Aaj Tak’s segment on Guru
Did anyone catch the one hour twenty minute stunt of Aaj Tak, where they simultaneously interviewed Mithun Chakravarthy, Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan and Mani Ratnam?
The whole segment was live. On Aaj Tak’s side there were two interviewers. On the other end Mithun was in Calcutta, Aish (don’t know), Abhishek in a Bombay studio, Mani Ratnam in Chennai.
Though the idea of the Guru’s PR Department must have been to promote the movie on a news channel like Aaj Tak for about 75-80 minutes, I’m quite sure the two young “over-awed” interviewers may have given the team of Guru moments where their hearts must have been in their mouth and some, where they were simply shitting in their pants.
What the hell was going on?
You had two stars, a senior artist and a renowned craftsman from the film industry and the questions you could come up sounded so amateurish and pathetic, it sent the viewer running for the nearest pillow or newspaper to cover the face and yell “I DID NOT HEAR THAT!!!”
To give you a glimpse of the amazing “depth” of questions asked by the two interviewers, here’s a few examples…
How did you have fun on the sets?
Isn’t Guru based on Dhirubhai Ambani? (seriously… asking this question once was enough, but asking the SAME FUCKING DARN QUESTION MORE THAN A DOZEN TIMES IS GLORIFIED STUPIDITY)
Aishwarya or Mani Ratnam – please sing for us (I kid you not… the dumb eggheads did ask the great maestro Ratnam this one… I fell off the sofa when I heard this… Mani simply smiled and stayed put … )
Abhishek who is you favorite co-star? – to which he replied “My dad”… but no… remember that the interview is being taken by two kids (guy and a girl) who in their over joyed moment of their lives (we are TALKING TO ASH, ABHI, MANI!!!) are shaking their bodies so vigorously, as if their chairs are connected to live wire…
So what do they do?
Next question to Abhishek – “We want to know who is your favorite FEMALE costar”… Ok Ok we know you want Abhishek to say Aishwarya… now you really have to be an idiot to not understand what were the motives in asking that question… and last I checked Abhishek is no idiot. (By the way his answer to that was “My mom”)
The excited kids… sorry… interviewers, in their overjoyed euphoria forgot that for an interview… one needs questions to be asked…
Things got so repetitive at one point that each of the Guru’s team – Mithun, Ash, Abhi and Mani specifically had to tell the interviewers that “They have answered the (oft repeated) question again and again”
And seriously… is this the way to handle Mani Ratnam????
Didn’t the dumb interviewers do their homework??? Didn’t they know that Mani doesn’t speak much Hindi???? The male interviewer kept on going in Hindi while talking to Mani… after some point, Mani simply raised his hands and went “Could you please talk to me in English, so I can understand what you are saying…”
After which the guy would first speak in Hindi (for the audience) and then convert the question in English for Mani… though he kept forgetting to convert his questions into English at many a point.
You could see the look on Mani’s face… it said it all… I’m fucking stuck with a bunch of idiots…
Things must have got so unbearable for him, that his answers got shorter and shorter with some patented lines like “I’m just doing my job”
Here was Mani Ratnam, one of the most experienced, knowledgeable and creative person in the Indian film industry and all the interviewers could do is ask him to sing or repeat the question a dozen times on whether Guru is based on Ambani???
SERIOUSLY… WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING!!!! The Female Interviewer didn’t want to get off Abhishek’s back and the Male didn’t want to get off Aishwarya’s…
AND WHO THE HELL DESIGNED THE SHOW???
A BREAK EVERY 6 MINUTES???? At one point even Mithun was irritated, slipping in a one “ANOTHER BREAK???” comment in his mic.
Though there were few fun moments, NOT due to the interviewers but because of Mithun… who pulled Ash’s leg and Abhishek joined in… and the fun jabs he took at Abhishek.
We need to talk to Mani… seriously… PFC’s Authors should be given the opportunity to sit down with the crew of his next project… we could end up with a couple of volumes of Cinema Encyclopedia… unlike the shoe in our hand to SLAP our heads with after the Aaj Tak show last night.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
:o
anyone have a video link?
I can’t believe they allowed journalists or whatever these guys were to conduct this interview. It’s insulting to say the least! Lack of research is obvious, If I was their boss i’d sack them!
Waiting for aaj tak to become kal tak. Other than NDTV & IBN, all news channels are C R A P.
Some people just dont know how to conduct an interview. Prabhu Chawla, Senior Editor, India Today is another such person in my opinion. I watched him interview Sachin on google video (can’t seem to find link!) and it boiled my blood to say the least. It was so lame (the questions which he was asking) I had write them an email to express my disappointment – they never responded back.
It is an insult of the person being interviewed when interviewer is so ill-prepared.
You have to pay to watch videos on most of these websites.
I think and this is my opinion that most of the channels/media organizations in India are so bloody bad that it’s unbelievable. I am not sure what it is – the fact that there are so many channels, and all of them 24 hours, that they now have to feed the people all the time with whatever news they can, which is decreasing the quality of the people employed, the programs produced. Watching Indian news channels, leaves one depressed, with the stupid way – discussions are done, news is reported – full of breaks every 10 mins. It’s so bloody juvenile, not just among the young journos, even among the experienced ones. I stop here..otherwise one can write a book on how bad they are.
- Off Topic – Apple announces a mind boggling new device – the iPhone
= Sangeeta, don’t have a video link…
= Muzzy, actually some of the coverage of Aaj Tak isn’t that bad for my taste… Unfortunately I don’t get NDTV and IBN on DishNetwork my satellite channel provider.
= Windmill, Haven’t seen much of Chawla’s interviews though he does have an odd style of questioning… now that you mentioned him… it seems the interviewers and Chawla do have something in common wherein they are trying too hard to coax the person being interviewed into spitting out some scoop…
= VC, I largely agree… the quality is certainly down though technologically they have advanced.
oh i’m loving the new iPhone :D
It seems to me that none of you ever watched CNN, FOX and other American news ;)
= Indianguy, no… why? is it any good?
Nah, I think indianoguy is making the poing that the American channels do just as crap a job with their entertainment/news coverage.
!!=)) this one made me fall in hysteria
http://www.hinduonnet.com/2003/04/04/stories/2003040402570700.htm
oh dear!
oz – thats exactly he was doing – forcing questions down the guy’s throat and looking like a complete idiot with no knowledge of the topic he was asking questions about.
off-topic – and iPhone is one to drool over but touch-phone only. :( i’ve got one and they ain’t that nice.
= Windmill, they have a different touch technology… check this out, specially the second video in the comments section.
So many shows on Indian TV are knock offs of American shows. Why can’t someone copy a good show for a change? Why can’t someone do an intelligible show on the lines of Inside the Actors Studio or something like that hosted by a filmmaker or actor, where real cinema lovers and students can hear from people like Mani Ratnam and discuss cinema seriously. It’s just wrong to have someone like Mani Ratnam in a farcical PR stunt like this Aaj Tak thing.
Mani Sir – Please return to Tamil cinema & recreate that old magic! Mumbai will ultimately strip you of all your class. It’s not worth it.
The Iphones aren’t even as expensive as i thought it would be/:)$499-$699
vijay, the answer to your question is simple. and one we all know all too well. india is too star-struck. if there’s an “inside the actor’s studio”, here are the three different scenarios that we could possibly face…
scenario 1:
invite the STARS. get the RATINGS. somehow “koffee with karan” comes to mind. can one imagine a show with an uninhibited amitabh or SRK talking openly and honestly? they’ll be too busy answering with witty one-liners. the women on the other hand will be too busy flipping their hair and trying to look pretty and flash their colgate smiles. looking on the other side, can we find a james lipton equivalent to interview these people? sure there was farooq sheikh in “jeena isi ka naam hai” and i must say he did a commendable job (didn’t watch any episodes of suresh oberoi as host) but even that show just seemed like a celebration of what the “stars” have done. vivek oberoi was on there in his high phase.. after what.. only a handful of films? wtf?
scenario 2:
get the TRUE ACTORS. you know who they are. irrfan. kay kay. naseeruddin shah. konkona. tabu. you still get people to watch, but in all probability, not as many as “the stars” (f*ck those stars). show runs for a few weeks, dies down. next.
scenario 3:
get the F*CKALL wanna-be’s. you know.. the ones with no talent, only clout and connections to keep coming back up on that goddamn screen to remind us why we can’t stand them. the industry’s full of ‘em and too many to name. who’s gonna watch? not me, and i certainly hope not most of us on PFC. it’s only going to be torture for those truly talented, undiscovered gems to remind them that they don’t have the connections to be where they are.
mani sir and ramuji are going thru a phase right now.. one i know they’ll bounce right out of. genius is like an iceberg. a lot of it is hidden under the surface.
Reminds me of Prabhu Chawla’s interview of A.R.Rahman which I happened to see on Youtube. The guy is such an idiot. He comes up with the most stupid questions, starts talking in Hindi all of a sudden, makes fun of Rahman that he can understand but won’t speak Hindi, calls Rajni an Tamil Politician…you guys have to see it! A perfect example of How not to interview someone!!
Finally! Good to see Oz taking up the interviews issue.
Aaj Tak… we overjoy – so you don’t have to. WTF??
I was sick of their sensationalistic no-news segments. Prabhu Chawla should be plutoed. Period.
India, now more than ever, needs real journalists – not these fistful of shorgasms who sign off with a “sincerely up yours”.
Where have you gone… Kasinadhuni Nageshwara Rao, Khasa Subbarao, GK Reddy? :(
Yes, i saw that Aajtak interview. Dont know how to react.~X(~X(
It was really bad!!! Also, the problem was they had no clue how to handle all four of them. Four guests for one show is too much. And as far as Aajtak or other hindi channels are concerned, they just need the stars. “Stars” gurantee good ratings. The two anchors are not that dumb, but when it comes to tv ratings, they also have to dumb down. So all those naach-gana-masti-mazaak type of question.
BTW, if Mani cant understand hindi at all, how he directs hindi films ? Isn’t that bit weird. And its not only about language but also the mannerisms and nuances.
:-?:-?
Anuradha Sengupta is interviewing Mani Ratnam this weekend on her show Being. Saw the promo. Will be on CNN IBN. She is very good with her interviews. Hopefully that will be good one.
= Phoenixnu, Quote “BTW, if Mani cant understand hindi at all, how he directs hindi films ? Isn
Haven’t seen the ‘Aaj Tak’ one, but did see the ARR one of YouTube. As Striker says, a desi ‘Actors Studio’ would be great, but would probably fizzle out if it featured the real ‘actors’, as opposed to the stars.
The print media is no better. The interviews by Subhash.K.Jha, for instance, are so bad; he sucks up most of the time IMO. Think Raja Sen from Rediff does a neat job. Loved the series he did with Pankaj Kapoor, for instance.
Forget about Indian Film journalism.. but that American AVS show, is just pure class when it comes to…! although, it is unbearable.
Once at a film(Sarkar) press conference RGV was asked “What’s you favorite food?” and he replied “Next Question”
OMG finally.. half of the time i watch some of these interviews i just think to my self wtf is going on…or why in the world is this person either asking the same question over and over or just asking a silly one…and if someone like me(with no knowledge in this profession) is able to see that then there is problem for sure!!
@OZ, dont agree completely with u. U can get world’s best translators but many words dont have the meaning in other languages. And yes, language,culture,mannerism…everything is region specific. I meant everything. U can observe,study,learn n research but the person who belongs to that time/region/language..will still show u many things that u can never figure out. I somhow feel u should n must learn the language in which u r working. Example pick up any good bollywood song n give me a good translation. I will agree then. U know, why lot many filmmakers fail lot many times ? I think bcz they try to tell stories that they have not experienced. Have always felt that u can tell that story in most excciting way the one that u have experinced. Not denying the fact thats its not the only way. But still.
Also, why blame the poor bollywood stars ? They will deliver all heavy dialgoues but cant read in hindi n may not know their meanings also. Thats why so many times they sound so shallow. N thats where BIg B scores!! C his command over language. And if one understands the language its always better, u can play around with evrything…dialogues, mannerisms n hundred other things. Translators cant do evrything, Oz
@phoenixnu thats the reason why dialogues of his hindi movies are ritten by a hindi knowldegable guy (Umesh Sharma for Bombay,Tigmanshu Dhulia-Dil Se…,Anurag Kashyap-Yuva+Guru-acc 2 imdb).
thats also the reason why chachi 420 and its tamil version both were connected 2 the audience they were trying to reach out to (dialogues of hindi – Gulzar).
basically the thing is that if you have a clear vision(basic screenplay) of the thing(which i guess Mani ’sir’ and kamal hassan have/had) then u can get the local knowledgable ppl 2 rite the dialogues and get the ‘local’ thing going.
translating stuff in itself is a huge thing.i mean, i never understud the meanings of ‘Chaiyaa Chaiyaa’ till i read its english translation in English on Desitrain and also, i watched Omkara the subtitled version-which really helped me as i felt that the subtitles were in itself a huge help in understanding the movie.the subtitles i felt were genuinely good.
besides, the translations sound really really bad when it is done in a hurry/not given due importance (hindi dubs of most movies).
my summary is that Mani Ratnam may not be able to handle Haasil/Omkara(very very region specific) but, still can do decently well with Dil Se… when supported by able guys.
>>till i read its english translation in English on Desitrain
a goof up :”>.
also no offense meant at any point, in case it sounded rude.
@rbehemoth, perfectly fine. N no offense ya. But lot many times I have exprncd that its so difficult to make someone understand something, if the person doesnt know about that region( language,culture,mannerism…everything) Just to quote, two expmles…the popular dialgue from Omkara…Bewakoof aur chu***e me dhaage bhar ka fark hota hai. I feel, u can have the best translation of the dialogue but u cannot understand the tone of it unless u know about that region. One more, If u seen the promos of Salaam-e-ishq, there is a dialogue by Sohail Khan…are bawri, aaj tak maine kuch na dekhiya to dunia kya dekhegi…very funny one, his reply to Isha Kopppikar when she resistw his sexual urge. Here also its the same. So, my point is if u want to work in one language why not learn that one. It always helps. Otherwise anyoen can make films in any other language. Isn’t it ?
You are very welcome Ramanand.