Getting Bums on Seats!
Finally, the audience actually seems to be appreciating quality. Don’t be mistaken- Golmaal Returnses, Singh Is Kinngs, Welcomes and Races will still be hits, and Fashion will still be acclaimed as a realistic and pathbreaking film. Never mind. Why should I grudge them that (ill-deserved or well-deserved, depending on your viewpoint) success? What’s good is that the Johnny Gaddaars and Mithyas- basically the kind of films that we at PFC are accused (?) of being biased towards and ‘promoting’ are also being appreciated.
I don’t know anyone who didn’t love Johnny Gaddaar. Or Manorama Six Feet Under. Or Mithya. And Dasvidaniya (acchcha, fine I do know one person who didn’t 
)That obviously means they are being appreciated and liked- but then why are they still flopping? What is sad is that the audience who does like these films are not being compelled enough to come to the theatres, to lift their a**es and travel to their friendly neighbourhood multiplex. UTV has made an admirable effort in this regard and succeeded impressively with Aamir, Welcome To Sajjanpur and A Wednesday, and they can be used as a model in this regard in many ways.
However, it is understandable that not all producers would possess the muscle of UTV. In such a situation, it is imperative for filmmakers and producers to think of innovative strategies, use the blogosphere to the fullest and create eyeball-grabbing, interesting publicity design- posters as well as promos. Word of mouth is seriously overrated, it rarely works, unless the film has a certain factor that pulls the socks off the audience (like in A Wednesday), the WOM doesn’t trickle down that easily- Johnny Gaddaar is a case in point. One can never depend on it. Hopefully we shall soon see more importance given to marketing niche films in a special, effective yet feasible manner and devising smart strategies accordingly.
I feel there is still a large part of the audience for niche films that hasn’t been lured hard enough, those who would rather sit at home and watch English movies on DVDs than make check out new, fresh voices in Indian cinema, simply because it doesn’t attract or excite them enough. Nevertheless, three extremely promising films- Oye Lucky Lucky Oye, Sorry Bhai and the mockumentary The President Is Coming (I like the smart way Rohan Sippy is promoting this radically new concept in India) hit the marquee this Friday. I am personally very badly disappointed with the poor quality of Sorry Bhai’s promos, salvaged only by Chitrangada Singh’s radiant presence, but I do hope it finds an audience.
As I wait for this Friday’s films to help me recover from the lurid nightmare I suffered last week in the form of Yuvvraaj, I sincerely wish Onir, Dibakar Banerjee and Kunaal Roy Kapoor the very best for their films. And hope that all you lazy buggers out there who complain about the lousy films doled out from Bollywood lift your backsides and park them at theatres showing these films. After all, like politicians, we also get the films we deserve.
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
im sure the sad quality of the promos of sorry bhai have something to do with the producer vashu bhagnani but lets face it. . .onir is no dibaker. . I expect v little of sorry bhai and was quite offended by how onir repeatedly insulted the intelligence of pfc-ers by claiming it has no similarity to dan in real life. The music sucks too. . OLLO seems to be that special movie of the year. .
i think this has been an almost revolutionary year for Indian cinema, cant remember the last time so many ’small’ films made it to the hit list.
years from now when we look back at the journey of Indian cinema, this is going to be the year highlighted for bringing in the change. Finally
Yes, the couch potatoes are still not getting up, and me feels they aint gonna change, these are the people who get fired up in their passion of cinema only during the film fests, or during the latest philosophical banter over bergman, god an zero…
but the positive thing is, India is giving birth to a whole new generation of film lovers, and when this generation comes to a full circle…things are gonna change. hopefully.
Jahan, A majority of cinema viewers still check out the newspaper reviews. Many of them only count the number of stars, they don’t bother to read the review.
A favourable word of mouth review also helps, especially after the opening weekend.
IMO good promos, a positive buzz and encouraging reviews are essential for a films initial success.
i bet this is going to be the best friday of the year n so much variety!! seen one and hav heard gud things abt the other two as well.
my ‘bums’ committed to the cause of emerging good Indian cinema. No matter if I have to skip beer a couple days a week. so be it. Cheers!!!
@Abhay: How can you say that it is a copy for sure, without seeing the film? Give it a chance… it is not that novel a plot that it needs to be copied.
It is sad to see the publicity of Sorry Bhai..it is too sorry…OLLO i feel will be a run-away sucess, Sorry Bhai will benefit from Word of Mouth, i guess, if that still fits in the present scheme of things…
Good luck to all three films this friday/wednesday depending on where you are..
The biggest issue I think is the pricing of tickets in a multiplex. Most of the so called small movies are released only in multiplexes and needless to add that ticket prices are exorbitant in all the multiplexes. The multiplexes need to come up with some innovative strategy regarding this. One solution that comes to my mind is the variable pricing strategy. Why not have the ticket prices lowered in the first few days for movies like Johnny Gaddar so that more and more people come to watch it. Such movies take time to catch up and the audiences cant be blamed if the movie is pulled out of theaters in the second week itself. The multiplex owners seem too satisfied by screening occasional blockbusters like OSO and Singh is King. I think theater owners should be part of the system that promotes the movies. You cant expect your movie to be a hit if theaters pull out your movies after a couple of dismal shows.
@Jahan
add me to your list of people who didnt like dasvidaniya or mithya. But am a huge fan of Johnny Gaddar and loved Manorama as well
I am sorry about posting an unrelated comment here.
Just heard the latest from Mumbai and I hope that there are no more casualities and also that if anyone of you know anybody in Mumbai.
Please advise them to be safe and iside their homes.
Pray to god that this ends soon with minimal loss of life.
Again apologize for posting it here.
@Sarang..this is really unfortunate..hope we have no more casualities…
PFC Mumbai..is everything ok?
@ Jahan
Rightly said…word of mouth is a bit over-rated IMO too. The film does need something more than a very vague WOM. (I heard equally good things about Johnny Gaddar and Partner from the same friend, so how do i trust…and whom?)
But yes…things are looking up a bit. But i’d say only a bit as the economics always rules the rest…and if the results are not encouraging enough, many of these ‘bhed-chaal’ entrants will fall-off. (Over the last 15-months, everybody in Mumbai was talking of making a ’small-film’ like ‘Bheja Fry’ and most of these guys are off now as the new buzz-word is ‘thrillers’ or ‘college romance’ with new stars)
The only thing i wud raise a small objection abt, fron ur post, is to get ‘Sorry Bhai’ included in ur list of (small) Indie films. It’s not, by any measures. Vashu Bhagnani is as commercial as u get. Plus Onir’s last film (Bas EK Pal) being a frame-to-frame copy of Almodovar’s ‘Life Flesh’, let’s keep any hopes from his films away from the (at least in our hearts) ‘purer’ stuff like OLLO and ‘The President is Coming’.
Sarang, I just found out about Bombay too.
I’m shocked.
And quite lost for words.
Really sad :-(
I also apologise for leaving an unrelated comment here.
Just really shocked…
@Varun
It was a shock to know that “Bas ek pal” ws a copy of “Live flesh”. Now i have no hopes on “Sorry bhai”….
If I see intuitively, shouldn’t the small budget films should have lower ticket price rather than a “multiplex” price.
They already make aam junta wary. No one wants to invest 1000 bucks (for a family of 4) to watch a movie that nobody around them or they don’t know about.
For e.g. Sorry Bhai, now, for a regular bloke who just watches cinema for the heck of it, Sanjay suri, Chitrangada or Sharman are not superstars or have earned “his” credibility yet. No offense to these actors.
SB will need to have an “excellent” WoM compared to Golmaal Returns “good” WoM.
Excellent and Good are of course subjective.
What I feel is that the producers of such
“smaller” films along with the distributors should tie-up with the multiplexes and must ensure that there is a clear differential pricing for these movies.atleast the shows in the morning & afternoon can be made extremely attractive if not the evening & night which are primetime slots.
Yes some multiplexes already do this- but its not specific to any film as such.What I’m talking about is something uniform for all such films.
And similar to OLLO’s free screening in the U.S why cant they have something similar sometimes in some select locations in India too?
I remember when Nagesh Kukunoor’s Hyderabad Blues was relesed, the multiplex cutlure hadnt yet started & there were actually free shows held for collge students.So cant that be done even now?
Hmm Jahan, considering that Mumbai is under a stage of seige now, and its literally war there, i wonder how many people would want to risk life and limb to watch a movie tomorrow. Its better if Dibakar postpones the release of OLLO. I mean considering the trauma that Mumbaikars would be facing, i am not sure if many would venture outside.
Congrats…PFC ppl!!!
U have successfully made a Rajiv Masand to adopt PFC-ism!!
Just look at his reviews on Sorry Bhai and OLLO.He is trying to be sensible!! good !! Even some lines in his OLLO review was similar to a PFC OLLO review!
Bharat, I so agree with you on Masand’s inspiration. Read some excerpts from Apna Dabba’s review and Masand’s “verdict”
Dabba : “I liked the Writers’ (Urmi Juvekar, Dibakar Bannerjee) choice of not explaining what didn’t matter or things they expected us to get. For example, teen Lucky is Sikh with a turban, but grown up Abhay doesn’t wear one. One would imagine that a thief needs to be inconspicuous.”
Masand : “Again, if you’re wondering why the younger Lucky wears a turban and the older one does not, don’t expect any answers from the director. Think about it yourself. Come on, you’d expect a thief to be inconspicuous, wouldn’t you? “
Dabba: “The jokes fly at you from all directions (there was only one 13 minute stretch during the 130 minute film, when the audience was not guffawing), and from all characters.”
Masand: “The jokes in Oye Lucky Lucky Oye fly at you from all directions, and they seldom fail because in most cases the characters aren’t in on the joke.”
Was planning on watching OLLO FDFS. Just don’t feel like it now. Maybe next week if the film stays that long.
And I didn’t like Mithya either, though I was really looking forward to it. Dasvidaniya was good and simple without being ’spectacular’. I liked the film, didn’t love it.