Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (28 page)

In a scenario where anyone with money could conceivably produce a film, the most common discursive manifestation of
boundary-work
is the frequent use of the epithet, “proposal-maker,” a term, deployed with great disdain by the vast majority of my informants, which describes a figure whom they regarded as the embodiment of the prevailing work
ethic within the industry. In filmmakers’ statements, a proposal-maker refers to a producer who is not interested in exerting the effort necessary for turning out a quality film, but simply runs after stars; this figure of the lazy, slapdash producer operates as a trope to showcase the conscientiousness and commitment of the filmmaker wielding the term. For example, R. Mohan, a businessman who made his fortunes with the nationally marketed Good Knight brand of mosquito repellant and then turned to Hindi film production in the early 1990s, after producing Malayalam films in his native state of Kerala, contrasted his style of producing a film in one shooting schedule with what he found to be the disjunctive mode dominant in Bombay. He attributed the fragmented production process to actor insecurity and producer complicity: “The Hindi stars are slightly nervous; they have this insecure feeling—‘I don’t know how many days I have.’ So what happens is when one becomes successful, what they do is they generally sign fifteen to twenty films, so it gives them a broader base of income. They get fifteen advances and it suits the producer also, because most of the producers here, they don’t want this one schedule business. . . because many of them are proposal-makers rather than really being filmmakers” (Mohan, interview, May 1996). Mohan then elaborated upon how a proposal-maker would go about financing and producing a film: first he would needle a star endlessly until he relented and agreed to allot a day or two in the future to shoot for the film; with this commitment, the proposal-maker approaches a music director (composer) who, because of the star’s willingness, readily agrees to join the project; then the proposal-maker contacts an audio company and offers the audio rights to his film in return for an advance payment, which the company obliges based on the combination of star and music director in the film; the proposal-maker uses that payment to pay the star and cover the costs of shooting for a few days; the proposal-maker then edits that footage to show to distributors in order to obtain an advance from them, which he uses to fund shooting for another schedule, after which he repeats the process again with other distributors. “I wouldn’t call this the right way of making films.” Mohan asserted. “That means basically, you don’t even have a script at the time or a subject.” In the chapter four sketch, the producer— Vinod Lakhani—who approaches Vijay Khanna with an idea for a film, rather than a completed script, could potentially be regarded as a proposal-maker.

The epithet of proposal-maker, with its associations of being careless, uncommitted, and disorganized, primarily gains its meaning and value in relation to commercial outcome. Commercial success has been and
continues to be the critical factor in establishing one’s credentials and staying power as a legitimate filmmaker within the Hindi film industry. Commercially successful producers, though still criticized for a variety of reasons by members of the industry, are never referred to as “proposalmakers,” no matter what the circumstances are of their
production process
and working style. The Working Group explicitly affirmed that in its report. After describing the broad categories of film producers in India— established producers, ad-hoc producers, director/producers, and producers of good-quality low-or medium-budget films, the Report states, “there is a certain amount of mobility [between the categories] and there are cases where a new person enters the field of film production as an ‘adventurer’ and if his film becomes a hit, he moves to the category of established producers” (Karanth 1980: 17).

Many of the filmmakers I met who were first-generation members of the industry exemplified this mobility. For example, the late B. R. Chopra, a producer/director who came to Bombay from Lahore during the Partition of India, characterized his entry into the world of filmmaking as completely unplanned. Chopra’s early involvement with films was as a film journalist in Lahore. In 1947 some businessmen friends of Chopra’s father approached him with the idea of making a film, and even though Chopra and his colleagues started working on the film prior to Partition, they had to abort the project due to the ensuing violence in Lahore. Once Chopra came to Bombay, he revived the project with the same partners, and hired a director as he had no experience in direction, but unfortunately the film, released in 1949, “bombed at the box-office in a very big way; it was thrown out by the public completely, and we were on the road” (B. R. Chopra, interview, 7 August 1996). Chopra relayed a fortuitous set of circumstances that lifted him out of his slump: he came up with an idea for a film that he was able to present to a wealthy friend from Lahore, who told him that he was willing to invest the money necessary to make the film. When Chopra responded that he would be unable to pay him back if the picture did not succeed commercially, his friend assured him that he would bear all of the losses, on the condition that Chopra direct the film. “I said, ‘I don’t know how to direct a movie! I’ve never been a director,’ ” Chopra recalled. “He says, ‘I don’t know, I have faith that you can do it.’ So that’s how I was made to direct the picture and I must say it’s only a miracle and the divine grace that I was able to succeed in the very first picture. . . I was able to stay in the films and have continued to stay because of that one success. Once you are successful, then of course, things
become easy: people start respecting you” (Chopra, interview, 7 August 1996).
⁶

If commercial outcome is ultimately the criterion that distinguishes established filmmakers from all others, then why the persistent discourse about proposal-makers? The apparent rate of commercial failure does not dissuade new entrants into the industry from other businesses. Furthermore, since commercial success eludes most producers, including the established ones, box-office outcome is not an effective basis of
distinction
. The boundary-work of the sort discussed above differentiates filmmakers who possess the potential for commercial success from those who do not, which can translate into tangible benefits, such as attracting capital for future projects through distributors or new investors. Part of producer Mukesh Bhatt’s complaint against people from other businesses trying their hand at filmmaking was that they did not choose the right people to collaborate with in the film industry. Describing new investors as susceptible to false promises of easy money and fame, Bhatt said, “They will not come to a genuine person, because a genuine person won’t give them a picture which is only a bed of roses. They’ll give them the clear picture, ‘
ki
[that] listen, it’s a tough job; it’s hard work; and it’s not a bed of roses, you have to really slog it out,’ which doesn’t suit their ears because they’re coming here for fun more than business” (Mukesh Bhatt, interview, October 1996).

Bhatt’s insistence that filmmaking is a “tough job” rather than “a bed of roses” points to another important function of boundary-work—to represent filmmaking as a challenging profession that requires specialized skill and knowledge. Training in filmmaking in India has primarily been through apprenticeship and heredity, which thereby garners much less symbolic capital—even among filmmakers—in comparison to professions that require formal higher education. If anyone can produce a film, then filmmaking does not possess prestige. This is akin to Shah Rukh Khan’s point in chapter two about Hindi films’ low cultural status resulting from their role as common entertainment. Just as Hindi films were not regarded as special because everyone saw them, filmmaking has been devalued because of the perception that anyone can do it. The effort to represent filmmaking as work and not “fun” also articulates with the concerns about respectability, discussed in chapter three, as it accords with filmmakers’ valorization of middle-classness, exemplifying their concern with social status.

The lengthy exchange between Malhotra and Agrawal in the chapter four sketch represents the key role played by distributors in the filmmaking process. Historically, production and distribution have not been integrated in the Bombay film industry, and Hindi films have been distributed throughout India and the world by a decentralized network of independent distributors. These distributors have been one of the primary sources of finance for Hindi film production until the entry of media conglomerates and corporate producers around 2003. Producers have financed films primarily through the sale of their theatrical distribution rights, a process that begins from the moment a film is “launched,” or its particulars announced at the
mahurat
—a ritual undertaken by a producer, marking the start of a new film project. From the time of the
mahurat
, producers start selling their film—or more accurately “the package,” which at the bare minimum includes the director, the male star, and the music director—to distributors. Some producers, because of their past record and the marketability of the key personnel involved, are able to declare “all territories sold” on the day of the
mahurat
, while others have to work hard to acquire distributors for their films.
⁷
The somewhat hyperbolic manner in which Malhotra tries to convince Agrawal to buy the rights for his film was a practice that I encountered frequently throughout my fieldwork.

For the purposes of Hindi film distribution, India is divided into five major territories: Bombay; Delhi/U.P. [Uttar Pradesh]/East Punjab; C.P. [Central Province]/C.I. [Central India]/Rajasthan; Eastern; and South (Map 1). A sixth territory, known as the “
Overseas Territory
,” was undifferentiated from the point of view of distributors in India, but by the late 1990s it became subdivided into North America, United Kingdom, Gulf States, South Africa, etc. The five territories in India are divided into fourteen subterritories (Map 2), which may be further subdivided.
⁸
Since a single distributor is unable to bear the cost of an entire territory, these subdivisions are the more salient distribution categories in terms of structuring film transactions, as depicted in the chapter four sketch by Agrawal, whose business encompasses the Delhi/U.P. subterritory of the larger Delhi/U.P./East Punjab territory. Until 2001, the Rajshri Group was the only national distribution company—referred to as an “all-India” distributor in trade parlance—while all other distribution concerns were specific to a territory or a subterritory. The significance of distribution territories for the creation of a taxonomy of the film indus
try’s audiences, raised in the lunchtime conversation between Chadda, Malhotra, and Menon, is addressed in greater detail in chapter eight.

Map 1
Distribution Territories for Hindi Cinema.

Rather than encompassing India’s 28 states in their current territorial integrity, the film territories that developed in the 1930s, after the arrival of the talkie, preserve a colonial geographical logic, both in terms of their boundaries and their names: Central Province; Central India; East Punjab; Nizam.
⁹
Thus, the territories do not correspond to the contemporary political division of India into linguistically organized states. For example, the political-linguistic state of Maharashtra, of which Bombay is the capital, is divided and portioned into the Bombay territory and the subterritories of C.P./Berar and Nizam. The Bombay territory, which is considered the territory with the highest revenue potential, includes the city of Bombay and its suburbs, the entire state of Gujarat, parts of
Karnataka, and only parts of Maharashtra. Another example of the distribution network overriding political boundaries is the inclusion of the independent nation-states of Nepal and Bhutan as parts of the domestic Eastern territory rather than the Overseas Territory.
¹⁰

Map 2
Distribution Subterritories (Circuits) for Hindi Cinema.

In addition to dividing India into territories and subterritories, the distribution network also subdivides each territory by revenue-earning potential into A-, B-, and C-class centers. A-class centers are generally more populated—cities and large towns—with more cinemas, thus generating the most revenues for the distributor. Another defining feature of an A-class center is the ability to fully collect revenues, for producers and distributors frequently lament that once their films are in B-or C-class centers, which include touring cinemas, they have no means of accurately tracking a film’s earnings. In practice, such a division meant that
films were first released in A-class centers to garner their full commercial potential, after which they slowly made their way to B-and C-class centers.
¹¹
Over the years, due to numerous factors such as piracy and the increasing significance of satellite television, the temporal lag between A-, B-, and C-class centers has reduced drastically as producers and distributors try to recoup the greatest revenues as quickly as possible.
¹²

Agrawal and Malhotra’s negotiation over the price of the film referred to two of the three main types of distribution arrangements existing in the film industry: the minimum guarantee
system
, commonly referred to as an “mg”; and the commission system. The most prevalent arrangement in the Hindi film industry has been the mg system, where the distributor bids for and guarantees the producer a specific sum that is disbursed in installments from the onset of production. Distributors normally pay 30 to 40 percent of the contracted amount to the film’s producer during the production phase and the remainder at the time of the delivery of prints. At the time of the film’s release, distributors pay for the print and publicity costs as well as theater rental. After distributors cover their costs—rights, prints, publicity, theater rental—and extract their 25 percent commission, any remaining box-office revenue, referred to as the “overflow,” is split equally with the producer. In such a system, distributors bear the majority of the risk of a film’s commercial outcome, since the producer is guaranteed a certain price for the film’s rights. As the boxoffice outcome of any film is highly uncertain, producers with clout and power in the industry have been known to price their films in order to make a profit even prior to the film’s release—sometimes even before the onset of production—which is referred to as a “table profit.” Although the minimum guarantee system ostensibly accrues profits to producers once there is an overflow, the chances of a film earning enough revenues at the box-office to generate an overflow are relatively small.
¹³
Another factor in producers’ pricing decisions is their distrust of distributors with respect to sharing the overflow, since distributors frequently use the revenues from successful films to cover their losses from unsuccessful films. Such a scenario is a consequence of the absence of a transparent system of data collection, especially when distributors are based far from Bombay.

The other two common distribution arrangements—commission and outright sale—have varying levels of risk associated with them. When a film is distributed on a commission basis, distributors bear the least amount of risk because the most they may invest in a film are in its publicity and print costs. Distributors deduct a certain percentage (25 to 50 percent) of box-office receipts as a commission and remit the rest to the
producer. In an outright sale, distributors pay producers for the right to distribute their films for a given time period, during which all expenses incurred and all income earned are solely the distributor’s. Not a very common practice within India, outright sale was the most common arrangement for overseas distribution until the late 1990s, when certain producers began to put in place systems necessary to recover profits from overseas markets.
¹⁴

TABLE 3
CLASSIFICATION OF COMMERCIAL OUTCOME

Distributors are not only critical to the production process, but also to the classification of commercial outcome. Whether a Hindi film is categorized as a “hit” or a “flop” by the trade is actually based upon whether or not distributors make a profit and how much of it they make (
Table 3
). For example, a film that earns twice its cost, by which is meant the distributor’s cost, is categorized only as a “semi-hit.” Furthermore, even though distribution is decentralized, and there are very few all-India distributors, the trade press tends to represent an all-India or “universal” hit as the benchmark, so that if a film does extremely well in one or two territories, earning more than thrice its cost for its distributors—which could be categorized as a “super-hit”—but does not fare as well in other parts of India, its ranking gets downgraded.

Thus, the determination of commercial success or failure is actually connected to the distributor and not the theatrical audience. It is the distributor’s pricing decisions rather than the number of tickets sold that determines whether a film is classified as a box-office success or failure. Such a formulation is connected to the fragmented nature of production and distribution, where the sale of distribution rights has been the most common source of finance capital for filmmaking. In the mg system, the distributor’s profit is a fact that could be independent of how many people actually saw a film, for a distributor could have paid a high price for the rights of a film, yet may not have earned as high a profit as anticipated; therefore, the amount of profit is not necessarily congruent with the size of the viewing audience. The auction system for allocating
distributors to films produces what is known in economic theory as a “
winner’s curse
,” so the distributor who wins the rights has the highest chance of having overestimated what a film will gross and therefore has the highest chance for a flop.
¹⁵
As the buyers of films, distributors occupy the structural position of consumers—albeit a specialized one— within the filmmaking process, but they are rarely implicated in the wideranging discussions about the commercial outcome of a film carried out in the film industry, the media, and among viewers. Instead, box-office performance is discussed by filmmakers in terms of audience composition, tastes, and desires. Hits and flops are interpreted and represented as indices of audience subjectivities rather than of distributors’ commercial predictions.