Famous grouse
Record-breaking films from the South are teaching Hindi cinema new lessons. Some of these are simply on the perils of vanity
The current mood in Bollywood is panic. Last week, two high-profile films, Heropanti 2 and Runway 34, with A-list stars (Tiger Shroff and Ajay Devgn), opened to sub-par numbers (Rs 6.5 crore and Rs 3 crore respectively), and they show little sign of reviving. It was the same with Shahid Kapoor’s cricketthemed Jersey the week before.
Meanwhile, the Kannada film KGF: Chapter 2 has crossed Rs 1,000 crore in box-office earnings worldwide. Over the weekend, its dubbed Hindi version made more money than the two Hindi releases. KGF is likely to outstrip Dangal and become the secondhighest-grossing Hindi film, after Baahubali 2: The Conclusion, which was originally made in Telugu. This means that Dangal, at #3, would be the first film on the list made in Hindi. Hence, the panic.
There has been much pontification about what has led to the current scenario — “South filmmakers are delivering the kinds of masala movies that Westernised Bollywood filmmakers have little appetite for ”; “South films have more conviction and imagination”; “South stars have built a massive following via dubbed films on TV, satellite and streaming”. All of this is true, but perhaps we should talk about something that, like a termite, has eaten away at the vitals of the Hindi film industry: Vanity.
For a while now, actors have paid paparazzi to take photos of them. A manager at a talent agency told me that many paparazzi receive retainers. When there aren’t enough events, they stage them, in their building compound or coming in or out of a gym, restaurant, airport or filmmaker’s office.
Advertorials, which started with newspaper supplements, has now infiltrated every form of communication, including social media. Everything can be bought, including some magazine covers, tweets and posts on the Instagram feeds of leading paparazzi.
Optics are everything. “Everything is paid. If we don’t pay, actors will. If they don’t pay, publicists will. It’s a vicious circle,” says a leading filmmaker.
The issue with this is that artists buy the spotlight, and begin to believe they have earned it. The level of delusion and hubris tends to be proportional to the mediocrity of the work. Instagram in particular has exacerbated the situation. The number of followers is being conflated with talent.
Casting agents admit to looking at the digital footprint of an artist before selecting them. The bigger it is, they reason, the more the artist can help promote a project. Meanwhile, leading artists forget that having millions of followers is not evidence that they can act, or draw an offline crowd.
The consistent success of South films has provided a much-needed reality check. As one distributor put it: “Aukaad samajh mein aa rahi hai (They are realising their status).”
I hope that this leads to introspection and some course-correction. Because ultimately, hype is just that — hype. What really matters in cinema is what happens in the frame between action and cut.
As Laurence Olivier said to Dustin Hoffman on the sets of the 1976 film Marathon Man (albeit in another context), “My dear boy, why don’t you just try acting?”