Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (38 page)

As music is absolutely essential to the marketing and financing of popular Hindi films, on certain occasions financiers or distributors have pressured filmmakers to include songs. One such example is a film that, for the sake of confidentiality, I have renamed
Darwaaza
(Door), which was originally planned as an entirely song-less film.
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The film’s screenwriter, Atul Rai, corresponded with me via email about how songs got added to the film. Rai explained that both the director, Jay Sinha, and
he had agreed that there was no place for songs, because they wanted the film to be “gritty and dry, dramatic, and intense.” Soon after, Rai described how “market anxiety” took over, as Sinha was assailed by the film’s financier, distributors, and music companies about the folly of his ways: “ ‘In India these things don’t work, Sir!’ ‘Jay-
ji
, Music is a territory in itself; it will increase your recovery of money’ blah, and more friggin’ blah. So, Jay decides to include songs. We fight and fight; he agrees with everything I say, but the ‘market’ can become a bogeyman. So, we incorporate songs into the script.” As Rai and Sinha continued to work on the script, they gained confidence with feedback from others about the strength of the screenplay and decided to revert to their original intentions. “Jay says, to hell with the songs; in any case we had conceived of the film without music and we have a point to prove anyway. So, out goes the music,” wrote Rai.

By the time the film was completed, it had gone significantly over budget, and Rai described how songs ended up in the film as a form of insurance against box-office failure:

Darwaaza
is not a singular case. Rumors and stories circulate periodically within the industry about distributors and financiers pressuring filmmakers to add songs to films to increase their prospects at the boxoffice. Not having songs signifies that a film is outside the mainstream of the Hindi film industry, possibly even an “art film,” which to most people in the industry means death at the box-office. To anyone working within the dominant system of financing, distribution, and exhibition, songs are an indispensable element in films, which leads to a dominant production
fiction
: the necessity of songs for box-office success.

Nearly everyone I spoke to in the industry brought up the importance of songs for the commercial success of a film. In addition to drawing
audiences into theaters, songs are also important for adding to a film’s “repeat value.” The most successful films of Hindi cinema have been marked by the phenomenon of repeat audiences—people seeing a particular film 10, 20, 50, even 100 times. Renowned contemporary painter M. F. Husain made news with reports that he had seen
Hum Aapke Hain
Koun!
, which had 14 songs, 85 times. Songs are probably
the
critical element in a film’s repeat value.
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Screenwriter Sachin Bhaumick explained to me how with the presence of music even films based on suspense and mystery possessed repeat value and thus became hits: “Producers say that a suspense picture has no repeat value because you know who the murderer is after seeing it once, so why will people go back? The only suspense pictures which ran are those which have got good music; they came back for the music, like
Bees Saal Baad
[Twenty Years Later]: fantastic movie!
Woh Koun Thi?
[Who Was She?]: fantastic movie! Suspense picture with good music: these pictures ran.
Gumraah
[Without a Compass]: another picture with fantastic music. Music brought the repeat audience” (Bhaumick, interview, October 1996). The overwhelming commercial significance of music, however, can be frustrating, according to Tarun Kumar, who complained, “You see it should be a choice for the director to use songs or not, it is the compulsion that really wears us down” (pers. comm., May 1999).

Kumar’s frustrations about conceptualizing song situations—the points in the screenplay where a song appears appropriate or necessary— have subsided somewhat with the advent of multiplexes and a sense of greater creative freedom filmmakers have, discussed in chapter two. Since 2006, Kumar’s films have had far fewer instances of characters bursting into song or elaborately choreographed production numbers. Non-lipsynch songs continue to have a presence in his films, however, frequently expressing the psychological state of a character or the emotional tenor of a particular situation. As music’s narrative significance has diminished with the decrease of lip-synch songs in many contemporary Hindi films, it has arguably taken on an even greater commercial significance within the industry, for it is primarily created for marketing, promotion, and ancillary revenue purposes.

While filmmakers assert that a commercially successful soundtrack is important for the success of a film, there have been plenty of examples where hit music did not translate into a hit at the box-office, or where the sales of a soundtrack increased after a film became a hit—that is, a soundtrack became a hit only after a film became a hit. The inability
of music either to forecast or ensure box-office success leads to another prevalent production fiction within the industry: that a film’s music alone cannot ensure its commercial success. The pair of truisms—songs are necessary for commercial success, but songs cannot guarantee commercial success—thus operates to explain a great deal of box-office outcome. If a film with successful music—indexed by strong sales, appearance on television and radio countdown charts, and dominant presence in the urban soundscape—ends up performing below expectations at the boxoffice, filmmakers can (and do) assert that music is merely one component of a film, and that a good story, narrative, and script are necessary for success. If a film’s music does not register much impact in the market and subsequently the film fares poorly at the box-office, then the film’s failure can be attributed to its music. A successful film lacking successful music, despite being relatively uncommon but possible, reiterates the truism that a film’s story, narrative, and script are more important than its music.
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“
Army
is the first corporate film of the film industry,” Mukul Anand stated. “Our goal at Neha-mad Films is to provide structure and security to everyone in the unit, from the technicians to the spot boys.” In March 1996, I was attending the launch of United Music—a subsidiary of UTV, a television production company just beginning to make its forays into the film world—at the Grand Ballroom at the Leela Kempinski, a fivestar hotel near Bombay’s international airport. The event, attended by producers, writers, actors, journalists, and other members of the film industry, but devoid of stars, encompassed a series of presentations about UTV, United Music, and the Indian music industry, and the official release of the “teaser sampler” of
Army
’s music, which was listed prominently on the invitation as the evening’s “added attraction.”

A director highly acclaimed for his technical prowess, Anand was speaking on stage at the front of the room about
Army
, which he was producing but not directing, through the new company he had created in partnership with Nitin Manmohan, an established producer of reasonable commercial success at the time. Anand’s individual production company mad—an acronym for Mukul Anand Directs—joined with Manmohan’s company, Neha Arts, in 1995 to form Neha-mad Films Combine.
His claim that
Army
was the first corporately produced Hindi film had partially to do with the fact that 49 percent of MAD was owned by ITC, one of India’s largest private corporations, and mainly to do with financial transparency, as Anand reiterated a number of times during his presentation: “It’s the first film with checks and where we can produce all of the accounts.” In June I interviewed Anand in his home, and he spoke at length about his plans and ambitions in filmmaking, as well as his overall vision for the film industry.
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He was firm that the industry needed to be reshaped in terms of its structure and working style, and based on his experiences in the advertising world, he realized, “Bingo; this is what the film industry needs: it needs a corporate way of working” (Anand, interview, June 1996).

Although much media attention and reportage has been generated about the “corporatization” of the Hindi film industry from 2002 onward, as apparent from the above anecdote the term “corporate,” to denote a particular organizational structure and work ethos, held a great deal of value and currency within the industry, even in 1996. During my initial fieldwork I encountered considerable discussion within the press and among filmmakers concerning the new trend of corporatization taking place within the industry, which was primarily identified with the establishment of two production companies, Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Limited (ABCL) and Plus Channel India Limited.
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The significance of ABCL—and the reason it generated a tremendous amount of publicity and media attention—was that it represented a concerted attempt to convert the charisma and star power of its eponymous founder, Amitabh Bachchan, into a brand that could be leveraged across a variety of commercial enterprises involving entertainment: film production and distribution, television production, music production, and event management.
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Plus Channel began, in 1995, as a producer of television programming and then turned to feature film production, releasing five films in 1996. It also had its own music division and branched out into event management as well.

The press hailed both companies as steps that promised to organize and discipline the chaotic world of Hindi filmmaking, and such representations were reaffirmed by their founders. A special feature story about Bachchan and ABCL that appeared in
India Today
asserted, “Bachchan says he is pursuing a dream: to bring order with ABCL into the chaotic, badmoney fuelled world of Bollywood” (Jain 1995: 111). In an interview with the journalist who wrote the feature, Bachchan explained his motivation for creating ABCL, “I felt the need for a professional attitude towards the
entertainment industry. It was most disorganized, and I wanted to try to run it as a corporate entity” (Jain 1995: 119).

Amit Khanna, the founder and CEO of Plus Channel, stated in an article appearing about the company in the trade weekly
Screen
, that the goal of the film division of Plus was to “meet the crisis caused by the unprofessional approach to filmmaking” (“A Plus film” 1996). Speaking about the upcoming release of their first feature film, Khanna said, “If the experiment works, it will set a trend. It will free filmmaking from being the proposal-makers’ gamble and make it professional” (“A Plus film” 1996). Once again the figure of the “proposal-maker” is deployed to assert boundaries between legitimate filmmakers and their others. The reason that Plus’s first film was characterized as an experiment was because it was made without
stars
and on a very tight budget of approximately 8 million rupees, which was pretty low for the time; average budgets in 1996 ranged from 10 to 50 million rupees. Low budgets are only possible without stars, since the remuneration for the leading pair in a film, when played by stars, can often comprise up to 25 percent of a film’s budget. “We will never sign stars who demand big money,” Khanna declared, “though they are welcome to work with us if they are interested in making a good film” (“A Plus film” 1996).

The disorganization and unprofessionalism alluded to by Bachchan and Khanna referred to the star-centric nature of green-lighting film projects and the fragmented nature of production, but in 1996 the way that such terms were defined also had to do with the daily rhythms of work within the industry and the behavior of stars. For example, during our interview Taran Adarsh said, “Oh! I think our industry is the most disorganized industry, because we don’t have any fixed rules. If you notice in other fields, they have a nine to six job, people entering an office at nine a.m.,
nau baje kaam shuru pe lag jate hai
[people start working at nine], Right?
Yaha par nau baje kaam nahi hota
[here, work doesn’t start at nine]
; yaha par
[here] production offices open at eleven o’clock, twelve o’clock, or one o’clock, or two.
Yaha par
[Here] evenings extend
hoti hai
[get extended]. It’s not a normal job as such” (Adarsh, interview, September 1996). While Adarsh focused on the industry’s overall sense of temporality in order to exemplify its disorganized nature, Komal Nahta homed in on stars and their mostly callous behavior as typifying the lack of discipline: “Stars, even today, you will be shocked to know. . . cancel shootings at the last moment. The stars are all-important, all-commanding, and of course, not that we don’t have good stars, there are some good stars who are very disciplined, who come on time, before time and all that, but 80
percent of the stars have the producers at their mercy. It is rather sad. Now with corporatization, let us hope things change” (Nahta, interview, September 1996).

Nahta’s point about “good stars,” who “come on time,” reveals how being “disciplined” within the film industry overwhelmingly had to do with punctuality. In fact, I discovered that “professional” was often synonymous with punctual; when members of the industry discussed stars who they felt were exceptional because of their professionalism, they consistently brought up the example of Amitabh Bachchan and the fact that he always reported to his shoots on time. Punctuality and the prominent discourse about it are deeply connected to issues of power and hierarchy within the film industry, as tardiness is a privilege only accorded to the powerful. The only people who could afford to be late, and not suffer any immediate repercussions regarding job security, were those with power and status in the industry—namely the stars. To keep people waiting requires a certain amount of confidence—most would say arrogance—in one’s indispensability; therefore, punctual behavior by a star takes on tremendous meaning within the industry, for it signifies his or her commitment to the film, respect for the producer and director, and willingness to cede some autonomy over his or her time. For these reasons, punctuality has become synonymous with professionalism within the film industry, since it communicates a willingness to be a member of a group working toward a common goal—that of a commercially successful film.

Adarsh surmised how corporatization could possibly change working behavior within the industry: “The corporate people come in; they say, ‘Fine, if you can’t do that for us, we’ll take you to court; if you don’t stand by your commitment, we’ll handle it in court; we’ll meet you in the court of law’ ” (Adarsh, interview, September 1996). In 1996, corporatization was thus primarily perceived as a disciplinary mechanism that would transform the everyday interactions within the film industry, namely infusing an ethos of accountability. According to this perspective, such accountability would have an overall impact of reducing financial uncertainty within the industry, because if stars reformed their undisciplined ways, productions would not undergo undue delays, which would thereby hold down costs and increase the commercial viability of projects.

Some members of the industry were skeptical about the impact of corporatization because of what they regarded as the incommensurable working styles of the film industry and the corporate world. Shyam Shroff, whose distribution firm implemented the actual logistics of distributing some films in the Bombay territory that ABCL had bought the rights for,
discussed how the film world and the corporate world were “not made for each other.” He said, “The people in corporations are shocked to see the way film people behave here. The same way even film people are shocked to see the behavior, how corporations behave” (Shyam Shroff, interview, April 1996). When I asked him what were the differences between the two groups, his explanation primarily addressed the issue of personal interaction, gate keeping, and hierarchies of access:

Shroff’s characterization of corporate culture primarily in terms of the modalities of personal interaction typifies the overall manner that filmmakers discussed concepts like professional, organized, and corporate, which had to do with individual behavior and personal conduct. Akin to the discussion, in chapter three, of the juxtaposition of “
filmi
” with “middle class,” corporate is juxtaposed with an implied
filmi
in Shroff’s remarks. The term “corporate” connotes rules, sharply delineated temporal and physical boundaries, and unnecessary procedures, which in Shroff’s statements stand in stark contrast to the film industry’s more personalized, flexible, and direct modes of operating.

While Shroff’s skepticism was based on the issue of divergent working styles, Amit Khanna of Plus Channel was confident of his venture. During our interview, he represented Plus as “redefining the ground rules” of Hindi filmmaking, by focusing on low-to medium-budget films that would recover their costs in a variety of ways. Khanna characterized his company as distinctive from the rest of the industry, because of its focus, planning, and vision: “We’re making self-sustaining films, not niche films, and we’re making a film, not buying a lottery ticket, which is what 95 percent of the people do here. When I make a film I’m sure it should get me cost plus a reasonable amount of profit. And there are various avenues through which that profit or those returns can be generated. Music is one, television is another, exports are the third one, and there could be
something as diverse as in-film advertising to in-flight screenings. Now people don’t look at it in a holistic manner; we do, so it gives us that much more liberty” (Khanna, interview, June 1996). Khanna’s remarks point to how reducing the risk of commercial failure—by introducing economies of scale and developing multiple revenue streams—was at the center of the early attempts to restructure and rationalize the industry, which is what the term “corporatization” represents. Khanna’s point about earning a “reasonable amount of profit” suggests attempts to recalibrate ideas about commercial success as well, which Mukul Anand also discussed during our interview. Discussing the profitability of his company’s first venture, Anand said, “We introduced films as a non-profit, non-loss medium. It’s a profit medium with
Army
, but how profitable? We will see, but
Army
has shown us a profitable balance sheet, which is about 17 percent. It’s not bad because it’s the first time we are presenting a balance sheet, and within a year we have shown a 17 to 20 percent profit on a huge investment. Say on a 4
crore
[40 million] investment we make 1
crore
[10 million]: that’s good enough” (Anand, interview, June 1996).

Despite Khanna’s and Anand’s modest expectations regarding commercial success, in contrast with the industry norms discussed in chapter five, both of their companies failed relatively quickly. The demise of Nehamad had to do with the untimely death of Anand, in September 1997, and it is hard to predict what Neha-mad’s trajectory would have been within the industry. Plus Channel produced a plethora of films in a very short time span—about 22 films in three years—none of which achieved any modicum of theatrical success; it became over-extended across its various spheres, going into a great deal of debt by 1999, and was dissolved by 2000.
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ABCL’s failure—its troubles began as early as 1997, and by 1999 it had declared bankruptcy—was exhaustively covered by the Indian press and attributed to several causes: the lower than expected demand for the company’s stock during its first public issue; poor box-office performance of films starring Bachchan at the time; huge overhead expenses as a result of too many high-salaried employees; debts incurred by producing the Miss World Pageant in Bangalore in 1996; and overall poor management and business judgment.
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