Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (36 page)

This chapter has examined the prominent features of the work culture of the Hindi film industry and discussed the sentiments of disdain articulated by filmmakers about that culture. In their self-criticisms and admiration for Hollywood, Hindi filmmakers imply that there is a correct way to make films; the very existence and nature of their filmmaking practices demonstrate exactly the opposite—that there is no one way or “right way” to produce feature films. The next chapter examines how the structure and work culture of the industry are implicated in filmmakers’ understanding of risk and their practices of managing uncertainty.

In a span of four weeks in May and June 2010, two highly publicized, promoted, and anticipated films—
Kites
and
Raavan
— performed well below expectations at the domestic and overseas box-office and were declared “flops” by industry analysts, events reported extensively in the trade and general press. Both were big-budget films featuring major stars of the Hindi film industry, directed by highly respected directors, produced by experienced banners—the term for production company in industry parlance—and distributed worldwide by Reliance Big Pictures,
one of the few vertically integrated companies (production/distribution/ exhibition) and one of the most significant players in the Hindi film industry since 2007. Both films had also generated a great deal of press and media attention while under production and were promoted by Reliance Big at the Cannes Film Festival in 2009 and 2010—a fact that garnered further media coverage.

Each film had its particular “usps”—industry parlance for unique selling points:
Kites
featured the Mexican soap opera star Barbara Mori and was shot extensively
in
the United States and Mexico;
Raavan
was touted as a modern twist on the ancient Hindu epic
Ramayana
and was produced simultaneously in Hindi and Tamil—its director, Mani Rathnam, was a leading filmmaker of the Tamil film industry. Each film also featured principal personnel or combinations whose previous ventures had been commercially successful. For example, the specific combination of actor, actress, director, composer in
Raavan
—Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Rathnam, and A. R. Rahman—had achieved reasonable boxoffice success in 2007 with
Guru
. Meanwhile,
Kites
starred Hrithik Roshan and was produced by his father, Rakesh; every film produced and directed by the father and starring the son had been a top-grosser for that particular year. Although Rakesh Roshan did not direct
Kites
, its director, Anurag Basu, had become hot property in Bombay following three consecutive box-office successes; therefore, the weak box-office performance of both films attracted a fair amount of media attention and was represented as alarming in the trade press. For example, regarding the poor opening weekends of both films
, Film Information
commented, “The initial response of
Kites
this week has sent shock waves in the industry” (“Latest Position” May 2010); and “The unimpressive initial [gross] of this week’s
Raavan
at many centres has come as a major disappointment for the trade” (“Latest Position” June 2010). Later issues of the trade magazine contained editorials lamenting the high rates of commercial failure, exhorting filmmakers to improve the poor quality of films—the most common reason posited for box-office flops.

The disappointing box-office performance of highly anticipated, bigbudget, major star cast films is a phenomenon common to large-scale commercially oriented film industries across the world. Filmmaking has always been a very uncertain business, and in India the uncertainty encompasses both production—films may be aborted midway through production due to insufficient funds, or they may never be distributed once completed—and consumption, specifically the caprice of audience response as indexed by box-office outcome. This chapter examines how
the Hindi film industry manages the uncertainty endemic to filmmaking, from specific production practices that attempt to reduce risk, to rituals that allay anxiety, to discourses that endeavor to explain the vagaries of box-office outcome. Hindi filmmakers aim to reduce the risks and uncertainty involved with filmmaking in a variety of ways, from the most apparently superstitious practices—such as always using the letter “K” to begin a film’s title—to more perceptible forms of risk reduction, such as always working with the same team of people or remaking commercially successful films from the Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam film industries. As the examples of
Kites
and
Raavan
illustrate, however, there are no guarantees that such efforts will be successful.

Even though “nobody knows anything” may be a rhetorical trope to characterize filmmaking that is aimed at wide audience appeal (Cassidy 1997: 36), in actuality filmmakers create and deploy knowledge to cope with the unpredictability
of
their enterprise; after all, films continue to be made despite the reportedly high rates of failure. I contend that these forms of knowledge constitute an ideology that allows filmmakers to make sense of, and enables them to act within, their highly uncertain environment (Geertz 1973: 220). A crucial feature of the ideology of film production concerns filmmakers’ understandings and representations of their audiences, which I examine in great detail in the next two chapters. In this chapter, I focus on how Hindi filmmakers implicate specific production practices and features of the industry’s work culture in their discourses about what is and is not necessary for commercial success. I term these mostly after-the-fact pronouncements “production fictions,” which primarily serve the role of explaining commercial disappointments or failures. For example, a prevailing explanation for the failure of
Kites
was that there was very little Hindi spoken in the film, since the protagonists were an Indian American man, who primarily spoke in English, and a Mexican woman, who spoke only Spanish. Trade analysts pronounced that the film had a hard time at the box-office because Indian audiences do not like reading subtitles. Another more longstanding production fiction concerns the importance of stars, expressed in the dualism that stars cannot guarantee commercial success, yet commercial success is not possible without stars. Perhaps the most robust production fiction—the one that can be utilized to explain a large proportion of flops—is that of the absence of a “strong story” or script. Everyone in the industry asserts that the importance of good writing and good scripts is the foundation of a successful film; therefore, the root cause of commercial failure is frequently attributed to the script. As important com
ponents of the ideology of film production, production fictions are fluid and flexible discourses that can be consistently modified to account for new circumstances. For example, some films are said to have failed because there was not enough marketing and promotion, others because there was too much. Since their main function is to explain and rationalize inherently unpredictable and inexplicable events, production fictions constitute ever-shifting benchmarks that filmmakers must strive for in order to attain success.

My analysis of how Hindi filmmakers manage uncertainty begins with a discussion of specific ritual and discursive practices that appear to be centrally concerned with allaying the anxiety that accompanies the highly uncertain contexts of production and consumption. Then I turn to an examination of particular production practices and narrative elements deemed necessary to reduce risk. Songs, stars, and remakes of successful South Indian films are part of the Hindi film industry’s standard repertoire of risk management, serving to reduce some of the financial uncertainty of the production and distribution process by ensuring distributors and exhibitors that commercial viability is an important consideration for producers. Stars and songs are important for attracting distributors due to the industry’s presumption that such features are necessary to draw audiences; having already succeeded with one set of audiences, remakes of South Indian hits are perceived as reducing the risk of uncertain audience response. Since chapter five already addressed the centrality of stars within the industry, and I have discussed the phenomenon of remakes elsewhere (Ganti 2002), this chapter focuses on songs, particularly their commercial significance within Hindi filmmaking, and the ways they serve to reduce the uncertainties around finance, distribution, and consumption.

Among a wide range of
production fictions
, some refer to the content of films while others address the behavioral norms and working style of the industry. A prominent industry production fiction during my first phase of fieldwork was that its poor rate of commercial success had to do with its lack of professionalism, discipline, and organization; therefore, a prevailing sentiment existed: that in order for the industry’s fortunes to improve, filmmakers needed to become more professional and disciplined in their working style, while the industry on the whole needed to become more organized. It is for this reason that I discuss the phenomenon of
corporatization
, which at one point was touted as the panacea to all of the problems besetting the Hindi film industry. I detail what this
process has entailed exactly: both the changes it has brought about in the working style and structure of the industry and what has remained the same. As the rate of commercial success has not improved since the advent of corporatization, I examine the new production fictions that have been generated to make sense of the continued unpredictability of the film business.

From conducting a ritual prayer to Ganesh, the elephant-headed Hindu god regarded as the remover of obstacles, to breaking a coconut to celebrate the first shot of the day, chapter four depicts how the everyday life of Hindi filmmaking is marked by a variety of Hindu ritual practices. I encountered other signs of religious practice, both generally South Asian as well as specifically Hindu, at the varied sites and spaces of production. For example, similar to standard practice at temples and mosques, many production and post-production spaces—like dubbing studios, editing suites, and preview theaters—require the removal of footwear prior to entering them. Chromolithographs of an assortment of Hindu deities, iconography, such as the symbol for
Om
, or images of Shirdi Sai Baba, a saintly figure revered by Hindus and Muslims, are a common visual presence across the sites of production and post-production. While these practices could be interpreted as expressions of the religious identity of members of the film industry, the appearance of religious imagery on the material items of production—
Om
stickers on a film camera; vermillion on the continuity notebooks—leads me to argue that these operate less as markers of religion than Malinowskian manifestations of magic.
¹

Malinowski, in his classic work,
Magic, Science and Religion
, argued that whenever humans engage in activities where there is a tremen
dous amount of uncertainty regarding possible outcomes, they resort to magic in order to be able to carry out their tasks with confidence. Drawing from his fieldwork in the Trobriand Islands, Malinowski juxtaposed the practice of lagoon fishing with open sea fishing to support his point; the former activity, due to its ease and reliability had no magic associated with it, while the latter, which was full of danger and uncertainty, had extensive magical ritual to secure safety and good results; therefore magic serves to “ritualize man’s optimism,” and “to enhance his faith in the victory of hope over fear” (1954 [1925]: 90). Certain ritual and discursive practices in the Hindi film industry serve to enact confidence and enshrine optimism within the vagaries of filmmaking. I focus here on two such practices: first, the
mahurat—
a ceremony that marks the commencement of a film’s production—which has become far less prevalent since the advent of corporatization; second, a particular exclamatory mode of praise and encouragement mostly performed by producers, which I term “success-talk.” While the first practice displays features that resonate with Malinowski’s discussion of the mimetic and metonymic nature of magical rites, the second practice is analogous to his characterization of spells.

Mahurat
, derived from Sanskrit
muhurtham
, in the most general sense refers to an astrologically calculated auspicious date and time on which to start any new venture. The word and concept are most commonly used in conjunction with Hindu wedding ceremonies. Taking place sometimes months in advance of any actual shooting, during my fieldwork I observed
mahurats
in the Hindi film industry ranging from simple ceremonies in studios or other production sites to ostentatious affairs in luxury hotels (
Figure 18
). One of the central features of a
mahurat
was the enactment of the filming process, during which the principal actors in the film performed a brief scene
for
the camera and the spectators present. The customary nature of the event was emphasized by the fact that the scene was written especially for the occasion, and the shot footage was never incorporated into the final film. The goal was to impart the essence of the film, since at this stage it was usually only a germ of an idea—a script had not even begun to be written. Other aspects of the event that highlighted its ritualized nature were the frequent incorporation of features from Hindu ritual worship such as the breaking of a coconut before the “Roll camera!” command, adorning a camera with flower garlands, or even the performance of an
arati—
the rotational display of an oil lamp or a camphor flame—to the film camera. Although the actual enactment of the scene is quite brief, the overall
mahurat
, attended by members from all three main
sectors—production, distribution, and exhibition—represents a space of sociality, celebration, and conviviality within the film industry.

FIGURE 18
Puja
(Hindu ritual prayer ceremony) being conducted with the producer, director, screenwriters, and music composer present as part of the
mahurat
for
Albela
, Film City, 1996. Photo by the author.

The
mahurat
, although reported in newspapers, film magazines, and television shows, was not a significant form of publicity for the viewing audience. While it generated some expectations, the amount of time that elapsed between the
mahurat
of a film and its theatrical release was usually a couple of years, and in some cases many more. It was also a common feature of Hindi filmmaking that many films—and some very highly publicized ones—never progressed beyond the
mahurat
stage. The significance of the
mahurat
stemmed from its role in helping producers raise finance for their films, specifically in their efforts to sell distribution rights, which comprise an important chunk of the working capital for a film project. Often the most successful producers—either those who by virtue of their track record or star cast had no trouble raising finance, or those who were financially solvent enough not to have to rely on distribution rights as a source of working capital—did not have the ritualized
mahurats
to announce the start of a new film project.
²
The
mahurats
I attended during my fieldwork were for films that had some element of uncertainty associated with them: the lack of stars; the debut of a new actor; the return of a star after a several-year hiatus from acting; or the debut
of a new director. In all of these instances, the lack of name recognition or the debut status of either actor or director comprised an unknown terrain, regarding both the availability of finance and box-office outcome.

The
mahurat
, in its enactment of the filming process, embodies both the mimetic and metonymic properties of magic. Malinowski categorized the various rites utilized in the practice of magic into two main types: those that simulate a certain emotional state; and those that perform a desired result, where the “rite imitates its end” (1954 [1925]: 72). By shooting a scene in one take, the
mahurat
ritual simulates a smooth, trouble-free film shoot; it also forecasts the successful onset and completion of production. Being performed in front of an appreciative and wellwishing audience, the
mahurat
reproduces a desired scenario of reception and audience response.

While the
mahurat
was a more spectacular ritual of managing uncertainty, a more common feature of the everyday life of filmmaking was “
success-talk
”—the hyperbolic articulation of praise and optimism by a film’s producer at the various sites of production. Akin to Malinowski’s discussion of spells, a distinguishing feature of success-talk is the use of words to “invoke, state, or command the desired aim” (1954 [1922]: 74).
³
We see examples in the chapter four sketch with Malhotra, the film’s producer, during his verbal exchange with the Delhi-U.P. distributor and in his lunchtime conversation with his film’s director. In both instances Malhotra’s statements to the distributor, “It will appeal to everyone,” and to the director, “Everyone will love it!” invoke a hypothesized audience response while forecasting box-office success.

Similar to the
mahurat
, I observed the most pronounced performances of such success-talk in situations of high uncertainty. One such example was the film
Sitaare
for which my friend Sandeep was ostensibly an executive producer.
⁴
The film had very little name recognition as it was being made by a first-time director and starred “newcomers” and “character artists”—industry parlance for novices and actors who play supporting roles—who had very little face value.
⁵
Sitaare
’s production schedule was very fragmented, since the producer constantly had to raise finance. A first-time director and the lack of stars posed a challenge in attracting distributors to the film. By the time I left Bombay at the end of my first period of fieldwork in 1996, the film was stalled due to a lack of finance.

It finally released in 1999—three and a half years after it commenced production.
⁶

Whether we were viewing rushes of the film or on the sets,
Sitaare
’s producer, Kunal Madhvani, was indefatigable in his performance of
success-talk.
⁷
After we had viewed the first set of rushes, Madhvani was exuberant. “It’s singing! It either works or it doesn’t!” he said to the cast and crew assembled in the preview theater. He then phoned his partner, an Indian businessman from London who had put up some of the initial finance for the film. “Congratulations, Sunny! The film looks great! We have a hit on our hands! And be ready for the Filmfare Awards, they’re sure to come as well! The audiences will love it! The
taporis
downstairs will love it and the families upstairs will like it!
⁸
It’s so fresh!” Madhvani turned back to the group in the theater and discussed the plans he had for the film in terms of its theatrical release, making sure that the distributors would book the best cinemas for the film. At that time, I marveled at the over-confidence that Madhvani exhibited, since all we had seen were the silent rushes from six days of shooting, prior to color correction. When relating such expressions of buoyant praise against the larger insecurities and obstacles of this particular production, Madhvani appears less as a deluded optimist and more like Malinowski’s fisherman battling the uncertainties of the open sea.