Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (56 page)

1
. The film was the directorial debut of Manish Acharya—originally from Bombay and a former it industry professional working in the United States—who decided to go to film school and received an mfa degree in filmmaking from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Implicit in Jariwalla’s remarks was that Acharya with his U.S. film school education brought a different approach and sensibility to filmmaking.

2
. There have been a number of novels and films set against the backdrop of the Hindi film industry: Salman Rushdie’s
Satanic Verses
(1989), Shashi Tharoor’s
Show Business
(1993), Guru Dutt’s
Kaagaz ke Phool
(Paper Flowers, 1959), Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s
Guddi
(Doll, 1971), Ram Gopal Varma’s
Rangeela
(Colorful, 1995) and
Mast
(Fun-loving, 1999), Farah Khan’s
Om Shanti Om
(2007), and Punit Malhotra’s
I Hate Luv Storys
(2010).

3
. When I did set up appointments beforehand, they were mostly with members of the industry who would either not be present or spend much time at production sites: like screenwriters whose primary labor took place prior to a film’s production; directors or actors who were not shooting a film at the moment; producers, directors, or actors who had retired from filmmaking; or those who dealt explicitly with the commercial aspect of filmmaking, such as distributors and exhibitors.

4
. In fact my first interview of Subhash Ghai—a very successful and prominent producer/ director—was very multi-sited—over the course of three days—the interview began in his home, continued in his car, then his editing studio, then his office, then a restaurant, then Filmistan studios, where he was shooting his film
Pardes
, and finally ended in one of the makeup rooms at Filmistan.

5
. Radhika and Tarun are pseudonyms.

6
. There is a clear division of labor between dance, music, and story, although with the examples of Vishal Bharadwaj—a music composer who is also a director— and Farah Khan (a choreographer turned director), those roles are also getting blurred.

7
. He had also acted in a very small role in the previous year’s box-office hit, ddlJ, in which he assisted his good friend, Aditya Chopra.

8
. Sandeep is a pseudonym.

9
. The action director used to be known as the fight master.

10
. While choreography, music composition, and cinematography have tended to remain distinct occupational specializations, recently there have been some individuals who have combined those specializations with film direction as well: Farah Khan (choreographer and director); Vishal Bhardwaj (composer and director); Anil Mehta (cinematographer and director).

11
. The main details that are worked upon during this phase are the screenplay and dialogues in terms of the script, the melodies and lyrics in terms of the music, and locations, sets, props, and costumes in terms of production details.

12
. For example, Satyajit Ray was valorized as the auteur par excellence.

13
. A particularly humorous instance of dubbing that I encountered was the actor kissing his own hand to simulate the sound of kissing the actresses’s hand.

14
. The amount of time that dubbing takes depends on the actor’s experience and the length of the role; an experienced lead actor can finish dubbing for a film in a few days.

15
. Of course, during the shooting, actors still have to be able to make the correct lip movements so that the dubbed speech appears synchronous.

16
. Two cases that I am familiar with from my fieldwork—Rani Mukherji who was just beginning her career in
Ghulam
(Vassal, 1998) had her husky, throaty voice overdubbed by someone with a much higher-pitched voice; Aftab Shivdasani’s voice in
Kasoor
(Fault, 2000) was not considered old and deep enough for the age he was playing in the film, so the director, Vikram Bhatt, dubbed for Shivdasani, which I was able to observe firsthand. More recently I read in the trade magazine
Film Information
(“Heard, Not Seen” 2008) that producer/director Subhash Ghai dubbed over actor Anil Kapoor’s own dubbing for one scene in his film
Black &
White
, because he thought he could do it even better.

17
.
Lagaan
holds a very special place in the contemporary Hindi film industry, for it signifies for filmmakers the global success of the mainstream Hindi film form, winning awards in European film festivals and having been nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Foreign Language Film category in 2002—only the third time that a film from India had been nominated for an Oscar.

18
. This style of working is itself a result of the undercapitalized nature of the film industry—a scenario that existed until about 2003. Since films are shot in a series of schedules, rather than being out of work while a particular film is not being shot, actors took on multiple assignments to be assured a steady stream of work and earnings.

19
. At various points in the industry’s history, producers have attempted to curtail the number of films that actors could work on simultaneously—imposing ceilings on the number of films actors could sign or limiting the number of shifts that an actor could work in at once.

20
. I agreed to play the role, which involved two scenes, but since the film went through a lot of changes—including the original heroine being replaced—the scenes I acted in never saw the light of day.

21
. In another instance during my fieldwork, on the shoot of
Dastak
(Knock), even after an actor had been hired to do a scene—that of a television journalist reporting from a special event—I was asked by an assistant director if I would like to play the part of the television reporter. I declined the offer.

22
. I too learned my few lines of dialogue on the set. I was not given anything to read, but was tutored in my lines by an assistant director.

23
. One reason for this was that both songs were love songs, involving two actors
on location, without any background dancers. The elaborate production numbers that “Bollywood” has become known for, involving a retinue of background dancers and lavish sets, would have more complicated choreography that would entail rehearsals and planning beforehand.

24
. Films started being edited digitally on computerized editing systems only since 1998. While the means of visual production are relatively simple, sound is another matter. Filmmakers employ state-of-the-art sound recording and mixing technologies, and most Hindi films are presented in Dolby Digital sound. The postproduction phase is very high-tech.

25
. Filmmakers are also quite efficient with other resources as well. For example, when a scene requires a smoky atmosphere, rather than using a dry ice machine, smoke is created by throwing water on hot coals in a shallow metal basket and having a crewmember walk through the set carrying the basket. Lumber to construct a set is rented and therefore reused continually, rather than discarded after one use; sometimes even sets are reused.

26
. As budgets have increased the proportion of the budget devoted to raw stock has decreased, but the actual costs remain high. As of August 2009, the price for 400 feet of Fuji color positive was 12,000 rupees. An average Hindi film production shoots about 100,000 feet; thereby the raw stock cost would be 3 million rupees. I thank Vikram Bhatt for providing me this information.

27
. One tin contains 400 feet of stock, so per Roshan’s claims, he shoots from 40,000 to 52,800 feet of film, while his colleagues shoot anywhere from 160,000 to 200,000 feet of film.

28
. For example, see Caldwell (2008), Ohmann (1996), and Zafirau (2009b).

29
. In that sense Hindi filmmakers’ loose use of the term “Hollywood” to refer to all English-language filmmaking in the West parallels the indiscriminate use of the term “Bollywood.”

30
. Since the late 2000s, casting directors are starting to be a recognizable job specialization in the Hindi film industry, which is represented by the press as a further sign of Bollywood’s increasing “professionalization”—see Joshi (2010).

1
. Gmelch’s discussion of “baseball magic” (2003) is another instance where Malinowski’s ideas of magic have been applied in a contemporary, modern context.

2
. Although most Hindu producers did begin a new film project with a small
puja
— as a way of commencing the production auspiciously.

3
. Malinowski’s description of economic magic is the most relevant to my example: “In economic magic the growing of plants, the approach of animals, the arrival of fish in shoals are depicted” (1954 [1922]: 74).

4
.
Sitaare
is a pseudonym.

5
. The only established figures of the crew were the music directors (composers) who had come into some national prominence by virtue of their previous film, which was a huge commercial success. The editor was very respected within the industry and the screenwriter had recently tasted success with his previous film, but distributors do not buy the rights for a film based on the status or prestige of technicians like composers, editors, or writers; they base their decisions on the cast.

6
. The film had a new actress; it was rumored to be because distributors did not like the original actress chosen for the role. Many of the portions that I had observed
being shot in 1996 were reshot. The film did not enjoy wide circulation. I have also been unable to obtain the film’s dvd, since friends in India have not been able to find it in mainstream retail outlets.

7
. Kunal Madhvani is a pseudonym.

8
.
Tapori
is a Bombay Hindi slang term to refer to young street-smart men, coming from poor or working-class backgrounds, who occupy a significant presence in the urban landscape. They could be interchangeable with the category of “frontbencher” discussed in chapter two. See Mazumdar (2007) for a discussion of the cinematic representations of the
tapori
. The reference to “families upstairs” has to do with class-segregated viewing practices associated with the cinema hall and filmmakers’ representations of their audiences, which will be discussed in chapters eight and nine.

9
. Ooty is the shortened name of Ootacamund—a picturesque and popular hill resort town known as “hill stations” in India—in the southern state of Tamil Nadu. Such hill stations are a favorite locale to shoot song sequences.

10
. Sound and music arrived in Indian cinema with the release of the Hindi film
Alam
Ara
(Beauty of the World), on March 14, 1931, at the Majestic Theatre in Bombay. Advertised as an “all-talking, all-singing, all-dancing film,” this production, by Ardeshir Irani, with its seven songs established music, song, and dance as staples of Indian cinema. Others sought to emulate its success and the number of songs proliferated in films during the early sound era—with as many as 70 in
Indrasabha
(Indra’s Court, 1932). The presence of songs in Indian cinema has been explained in terms of cultural antecedents and the influence of indigenous performance traditions (Barnouw and Krishnaswamy 1980; Ganti 2000, 2002).

11
. These songs circulate in a rich, complex aural economy, where they take on a life of their own, disassociated from any particular film (Ganti 2000; Gopal and Moorti 2008). Until the early 1980s, film music was the only form of popular music in India that was produced, distributed, and consumed on a mass scale, and even today film music accounts for the majority—nearly 70 percent—of music sales in India. Entering a music store in India, one is faced with a staggering selection of film music: categorized and packaged by films, music directors (composers), singers, actors, actresses, directors, decades, and themes, as well as the more recent phenomenon of remixes.

12
. When Hindi filmmakers term a film a “musical,” they are referring to a film that is explicitly about music, musicians, or performers in some way. The mere existence of songs does not automatically make a film a “musical” within the genre distinctions of popular Hindi cinema.

13
. For example, in 1995 the music from the year’s biggest hit,
Dilwale Dulhaniya Le
Jayenge
, sold a 100 million units and this figure does not account for the sales of pirated versions of the soundtrack (Chaya 1996).

14
. According to one news report, more than 200 films have been shot there since the 1980s (Hugo Miller 2006). In 2002, the Swiss government honored Hindi producer/ director Yash Chopra, for whom Switzerland has been an especially favorite location for song sequences for two decades, with a special award for helping to raise awareness about and projecting Switzerland as an idyllic tourist destination.

15
. The fact that the mise-en-scène of these sequences may be completely disjunctive with the rest of the film is not of concern to filmmakers, who are more interested in establishing that these sequences have been shot outside of India, which is one of the reasons that filmmakers tend to shoot in cities and areas that have land- scapes and architectural styles distinct from those found in India. Thus Europe, North America, and Australia are preferred to other parts of Asia. When songs have been filmed in Singapore or Malaysia, the focus is always on a built part of the landscape like the petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur. Although more recently, entire films have been shot in Malaysia—
Don
(2006), Singapore—
Krrish
(2006), and South Korea—
Gangster
(2006), because the respective governments wooed filmmakers with a variety of incentives.

16
. I have not been able to find the origins of this phrase, but it appears to have become very common parlance within the United Kindgom. The earliest reference I found was in a March 5, 2003, memorandum submitted to the U.K. Parliament’s Select Committee on Culture, Media, and Sport, by Julia Toppin. It appears in a sentence describing the indirect financial contributions of filmmaking in the United Kingdom—“Income is also derived indirectly from product placement, location tourism, or a highlighted cultural aspect, i.e., the Bollywood Effect.”
http://www.publications.parliament.uk
. The phrase has become part of the British Tourist Authority’s official discourse and appears in its annual reports, “India: Market and Trade Profile,” in the section detailing strategies of how to reach Indian consumers (British Tourist Authority 2007).

17
. The impetus is to revive the Swiss tourism industry by drawing visitors from India as Swiss government data showed that, while overall tourism to Switzerland has reduced, the percentage of tourists arriving from India has been on the upsurge.

18
. The screenwriter relayed his experience, but asked me to keep the details of the film in confidence, as he did not want the director to learn of his feelings, so the name of the film, director, and writer are pseudonyms.

19
. Soon after the release of
Khalnayak
(The Villain, 1993), there were reports in the press about how often people were seeing the film, but only until the main hit number of the film—
Choli ke peeche kya hai?
(What Is Behind My Blouse?).

20
. There have been a few films made without songs:
Kanoon
(Law, 1960), by B. R. Chopra, and
Ittefaq
(Chance, 1969), by Yash Chopra were the most notable ones. In more recent times,
Bhoot
(Ghost, 2003) was made as a song-less film, but the director decided to produce an album with songs in order to reap revenues from the sale of the soundtrack, shooting two music videos to promote the film on television. According to the director, Ram Gopal Varma, the music sales were disappointing and a failed experiment. The film went on to do quite well at the boxoffice, however; its success was heavily commented upon by the media in 2003, and Varma was touted as a renegade and a risk-taker who had shattered a prevailing myth of the industry. See Jha (2003).

21
. This is the tag line that appears on all of the pnc (Pritish Nandy Communications) literature.

22
. Unfortunately, in September 1997 Anand died from a heart attack, just a month before his 45th birthday.

23
. For example,
Outlook
’s article on July 17, 1996, “There’s No Business Like. . .” begins with the following assertion, “Call it an infusion of corporate culture in Tinseltown. . . but slowly and surely, in Bollywood, the loose-script-shuffling, cash-toting producers of yesteryear are giving way to staid, pin-striped business managers who are more comfortable spewing net profits and earnings per share than zoom, long shot, and cut” (Annuncio 1996). Needless to say, I never met examples of either type during my fieldwork.

24
. To give an indication of Bachchan’s star power, the news of aBcl’s formation made the front page of the
Times of India
on January 14, 1995, in a story that appeared right below the newspaper’s masthead, “Amitabh firm set to create new trend” (Dalal 1995). Months later,
India Today
carried an eight-page special feature, “From Superstar to Tycoon” (Jain 1995) in its November 30 issue. aBcl initially raised capital from institutional investors in 1995 and then floated a public issue in early 1996. For more details see Banker (1999).

25
. Prasar Bharati (Broadcasting Corporation of India) which is comprised of Doordarshan (tv) and All India Radio, filed a petition in the Bombay High Court in 1999, requesting that the company be “wound up”—Indian legal parlance for declaring bankruptcy, as it owed Doordarshan more than 220 million rupees (Chakravorty 1999). The company began its winding up process in April 2000, and was fully liquidated, with an auction of its movable assets and property, in February 2002.

26
. For more on aBcl’s and Bachchan’s financial troubles, see Aiyar (1999); Annuncio (1997); Ghosh and Guha Ray (1999); Madhu Jain (1998); and Menezes (1997). Bachchan repaid his creditors and relaunched the company in 2003 as aB Corporation. A testament to Bachchan’s charisma and exceptional status from the perspective of the Indian media is the way that this second chance has been represented— once again a great deal of press and much of it in hyperbolic tones, and the frequent use of cricket and cinema metaphors (“Amitabh Bachchan, Now Unlimited” 2003) and (“Time to Don the Mantle” 2003).

27
. In November 2008, Cinema Capital Venture Fund (ccvf), India’s first seBiapproved (Securities and Exchange Board of India) venture capital fund focused on the film and entertainment industry, came into existence and invested close to 1 billion rupees in the industry within the year (“Your Ticket to Blockbuster Return” 2010).

28
. Yashraj Films often has Pvt. Ltd. listed after its name, but it is not prominently displayed on their website or their promotional literature. A private limited company refers to a company that has private investors other than the founders, who are due some form of dividend from the company’s profits.

29
. Yashraj demonstrates the value assigned to the term “corporate.” In their own promotional literature, they represent themselves as a “corporate” entity: they refer to a corporate office; they use language such as chairman and vice chairman to describe Yash Chopra and Aditya Chopra, respectively; and they have vice presidents of various divisions. See the “About Us” section of the Yash Raj Films website,
http://www.yashrajfilms.com
.

30
. Bhatt pointed out, however, that for “independent” filmmakers—by which he meant individual producers—the problem of raising finance from one production schedule to the next still existed.

31
. Co-branding enables what is referred to as “cross-promotions” where a consumer brand and a film are advertised simultaneously in one go—for example,
Kaante
(Thorns) (2002) tied up with Indian soft-drink brand Thums Up and advertisements depicting the film’s characters drinking Thums Up were aired across a variety of Indian satellite channels during some key viewing periods, such as cricket matches (Tandon 2002).

32
. For example, both of Manmohan Shetty’s daughters work in Walkwater Media— one as joint managing director and the other as creative head of their film division— and previously worked in Adlabs; Pritish Nandy’s two daughters occupy the positions of creative director and vice president, creative services in pnc; Subhash Ghai has his brothers-in-law, daughter, and son-in-law in high positions at Mukta Arts. Shravan Shroff heads the exhibition division of Shringar, the distribution company started by his father and uncle.

33
. In May 2006, when my interview with Shroff was conducted, the “big” actors he refers to would have been Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Hrithik Roshan, and Sanjay Dutt, who had consistently starred in the biggest commercial successes between 2000 and 2005. Among this group, Shah Rukh Khan had the most sustained record of success: five huge hits over five years. When I began my fieldwork in 1996, the most in-demand stars were Shah Rukh Khan, Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Govinda, Sunny Deol, and Ajay Devgan. In 2010, the top stars continue to be the three Khans, plus Hrithik Roshan, Akshay Kumar, Ajay Devgan, and Ranbir Kapoor. Note the consistent presence of the three Khans since 1996.

34
. There is a longstanding and prolific discourse about the unreasonable nature of star remuneration—referred to as star “prices”—within the trade press. The rates quoted in some stories seem somewhat sensationalist, in order to emphasize the unreasonable nature of stars. Many producers and directors during my fieldwork claimed that stars were never paid as much as they claimed to be—at least by “legitimate” producers. The discussion about star prices can be viewed as a part of the
boundary-work
engaged in by filmmakers: the illegitimate producers—the “proposal-makers”—are those who pay stars unreasonable fees.

35
. For example, Rajjat Barjatya stated, “The sort of films being made today—the reason why they’re flopping is because the foundation is so weak. Today, producers just, you know, they sign a good director; they sign a couple of good artistes; they launch the
mahurat
; collect money; and with the money they have collected from the distributors, they start making the film piece by piece. That’s no way of making a film” (Barjatya, interview, April 1996).