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Journalism of Courage
Just a couple of years ago one could not write the word ‘‘Bollywood’’ in an American newspaper without having to include a description of what it meant. Recently in Mumbai I had an unusual privilege of interacting with the senior editors of leading US newspapers. These editors had made a trip to Mumbai specially and made a request to meet Bollywood film-makers in order to get the hang of what makes Bollywood tick. The manner in which they listened to our making and marketing of movies made them gape. After that meeting I came to a conclusion, that in the past few years Bollywood has become shorthand, a buzzword for one of the most happening trends in America.
In a new India, multiplexes make it possible to screen a vast variety of movies, catering to different audiences. What’s happening is that from the traditional 1,500 seater’s they’ve come down to theaters which seat 150 or 300 people. So it gives the theater owners as well as audiences a lot of choices. It’s changing viewing habits.
It wouldn’t be entirely untrue to confess that even my success and the success of most film makers of my generation wouldn’t have been possible without the hours we spent in the cinema halls of India, which exclusively screened those Hollywood films. These were the classrooms where we learnt the ABCs of story telling through sound and picture—the ‘‘language of cinema.’’
Most filmmakers in Bollywood will concede that they owe their craft and the idiom that they flaunt as their own to Hollywood. Art is an image-using system. In order to create we draw from our inner well. This inner well is an artistic reservoir. As filmmakers, we in Bollywood realize that we have to maintain this artistic ecosystem. If we don’t give some attention to its upkeep, our wells are bound to become depleted, stagnant or blocked. And overproducing draws heavily on that artistic well. Over-tapping these wells is like over fishing, and leaves us with diminished resources. Our work dries up, and we start re-cycling. Then comes the time to replenish and restock our creative resources and fill the water afresh. Filling this well involves the active pursuit of images to refresh our artistic reservoirs, and for this we have always turned to Hollywood.
When we were kids, we often used to find great filmmakers like Ketan Anand, Manmohan Desai and Vijay Anand visiting our cinema halls. No prizes for guessing why they were there!
I remember once when I was struggling to put an ‘‘original’’ script together, the legendary IS Johar, a renowned comedian, filmmaker and Bollywood’s first intellectual, laughingly advised me, ‘‘Son, why don’t you ask your rich producer to buy you a ticket to London, see an American film, and come back and remake it with Indian actors? It is cheaper, less bothersome and guarantees success!’’ At the time I was horrified. Little did I know that in later years I would take that advice of his too seriously. Even today in this age of communication revolution the bulk of Bollywood filmmakers leans on the easily available pirated VCDs and DVDs to nourish their craft. The trade contemptuously refers to this generation as the ‘‘DVD directors.’’ Take away Hollywood and there’s no Bollywood. To fantasize about originality is one thing. To be completely original is a utopian dream, at least in Bollywood.
