Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (54 page)

41
. This was the Adlabs Multiplex, which was part of the imax Adlabs Theatre Complex in Wadala, a northern suburb of Bombay. The particular set of exemptions was for the city of Bombay; for the rest of Maharashtra the category of multiplex was defined as three screens with a cumulative seating of 1,000 seats.

42
. The only exception is Big Cinemas which is a national chain of both multiplex and single-screen theaters. Big has been following a mixed construction and renovation policy—in some cases building new structures and in others buying older properties and renovating them either into multiplexes in the case of Bombay’s Metro Cinema or retaining the single-screen structure in smaller towns—for example, Muzaffarnagar, U.P.’s Alankar theater. See
http://www.bigcinemas.com/in
.

43
. It has been notoriously difficult to find any exact or even consistent statistics about the number of permanent movie theaters in India. Much of the data is collected at the aggregate all-India level, which does not correspond to Hindi film exhibition sites, as that would only comprise one segment of the sector—due to the diverse filmmaking traditions that exist. Sixty percent of the theaters are in southern India, which is disproportionately high for the population; therefore northern India, which comprises Hindi cinema’s main markets, is even more severely under-screened than an all-India statistic would communicate.

44
. “Films and Cinemas,” Indiastat.com,
http://www.indiastat.com/media/21/filmsandcinemas/61/stats.aspx
.

45
. Precipitated by the government’s multiplex policy, the first strike started on May 16, 2003, but was called off immediately after assurances that their grievances would be addressed. The main demand on the part of single-screen theaters was a 50 percent reduction in the entertainment tax rate (from 60 percent to 30 percent). The second strike occurred on October 17, lasting three days and included demands for an exit policy—whereby theaters would be allowed to convert to other uses if the cinema business was not lucrative—in addition to the demands for a reduction of entertainment tax. The third strike began on March 19, 2004, and lasted for three weeks; it was sparked by the government’s failure to implement its promised new tax policy that reduced the entertainment tax rate by 10 percent.

46
. Bajaj told me “South Bombay King” was his appellation, which was confirmed by one of my distributor informants. Bajaj controlled Eros, New Empire, and Excelsior in South Bombay.

47
. One of the prominent multiplex theater chains in Bombay, Adlabs, had bought Metro. Adlabs—one of the few companies that was vertically integrated in terms of production, distribution, and exhibition—had the majority of its stock bought by Reliance Capital in 2005. In 2009, Adlabs was renamed Reliance MediaWorks, and its chain of cinemas got rebranded as Big Cinemas.

48
. From Ravi Shankar Prasad’s, the minister of information and broadcasting, inaugural address at frames 2003,
http://www.bisnetworld.net/ficci/Business/entertainment.htm
.

49
. For example, during the FRAMES 2002: Global Convention on the Business of
Entertainment, the president
of
ficci asserted in his opening remarks, “The entertainment industry in India has historically grown in a somewhat unstructured manner, and if I may say so without much government support or incentive” (
http://www.bisnetworld.net/ficci/march-frames-lodha.htm
).

1
. Tarun Kumar and Asha Mehta are pseudonyms.

2
. From the mid-1990s, Hollywood films began to be dubbed into Hindi and some other Indian languages and released in a wider scale theatrically, but even then foreign films occupy a small percentage of domestic box-office. “Proportion of Gross Box Office collections of foreign films lies between 5 and 10 percent of total gBoc of all Indian films. Outside of the United States, India is probably the strongest local film market in the world” (Kheterpal 2005: 10). Shroff is probably referring to video and laser disc as media to watch Hollywood films in the 1980s— as the reference to
Top Gun
would suggest—the media technologies and the fact that these films would not have been dubbed or subtitled in Indian languages points to the circumscribed nature of such consumption.

3
. Shroff’s family has been involved with the film industry for two generations: Shroff’s grandfather started a film financing business and then his father, Shyam, and uncle, Balkrishna, transformed that company into a film distribution business. Shroff then added exhibition to the company’s portfolio in 2001.

4
. The ubiquity of the term “cool” globally makes it notoriously difficult to define. The use of the term as a form of slang to denote a certain style and attitude has its roots in African American jazz culture of the 1920s. For the history and evolution of the term see Moore (2004), Pountain and Robins (2000), and Nancarrow et al. (2002).

5
. See Ganti (2002) for an earlier instantiation of this point.

6
. Johar had been shooting his film,
Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
(Never Say Good-bye) (2006) for three months in the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut area. Ranjani Mazumdar, who was teaching a class on Indian cinema—at the time through the nyu Cinema Studies department—had organized the trip for her students. I thank her for including me in this excursion.

7
.
Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna
shoot at the Sleepy Hollow Country Club, November 18, 2005.

8
.
Himmatwala
(The One with Courage) (1983), directed by K. Raghavendra Rao, starring Jeetendra and Sri Devi, was a big box-office success and can be seen as starting this particular trend.

9
. For example, the directors Mani Rathnam and Shankar, and actor/director Kamal Hasan, have often been hailed as cinematic pioneers and are held in highest regard by members of the Bombay industry and film press.

10
. This perception appears to be a longstanding one. I came across an interview with Telugu director K. Vishwanath in the July 3, 1982, issue of the trade magazine
Film
Information
where the writer introduces the director as an anomaly: “K. Viswanath baffles you. He is a maker from South—where loudness and crudeness are the order. Even the ‘bests’ like Dasari and Rama Rao are hardly aesthetic, but K. Viswanath is a highly sensitive director” (Kathuria 2007 [1982]: 11).

11
. See Mankekar (1999) for a discussion of the motivation behind this policy move and its impact.

12
. Actually this issue has not been studied in great depth as to why filmmakers with-
held the sale of domestic video rights. Pendakur (1989) explains it as the Indian film industry’s shortsighted position. He asserts that the “film industry must be blamed for having created an adversarial relationship with the emerging video business. Instead of treating home video as a source of new revenues, Hindi film producers took an “untenable” stand” (Pendakur 1989: 73). The issue is more complicated than that, however, given the fragmented nature of the industry, which I will examine in greater detail in subsequent chapters. During the period Pendakur refers to, and until the mid-2000s, distributors served as the main source of capital and finance for filmmaking. It would appear that distributors would be the ones against the sale of video rights, rather than producers. From reading the trade press of the early years of the advent of video (1982–84), it is apparent that dissension existed—there are strong statements by distributors threatening boycotts of producers who sell domestic video rights and denials by producers about having sold said rights. Producers started selling domestic video rights in 1984, and “officially” from 1987 onward. Videocassettes of films were released simultaneously with their theatrical release. The disagreement between producers and distributors over the sale of rights has continued till this day with the issue of satellite rights and telecasts. Distributors have always wanted to be able to have a longer period to exploit films theatrically, whereas producers have an incentive to sell the satellite telecast rights much earlier.

13
. Mark Liechty (2003) discusses a very similar narrative emerging from the same set of circumstances taking place in Nepal.

14
. The article quoted a housewife from an affluent neighborhood in New Delhi asserting, “After a really long time, we have a movie that is different. I am really fed up of the crass violence in today’s movies.
Lamhe
is a film that you can see with your family without being embarrassed” (Khanna and Dutt 1992: 68).

15
.
Masala
is a Hindi word that means a blend of spices, but has frequently been used to describe popular Hindi films, denoting their unabashed goal of entertainment as well as the inclusion of a variety of narrative and aesthetic elements: songs; dances, comedy, action, romance, and drama.
Nautanki
is a form of traditional musical theater originating and performed in northern India—in the present-day states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. For a detailed history and study of this form, see Hansen (1992).

16
. His surprise and statements evoke in a peculiar way Ravi Vasudevan’s argument about Hindi films doing well and being popular in “transitional societies” (1995).

17
. The standard length of Indian films ranges from 150 to 165 minutes. In 1996, producers and directors told me how exhibitors prefer such running times for the sake of standardized exhibition practice, which divides the screening day into four shows: at 12:00, 3:00, 6:00, and 9:00 p.m. (or at the half-hour). hahk’s length necessitated a readjustment of the standard exhibition times, either from four shows to three, in which case the distributor compensated the exhibitor for the revenue lost from the reduced number of shows, or if keeping four shows, then starting the first show of the day as early as 10:00 a.m. The film was later rereleased with two more songs, which increased the running time to 205 minutes. The advent of multiplexes did away with the standardized exhibition times that for decades had marked the experience of seeing a film.

18
. HAHK is a story of two families: one with two sons, Rajesh and Prem; and the other with two daughters, Pooja and Nisha. Rajesh and Prem’s uncle, who has been their guardian and parental figure ever since their parents died many years
before, arranges Rajesh’s marriage to Pooja, the daughter of his old college buddy, thus transforming a friendship into kinship. The main narrative focus of the film, however, is the unfolding of a clandestine (to the families) love story between Rajesh’s younger brother, Prem, and Pooja’s younger sister, Nisha. Pooja discovers their love and is ecstatic that her sister will marry into the same family, and hence join the same household, as Rajesh, Prem, and their uncle (who never married) live together as a traditional Indian joint family. Unfortunately, before she can spread the good news, Pooja suffers from an untimely accident and dies suddenly. Rajesh’s uncle and Pooja’s parents decide that Nisha should marry Rajesh, so that his infant son will have the benefit of a mother’s care. Fortunately, Rajesh discovers his brother’s and Nisha’s love for each other in time, and Prem and Nisha are married and presumably live happily ever after.

19
. The word
crore
is derived from Sanskrit and is used in Indian English. One
crore
represents 10 million.

20
. Until hahk, filmmakers, in order to minimize their losses from piracy, released the videos of their films at the same time as their theatrical release. The producer/ distributors of hahk withheld the videos and went to great lengths to stave unauthorized circulation of their film. I will address hahk’s unique release and distribution strategy in chapter eight.

21
. See Derne 2008; Deshpande 2005; Ganti 2004; Inden 1999; Kapur and Pendakur 2007; Kazmi 1999; Mazumdar 2007; Uberoi 2001.

22
. I want to remind readers that I am discussing the dominant trends in filmmaking, but such trends do not preclude other types of films from being made, especially given the prolific nature of the Hindi film industry. For example, the fascination with the world of organized crime and gangsters, which has had a long history in Hindi cinema, also gained prominence in the late 1990s. The representations of mafia bosses and their gangs changed from the glamorous, Westernized, and sanitized representations of earlier Hindi films, however, to grittier and more ethnically and regionally specific portrayals, a trend that began with Mukul Anand’s
Agneepath
(Path of Fire, 1990), which became a standardized feature of the genre after the critically acclaimed and modestly successful
Satya
(Truth, 1998) by Ram Gopal Varma. While Varma’s films and aesthetic style could definitely be regarded as “cool” by viewers and scholars, his self-proclaimed iconoclastic position within the industry (furthered by both critical and media representations of him) associate him with a more conventional understanding of coolness—of rebellion, opposition, or defiance to authority. My discussion of coolness, however, points to how the category of cool within Hindi filmmakers’ own discourses is about becoming culturally mainstream and socially desirable within a more elite social world.

23
. One can argue that this trend goes as far back as
Devdas
—the film based on Sarat Chandra’s novel of the same name—and the enduring popularity of this narrative. Even
Awara
(1951) is an example.

24
. See the Rajshri Productions website,
http://www.rajshriproductions.com
.

25
. For a detailed discussion of the emergence, development, and growth of multiplexes in India, see Govil (2005) and Athique and Hill (2010).

26
. The panel was titled “Urbane themes, gloss, and technical savvy topped with highend pricing: is Hindi cinema increasingly the preserve of nris and multiplex audience?” It was organized by the film weekly
Screen
as part of its 58th anniversary celebrations. The panel was comprised of directors Kabir Khan, Sujoy Ghosh, and Sooni Taraporewala, as well as distributor Shyam Shroff (Pillai 2009).

27
.
Awaaz
is a pseudonym.

28
. Kumar’s reference to “cross-over films” was another generic designation that gained purchase in the industry after the global success of South Asian–themed films made by diasporic filmmakers like Mira Nair’s
Monsoon Wedding
and Gurinder Chadha’s
Bend It Like Beckham
. Although both of these films were made by diasporic South Asians living and working outside of the Bombay film industry, their success opened up new imaginative horizons for some Hindi filmmakers in terms of thinking more specifically of a global audience, hence the label, “cross-over.”