Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (51 page)

It was a familiar fanfare—the staccato drum-beats, followed by a drum roll, overtaken by the clear, penetrating sound of trumpets, joined by the string section swelling to a crescendo—that preceded the screening of many a film in the United States. This time, however, the recognizable strains of the 20th Century Fox fanfare filling up the auditorium at Village 7 Cinema in Manhattan, on February 12, 2010, was followed by a series of opening credits—“Fox Star Studios and Fox Searchlight Pictures Present . . . A Dharma Productions and Red Chillies Entertainment Production”— that ended with the title of the Hindi film,
My Name
Is Khan
, starring Shah Rukh Khan, directed by Karan Johar, and co-produced by Khan and Johar.

My Name Is Khan
(MNIK) attracted a great deal of media attention in India in 2009 for the unparalleled sum that Fox Star Studios, the Indian subsidiary of 20th Century Fox, paid to acquire the global distribution rights of the film—purportedly between 800 and 850 million rupees.
¹
In press conferences and interviews, Khan and Johar represented their decision to sell the film to Fox as a step toward bringing a new global visibility to Hindi cinema, by partnering with an institution that would take their film to new, untapped, and untraditional—that is, nondiasporic— markets. Johar stated in an interview with
rediff.com
, “Because of its vast network, Fox was able to show this film in the best of theaters worldwide, from Canada to Poland to Indonesia. Even in countries where Indian films are very popular but
not well distributed, Fox did a remarkable job. From Egypt to Jordan to Malaysia, the film has performed strongly to a large extent because of the Fox distribution strategy and its ability to engage leading film writers in various countries to run stories on
My Name Is Khan
” (Pais 2010).
²
The film’s box-office performance in India was more checkered, and in the year-end accounting of commercial outcome, MNIK was not classified as a hit, but as a “coverage to commission-earner” by
Film Information
(see Table 3, p. 190) which meant that the territorial distributors to whom Fox resold the rights covered their costs, and some may have earned their 25 percent commission, but none had profited greatly on their investment.
³

Starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol—Johar’s favorite onscreen star pair—the film centered on the ethnic profiling and discrimination faced by American Muslims in the aftermath of 9/11, as experienced by a Muslim man (played by Khan) with Asperger’s syndrome. In terms of its content, treatment, and narrative style, which eschewed lip-synch song sequences, mnik represented a radical departure from Johar’s previous films. He characterized it as emblematic of his evolution as a filmmaker: “This is not the usual
masala
film. This is not even a typical Karan Johar film. It is a more thought-provoking and deeply psychological film than anything I have done before. Making this film made me grow more as a person than ever before” (Pais 2010). In Johar’s remarks we encounter the traces of disdain, the assertions of distinction, and the entanglement of film production with the production of filmmaker subjectivity, which have been a central focus of this book.

While Johar’s remarks focused on how MNIK differs from the norms of Hindi cinema—or even his own filmmaking practice—Khan’s comments at another venue focused on the distinction that accrues to Hindi films from their circulation amidst sites and audiences considered “Western.”

“We have hit upon a kind of cinema that’s brave,” said Khan, “and the kind of pop cinema that India stands for today. Internationally, we need to work on the kind of cinema that would respect the tastes of the Western audience also” (Shetty-Saha 2009). From his comments during our interview, over a decade ago, to the statements above, Khan has appeared centrally concerned with the global reputation of Hindi cinema over the course of his career. mnik thus exemplifies Khan’s desire of making films that are “less tacky” in order to “reach the international market.” Following the dominant logic of interpreting commercial outcome as indices of audience identification and acceptance, Johar touted the film’s global boxoffice grosses—about $39 million, including a little over $4 million in the United States—as concrete evidence of the film’s international appeal.
⁴

MNIK also represents a new phase that began in the Hindi film industry in the late 2000s: one of greater interaction and formal partnerships being forged between Hindi filmmakers and Hollywood studios. For example, studios such as Sony and Warner Bros. have co-produced and distributed mainstream Hindi films,
⁵
while Disney has invested in UTV and partnered with Yashraj Films to co-produce animated films for the Indian market.
⁶
The flow of capital is not simply unidirectional from the United States to India, however.
Reliance Big Entertainment
, a subsidiary of the Indian conglomerate Reliance ADA Group, made news in May 2008 when it signed deals to produce and develop movies with prominent Hollywood actors, such as Tom Hanks, Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Jim Carrey, and Nicolas Cage (Lakshman and Grover 2008; Timmons 2008).
⁷
Reliance further solidified its position as a significant player in Hollywood when it announced an $825 million production and distribustion deal in August 2009 with Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios, of which $325 million was an equity investment on the part of Reliance (Jamkhandikar 2009).
⁸

While Hollywood’s interest in “Bollywood” is definitely interpreted and registered by Hindi filmmakers as a validation of the Hindi film industry, and as a sign that it has indeed “arrived” on the global stage, the collaborations to date have not yielded the sort of commercial success that Hollywood studios may have been hoping for. I believe this is partly due to the very different motivations each industry has for collaborating with the other. Hindi filmmakers regard Hollywood’s interest and resources as a way to expand into new and untapped markets, while Hollywood studios are interested in profiting from what they perceive are the Hindi film industry’s vibrant domestic markets. This leads to an irony: Hindi filmmakers see Hollywood studios as agents in their continuing gentrification—their partners in going “global” at the same time that Hollywood appears to be interested in going “local” in India.

Although MNIK did not garner the sort of box-office success in India that earlier films featuring the director-star duo had, Johar nevertheless characterized it in his acceptance speeches at various awards ceremonies as the “most important film I have ever directed.”
⁹
That MNIK had garnered a great deal of symbolic capital for Johar within the Hindi film industry and the national media establishment was evident at the seventeenth Annual Star-
Screen
Awards, held in Bombay in January 2011, when the film was bypassed for the best film and best director award, but won the Ramnath Goenka Memorial Award, characterized as the “most special award” of the night, which went to “the biggest movie of 2010.”
¹⁰
Shekhar Gupta, the editor-in-chief of the
Indian Express
, announced the winner,
describing the award as one that recognizes “boldness and courage of imagination” in filmmaking. Prior to Johar going onstage to receive the award, a montage of clips from the film was accompanied by a voice-over that proclaimed in Hindi, “There are only a few films that spread their magic beyond boundaries and time. We have such a film this year, which not only broke records on a global platform, but also raised the stature of Hindi films throughout the world. This memorable film presented a current problem through such a touching story. This is the first film to be appreciated in so many countries around the world—
My Name Is Khan
.” In his acceptance speech, Johar stated, “
My Name Is Khan
has truly been the most special experience of my life. It has been the most important film I think I have ever directed. I really thank the cast and crew of
My Name
Is Khan
who have stood by me through thick and thin—everyone—but more importantly I think to the content of the film, which has travelled globally, and I thank
Screen
and the Indian Express Group for honoring the film for its endeavor.”
¹¹
The way MNIK was positioned within film industry discourses was that the social, cultural, and reputational value accruing to the film, from its distribution deal with Fox and its global circulation in non-traditional markets, more than made up for its lackluster commercial performance within India.
¹²

While I encountered many Hindi filmmakers who harbored global ambitions, specifically the desire to win over non-diasporic audiences in Euro-American contexts, the incredible commercial and critical success of British filmmaker Danny Boyle’s
Slumdog Millionaire
, in 2008 and 2009, had a significant impact on the Hindi film industry’s perceptions concerning their horizons of possibility with respect to success among non-traditional audiences. That a film set and shot completely in India, with an all-Indian cast, a mainly Indian crew, inspired by the narratives and idioms of mainstream Hindi cinema, and with nearly one-third of its dialogue in Hindi, could win eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and earn over $377 million globally would have been inconceivable to most members of the Hindi film industry.
¹³
The film’s critical acclaim in sites such as the Academy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and Bafta Awards, the individual awards and continuing global recognition garnered by the film’s composer, A. R. Rahman—a highly acclaimed, respected, and successful composer working in the Hindi and Tamil film industries—and the subsequent participation of Anil Kapoor, a wellestablished star of the Hindi industry, in mainstream American films (
Mission Impossible 4
) and television (season eight of
24
) are interpreted by members of the film industry as signs that Indian filmmakers are no
longer restricted to domestic or diasporic audiences in their appeal and reach.

When I began my fieldwork in 1996, neither my informants nor I could have predicted any of the above occurrences. The dynamism of contemporary mass media—the quality of it being a moving target—makes it both an exciting and challenging topic of research. Over the course of finishing this book, certain other trends within the Hindi film industry have emerged that warrant attention as sites for future inquiry. Since 2006, a trend of making sequels has been gaining momentum—something that had been unheard of within the Hindi film industry prior to this period. Sequels, along with the more established practice of remaking earlier Hindi films, which became heightened from 2002 onward, represent new methods within the industry to manage the commercial uncertainty of filmmaking, especially the caprice of audience response. An associated trend is the tremendous nostalgia among contemporary filmmakers for earlier eras of Hindi cinema—particularly the 1970s—and since 2007 there has been a spate of period films set in that decade.
¹⁴

An even more intriguing instance of nostalgia is manifest in
Dabangg
(Fearless), which was the biggest hit of 2010. Starring Salman Khan, the film is about a corrupt Robin Hood–esque police officer in provincial Uttar Pradesh; it tells the story of his battles against an even more corrupt politician and his goons, and of his own dysfunctional family, which includes an asthmatic mother, a stern step-father, and a sickly weakwilled half-brother.
Dabangg
is striking for the confidence with which the film displays the very features of Hindi cinema, albeit in an ironic and much slicker style—with spectacular violence, earthy humor, bombastic dialogue, mannered acting, and erotic song sequences—that during my fieldwork were derided as déclassé. With a narrative centered on betrayal, revenge, and redemption—which also includes elements of romance, comedy, action, and filial piety—the film unabashedly embraces the narrative form and aesthetic style of the
masala
film, reminiscent of the 1970s and 1980s.
Dabangg
received quite favorable reviews from the English-language press, and its smashing commercial success was celebrated by the film industry, evident from its garnering of four best film awards from four different awards ceremonies.
¹⁵

For a film to unapologetically embrace—and be celebrated for—a style of filmmaking that earlier was characterized as only suitable for the “masses,” and thus be cited as a source of Hindi cinema’s low social and cultural status, demonstrates the vast transformations that have occurred within the field of Hindi film production. The processes of gen
trification that I outlined in this book, which reduced the symbolic and economic importance of poor and working-class audiences and accorded Hindi films respectability, cultural legitimacy, and “coolness,” made it possible for a film like
Dabangg
to be produced by second-generation members of the film industry, and for it to receive the Indian government’s National Award for Best Popular Film, which cites “wholesome entertainment” as its main criteria for judgment. The very decade, the 1980s, that was decried by my informants when I began my fieldwork— and which was a basis of disdain and anxiety—has become a source of novelty and nostalgia.

Another noticeable trend is that low-budget films made without stars have begun to appear as not just commercially sustainable, but as genuinely profitable. Two of the biggest hits of 2010,
Peepli Live
and
Love Sex
aur Dhokha
(Love, Sex, and Betrayal)—classified as “A1” and “A,” respectively, by
Film Information
—deviated from the prevailing norms of the Hindi film industry in terms of narrative and aesthetic style, content, theme, and casting; both films featured mostly nonprofessional or debutant actors without any name recognition, and
Peepli Live
was directed by a female first-time director, which continues to be an exceptional occurrence within the industry. Neither film was expected to garner the success that each did; this was due to their lack of stars coupled with their cynical and dark perspective about the nature of contemporary urban India.