Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (57 page)

36
. For example, a distributor would enter into an mg agreement (chapter five) with a producer for a particular territory, and then he would sell off the subterritory rights within his territory to other distributors as a way of raising funds for the minimum guarantee that he promised to advance to the producer.

1
.
Bihar
is a state located in northern India—lying southeast of New Delhi, northwest of Calcutta, and bordered by Nepal to the north.

2
. This is a marked difference between the Hindi film industry and Hollywood, which has a vast market research and marketing apparatus that produces an immense amount of data and “surveillance” about film audiences (Miller et al. 2001). While marketing a film in terms of promotion and advertising across various media platforms has increased significantly since 2000, centralized market research of the sort carried out by the National Research Group in the United States—test screenings, tracking studies, focus-group studies—does not exist to this date in the Hindi film industry. Some filmmakers screen their films prerelease— referred to as “trials”—to friends, family, colleagues, distributors, journalists, and other members connected to the industry, while others are very proprietary and show their films to a select few. The system of paid previews began selectively in 2006 and gained greater momentum in 2008, but in these cases, films basically open to the public a day or two before their official release and serve
as a revenue generator (tickets are frequently higher priced) rather than as a test of content.

3
. See Hughes (2006) for a related discussion about how film genres in South India in the 1920s enabled exhibitors to imagine the social reality of their audiences, which enables one to do a historiography of early cinema audiences.

4
. I thank Faye Ginsburg for this phrase.

5
. For example, in
Media Worlds
, Louisa Schein asserts, in her chapter about Hmong media practices, “The way people understand who they are and how they belong is never anterior to, is indeed inseparable from, the kinds of media they consume” (2002: 30). Other scholars who have theorized and examined the relationship between media consumption and subjectivity are Abu-Lughod (2005), Appadurai (1996), Hall (1990), Mankekar (1999), Yang (2002).

6
. See Srinivas (2009) for a very cogent and incisive summary of spectatorship theory in film studies.

7
. See Ganti (2002, 2009) for a further discussion of this issue in terms of adapting Hollywood films (2002) and state censorship (2009).

8
. The most obvious example of this is a film of the
Twilight
series, where numbers of people were seeing the film to mock it or make fun of it, but this particular form of engagement does not get registered by aggregate box-office figures; instead such actions also add to the commercial success of the film, which then gets interpreted by its makers as approval and endorsement. While one can argue that the plethora of viewer-generated commentary about films that one finds online is a source of public opinion about films, such commentary, when it counters boxoffice figures, does not get registered as any sort of verifiable reality. Instead, boxoffice figures are used to trump any charges of negative response. Additionally, the multiplicity of distribution outlets for films—television, home video, Internet— means that film consumption takes place across a great variety of venues and sites, with much of it being unquantifiable. If one takes piracy into account, it is actually very hard to quantify how many people have watched a film and even harder to quantify how many people liked a film.

9
. The film opened in India with only 29 prints, which was a comparatively tiny number, and included showing in only one theater in all of Bombay. The films’ producer/ distributors also tied the release with the upgrading of theaters to digital sound. As mentioned in chapter two—as a measure to combat the loss of revenue from piracy—since 1987 Hindi filmmakers had been releasing videocassettes simultaneously with a film’s theatrical release. At the time of my fieldwork in 1996, the official video of hahk had still not been released. The film’s videocassettes were finally released several years later, in 1999. The measures that the film’s makers instituted to check piracy involved coding the film prints so that pirated videos could be traced back to the source. Rajjat Barjatya informed me, “Each print of hahk was marked so that even if an unauthorized video was circulating in the market, we could decode that video, and exactly find out which print it was made from. So we know which print it was made from, and we know where that print has been screening. Indirectly we know which cinema that it’s come from” (Barjatya, interview, 29 April 1996).

10
. There is still a burden on filmmakers insofar as they are expected to be aware of audience sensibilities, discussed later in the chapter.

11
. There are parallels to the Hispanic marketing industry (Dàvila 2001), which organizes the Latino market in the United States regionally, where regions are asso- ciated with specific cultures, and those cultures with specific traits; Latino consumers are segmented along nationality as well.

12
. Dharmendra is frequently referred to as “the Jat” and his elder son, Sunny, as “the junior Jat”—a powerful landed caste in northern India, specifically Punjab, Haryana, and western Uttar Pradesh.

13
.
Film Information
, September 29, 2001, pp. 5–6.

14
. The South, with the exception of the state of Andhra Pradesh, is not considered a very receptive market for Hindi films because of the longstanding historical antagonisms against the Hindi language, especially in Tamil Nadu; further, the existence of prolific film industries in the southern Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh is a hurdle. Andhra Pradesh, which includes the sub-territory of Nizam, is considered a more favorable market for Hindi films than the other southern Indian states because of the existence of a native Urdu-speaking population residing in the capital city of Hyderabad.

15
. “Emotion” is used to denote kinship relations, an issue which is discussed in greater detail in Ganti (2002).

16
. Movie theaters in India also operate on what is referred to as an advance booking system—people reserve and buy movie tickets beforehand for a specific day and time, sometimes a few weeks before a movie’s release. Advance booking is one way for producers, distributors, and exhibitors to gauge the initial interest in a film as well as predict its opening weekend.

17
. Deborah Matzner (2010), in her ethnography of Indian television producers, observed the same phenomenon.

18
. Matunga is a central suburb of Bombay, with a heavily South Indian population; in Rajabali’s statements, the “man from Matunga” represents non-elite viewers.

19
. Rural bandits or outlaws—the Hindi word is
daaku
.

20
. Rahul Agrawal is a pseudonym.

21
. See Ganti (2002) for a discussion of Hollywood adaptations and the case of
Ghulam
specifically.

22
. The review in
Film Information
predicted that its business would be better in Bombay, Maharashtra, and South. In the year-end analysis of box-office outcome,
Ghulam
’s overall business was categorized as an overflow earner, which meant that its distributors would have recovered their investment, earned their commission, and earned enough to share the overflow with the film’s producer.

23
. One could easily argue that Hindi films have always had a generic North Indianness, and from the late 1990s have been especially Punjab-centric.

24
. This is a folk dance and musical form from Punjab.

25
. While none of my informants ever raised the issue explicitly, explaining their judgments about the moral conservatism of audiences mainly through the medium of box-office outcome, another reason for filmmakers’ perceptions of audiences as morally conservative would also be linked to the way that Hindi films periodically become embroiled in moral panics and controversies—often over sexually charged imagery—in the public sphere around issues of obscenity, vulgarity, and the constitution of “Indian-ness.” For more on this issue see Ganti (2009). For an example of a particularly heated and documented moral panic around the 1993 Hindi film song
“Choli ke Peeche”
(What Is Behind My Blouse?) see Ghosh (1999).

26
. Nargis was the lead character in
Mother India
(1957), a classic by Mehboob Khan that has been the focus of many a scholarly article about Indian cinema. See Ganti (2004) for a brief biography and filmography.

27
. In our many conversations about filmmaking over the years, Rajabali has consistently exhibited a much more complex and generous understanding of audiences than his colleagues in the film industry.

The title of this chapter draws explicit inspiration from Arjun Appadurai’s
The Fear
of Small Numbers
(2006).

1
. According to
Variety
, the film grossed $591,289 in three days from 44 screens across the United States, which was a very high per screen average of $13,438 (“Box Office” 1999; Chhabra 1999). Promotional trailers for the film, aired as commercials during community-produced Indian television shows in the United States, led with voice-overs and title cards: “Bollywood Beats Hollywood!”

2
. This caricature of diasporic audiences has been remarkably persistent—I encountered it as recently as 2009: director Sudhir Mishra asserted at the panel discussion, “Reframing Cinema,” being held at nyu in November 2009, as part of the miaac Film Festival, “With the rise of corporates, films are being made for the homesickness market in the U.S.” Director Kabir Khan stated on a panel discussion in Bombay about the impact of multiplexes, “The diaspora is still ten years behind us” (Pillai 2009).

3
. Bhagnani was speaking in Hindi and his exact sentence was, “
Unko chahiye ek
regular
wohi ghisi-piti
film, cliché,
jhagda, janwar panthi, khoon-kharaba
.” The English translation doesn’t communicate the full level of disdain expressed in the Hindi.

4
. Bhatt’s discussion is similar to what Zafirau (2009a) noted in his research about Hollywood producers who often relied on their own children to assess the appeal and potential popularity of films targeting children.

5
. This binary was perhaps first articulated in the mid-1990s as “rural Bharat vs. urban India,” by Sharad Joshi, leader of the farmer’s movement in Maharashtra. For an articulate and insightful discussion of this issue see Gupta (1998).

6
. Johar’s previous success,
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
, and the draw of the star cast of
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham—
Shah Rukh Khan, Kajol, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, and Kareena Kapoor—was what enabled him to be in such a commanding position.
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
was, until 2009, the most successful Hindi film in the United Kingdom and North America.

7
. Even those who feel the right to enter can still have problems. For example, during my fieldwork in May 2006, the security guard at Fame Cinemas, Kandivali branch, stopped owner Shyam Shroff, who was giving me a tour of the chain of multiplexes, from entering the premises—because it was in between show times. The guard asked him in Hindi, “Who are you?” When Shroff said his name and it didn’t register with the guard, Shroff finally said in Hindi, “I’m the owner [
Main malik
hoon
].” Other examples—I was asked to stop taking photographs of the Raghuleela Mall in Kandivali; I was also asked to stop taking photographs of Fame Adlabs, until I informed them that I was a guest of Shroff, and then I was allowed to continue.

8
. See the Big Cinemas website,
http://www.bigcinemas.com/in/advertise.asp
.

9
. Language from the Big cinemas website describing their audience profile to potential advertisers interested in promoting their brands at the multiplex chain. See the Big Cinemas website,
http://www.bigcinemas.com/in/advertise.asp
.

10
. Official exchange rates for 2008 pegged the dollar to be equal to about 48 rupees. Exchange rates, however, do not accurately reflect the purchasing power or value of a particular currency. Purchasing power parity (ppp) is a better indicator of currency value and in 2008, $1 = Rs. 13.42, which meant that $1 and Rs. 13.42 were able to purchase the same amount of goods and services (World Bank 2009); therefore, using the ppp rate to convert rupees into dollars, the cost of tickets at multiplexes ranged from $8.20–$9.69 in contrast to $1.49–$4.47. I thank Omkar Goswami for calculating the ppp conversion factor between the U.S. dollar and the Indian rupee.

11
. ppp Rates: $13.04–$22.35 for multiplexes; $3.73–$8.20 for single screens in Bombay.

12
. See Fame Cinemas website,
http://www.famecinemas.com
.

13
. Nahta’s exact statement was, “They’ve got different classes where the highest classes are so high priced that they are assured that these
jhopad-patti wallahs
[slum-dwellers] will not come and sit next to them.”

14
. See a related discussion of the idea of a “decent crowd” noted by Athique and Hill (2010).

15
. For example, in 1996, Komal Nahta, editor of
Film Information
, discussing films that had become box-office successes that year, remarked about the film
Agnisakshi
(Fire-Witness), “I think five years back, it would be even suicidal to think that an
Agnisakshi
can run in Bombay. A woman gets married, she runs away and gets married again and all that. People are open even to such films” (Nahta, interview, September 1996).

16
. I visited five different multiplexes in May 2006: Fame Adlabs, Fame Malad, Fame Raghuleela, Cinemax Versova, and pvr Cinemas, Juhu. Of the three chains that I visited, only Fame Cinemas had an offering of films in other Indian languages, namely Malayalam, Bengali, and Marathi, but these were only screened in one theater at off-peak times.

17
. See Bamzai (2007); kpmg (2009, 2011); Pricewaterhouse Coopers (2006a, 2010).

18
. Big Cinemas’ press release, March 17, 2009: “Major exhibitors come together to address film revenue share issues” asserted that in 2005–6, 45–50 percent of theatrical revenues came from multiplexes while in 2007–8, this figure rose to 65–70 percent.
http://www.bigcinemas.com/in/pressrelease_majorExhibitors.html
.

19
. Yet I could not come across consistent figures for the number of multiplex screens in India—they were all estimates—and the percentage of revenues multiplexes were purported to generate were also widely inconsistent across various information sources.

20
. There seems to be an industry of generating reports about the film industry in India by Andersen Consulting, Yes Bank, kpmg, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, A.T. Kearney, Dodona Research, and Screen Digest. Even these various reports do not present consistent information about the film industry, filmmaking, or filmgoing in India—many figures are presented as estimates, and facts are referenced with respect to other prepared reports.

21
. Mukesh Bhatt, whom I quoted discussing the two Indias trope, is not related to Vikram Bhatt, despite the shared last name. Both Bhatts are related in terms of work, however—Mukesh has produced many of Vikram’s directorial ventures.

22
. Of course the growing popularity and increasing commercial scale and profitability of Bhojpuri films (Bhojpuri is a language spoken in Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh), from about 2005 onward, belies the point made by Hindi filmmakers about the dearth of revenue from the “interiors” like Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

23
. Ashok Kumar (1911–2000) was one of the first stars of Hindi cinema who began his acting career in the 1930s.

24
. Examples of such filmmakers include Anurag Kashyap, Vishal Bharadwaj, Dibakar Banerjee, and Sudhir Mishra.

25
. Johar’s own filmmaking career has been characterized by a desire to make a presence in the global media landscape. For example, he always sells his audio rights to Sony Music rather than an Indian music company; he was the first to use white European background dancers for his second film, flying them into Bombay; he sold the worldwide distribution rights for his film
My Name Is Khan
to 20th Century Fox. From his directorial debut,
Kuch Kuch Hota Hai
(Something Happens, 1998) to his magnum opus,
My Name Is Khan
(2010), Johar’s films have always been associated with urban, metro, overseas, and “classes” audiences. His film,
Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham
(Sometimes Happiness, Sometimes Sorrow, 2001) was, until 2009, the most successful Hindi film in North America and the United Kingdom. His filmmaking typifies the gentrification of Hindi cinema and the transformation of the Hindi film industry into Bollywood.

26
. See Fernandes (2006); Lukose (2009); Mankekar (1999); Mazzarella (2003); Rajagopal (2001).