INSIDE THE SLEAZE FACTORY
The sun has set on the once profitable soft porn video film industry of the web, with its tenminute lowbudget films shot in rented farmhouses and airless flats. Two of its ‘stars,’ originally from small towns, look back at their time in that world of quick money, fame and notoriety
› When people in my home town gave me disapproving looks, I told them that what they watched were cheat shots, and that I did not shoot intimate scenes with women.
MANISH AGRAWAL, actor, originally from Shimbhaoli, Uttar Pradesh
Manish Agrawal shot his first softporn film in a single take. “Mil gaya (got it),” shouted the director, after capturing 10 minutes of kissing and cuddling on a Handycam in a room with a pungent smell and sky-blue walls. The 10-minute movie, titled Hot Ashiq, was meant to garner hits on YouTube –“Hot” to push the film up in Internet search; and “Ashiq” to denote a love angle. A visibly uneasy Manish, in his body-hugging grey T-shirt and rugged jeans, looked away from the girl and hurriedly left the room.
That day, Hot Ashiq was one of the 10 soft porn videos shot inside a farmhouse in Najafgarh, outer Delhi.
Most of the content in this segment was created between 2008 (when YouTube launched in India) and mid-2016. After that, the platform introduced changes in its monetisation policy and such films stopped being profitable. The industry shut shop.
But back in November 2012, when Hot Ashiq was made, digital soft porn was a flourishing business. The mushrooming of smartphones, cheaper data packs and an abundance of aspiring actors triggered a wave of digital erotic films in Hindi and other regional languages.
After signing an agreement, anyone between 18 and 40 years could act in this new genre of short films, which – quite distinct from hardcore porn – were called “single X” or “hot films”.
Apart from cleavage shots or “glamour” as industry wallahs describe it, these films were low budget, shot indoors, had titillating titles and were not story-driven.
By the time Manish did his first film, more than 500 soft porn channels were up and running on YouTube. Thousands of men and women were getting absorbed in the industry. Most of them, including Manish, hoped it would lead to some “achha kaam” (dignified work). Many vanished before even making their presence felt in the digital industry. But that day in November, Manish, 32, well-built, fair, left an impression on everyone. “I became a star with my very first film. It was viewed more than a million times over within a week,” claims Manish. Word about his performance spread in the industry. His dates for the next three months were blocked. People in the business gave him multiple titles including ‘Playboy’ and ‘The Amitabh Bachchan of Hot Films.’ He was so busy he couldn’t even take calls from his family in Shimbhaoli town, 70 km east of Delhi, or attend to his job as a conductor with Uttar Pradesh Roadways or make sense of his newly acquired success.
One of Manish’s bus-driver friends had introduced him to a coordinator named Guddu, who had pictures of more than 200 aspiring ‘models’ on his phone.
When a ‘model’ increased his fees the night before the Hot Ashiq shoot, Guddu suggested Manish’s name to the director. “I was not like those lecherous boys who get excited seeing girls in skimpy outfits. I was a professional. That’s what Guddu ji said,” Manish tells me, as he works out in an upmarket Noida gym, where he has been living in a one-room flat for more than a decade.
By February 2013, Manish says, he had acted in more than 1,000 soft porn movies shot in Delhi, NCR and Uttar Pradesh. He would have featured in Nepali X-rated films too had he not rejected the offer because of lack of dates. “Manish, you have arrived and how. That’s what I used to tell myself,” Manish says of his unexpected success.
CHEAT SHOTS
Shimbhaoli town in western Uttar Pradesh, where Manish was born and spent his early years, shares its name with one of India’s largest sugar refineries. The refinery is to Shimbhaoli what the Taj Mahal is to Agra. Most of the town’s men would have migrated if it were not for the enterprises dependent on the refinery – transport, telecom, eateries, hotels, construction. Shimbhaoli is where a shopping mall came up five years ago, where getting a college degree means moving up the social ladder, and where everyone knows the handful of girls who drive two-wheelers.
While in school, Manish and his elder brother used to accompany their father as he hopped weekly markets, setting up his makeshift clothes shop, after a family feud left him in penury. “We were just surviving,” says Manish. When he turned 21 and his parents got him married, he realised that if he had to take charge of his life, he had to leave Shimbhaoli.
He was 25 when he left for Ghaziabad to work as a sales executive in a furniture store. One of his roommates told him about a recruitment drive to hire conductors for Uttar Pradesh Roadways. He laughed at them, he thought the job was below his dignity. But eventually, he was the only one among them to get that job.
For Manish, his previous jobs were but halts on his journey to stardom. From the time he was a schoolboy, he used to imitate Amitabh Bachchan. All his life, people told him he was born to act. “Why are you wasting your time here? Go to Mumbai,” passengers on the Noida- Haldwani route told him.
But neighbours gave him disapproving looks when he visited Shimbhaoli the first time after joining the soft porn industry. Everyone had watched his films. At least, that was the impression they gave him. “What kinds of films are these, Manish ji? You didn’t feel ashamed doing this?” people asked him. To them, as well as to his family members – parents and wife – Manish said that those were cheat shots. “Haven’t you seen Seeta Aur Geeta? You think there were two heroines in that film? It is technology,” he would explain, referring to the 1972 Hindi comedy starring Hema Malini in a double role.
RIP MORNING SHOW
Manish’ story is intertwined with technological advancements in the entertainment sector that began around two decades ago.
By mid-2000, digital technology replaced film prints in theatres. That proved to be the death knell for morning shows (read adult films), which in turn triggered the rise of the CD film industry. These were low-budget films with a rustic flavour that were not released in cinema halls but distributed in the market as CDs worth ~25 to ~40.
By late 2000, piracy phased out the CD players. The huge workforce of the paralysed CD film industry – as well as outsiders – now shifted to the web. Small-time producers and owners of regional music companies identified the money-making potential of the video streaming platform and started churning out short, digital versions of morning shows.
Subrat Kar, co-founder and CEO of video intelligence company Vidooly, says, “Advertisers just wanted to join the digital bandwagon. They were mass targeting and didn’t care about the web channels on which their ads were displayed.”
Sub-standard acting, poor production quality and wafer-thin plots became the hallmarks of these films. It became a cottage industry of sorts, with films being shot in rented as well as private flats, residences, bungalows, and farmhouses.
Not everyone was impressed with making quick money in this manner. Noidabased Ravi Kasana, director of regional films, recalls being offered ~2 lakh for directing 15 soft porn films. “I was in debt and needed money but I refused because I didn’t want to be that guy who made those kind of films,” says Kasana. He closely tracked the career trajectory of young men and women who joined the industry. “Many girls who started off with these films got work in B-grade full-length feature films. But the men struggled to come out of the YouTube circuit,” says Kasana.
THE DOWNTURN
In early 2016, Manish found himself stuck in that loop. He began questioning his choices. “There was no way people would consider me for any movie meant for family viewing,” he says. “Sunny Leone and Emraan Hashmi have both acted in extremely bold films. Still, people click selfies with them. But people look at us differently despite the fact that there is far less skin show in our films,” he says.
Manish was also fed up with what he called an “overdose” of erotic films. Boredom started seeping in. He was done with all the kissing, caressing and heaving. Around that time, YouTube’s policies regarding broadcast and content monetisation were getting refined; dumping volumes of softcore porn online was no longer as profitable as it originally was.
Users could flag content – including nudity or sexual content – that YouTube would then take down for violation of community guidelines.
Secondly, copyright infringements were becoming increasingly high. “Within minutes of putting out original content on the channel, others would post it on their channels without permission. It affected the ability to monetise,” says Subrat Kar of Vidooly.
Thirdly, brands became conscious about where their ads were displayed. “They didn’t want to put their ad on unhygienic content,” Kar adds.
And YouTube changed its policies. “Initially, our requirement for enabling ads for a given channel was purely viewership based, where a channel had to reach 10,000 aggregate views to become eligible to monetise,” says a YouTube spokesperson. But the policy was updated in January 2018. “As per the new policy, creators monetising on YouTube will need to have accrued 4,000 hours of watch-time within the past 12 months and have 1,000 subscribers to be eligible to earn revenue from their channels,” he says.
Effectively, it meant diminishing returns on investment. The new arrangement did not suit small-time players. They got weeded out from the industry. Today, the game belongs to big production houses and studios that have been producing films and TV serials for years.
IMAGE MAKEOVER
Fast forward to mid-April 2018. Manish is back in the Najafgarh farmhouse. This time, it is part of an image makeover.
He has stopped doing sleazy films. “I am happy to have come out of that world,” he says. He has had miss-and-blink appearances in Salman Khan’s blockbuster Tiger Z inda Hai and the Manoj Bajpayee starrer Aiyaary.
Today Manish runs two YouTube channels which broadcast double-meaning comedies and crime shows, apart from directing films in these genres on a freelance basis.
At the farmhouse today, he has to direct 10 short comedies. Only one film has been canned and a power cut brings the shoot to a halt, leaving Manish annoyed.
Just then, a debutant female artiste on the set nervously approaches him for a selfie. Manish combs his hair, takes the girl’s phone and gracefully poses for the picture, displaying the V sign.