… we have a weekly tracking mechanism where we know how we’re doing on buzz and interest and on desire to see.

So basically what are the surveys? Are they talking to people and trying to figure how much they are aware of the film and how excited they are about the film?

Yeah. Yup. So you’ve got a many city survey that happens weekly where you talk to frequent moviegoers. So you should be someone who watches at least a movie a month in a cinema hall and you’re asked about spontaneously which are the movies you want to watch. So the movies that come to your mind are ones that you are not being goaded into answering about. And then you ask in an aided manner— ‘Have you heard of these films as well?’ and then you see what the responses are on that. And you ask about excitement to watch the film, whether you would go on an opening weekend or you’re going to wait to hear what people have to tell you and so on and so forth. There are five or six parameters that we look at. Each one gives you an indication of how well you are doing. So you might be high on the awareness of the film because you’ve managed to communicate your message to everyone but no one’s really that excited about it. Then you realise that your creative isn’t working. The people have seen it but they are like ‘Yeah, okay. I’m going to take my chances and go later.’ So then you need to build that. Or you might be really high on excitement with the people you have managed to reach but you haven’t managed to reach too many people, in which case you need to be able to take your media plan wider. So those are things that we are tracking everyday actually but we get a weekly report card on how we are doing and how everyone else is doing as well.

What are the big marketing trends right now? Is one of the trends spending lesser on big films with what happened on a film like Ra.One? So much money spent on the publicity. So much publicity that there is large section of people who believe that that is what worked against the film. Is that one of the trends? And, of course, I’ll come to the second trend which is bigger marketing for a smaller budget film— the Vicky Donor, English, Vinglish  kind of thing.

Sure. I don’t think there is a trend of spending less on bigger films. I have to be honest. I don’t think anyone’s doing that because I think the simple logic that a studio or producer would use is that: ‘I’ve spent 50 crores making this movie. Now am I going to scrimp on that final two more crores?’ Because in any case, there is a certain basic marketing budget that you need to spend and then it’s about, incrementally, to shout that much louder, it’ll probably take a couple of more crores or three crores to do that. So am I going to scrimp at that last stage or do I just ensure that the entire investment is not contingent on me being miserly about that last mile?

But again, it is about optimisation, not maximisation.

You’re absolutely right about that. I think what tends to happen is that you might believe that you’re optimised in your own environment but you have to realise that you’re dealing with people who are subjected to multiple messages every day. So you might think that you’re optimally reaching them with your message the right number of times but you need to look at the competitive subset that you are in. And the right number of times might not be the right number of times relative to the way someone else is reaching them.

So, I mean I know these are not your productions, that you are not qualified to comment beyond a point, but what could be your learning from something like Ra.One?

I think my learning ultimately would be that the film has to work. You can over hype and it can live up to that hype and there is nothing wrong with that. Or you can over hype a film and it doesn’t live up to that hype and then people are disappointed. But if a film works, then the marketing works. A film doesn’t work, then frankly everything is going to be seen in retrospect as, ‘Oh okay, they over hyped it and it didn’t work.’ But finally, you aren’t talking about a detergent, right? Which, if you do a blind test with someone with two beverages or two detergents, it’s all about the branding that you have created around it and frankly they might not see the difference in when they are using it. But a film is something that they are going to be going out there to experience. So it’s that much more important for them to really feel that your marketing has really lived up to your promise.

So you’re saying this is not so much about strategy as about the brass tacks of a film. Because I know Don 2 followed closely on the heels of that and they really cut down on the publicity of that because they were afraid of what happened with Ra.One. But you’re feeling that that kind of reaction is not really…

You know I can’t comment on what they did because I was not privy to it but I have to say… See each film is an entity on its own and you need to market it. I mean we’re very careful about the softer issues rather than how much we’re spending and the media plan. All that obviously will follow. But what are we trying to position the film as? What is the tonality that we’re using? The medium is the message also. Which medium are we using? Are we using social media more? Are we using TV more? Because, what type of movie is it? Things like that are very important to us and we need to stay true to the film while obviously emphasising all the great things about the movie. But it can’t be something so divorced from the film that there is a mismatch or a dissonance when you are watching it. That I think is the most important thing that we have learnt over the years.

And I want to talk a little bit about, again, one big trend that has been talked about in the market which is taking smaller budget films, spending a lot more, more than the cost of the film almost, on the marketing. How is that working out? Is that something that is working well? Or do you feel that it’s just a balance that has been reached for now and, maybe that also will start shifting? Maybe you won’t need to spend so much on marketing a Vicky Donor once people start to naturally gravitate towards films like this?

You know, honestly, I think you need to back a small film really aggressively, if you’ve made it. Because, ultimately, you’re making it because you believe it can work. And if you’re going to finally then not give it the promotion it deserves because it’s not a big film… you could have made a film for four crores and a film for 40 crores, that doesn’t mean the marketing budget of that film will be one-tenth that one because then you’d just be not serving the film that you’ve made at all. I’d say that there is bare minimum today that you need to do for every film below which you are just not going to be heard at all in the system. And that’s just how it is. And that can be significantly higher than the budget of your film in the first place but you’ve got to factor that in when you are making the film to start with. Which is why you have to be so careful when making a smaller film because you are completely reliant on the quality of the film. You’re not going to be able to pre-sell. You are not going to be able to get that opening weekend easily. So it’s really all about the movie at the end of it. And then you better market it as well as you can in order to ensure that people know about it and come and watch it. So it’s crucial, I think.

Again, opening weekend. Lot of focus. Much higher than it used to be in the last couple of decades. Is that skewing the trade in any way? Number one. Number two, is a Sholay  possible in this climate at all?

A film that will run for seven years?

No. A film that would pick up so slowly, almost being on the verge of declared a flop and then go on to become… (one of the biggest grossers of all time).

It’s tough. It’s tough. Because that’s just not the dynamic that exists today. I mean, you have social media today where the verdict is pronounced pretty much on Twitter by Friday evening. You’ve got the number of screens that you are releasing your movie in because you are also combating piracy and you want to ensure that you’re as widely seen as possible so that you don’t succumb to piracy. All of this just dictates that, by that Monday, the verdict is out and everyone’s… all the thought leaders have watched the film. If it’s a smaller film then it’s very important what the critics have to say about it. With a bigger film sometimes it’s irrelevant, sometimes it is. But a Sholay  is pretty difficult. I mean a film that’s not… you won’t get shows the next weekend if by Monday you haven’t performed and by Tuesday the exhibitors need to decide on the showcasing for the next week, which is how it works.

We’ve been talking about the free market economy. We’ve been talking about the capitalist economy we live in. But business ethics is one question that still holds. So marketing ethics. You spoke about how you market a film. Is that something you guys are grappling with? How you position a film? Or does it not matter? Is any publicity good publicity? How is that working out? That’s one thing. The other thing is, I know that pretty much tough luck would be the answer but where does this leave space for independent cinema? So even though digitization has come in and all of us can potentially make a film but then you stumble at that, ‘I can’t market my film for 30 crores or 40 crores.’ Then what happens? I mean I just want to get a sense of… I mean you might not be able to action anything. You are a part of the market but what are the business ethics that producers should be, or are, grappling with at this point?

You know, I think good business ethics will also mean good business. Honestly, I don’t believe any publicity is good publicity. It’s just not true. Because you can be in the papers everyday and people can be completely turned off what you are saying because you’re saying it in a very aggressive manner or you’re saying it in a way which puts people off or you’re talking about things so unrelated to the movie that it’s not funny. So I think there needs to be one round of questioning from everyone about… because you have got so many different avenues open to you to get your movie spoken about. I think we all need to just sit and introspect a little bit about what is it that we are saying because we can get whatever we say published or we can get it aired. But is that going to really help one more person say, ‘Oh, because I’ve seen (or read) that, I must go watch the movie on Friday’? I’m not so sure. So I think good business ethics really is about promoting your film for the film it is. And really if there is any way to get the message of the film across or the ethos of the film across in a way that’s going to help you on that weekend that’s good marketing ethics because then you’re really telling people the best part about the movie that you want them to watch. When it comes to independent cinema, I have to say we use this term independent cinema in India but it’s a bit of a misnomer because we’ve taken one term from the West and used it here.

You know what I’m talking about.

Every film’s been… they’ve all been backed by studios. You talk about any film that’s managed to get a release it’s been a studio film. So starting from our movies, from Khosla ka Ghosla  to Aamir  to a Dev D  to A Wednesday  to Mumbai Meri Jaan  to Udaan  to Kai Po Che, you know, any of these movies, they’ve been backed by studios so they’re not really independent. I think if you’re talking about really experimental stuff, stuff that’s so rarefied that it would really be a South Bombay, South Delhi, Bangalore, Calcutta experience… I think going to the exhibitors directly might be the best and tying up with an exhibitor and getting them to showcase the film in a way that they talk to their patrons about it. You trailer it there… (in those cinemas). I think one has to look at those ways. If you don’t want to go the studio route, which is perfectly legitimate, you go to an exhibitor directly.

So you’re talking about more local economies…

Because I’m assuming a movie like that might not be able to afford a budget to be on television. You might not be able to spend on television and be able to promote your movie in that medium. Trailering is much cheaper and it gives across the whole… you can do a two and a half minute, a three minute. It really communicates what the movie is about. So ensure that you do a fair amount of trailering. Go to one exhibitor probably, who’s got nationwide presence and do an exclusive date with them where they can give you one show per screen and then if it grows, it grows. It’s not easy and that’s just the environment that we’re in.

Any other things that you feel that everybody across the board needs to introspect about when it comes to business ethics and how they are shaping the market, overall, for the movies?

I think that the way the television industries were told to have their own standards and practices body and it doesn’t undergo certification or censorship. I mean a lot of us believe that there is regressive content on television and blah blah blah. It is not monitored by a government body at all. It’s just there and if you’ve got grievance with it you can contact someone and you can have yourself heard. I really hope that we can move into that for cinema as well. Just because we’re a more high profile medium doesn’t mean that we need to be subjected to certain certifications. I’m sure if everyone is just told to have their own models of standards and practices the way the broadcasters do, then they will get more responsible. If you just impose a responsibility on the person themselves to take that call then I suspect it’ll be a much healthier environment for us to be in. I don’t see that happening any time soon but…

CENSORSHIP

Actually that was going to be a later question but I’m going to ask it now because we’ve brought this up. There has been a lot of talk about moving into a system where movies are certified according to them being suitable for ages above 12, 15, 18…  A lot of filmmakers have not responded very well to that at all because they feel like that will cut down on the audience. Does that affect producers at all? Is that something that you’re concerned with?

Not if the guidelines are really cast in stone and are very clear, like probably the BBFC guidelines are in the UK where it’s very specific what is 12, what is 15 and what is 18. If it becomes arbitrary and really something so subjective that any individual body watching it can decide on that, then it will lead to even more chaos. Then I’d rather stick to what we have right now which is U/A, A and U because there at least you’ve got the three broad parameters and now through trial and error I think we generally know which direction we’re heading when we’re making a film. So if we impose a new certification there has got to be very, very clear guidelines. Having said that I think I have to say I think the Censor Board, which likes to be called the Certification Board, because they’re not the Censor Board, has made quite a few strides in the last few years and you have to hand it to them. They are not in an easy situation. They are having to deal with any fringe group coming and protesting, going to the MIB (Ministry of Information and Broadcasting) and the MIB clamping down on them because they passed the movie. And at the same time, they’ve got to deal with the irate fraternity which is always questioning things and trying to push the boundaries. So, they’re in a tricky situation purely because they’ve been, the way that they’ve been legislated as a body. Having said that, I do believe that we need to be more progressive, even more progressive than we are right now. And I think we need to accept that if you’re giving someone the right to vote, they should have the right to watch what they want to watch. If they can elect their own government, they should be able to watch a movie and decide whether they wanted to watch it or not. If there is something misogynistic in the film, something that is just beyond the bounds of what is permissible in a society, that’s something that one should be looking at. But, really, I think we’re in a situation now where we should be able to watch a film we want to see considering you can watch whatever you want on the internet and that’s completely free.

THE OVERSEAS MARKET

Okay, in the nineties, there was this whole conversation about the NRI film and the NRI markets to the extent that there seemed to be such a great discovery of that market that it started to dictate content in a lot of ways. Has that balance been restored or is that focus still pretty much there? How much are we depending on overseas markets right now?

You know the overseas market for a small film is pretty much non-existent because you’re talking about the diaspora. You’re talking about the 30 million South Asians overseas and trying to reach out to them. For a big film, it would probably be 10% of your overall revenue, which is significant, but when you compare it to domestic theatrical which is 50-60%, it’s a small part. So I’d say we’re probably you know… it was an interesting new phenomenon in the nineties because it had opened up as a market and therefore it was being spoken about. Now you have reached a steady state of that being the contribution. You’re dealing with rampant piracy, especially overseas where you have got massive bandwidths where people can access movies and sort of download them really fast and you’ve got your movie available on Friday evening on a bit torrent site regardless of what sort of movie you’ve made. So you’re combating massive piracy and the fact that you still have a worldwide release of only 500 screens for 30 million people and they’re going to want to watch a Hindi film because they are as movie obsessed as their brethren here and they’re going to go online and download it. Because you’re not giving them a legitimate way to see it. You also can’t have it available legitimately online on the day and date of the release because that is just not something the exhibitors will accept. So it’s a bit of a chicken and egg overseas where we haven’t, again, scratched the surface of that market. But till we enter new markets at least through, maybe through free-to-air television and get our movies shown there and then move on to other platforms and then to theatrical, it’s going to be a slow process. But it’s something.

Are they any new emerging NRI overseas markets? Which ones are the biggest ones right now?

There is… you’ve got the usual suspects. There is the US, there’s UK, there’s Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the Gulf. Those are your key markets, that comprises maybe 80-90% of your total revenue. South America we have not ventured into at all. We’ve released a couple of movies in Brazil and Peru but that’s really a one-off and depending on if you’ve found the right film that the distributor wants to distribute. Africa is pretty unexplored other than South Africa and maybe a few other markets.

But that is a huge potential isn’t it?

Massive. Massive potential.

Africa, yeah.

It’s a bit of a function of the economy there also where the whole went into a depression and therefore the exhibition sector suffered, movie prices went down by one-fifth. Europe, again, is important. France, Germany, a lot of the Eastern-European countries. Then down in the Mediterranean you’ve got Turkey, you’ve got interesting markets where you’ve a got a South Asian diaspora. Russia is another market which has been largely unexploited since the fifties and the sixties. Japan, Taiwan, Korea, these are markets where we are releasing our movies much more. China, of course, suffers from regulations about a certain number of movies that can be released. Then the South Asian markets of course, massive South Asian population, we know that but not as widely exploited as it can be. So there’s a lot of work ahead.

Very diverse markets, so you can’t answer it in a holistic way but some key ways in which the marketing differs for overseas market than it does here?

A lot of online. We use online quite extensively because that’s where our people are and we can’t afford mass media for those markets. We use a lot of localised platforms. So local radio stations, local newspapers for the South Asian population, local television stations and we go into catchment areas. So we know there are certain catchment areas where, you know, there are South Asian populations existing— leaflets and flyers and door-to-door marketing.

What about non-NRI overseas market? Where are we on that?

Nowhere, honestly. I don’t think Indian cinema has really crossed over at all. Some of our movies are watched a little more widely than others. We probably have some directors who are known within a certain section of those who watch world cinema but honestly I don’t think we’ve really made too much progress.

But which way does the progress need to happen? Do films need to get up to par? Do we need to be making enough films? Or do you feel like you need to start exploring exhibition possibilities and then create awareness?

It’s a combination of both and I guess we’ve tried it with some movies. It’s debatable whether they were the right movies or the wrong movies. With a film like Peepli Live  which we believed was a satire, it has some resonance in terms of being able to reflect what’s going on in India, is tongue-in-cheek, but might be appreciated by a world cinema audience. We did a delayed release in the UK but probably it was too delayed which is why it didn’t work as well as it could have. It worked well but not as well as we would have liked it to. With films like Barfi! we are entering into markets like Japan, like Korea, like Taiwan, like Turkey where the film is going to be watched by an audience broader than just the Indian audience. So there is progress being made but it’s really negligible when you look at the overall revenues of the movie right now. So we’re doing it for our movies but we haven’t had that one massive crossover hit like a Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was for Taiwan. We’ve just not had that.

Okay, now that Disney has tied up with UTV, acquired UTV what potential new avenues, what possibilities, are you looking at whether or not you end up exploring them?

It’s a huge, huge, huge opportunity.

Tell me some of the possibilities that are on the table right now.

One is the distribution, just tapping into the global Disney distribution system, which we’re doing very actively right now. And, I mean one doesn’t want to speak too early and we just want the results to show but that’s something that we are looking at very actively, getting our movies distributed as widely as we can using that infrastructure. And two is obviously creating franchises here in India. We haven’t really had Indian franchises yet. We’ve had sequels but a franchise is something that goes beyond a movie and that goes beyond the ancillary rights around a movie. It goes into other spheres altogether. We haven’t had that yet in India and I think we’re ripe for it now. So using the Disney creative learnings across the last 80 years and to begin to tap into that.

Are there also conversations about the kind of films that you are producing? You know we still primarily make movies for our market and the South Asian population. So is there more of a chance of making films that might work across the board? For the lack of a better example, a Slumdog Millionaire, is that possibility very…

You know I think you need to root a movie somewhere.  Slumdog Millionaire  didn’t work in India and it was obvious why. It didn’t speak about the country as we know it and therefore we rejected it as an audience but obviously it did gangbusters business everywhere else. We’re looking at movies that work for India. We’re very clear about our objective. We want to make Indian movies that work for our people. Now if by their very nature they transcend just a South Asian population and are able to go wider? We’d always have an eye on that, that’s something we will look at. But it’s really important to root a film and know who you are making it for. And if you’re working with filmmakers who have a sensibility, just naturally, where the grammar of their cinema is, and it will travel, that’s great.

SURVEY BASED FILMMAKING

We spoke about surveys earlier. There are a whole lot of other kind of surveys being commissioned. There are surveys being commissioned at the development stage, before a film, to kind of try to figure out what kind of films to make. Then of course during the making of the film. Now that is something that intrigues me. We’ve heard of instances where even with something say like Oh My God!  there was a survey and people saying “Oh, we want to see god as god.” (They wanted to see Akshay Kumar, playing Krishna, dressed as Krishna was depicted in mythological and religious portraits. And so he was dressed like this in a climactic scene.) and therefore there are changes made… So where are you guys with that? Is there a conversation about where to draw the line because, like you said, that if you start influencing creatives enough… It’s also important for the creative industry to grow on its own. So what is the tricky balance with that?

I think Steve Jobs said something really interesting once, he said that research is all fine but someone’s not going to be able to tell you what they want till they get it. Because if you want to give them something new, they’re not going to be able to tell you what that something new is. When you give it to them, that’s when they are going to say: ‘Wow! I can’t do without this anymore.’ Right? So I doubt that anything breakthrough or path-breaking creatively is going to come purely out of research, right? Having said that, if you immerse yourself a little bit in just trends and what’s going on, in lingo, just understanding new interesting things happening in society and just keeping your ear open and eyes open to reading more about it, just interacting with people a bit more and that sparks a creative thought, I think that’s the most important research a creative person can do. Right? But the ideation of that insight to the story that really needs to come from there. I think it’s really important.

But I was talking about the surveys that are being commissioned by producers while the film is being…

I can speak for what we do. We’ve tried script research before. It hasn’t quite worked because I think it’s very difficult for an audience to envision a film the way that the director is envisioning it. It’s not their job to do so. Where research comes into play for us really, in the filmmaking process, is at the rough cut stage where we have a director who we’re creatively collaborating with who also buys into it. And we say, “We all have certain views about the film. Let’s just show it to people.” And here I’m not talking about friends from the industry, trade etc. because then everyone is a little tricky about giving their honest opinion. I’m talking about proper structured research where you have 20 people who represent the rough target audience and they just watch the film and they have a chat with a moderator after that. And the director is sitting in another room and just watching it on a close-circuit television and ten things might come out of there. We do it across various cities. Not that we learn what to discard and what to take on because people can have very individual, very subjective opinions on something that is not relevant, but maybe two or three very important themes are coming through about the beginning of the film, about the character and about a certain motivation and about the end. Those are the things on which we then sit and we have really important discussions.

What are the things that you are likely to more do it for? Are you likely to more do it for, say, genre films because that’s fairly new in India?

We’d like to do it for every film that we’re working on but we’re very sensitive about the people that we’re working with. So if we’re working with a director who is completely closed to it we won’t get very far and we don’t like to exercise final cut because that’s just not the way we like to operate. We want to creatively work with people and we do believe it’s a director’s medium ultimately. So if it’s a director who’s open to feedback and is very happy to get test screenings on board, then that’s something that we would do. But maybe it’s a cut we’ve all watched and we really like the way it is and we decide that actually whatever research tells us this is the movie we’ve made, this is the movie we want to go ahead with— then we take that call. So really there’s nothing that’s cast in stone. I do believe it can’t hurt if there is trust on both sides. The director and producer trust each other enough to know that whatever comes out of it we’re going to sit together and we’re really going to have a proper discussion about it and not get swayed so much that we’re going to take…

So you’re saying that basically it’s just another aid. It’s not something that…

It’s not something that’s going to make or break our decision on the film.

REGIONAL FILMS 2

Fair enough. You guys have made, what, five regional films, backed five regional films last year?

That’s right.

Where is that going? Are you guys looking at making more regional films? Is the concentration, focus more on South India? How is that working out? Is that the way for all distributors, producers to go?

See, I think if you want to be a truly pan-Indian studio then you need to be doing more than just Hindi cinema. I think it’s important. Having said that you also need to accept that you don’t know that sensibility at all. You could make a movie in China for all you know and you know it as much as you know a Tamil film. But you have to learn it and learn it in a systematic manner and first accept that you don’t know anything. And then go in there and start making movies that you sort of believe in, that probably are less risky than the other ones because they’re star driven, they’re proper commercial movies. Some will work, some won’t. But I think the first thing is to just seep yourself into that culture. So we don’t want to spread ourselves too thin. We’re doing Tamil, Telugu, Malayalam… That’s what we’ve started with and for the next couple of years I think we’ll be focusing on that.

And do you have to shift operations in a big way there? Do you need to have a completely…

We have a set-up there already. So we have our head of the South business and he’s got offices cross Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad…

Okay, you will be looking at other regional films? Marathi?

We might. As I said, those regional cinemas that have an overlap with Hindi are ones that are much less lucrative, in a sense, because they are not really cinemas that have potential to grow that much because the same audience is also watching Hindi movies and is quite happy to watch a Hindi movie. The South is interesting because it’s a different audience altogether. Hindi movies just don’t do much business in the South at all. So it’s a different cinema. It’s a different set of stars, it’s a different system, a different operation altogether.

SATELLITE RIGHTS, MUSIC SALES, MERCHANDIZING, LICENSING AND OTHER ALTERNATIVE REVENUE SOURCES

I want to come to satellite rights. There is a lot of talk about how movies are actually sold. And what movies work. And what movies don’t work. When you look into the figures as an outsider, a lot of things don’t make sense. Agent Vinod selling for a lot more than a Kahaani. Or Barfi! not selling as well. All these notions that a thriller does not do as well or this film does not have a ‘repeat value’ or this film does have a ‘repeat value’. How accurate are these surveys, given the TRPs themselves are actually extremely questionable, at least in India? How evolved is the process of selling satellite rights?

So I guess TRPs are questionable but that’s the only benchmark to go by. So that’s what we go by.

But that’s something that needs to change?

Well, the whole broadcasting industry needs to work on that so that’s not something we’re going to worry about. That’s just what we take as the Holy Grail to determine whether a film’s working or not on TV. That’s what the advertiser looks at, that’s how media is bought and so on. Yes it is true that broadcasters have their own theories about which movies are TV friendly and which ones are not and that might not be proportional at all to how they have done theatrically. But that’s just how it is and that’s the environment that you need to work with. So the buyer has the right to have their own theories about what they want to buy.

But are these theories based on any kind of proper…

I have to say they are based on the logic, whether we believe it or not, that movie viewing on television has to be something that you can snack on. You’ve got to be able to watch five minutes, go off somewhere, do something, be okay with two breaks, come back and pick off where you left it. So they tend to believe that action movies and comedy movies tend to work really well. When it’s a drama, when it’s something you need to be very, very compellingly involved in the story with on an ongoing basis, they tend to believe that that’s not something that lends itself to viewing on TV. Now I’m sure they’ve got a lot of studies that they have done to tell them that because obviously they are all very smart people. This really dictates massive budgets for them. So that I think is a theory that they operate on.

And you feel that that is… do you see a lot of acceptance for that theory in your own experience or… ?

Well you don’t have any choice to accept if that is what the buyer believes. That’s what the buyer is going to be paying good money for. And that might in the future dictate the kind of movies that get green-lit too. Because if 30 percent of your revenue is going to be based on satellite television, you’ve got to believe that you’re making cinema that will finally be bought by a channel.

And how big a factor is it for you when you take on a film?

It’s a factor.

Let’s talk about home video quickly because that’s the only market that is dropping. It’s… what? Fifteen percent or negative something? Is that only because of piracy or do you feel also because VoD (Video on Demand) and Direct to Home are catching on? Are they really catching on?

Actually, I think more than VoD and Direct to Home it’s that… One, is, obviously, piracy, two is the fact that a film is going to be available on satellite television pretty quickly and everyone knows that. It’s going to be 60 days, 65 days, before the movie is on a satellite channel and they can watch it for free. If they haven’t watched it before that on a pirated DVD, or if they haven’t watched it in a theatre. So the whole joy of owning a copy of the film is really irrelevant today I think for most people because they can either download it from somewhere or there’ll be some way of watching where they won’t need to own a physical DVD and it’s just become a bit irrelevant to have a physical copy of a film anymore.

Vishwaroopam was released simultaneously.

Actually it didn’t. He wanted to but it didn’t happen.

It didn’t work out? Is that a way to go? Is that something that could…

I don’t think it’s a way to go because it’s just… you won’t be able to release your movie theatrically because exhibitors won’t accept it. So it’s just…

But if you could, hypothetically, convince the exhibitors is that something that could make market sense?

I do believe there is no harm in doing it because I don’t believe that you are going to cannibalise very much at all on your theatrical business. I think someone who wants to watch a film in a cinema hall is still going to go and watch it. Someone who was anyway going to watch it on television later or on home video will access it on VoD. Having said that the exhibitors have a legitimate reason to say, ‘Guys, if you want showcasing in a cinema don’t have it available on another platform the same day that you are giving it to us because we’re just not going to take that.’ And it’s not something that is done anywhere in the world actually. Windows in India are much shorter than anywhere in the world.

PIRACY

Okay. Piracy. There was an anti-piracy cell. A bunch of you producers got together. Has that seen any traction? Has that been able to do anything? What are some of the steps that can be taken even today? Or do you feel that the market needs to just develop around piracy?

Well, the market is developing around piracy. I don’t think anyone is under any illusion that it’ll be stamped out completely. I believe that legislation is going to be the only way to get to make a difference to that. If you’ve got really stringent collective action against the pirate and the person who is going in and accessing content from the pirate, only then are you really going to be able to move forward.

Legislation and implementation, of course.

Absolutely, absolutely.

The cell that you guys set up, has that been able to take any measures? What can producer do themselves?

You do what you can. You’ve got an online anti-piracy agency when you release your film that ensures that take down notices are sent to any website that is pirating your movie. But given the level of proliferation you do your best but you know that it’s never going to be enough. You’ve got codes on every print that you send out so you know from where a print has been pirated. You know from where your movie has been pirated so you can take action against that cinema. The cinema will invariably tell you that it’s not the case, that if it’s a physical print it could have happened on the way. So you’re never going to be able to tell exactly where it happened. The stakes are so high that even if you put a security guard on every print, you know how much they pay and the lure of the sort of money that they would get if they had to go out and pirate that film would be so high that it’s not really going to be worth your while. So there are lots of reasons why you have to accept that you do need to work around piracy and that’s just how it is.

What are the alternative revenue sources that are hot right now? What are you guys talking about? One of the things that you spoke about earlier, licensing, gaming, merchandising, that is still a nascent market in India. One of the questions that I wanted to ask you was: Is that something that needs to develop more India specifically? I mean so far what we have seen is that we’re trying to import it exactly in the way it exists abroad. So if you have an action or sci-fi film in India, you’re going to have an action figure corresponding to that, or whatever, which we don’t make much of. But we might have a different market. Maybe Gangs of Wasseypur could have merchandising around it which is not the kind of film that you will have merchandising for abroad. So is that something you guys are thinking of in a completely different way now?

Very much. And I think it needs to happen with the right movie. Of course gaming we do on a number of our movies already. There are lots of other platforms like your Netflix and Hulu and YouTube and Samsung and various other platforms that we are on today which were non-existent a few years ago. But yes I think merchandising is definitely something that we need to look at much more.

In a different way. I mean I remember, for example, when Hum Aapke Hain Koun released there wasn’t a girl anywhere who didn’t have that green and white disastrous dress that Madhuri (Dixit) wore.

Or the felt cap of Maine Pyar Kiya.

Which is not what how you would think of merchandising abroad.

That just happened organically. It was just that people really wanted it badly. As an organised effort it could have done much more.

But I’m thinking that is the kind of merchandising that might work here much more than a Superman costume?

Absolutely. Absolutely.

What about in-cinema advertising? One does believe that the revenues in India are lower than the revenues that you earn aboard with in-cinema advertising. Is that something that needs to give?

So that’s revenue that goes to the cinema.


Okay. What about radio and music sales? How is that shaping up?

Well it’s shaping up pretty well. Of course, physical sales are pretty much non-existent today. So you’re really looking at digital. Radio and broadcasting as your key drivers as far as music is concerned. And the physical format, in music, is not really something that we look at at all. But music is the best way to promote a movie in India and so we look at it as a marketing tool…

As well as a revenue tool. What are the one or two alternative revenue sources that producers are most… which would you would bet your money on? Which are the ones that are coming up?

I’d say that if 4G is implemented in India the way that it is anticipated, 4G might be a massive source of revenue for studios because there will be a lot of audio-visual content that will be very easily downloadable and accessible. And if you are able to repurpose your catalogue where you are able to provide byte size content for platforms you might be in a really good position there. That’s one. Two is, I think, if you look at the online models today so from a Netflix to a Hulu to a YouTube. These are all models that I think are growing and evolving as we move along and they are new mediums completely. We’ve already got deals in place with most of them and we will continue to do a lot about that in the future.

THE COPYRIGHT ACT

I want to talk a little bit about the latest amendment to the Copyright Act, which gives a lot of people now a right to royalty. Is that something that you guys are concerned about? Have you had a look at the legislation? Are you rethinking your contracts? There is also ambiguity about how much royalty to be paid. So what are your concerns about that amendment?

So I don’t want to get too much into this because it might be something that is subject to litigation in a while etc. so I really don’t want to dwell on that too much. But yes it’s obviously something that we have looked at very, very closely.

And it is a concern?

It is a concern. Absolutely.

What are the concerns? If you can just tell me what is it that is of concern in the…

I do believe we need to look at India as the market that it is rather than ascribing western models of copyright to it. I think you need to look at music in Hindi cinema as a different entity altogether as compared to music that is not commissioned for a particular piece of work, that just stands on its own completely which is an album that someone’s created and sold as a separate album of that artist as against something that is commissioned by a producer to be written for a film to be shot and to be picturised on actors and actresses and then sold as a part of the movie. So I do believe that we’re in a little bit of a different situation here and I think those nuances need to be something that we all consider very carefully before we come to any final conclusion there.

Okay. And the ambiguity. Is that also something that is or that can be…

There is a fair amount of ambiguity which is what we’re all seeking some clarification on.

I don’t know if you are aware of it at all but screenwriters have been talking about a common minimum contract. Is that something that you guys have spoken about or…

No it’s not something that has been spoken about in any official capacity.

THE STATE AND THE NEED TO LOBBY

Fair enough. I want to talk a little bit about what the state can do overall. Of course there is the taxation. Resources and taxation are two main areas that I wanted to ask your opinion on. In taxation, of course, there is talk of entertainment tax being included in the GST. We don’t know if that’ll happen or not. There are discrepancies in the entertainment tax and service tax paid in each state. What are some of the concerns that you guys have? Where do you feel the state can, keeping their concerns in mind, aid the industry in any way at this point?

I think as cultural ambassadors of India in many ways and in many ways as the most public face of India to the world it’s probably important for the government to look at the sector a little bit differently and to look at how they can motivate this sector and how it can be given the impetus to grow. Because we haven’t really reached the stage where the sort of tax structures that are imposed on the industry right now are sustainable for growth in the long run. So I think it’s very important for the sector to be looked at and, frankly, also for us to represent ourselves in the right manner to them as well because I don’t think there has been a very concerted way in the past where we have represented our issues the way that Nasscom does for the IT industry, for example. So that I think is very important. The entire structure of taxation for the entertainment industry needs to be looked at. The other thing of course is piracy and I think legislation is the key role that the government can play in ensuring that piracy is dealt with in a very severe manner where the deterrent is so high that it becomes difficult for people who want to indulge in it. So those are the…

And do you feel like there needs to be a little more organisation in the industry to lobby, for the lack of a better word?

There are organisations. The problem is that there are three or four of them and I think it’s important for us to come under one body that represent the issues of the industry in a professional manner.

BETTER SCRIPTS AND AVOIDING PLAGIARISM

What are the changes that you can think of offhand in the creative… that need to happen in the creative industry which will aid the market at this point? Better scripts maybe, better scriptwriters, more film education, anything that you can think of.

You know there is a lot that studios can do and we’ve spoken about that but definitely the creative community needs to look inward a bit. Because I think the quality of writing that one has been exposed to in the last so many years and the stage at which writers are happy to put that out as their work and really ask someone for an opinion… One might be purely because of the training but I don’t think it’s that. I think it’s a certain amount of laziness in putting in that extra effort and getting it to exactly where it needs to get because I think there is such a dearth of concepts and ideas today that something that is even vaguely interesting can get picked up pretty early on but it’s not been developed into the best that it can be. The studios on the other hand have to ensure that writers aren’t feeling so desperate for their next meal that they feel the need to do that and are feeling more secure in order to focus on the writing. So I think just the quality of writing and the depth and intensity of effort put into a screenplay can change quite a bit.

And you did mention that studios also can do more in terms of allocating funds for research on a script or development.

I think many studios today, us included, are happy to do so. The problem is really the dearth of really great writing talent out there and the dearth of really great ideas out there that are represented in a manner that can pique someone’s interest. So I have to say that there is a massive dearth of talent.

What about, for the lack of a better word, approachability? Because honestly there is a lot of talent out there but one tends to believe that… There are fabulous writers out there. Come to think of it Indian literature today is the hottest property anywhere. There are fabulous writers sitting in Delhi but they are not going to come out here to try and write scripts. Because their whole impression is that: ‘I’m going to have to sit struggling in Versova, in a cafe.’ That’s not something they would do because book advances are so great. So is approachability, talent scouting, a wider reach something that you guys are also…

It’s important. I can’t deny that. Approachability is key. We try to be as transparent and as open as we can but obviously we’re not going to be able to meet everyone who has a great idea. But, yes I think it’s important for studios to be as approachable as they can be. And to actually be going out there to seek out people.

The way we used to plagiarise films in the eighties and the nineties is not how… a lot of things are changing. A lot of people are buying rights to remakes if they want to. Is corporatisation one of the major reasons for that clean up that has happened or is there a greater risk of litigation? Also I want to ask you guys, do you have systems in place to screen content for originality?

We do. Having said that, we might make a slip now and then. If we realise it later on in the process, it’s something that we would definitely look at. Because one couldn’t possibly have watched every film that exists in the world and in world cinema to identify if something has been taken from somewhere. So, but it’s something that we look at very, very carefully. It’s not something that we would accept at all. We do have a system in place where our lawyers get to watch a rough cut at some stage to give us feedback on potential issues that might come up later. But there is a lot of frivolous litigation as well, and we just assume there will be. With every film we allocate a certain budget to that because we know that that is something that is going to happen.

FINANCING MODELS

Okay, quickly. The industry status came a while ago. Have the financing models developed as one would have hoped when the industry status was accorded to films? And what is currently the prime source of financing? I mean public listing is one of them. I believe UTV has been delisted now.

It is part of The Walt Disney Company now.

But you guys had gone public earlier. What other organised funding? Venture capitalists…

Well, you have all your studios in the game today so they (films) are all privately funded by studios. You’ve got banks willing to offer, to credible production houses, loans at pretty decent rates of interest. So it’s fine now I think. If you want to raise finance for a film, and you want to do it through legitimate means, there are many legitimate means open to you.

You’re saying there are enough legitimate means that are available?

One is obviously going to the studio. Two is going to a bank and raising funding based on your credentials and based on your pedigree obviously. If you are a credible production house today you can raise funding from banks.

RELEASE AGREEMENTS

We touched upon this a little bit earlier. For example when Anurag (Kashyap) spoke about how even though Gangs of Wasseypur was doing well, the minute Ek Tha Tiger  was released Gangs of Wasseypur had to removed from screens. Are there larger agreements that can be worked out with exhibitors so that bigger movies don’t end up swallowing smaller movies?

I don’t think so.

No?

I think that the market is going to dictate that. And I don’t know about this specific example but finally you have to accept the exhibitor is going to be doing the best thing for their business in that week. So if a film is doing well I doubt if it’s going to be taken off screens if there is a big film. It will be accorded a certain number of screens but because there is a big film coming the week after, that is going to come in and take more screens. You just have to be savvy about where you are going to place your movie. If you believe you’re a film that will grow, don’t come one week before Ek Tha Tiger.  It’s a tough one. It is going to be tough.

COST-CONTROL

How are you investing in keeping costs low? I know there are producers who are hiring docket management systems to monitor the per-day costs and stuff like that. Is that a huge priority for you guys right now or do you feel that…

It is a big priority that you just have to do it on an ongoing basis. It’s just part of the deal.

What are some of the ways?

Well we just take on a really good line producer and we monitor the entire process really well. We pre-plan, we do our pre-production pretty meticulously. And that’s the best way to do it really, to just plan well in advance.

WHAT IS A STUDIO?

Final question. You started this conversation with speaking about how studios are coming back after decades. What is new studio system? How is it a sort of hybrid between a corporate and the way studios were thought of traditionally? What is this hybrid?

You know I think the way studios were thought of originally was you’ve got a massive studio lot. So there is a physical studio. You’ve got actors on contract, who work only with you, and you can loan out other studios. You’ve got your physical infrastructure to make movies. Today things are a bit more virtual. So today as a studio you don’t need to necessarily own sound stages. You can get most of your post-production work done outside of you. You don’t need to sign on talent that only works with you. You can choose to do long term deals with certain talent— like directing talent, acting talent. You don’t necessarily need to be… I mean you don’t need to have everything on one lot. It can be done in various places and it can still be all coming in to one studio. So I think the model today is really having creative, production, marketing, distribution, syndication- the whole value chain involved in the making of a movie and then the releasing of the movie can happen in your control, and for you to be responsible for all that but not necessarily having to physically control it.

Okay. And do you guys see yourselves as a studio? Would you say…

Absolutely.

The same model? Okay. That’s it.

Superb.

But the path of the leader is neither well-trodden nor easy. He was rejected by All India Radio for the very baritone that is now the most iconic voice in Indian pop culture. He also failed his first audition. But the industry was changing and he knew that before they did, so he made his way to Bombay regardless. His rise to superstardom came after 12 flops but the young actor kept his faith.

India was changing again. The promises of independence had begun to fade. Corruption, political turmoil and ideological bankruptcy had disillusioned the youth and Bachchan resurrected himself by tapping into this disillusionment. He became the angry young man everyone wanted to see; giving voice and emotion to countless seething citizens. He survived accidents, illnesses and political scandals but began to lose his place as the people’s hero in the late eighties.

The film industry was in a dreadful limbo— at its lowest low creatively. But once again, it was he who could see beyond the despair. Having realised that corporatization was the way out for the industry, he set up ABCL (Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd.). However, it was an idea whose time had not yet come and he suffered huge financial losses. But just when we were about to write his career off as yet another tragedy of time that takes no one along, Bachchan began to rise again, like the old nation that was beginning to assert itself on the global stage financially and creatively. He led the way for younger superstars to television by signing on India’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire— Kaun Banega Crorepati and forced filmmakers to rethink the role of ‘character’ actors. He led Bollywood as it captured international imagination. He stood proud in the forefront as the Indian film industry reorganized and corporatized itself, started reimagining its content and strengthened itself financially. What does him real proud is that today cinema is no longer the ill-considered job he once kicked up a respectable career for. And Amitabh Bachchan, has played no small role in its turns. In this interview he talks about the journey of Hindi movies and his own passage with them.

An edited transcript:

What is the first film that you remember watching?

The Flying Deuces, Laurel and Hardy film.

How old were you?

I was, as you know, born in Allahabad. Capital Cinema hotaa thaa ek wahaan. Civil Lines was the main area. And that’s where I saw it.

Where did the fascination come from? Were there any particular actors or movies? How did it occur to you that you would want to be a part of the movies?
I was never inclined to join the movies. There was no such planning or anything like that.

Do you remember the first seed or the first idea?

When I look back I would imagine that… I was always very fond of stage. And right from the kindergarten to the time that I was working in Kolkata, I cannot remember a single year when I wasn’t on stage. I guess that was the only fascination with acting, in a sense— theatre. Then while I was in Kolkata after finishing my graduation, one day my brother showed me an advertisement of The United Producers Filmfare Talent Contest. And there was a whole procedure where five or six very prominent producers—Shakti Samanta, Pramod Chakravorty, B.R. Chopra, you know, all the big people—they had formed this group called The United Producers and they were looking for talent and they had a contest and they would do a regular screen test. They would give you moments to enact. And I felt that this was a very professional, right way of getting into the film industry. So, he said that you know you should apply for this if you are fond of acting. I said: Okay fine. So, he went in and took some photographs of mine with a still camera and sent it in. But we were rejected in the preliminaries. I think there were 10 or 12 cities from the North East.

And this was while you were in Calcutta, right?

Yes, while I was in Calcutta. So that was a little disappointing. And then you know I just felt that now that I have applied for it, I was kind of interested in going into it, so I resigned from my job, which was kind of a horror story for my parents. So I left my job and landed up in Bombay at that time. And went from door to door looking for a job. Cinema was something that was not appreciated very much by the family. We were allowed to see only cartoons like Cinderella and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But Laurel and Hardy was the one film that somehow we were allowed to go and see because it was a comedy.

Other than that what are your earliest memories of cinema?

I think I saw a film in Allahabad itself. It was a Hindi film. It was one that had Dilip Sahab and Dev Anand (Insaniyat). It was the first and only time they worked together.
 

Okay. What film was that?

I forget the name now. And we all went in there to see because air-conditioning had arrived for the first time in Allahabad theatres. So just that attraction, of what an air-conditioned theatre looks like, was the reason.

Your milieu of professionals, your father’s literary set, I am sure movies were at least slightly looked down upon. How did they take it all?

I think it’s the overall attitude towards cinema in general. That’s not just my family, my father or my mother. It was general conditioning for everyone: movies were considered not ethical, not worthwhile, people from ‘not good homes’ were associated with it. And therefore, if you saw one, you were likely to get polluted or corrupt. And that’s what the attitude was. But my father and mother were very liberal. They have always been very understanding. And the moment I said that this is what I want to do, they absolutely agreed and accepted my desire to join the films. One of the things my father said after I got rejected in the preliminaries was: “Agar kisi ghar ke andar ghusna ho, aur uska darwaaza band ho, aur jaana hi jaana hain, aur darwaaza na khul raha ho, tho deewar fhand ke chale jaana chahiye.”

Who is the first film star you remember meeting before you became an actor?

Oh gosh, I can’t remember. I know the person I admired the most was Dilip Sahab. And he always remained with me, from then, and still is.

Did you ever meet him before you joined the film industry, just as a fan?

I made an attempt. I was once on a short holiday with my parents in Bombay. In around the 1960s which was about eight to nine years before I came into the film industry. And I had no idea that I would join the film industry because I was still studying and I wasn’t in Kolkata and I hadn’t come across that advertisement. Our hosts once took us to a restaurant somewhere in the main area of Bombay where all the big restaurants were.

Was this in ‘town’ (South Bombay)?

Yes, in town. And we walked in and there he was— Dilip Sahab, standing and talking to somebody. So, I quickly ran outside and they said you must get his autograph. So I got an autograph book and was waiting and hoping… when is he going to turn around so that I will ask him. But he just walked away, and I couldn’t get his autograph. I was very disappointed. And then when I got an opportunity to meet him and talk to him, (and) eventually did a film with him, I told him of this and we had a good laugh. But yes, he has been my idol ever since I started seeing cinema and has always remained one. The other film that we all remember was…. Ah! Gosh, I am getting old. It was a film on children in a school and…

An English film or Hindi?

Hum Laaye Hain Toofan Se Kashti Nikaal Ke— that song was there.

Yes I know. Aadmi? Was it Aadmi?

No, no. Something starting with P… And we remember it because it was very educational because the kids were asked to be patriotic.

This is not Dedi Humein Aazadi Bina Khadag Bina?

Haan, yehi wali. That was with…

No, Aadmi was Dilip Sahab. I know which film, but I can’t remember. It will come to us at some point (the movie is Jagriti). Can you think of one thing that we don’t celebrate enough about our movies?

There are people I think who have manufactured a certain terminology about Indian cinema. And I think that those adjectives need to be cleared up. One is the very name which is now being commonly used and I don’t even want to utter it because I don’t believe in it. It was I think created by an overseas group that was here which wanted to make a documentary. And I feel sad to say that most of these groups that came from overseas to make documentaries were actually not wanting to record our history. They were, rather, here to make fun of it. And in that moment, I think this word got coined and now it is being shoved into the Oxford dictionary. And it’s going to be there for time immemorial. That’s horrid. We need to get rid of that. The other word that is commonly used is ‘filmi’. “Wahaan nahi jaana hain yaar, woh badi filmi jagah hain“— as though it’s something very rotten and negative, below any kind of class, decree or whatever you may call it. Why are these adjectives on filmi? “Woh aisa ek ghar tha, woh bada filmi tha isliye maine kharida nahin usko“. So it’s used as a bad adjective to describe cinema. I think these are some of those things that need to be forgotten.
And despite the criticism, despite the cynicism, despite whatever the elite may think about cinema in India, there is a need for the star everywhere today. I am not just talking because I am an actor but in recent years, say the past 15 to 20 years, you will find that the star-value has played a very important role in most socially promoted ideas. Whether it is polio or cancer, everywhere you require that face and that value. And they never want to acknowledge that fact. But yet they can’t do without it. I often wonder why we are invited. Because, you know, we are barely learning how to act and then suddenly we have to make a comment on the political system, on some social norm.

And be de facto ambassadors of the country.

Yes, but that is all right. But, you know, to certainly give an opinion on some kind of a political change that is taking place or a social reform that is taking place, one asks us: “Sir, what is your opinion about that”. You know, we are just actors. We are not here to change the Constitution. There are many other brilliant people who can do that. But the reason why you come to us is because that, perhaps, is what is going to get quoted. That, perhaps, is going to bring you your headlines or is going to be the attraction for a reader or for a listener or for a viewer to catch the attention.

Can you think of a couple of people, movies… or anything… which you feel that our cinematic industry didn’t give its due?

The entire cinema industry in India has a huge number of examples where none of them have received their dues. And I really don’t know what do we mean by a classification called ‘given their due’. I think for an actor, his greatest achievement is the love of the audience.

Perhaps memory. Memory is a good example of….

Yes, but if he is remembered and honoured by the people, and if they recognize him, then that is his biggest achievement. I don’t know in what other way you can give them their due. Many actors have been honoured through the National Awards (for) their films. They have been rewarded by the Padma awards and there many such examples.

But it could be something small like somebody who’s been a brilliant filmmaker but his films are not as widely discussed, or in the mainstream?

Well that is one of the reasons why I felt that this medium that you are starting now, and why we are sitting here, is helpful in promoting all that. Unless you get to hear these people, what they did and what their contribution was… other than the film industry, the rest of the world is never going to hear of them. And most of them do not. Because the common man is still just interested in his three hours of entertainment and how it got there. Who worked behind it, sometimes, is not important for them. And that’s a tragedy because no film is made without the extreme contribution of the people that work behind the scenes. They are the real people. We are just fronts.
 

Can you think of a couple of ways in which the industry has changed in the last 40 years that you have been around? Not the movies itself, but the industry.

Well, the working systems have changed. They have become a lot more professional. I am not saying that they weren’t professional back then, but certain American systems…

Have they become more formal? Is that what you mean?

No, not formal. There are certain systems in place which are akin to perhaps what Hollywood uses. A lot of our directors, actors and producers are now training abroad at a very young age and coming back with some sense of management, some sense of production, or how they should approach a film, or how it needs to be made, through some very recognized institutions overseas. That is good and those practices are now coming into place. Whether it is right from drawing your contract to how your production is going to take place, what the actors are going to do on the set— these are several little things that have now been coming and that is very good for the industry.

Is this also the good side of corporatization, you feel?

I am not so sure whether corporatization actually brought this on. Corporatization came on because it saw the potential of the corporatization of the Indian film industry.

And the government incentive, of course.

Of course, yes. But I doubt very much if there is going to be any government incentive that comes across to the corporates. The film industry in India is very unique in many ways. I formed a corporate once. It’s still present there. But as a pioneer who started this concept, I was laughed at in the beginning. You know, “How can you make a film wearing a tie? Ye suit-voot pehen ke log aa gaye hain, ye inse picture kahaan banegi?” That was the idea but today it’s the corporates that are ruling. It’s unique that Indian cinema is more or less shrouded under one umbrella. You want to make a film— you get a story, you get a producer or become the producer. Then you get it directed. Once it’s made, you must have a distribution wing. Each of our films have six or seven songs, so there is an audio side to it. 82 percent of film content is for the television, so there is a television side to it. And all of it is under one roof. You have these various tributaries, which are all commercially viable entities, but they all emanate from that one product— which is that film. And in that sense it’s very unique. That doesn’t happen in the west. The west has its own system of pop or rock music or whatever else. But our pop music is the one that comes out from the cinemas. So, that’s very unusual. That is why there is a need to corporatize it, bring it all under one roof, have professionals looking after it and the ideas, and so on and so forth. Now with the cyberspace and the Internet, it’s even more, sort of more versatile, as far as the spread of cinema is concerned.
CDs have disappeared. Everything is now available on the net. What is most important is the content. If you have the content, you are okay. The whole idea of corporatization was formed when I was on a holiday in the United States of America. I was there to do a concert. I pioneered these stage shows right from 1981 to 82. Obviously we had lawyers and stuff, because nobody moves without a lawyer in America. One of our lawyers became very friendly with me and around early 90s he said, “Amitabh, you should go back and start corporatizing and get your house in order because the Americans are coming.” And I used to get letters from various big studios like Warner, Twentieth Century Fox and Sony wanting to meet me. And I wondered why do they want to meet me if they don’t even know who I am. I am just another citizen of my country who is here on a holiday. One day I just visited Warner Brothers and one of their executives sat and spoke non-stop for two hours about cinema in India. He brought out a dossier which had every detail about me— where I was born, what I did, what films I had done, who directed them. They had everything. And that’s the time this chap said… And when I formed/ did the corporatization in ABCL, I had told my executives that this is what is going to happen. No one believed it then. But look what’s happened now. We have every possible major studio functioning here and this is the way they will enter. Every time I meet these big corporate heads, I tell them that: You have destroyed cinema in Europe. You destroyed it in the UK. You got rid of Italian cinema, French cinema, German cinema—everything they have destroyed—Japanese cinema which was so prominent. And now you have come here to destroy us. But I think, that it’s going to take them a while and it’s not going to be that easy because our cultures differ.
If they were to bring one of their family dramas here, they’d have had a problem. So, only their Titanics their sharks and their Robots will work.

How is the experience of stardom? I can’t think of anyone else who has been a star for this long.

I don’t believe in this. I don’t believe in stardom.

Sure, but it is an experience yet. I mean, sure you have…

I am just lucky that I have had a fairly long period of time. It’s 43 years and it’s very heartening to know there are still people who…

Sorry to interrupt you, but I want to explain this. Because maybe you don’t believe in it so much, that gives you the objectivity to look at the phenomenon.

I really don’t know whether that is the right attitude, to look at it that way. I wonder how others look at it. I have never spoken to them about it because this is not something we talk about on the set. I wonder what they think. Perhaps you would know better of what they think about it. If you were to brief me on that then I would be able to react to it. On my own, I just feel that I am committed to a profession where I am an actor. Somebody comes up with an idea, a story. I look at it purely from the point of view of what I am going to be doing in it and whether it’s going to be a good story to make into a film and I just go ahead and do it. Now, all the other things are frills which I am really not interested in. I would rather be concentrating on the character, the role—what I am doing—and look at the fineries of it right then. Whether this is going to make me a star, or whether I am going to be in some number-race or what not… I have never looked at it that way because I don’t know what it means.

Clearly the media is proliferated, manifold. Films are all over the media. Other than that, can you think of a way in which the interaction between the stars and the media has changed for the better or for worse?

The stars were more elusive in the early years because of the lack of communication through the medium of media. Perhaps there was just one magazine that wrote about cinema. Now we have millions of them. There used to be one Filmfare Awards, after so many years. Now you have one every…

Every month…

No, every other day. You have a billion cameras following you wherever you go. One billion cameras. Every phone, every mobile, is a camera. So there is a record of you, irrespective of whether you want it or not. You step out of the house and you are sure to be recorded. So it’s a problem for us because if they don’t have information of your activity, they will take out special magazines on your dress, or the shoes that you wear: “Hey look, I don’t think I like his shoes very much.” And they have a close-up there. So, when somebody is following you, they used look at your face first but now they start from the shoes, and they go up onto the trousers and the shirt and the jacket. That’s become a value to the media. There are special magazines which have special issues which only talk about dresses that people wear.

Yes, they do.

So, it’s painful because every time you go out in public you have to make sure, “Gosh, where did I wear this before.” Because they are going to comment on this and say: “He has only one pair of shoes.” Intricate it has become, this whole business of media attention. Cyberspace. You know, whatever we are talking of now will be out in a couple of hours. I will do it myself. And that is one of the answers that you are looking for— the celebrity never had an opportunity to make a comment.

Yes, in his own space.

Obviously. (Earlier) whatever was conveyed to the public was done through the medium of media. And if the media like you, you are a good guy. If they don’t like you, you are a bad guy. It was all dependent on them.
But now, I write my own news. I went here, I did this, I didn’t like this, I like that— and that becomes a news item. So fairly, it’s become easy for the media because they don’t have to visit me to know what I am doing. They can just read my blog or my twitter and make news out of it. That’s how things have changed. I don’t think media is going to die. I think it’s going to survive and it’s going to progress even more greatly. I think everybody needs them because no matter how interested you are in the cyberspace and no matter how many millions of people are on it right now and if there are millions more… for some reason or the other, the morning paper is a document which kind of justifies everything that is happening in the country, and with individuals, and therefore that is believed. The only thing that has changed, as I said— I now have an opportunity to contradict something which has been wrongly interpreted. Whether it is believed or not is another point or story, but at least I have the satisfaction of having clarified myself for a given contrary statement.

Can you name three film songs that have always stayed with you? Hindi film songs, that are not yours?

I have always liked Waqt Ne Kiya Kya Haseen Sitam from Guru Dutt’s film Kaagaz Ke Phool. Most of Guru Duttji‘s songs in all his films have been simply brilliant. The whole history of music in cinema has been filled with such great lyrics and music that it’s very difficult to spontaneously come up with three songs. But songs of that nature have always…

Okay, and one of yours?

I have hated all of them so it won’t be proper to name them.

All of them? What about something from Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s film Mili?

They were all beautiful films. Abhimaan had perhaps some of the best music that you can hear. And that was because of the great genius of S.D. Burman. And it’s still alive, and still relevant. We, in a sense, are perhaps more remembered than a couple of generations before us because the television keeps us alive by showing our old films and that’s how we are still around.

You know we spoke about so many changes. Were there any changes in particular that you found it harder or longer to adapt to?

There have been many changes and I think that they have all been for the betterment of the industry. Certainly the professionalism, the managerial capacity of all production houses and most importantly the opening of doors to the ladies, to the females in our industry. That was never seen before. Earlier on in the sets, you never saw any ladies working on set, other than the hairdresser of the leading lady, or her companion. The woman power in cinema has become huge and their percentage is a lot more than the male fans, which I appreciate greatly because I think that women are 50 percent of the force of our country— their strength, their power and their thinking. And they need that position and they need to be encouraged and they need to be there.

But I was wondering, were there any changes in particular that you took longer to adapt to? As the changes came, were there any changes that you can think of— that you were not very comfortable with and so took longer to adjust to?

No, I never took…

Long to adjust to the changes, I would imagine.

But it’s okay. I accepted it and went ahead with it.

But when you look back, we are talking so much about 99-100 years back, what do you think were some of the turning points in Indian cinema, off the top of your head, that you can think of?

Its acceptability— first. Its great acceptability now. As one that has somehow been able to cross all these social barriers and now become so acceptable that every second youth in the country wants to come and join the movies. Families are more accepting of cinema. If not cinema, then television… or whether it is modeling or whether it is theatre. Theatre was always there. It was considered a more refined art, it still is. But just the fact that it’s moved away from that stigma of being looked down upon, that perhaps is one of the biggest achievements. I personally believe that every generation or decade or 15 years gives us an opportunity to look back and admire what happened. 15 to 20 years ago, those people were being looked down upon as doing something wrong by the ones that came 20 years before them. So, let us say, for example in the late 60s or the early 70s, when the so called ‘Angry Young Man’ came it was really looked upon as a social revolution— not by the actor but by the writer, because Salim-Javed thought that it was the time of great unrest and great upheaval within the country. And therefore the creation of this one man who would take on the establishment, and so on. I am merely a guy who was just passing by and was asked to act in it. I never deliberately went up, telling them that we should change social norms. We are not those people, we are just actors. It so happens that the writers think like that. And the writers are impressed by what happens in the country.
So when that happened there were many purists of that time, or 15 years before that time, who felt that this was a lot of rubbish and the kind of films we made were not good and not of standard. We admired them, we still do. I would regret the fact that I never had an opportunity to work with a Guru Dutt, a Bimal Roy, or a Mehboob (Khan). As would perhaps some of today’s generation regret the fact that they were unable to work with a Manmohan Desai, a Prakash Mehra, a Ramesh Sippy or a Yash Chopra, who were of the times when I was working with them. And this is going to happen in another 10 to 15 years time. People will say, “Gosh, I wish I worked in a film with Sanjay Leela Bhansali or with Tigmanshu Dhulia or Anurag Kashyap.” So many great films have been made now. All these big commercial hits that Shah Rukh (Khan), Salman (Khan) and Aamir (Khan) are churning out every six months. I am sure that they will have the same kind of reaction. But for that moment and for that year there is that initial hesitation of not acknowledging them because they are doing something new and fresh. We talk about that today— the language not being there, the written work not being there. But if you talk to a modern filmmaker; modern meaning the filmmaker of today’s times; he will say that this is the way our youth are talking. This is the way people are communicating with each other. And what has actually come into cinema is a certain sense of reality. Of late, within the past one or two years, a few directors have brought in a certain style of cinema, still keeping in mind the box-office but with a lot more realism. So you have Vicky Donor, Paan Singh Tomar, Gangs of Wasseypur and Barfi! which is so exciting. I always feel that this is a fantastic period and I consider myself extremely fortunate that I have been able to be a part of each phase and enjoy what comes my way.

The one thing that is most remarkable about you is the way in which you have never let your legacy become a trap, you have never let it imprison you in the past. Younger directors and actors who work with you today are perhaps much more hung up on your past than you are yourself. This is a very difficult baggage to shed for anyone, let alone someone like you, who has been part of such exquisite glory. Was there any mental rigor involved in constantly shedding that baggage of the great past?

I don’t know if it’s great. You are talking about it.

But it’s spoken of as great. You know that.

Yes, but I don’t talk about it because I just feel that its time is over. Then I must look for a job tomorrow. How can I look back on it and say, “Yes, I did some fantastic work.”  That would be so stupid of me.

It’s not so easy because you know that lot of your contemporaries, for example, they couldn’t move on, they couldn’t reinvent themselves… It is not an easy thing to do for anybody, not just actors.

I think that this is a fallacy. I don’t think that this is entirely correct. All my contemporaries. Shashi Kapoorji of course is indisposed. But Shatrughan Sinha, Vinod Khanna, Dharamji (Dharmendra), Jeetendra they have all moved on and they are still functioning very well. Shatrughan and Vinod still do films. They not only did films but went into politics and they achieved heights by becoming ministers in the Cabinet. Dharamji is still working in films and has just given a super-hit with his two sons. Jeetendra has established this massive TV company, which is incredible. So you can’t really say that…

That is a very optimistic way of looking at it.

No it’s not. It’s a fact.

But what about what (Gabriel Garcia) Marquez calls “the charitable deceptions of nostalgia”— we are all prone to that. It’s not just about stars, it’s not just about past glory. Are you completely immune to that?

I can talk about it. If you were to ask me…

But does it affect you? Is it something that you go back to?

Affect me in what way?

Nostalgia is the longing for a past.

No, I would love to work with the younger generation now. I would love to work with some of the new stars. I would love to work with Ranbir (Kapoor), Parineeti (Chopra), and all the youngsters. I have already worked with Sujoy (Ghosh) and I hope he takes me in his next film again because he made a wonderful film— Kahaani. Shoojit (Sircar) and me have already done a film, which unfortunately is not getting released. But he did a wonderful job with Vicky Donor. I would like to work with Anurag Kashyap, Tigmanshu Dhulia and all these wonderful people. I look forward to that. I don’t go back to see because that is not going to be relived again. I can’t go back in age. I am now 70.

Is there anything that you miss at all?

Of course I will miss my association with the film industry and the times that we have spent together but not in the way you are wanting me to miss them.

I am very glad that you don’t miss them and that you are in the future, not even in the present. That apart, you know I remember watching an interview of yours in BBC. I think it was in 1983. You were talking about how it could be really dangerous for cinema if there wasn’t any proper legislation. Do you remember any points where you were concerned about the future of Indian cinema?

No. I have never been ill-concerned about the future of Indian cinema. I know that it is such a potent force that it will survive irrespective of what happens. Many obstacles have come up but we have always ridden them (out) and that’s primarily due to the fact that the people of our country are so fond of this medium that they will keep it alive. We will just have to keep moving with the times and keep producing films.

Are there still any cinematic aspirations that remain unfulfilled?

I would rather pass this question to a future producer or a director. I don’t have the capacity to be able to tell them, “Hey let’s do this,” because I haven’t done it, or something like that. I would rather hope that some director thinks about something that he would wish me to do and then throws it to me as a challenge. It’s a gauntlet that I would love to pick up. When Sanjay Leela Bhansali proposed Black for me, it was a huge challenge— to work, to learn the language, to study the characters and so on. When (R.) Balki did Paa with me, I came to know about progeria while playing a 13 year old. These are all experiences that make it very exciting and I shall always look out for such instances. I never knew what Balki was thinking or what Sanjay was thinking beforehand. I didn’t go to him and tell him to make a film on progeria or let me play a 13 year old kid. He did. And thank god for that because I don’t really have that capacity but I would love to have a challenge thrown at me and see if I can handle it.

As much as you love challenges, how come you never tried your hand at direction, or writing a movie?

I don’t know direction. I still marvel at the fact that some of these youngsters… and how well equipped they are, and how knowledgeable they are about cinema. Where to place the camera, where to edit, and how long the shot should be. It’s a marvel. I will not be able to do that. I need to go to a school to train.

What about writing a movie?

No, never. I don’t have that capacity. If there is something that is already written and if I am going to discuss it with the director, before going on set, of course. Then I would love to discuss it and give my point of view but most of the time it gets rejected, so I stopped doing that.

In an interview which you had given to CNN you had said that one thing that distinguishes our industry is that it’s like a fraternity, it’s like a family. The fact that everyone is tightly knit with each other. Does it have its downsides as well?

I don’t see why there should be a problem there.

It’s very unique to us. Isn’t it?

I would look upon it as another challenge. To be on back-slapping terms with your colleague, yet when the camera goes on you would not hesitate to slap him if you were required to do that and how to convert that emotion so quickly, so rapidly, and so effectively, I think that’s a quality in itself.

You said that you couldn’t think of cinematic aspirations that you have for yourself but if you were to wish something for our movies what would you wish for them? I mean, somewhere you would like them to go, or something you would like them to achieve?

I think that we are moving quite well. I am happy that our products that were looked upon very cynically and negatively, by the overseas audiences in particular… The Americans and people in the United Kingdom have now changed their mindset about us. Things that we would never imagine are now virtually being considered and looked upon by them…
I don’t like the word ‘crossover’. There are films where Indian artists are being taken in their films and vice versa. One of the largest stores in London, the United Kingdom, Selfridges celebrates Indian cinema for one entire month by decorating their entire store and their windows depict the theme of Indian cinema. Where would you ever have imagined this in the 1940s, fifties or even in the sixties? These are things that make me happy. I like the fact that if I am travelling abroad and I meet somebody who doesn’t look Indian, doesn’t speak the language, yet he recognizes me, and that’s a great achievement. These are all very heartening things that are happening to us and I would want it to spread even more.
I was at an event in Jaipur couple of years back, I was stepping out of the hotel. And there were many tourists that were about to leave the hotel as well and there was a huge group of Chinese tourists who were on their way to see some of the sights. And all the girls broke away from that group, came and touched my feet, said Namaste. I said: “Gosh, where are you from?” One of the girls said: “I’m from China and I watch your films and we love them. These are some of the customs and traditions that we have picked up after seeing your films.” That’s very heartening to know. It’s not just the star value but it’s some of the other traditional values of our country and also the culture that has also been imbibed by them. I remember after Baghban was released, which was, as you know, made by B.R. Chopra and directed by Ravi Chopra, and had a story about children who had maltreated their father. And at about 3 o’clock in the morning, Ravi Chopra got a phone call from an absolute outsider and he said, “Mr. Ravi Chopra, you don’t know who I am. I am so and so and I am calling you from London. I have just walked out of the theatre after seeing Baghban. I want to tell you that my father and me had a dispute. We both live in the same city but I haven’t seen him for 25 years. I have rung up to tell you that I am going straight to my father and telling him I’m sorry.” That was just so moving. So when you have these incidents happening, you feel good about what you’ve been doing.

I think this will be a good note to end the interview on.