Casting Ouch
Farooque Shaikh in Accident On Hill Road
Why does an actor say yes to a role offered by a new filmmaker? My experience of struggling in Bollywood to make a film taught me this. There are four factors that convince an actor (male and female) to say yes.
The first is money. If I put crores on the table there are very few actors who will say no. But then that is such a stupid thought. If I had crores I would not have busted my ass for the last eight years to be a filmmaker.
So money aside, the second reason why an actor says yes or no to a role is because of Image. Just like ordinary people have names, every actor has an Image. An Image is what the actor thinks of what the public thinks of him or her at a given moment. If you and me did that we would be called mad hallucinating fools.
Most of the big stars –SRK, Salman, Akshay, Hritik, Saif, Shahid, Abhishek, Sanjay Dutt, Ajay Devgan– think of themselves as Action, Romantic or Comedy heroes. Ditto for heroines like Katrina, Ashwariya, Kareena, Priyanka, Rani. The younger lot of Ranbir, Imran, Asin, Deepika are also carving their own Images, having started with the safest, the Romantic .
Sometimes, much to our delight, actors step outside their Image—like SRK in Chak De, Abhishek in Yuva, Shahid in Kaminey.
There are some who don’t have an Image in their mind. Amitabh Bachchan (in his present state) , Aamir Khan (post Lagaan), Konkana Sen, and to a certain degree Abhay Deol and Irrfan Khan would fit in this category. That is why you see them in a variety of roles. It is difficult to slot them as a particular type of actor.
Unless you belong to a privileged coterie it is freaking tough to know what is the current Image status playing in an actors mind. A friend approached Abhishek for a Comedy but realized he wants to an Action film. Another friend approached Akshay for an Action film but heard our hero wants to do a Romantic film. And yet another approached Saif for a Romantic film but realized he is looking forward to a Comedy role.
The third reason an actor says yes to a role is pretty much linked to the banner that is backing you. If its Dharma or Yashraj producing your film, it doesn’t matter whether you are a debutant director. They know that the film will be marketed and promoted very well even if the subject is a run of the mill story. Nowadays you can add the name of UTV, Excel, Ashtavinayak, Indian Film Co/Studio 18 and Nadiadwalas to the list of banners actors would promptly say yes to.
The fourth reason why an actor says yes is because of the script. Swallow this once more. Money, Image, Banner and then Script. That’s how it is. The biggest lie in Bollywood is that content is king. Get real. Content is like a pawn in a chess game. You can easily sacrifice it provided your star line up moves ahead.
To all those who think they have a smashing script that will convince actors to say yes to you, go ahead, put on some diapers.
And if you think that you may have better luck directly dealing with production houses who in turn will get the actors, good luck to you. Most production houses are traders, not producers. They look at proposals (value of a film= star cast+director), not scripts. If you walk in with a star they will not look at your script. Those that claim to look at scripts are doing just that: looking. They cannot take a call on whether a script is good or bad because they don’t how to.
Do you know that Kamlesh Pandey and Rakyesh Mehra took Rang De Basanti’s script to most of the production houses, including UTV, with no luck? It was only when Aamir Khan stepped in, everyone suddenly realized what a wonderful script it was! Do you know that Imtiaz Ali’s concept of Love Aaj Kal was rejected by many production cos many years ago?
If things are so shitty, how the hell does a first time director get an actor?
You need two things.
Luck. And Persistence.
You need to get lucky. As we often say in school, ahem, you need to have a til (mole) at the right place.
Or you need to be persistent, pushing, waiting, trying. Not giving up. Hang in there.
You see the wonderful thing about being a first time filmmaker is that every director you admire was a first time filmmaker too.
PS: Next week I shall write about how I went about casting for Accident On Hill Road.
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
Well, you missed the fifth factor ‘casting couch’
. Thanks for writing, seems the factors for AORD would be scrip(name suggests so) and money( you must have made some dough while producing movies).Casting Farooqh Sheike may imply that there won’t be funda of ‘image’ and you haven’t mentiond your banner in elist list.
Will be waiting for your next post. Please do write about your stint as producer and documentry director if you get time.Thanks.
thanks, negi.. thats why the article was titled casting ouch!
yes will be writing about the funda behind my cast next week.
I realized the same fact, hardly anyone bothers about the script , for most of the people dont know , how to read a script??? and judge if its good or bad.
Its all money and image game and one has to find out his own way to move ahead.
Best of luck Mahesh !!
Best of luck mahesh for your upcoming movies. Reading the whole writeup was like beginners guide to bollywood.Please make some publicity of the movie. I am hearing about this movie here on pfc only.
Thats some insight into the big bad world of Bollywood. Now its easy to see why bollywood makes such shitty movies.
Well, you missed casting couch
that’s truth, isn’t it.
Thanks for writing, seems money(you must have made some dough as producer) and script(name suggests so).Casting farooqh sheike negate the idea of ‘image’ and you haven’t mentioned your ‘banner’ name in elite group.
Will be waiting for your next post. Please do write about your stint as producer and documentry director if you get time.Thanks.
Good going boss…satya vachan! Writers ki koi izzat nahin. :-|
And I liked that word ‘coterie’! Loaded.
writers ki koi izzat utnee hee hoti: jitnee pakistan mein zardari ki yaa amar singh ki apne ghar mein.
thanks yayaver, varun, cherish and yatri for the encouragement.
Mahesh, nice to see an honest post. completely agree with all your points. Would like to know how luck got you started on your first film:)
Not uplifting….but I guess its like you said…lot of
and 
until we get the ultimate 
waah mahesh …aapne toh baatein Do tuk keh di. “Perseverance” as you said is the key word. Luck is not dependable. All the best for your film and awaiting your next post.
good luck buddy!!!…everything said n done..u did achieve it…n as u said..everyone does everything for the first time sometime!!!..so now is ur time!! ;-)
I believe actors cant do much than agree to a role in the order you mentioned. Anurag Kashyap while making No Smoking had blogged that probably Aamir Khan and John Abraham (now we can add Abhay deol) are two people who can visualize how a film can turn out by reading the script/screenplay.
After all they are actors and cannot be assumed to be able to visualize. Therefore they have to believe or go with the Yashraj, Dharma, UTV, Studio 18 kinds and play safe.
It is only John Abraham who’s doing run-of-the-mill movies for stardom and alternative cinema for cinema sake
“After all they are actors and cannot be assumed to be able to visualize.”
—Very True.
I think that happens because most of our lead actors are sons/cousins etc of some already famous ppl in Bollywood. They dont have formal training in acting and grow up enjoying life and suddenly when they are 22 or 24 they want to become actors, at this point all the qualification they have is they look good and have built up their bodies. Most dont read and so how will they visualize.
BTW, Farroq Sheikh is looking great in the poster. I infact loved him in Saas bahu aur sensex also.
“To all those who think they have a smashing script that will convince actors to say yes to you, go ahead, put on some diapers.”
great post bro. wish you all the best. please do share more dope on how it all happened… gawd bless.
you said it bro…script kis chidiya ka naam hai
thanks manjeet, jibin, ashwini, pragati, magik and victor… its encouragement from people like you that makes us not give up the pursuit.
Karan Johar had once stated that in Hollywood, if big stars arent available, then they create stars. Examples include Tobey Maguire in Spiderman, Leonardo in Titanic, Keanu Reeves in Matrix, Matt Damon in Goodwill hunting, etc.
Our own RGV, curiously, gave many superb technicians to Bollywood, but never any major actors, except Urmila.
Its a curious phenomenon, because all big stars we know today werent given a big opening by the big studios. Amitabh debuted with Saat Hindustani, SRK debuted with Deewana, Salman debuted with Rajshri (which werent a big name then. And Salman’s earlier biwi ho to aisi can be ignored). Saif debuted with Parampara. Ajay Devgan debuted with Phool aur Kaante. Akshay Kumar became a hit with Khiladi (abbas mustan). Karisma kapoor with Prem Qaidi. Priety Zeinta with Dil Se/Soldier.
Aamir, Madhuri Dixit(with Subhash Ghai. We can ignore the real debut), Abhishek, Kareena, Ranbir, Sonam Kapoor, Imran, Sunny, Bobby got big studio backing debuts.
Good points, succinctly put. The lesson from this is: screw the production houses – just find a star and pursue pursue pursue pursue!
unfortunately, bhaisaab, the lesson you deduced isn’t always true. Production houses can also get you stars–of course you have to be lucky there too!
One more thing to note, there have been no Male lead actors lately who have succeeded who did not have any family connections. John Abraham is the last and SRK before him. Rest of them have some kind of family connections. Of-course we have many character actors and female lead actors who have succeeded without any connections.
Is the so called ACTOR ANIMAL is non existent! Actors/ stars are not in search of gud script which offer them challenging role? Thts why we have only countable original characters we cud produce in our films!
If u look at ‘Satyjit Ray’s Pather Panchali,it didn’t have any professional actors or any stars.but,still that film is considerd as one of the greatest movies of all time.Film making is all about team work…
wah wah chief… sahi bola boss… good going, de de hathoda maar ke… eagerly waiting for ur next.
ur post are very honest…i am going to watch this film in a theatre only for your posts and Abhimanyu Singh…
Hmmm. I really wonder if SRK in Chakde or Shahid in Kaminey were actually stepping out of their image? They were doing mainstream films with mainstream producers for mainstream money. Moreover these characters they played were mainstream, it showcased them in the sense that the whole film revolved around them. Would have been interesting if these very guys would have agreed to ’step out of their image’ had you to take these very scripts to them. The answer is nay. Hence the question of them stepping out of their image does not really arise.
I however will agree with you over what Abhishek did in Yuva. Not the main hero in the film, image makeover in a way that did not glorify him, trashed down his look. The only thing left to show for by Abhishek was his performance, which I really think is his best to date. Agreed it’s a Mani rathnam film, but still.
And wot about ‘LUCK’. That too matters. In all your post was good, especially for those who are opening the gates of bollywood for themselves.U too will agree with me, SCRIPT is the mother. But in all u simply rock.