Hero Hiralal – A Reality Show Ahead Of Its Time
The advent of cable-tv happened in India in the early 1990’s when foreign channels were beaming in the houses of the privileged upper-middle-class. A decade later came the age of the reality shows with Channel V running a contest to form a girl-band on the lines of Spice Girls; and in 2002 Viva happened.
But much before cable-tv was introduced and much before reality shows made an appearance, came the movie Hero Hiralal. It was the vision of Ketan Mehta that he weaved such a tale which seemed pedestrian to begin with, but ended in a crescendo. It was a reality show of high-voltage drama and very much ahead of its times, when nobdoy had come-up with such a concept.
The movie released in 1988 and I saw it a couple of years later in DD. The movie starts in a typical boy-meets-girl format. We are introduced to Naseeruddin Shah as Hiralal who drives an auto in Hyderabad. He is a big film buff and that’s how gets the title Hero. His friend Mohan Gokhale plays a movie-poster-painter and one of the landmark dialogs of the movie was ‘phata poster, nikla hero’.
A film troupe arrives in Hyderabad to shoot a movie and Roopa, played by Sanjana Kapoor in her debut movie, is the lead actress of the movie. Hero falls head over heels for her, he takes her round the city in his auto. Kiran Kumar plays the lead opposite Roopa in the movie that’s being made, and Hero keeps landing up during the shooting. He whisks her away and they spend a lot of time together, exploring the city in his auto. Roopa is just being friendly but Hero mistakes her overtures for love.
The movie shooting is complete and the entire cast moves back to Bombay. Hero, in his desperate bid to announce his love to Roopa, reaches Bombay. When Roopa dispels all his notions and feelings of love, Hero decides that life is not worth living and he wishes to end his life.
That’s when Sitara Devi, a publicity agent, enters his life. She does not want Hero to end his nondescript life in such anonymous fashion. She wishes to make his death a mega-event, to announce to the world about the pain and subsequent death of a lover and thereby make him a love-martyr. She turns, what would have been an incident [his suicide], into an event.
Huge hoardings are drawn-up all over the city, declaring this reality show as a must-watch. Lots of publicity is done and people queue-up to buy the tickets. There is media frenzy and reporters scamper to Roopa and and Sitara Devi for exclusive interviews. People on the streets start discussing this event and Roopa starts questioning herself whether she loves Hero or not; and what she can do to stop him from sacrificing his life.
Meanwhile Roopa is being closely guarded so she does not escape to meet Hero. Kiran Kumar and Rohini Hattangadi, playing Roopa’s mom, keep a vigil on her. The talk of the town is Hero and his game-of-death, the tickets are all sold out. People are for the first time going to witness a volunteered death in broad-daylight amidst public eye, and all for love. Hero’s unrequited love has brought him so close to death.
The day of the event has finally arrived. People and media throng the venue and Hero is tied in a glass tank and water starts filling into the tank. Roopa flees from her home, and helping her cause is Amitabh Bachchan, in a special guest appearance who drives Roopa to the venue of the event. Can Roopa stop Hero from giving away his life? Will she stop Hero by declaring her love to him so he has a good enough reason to live for? Will Sitara Devi let someone disrupt the show? Will love triumph?
Naseeruddin Shah was marvellous in the movie, he displayed great restraint. Sanjana Kapoor in a debut performance was good as well. Rohini Hattangadi as Roopa’s mom was just about ok. But Ketan had kept the most important role for his to-be wife Deepa Sahi who played Sitara Devi with lot of strength and vigor. She brought the shrewdness and wile into the character, she was fantastic. And of course, Ketan Mehta as a film-maker, excelled in his artistic vision.
The movie’s unique concept of exploiting people’s emotions for commercial gains is much like the reality shows of today; where behind-the-scene activities, emotional outbursts, minor squabbles and disappointments, impoverished backgrounds are highlighted for higher TRPs. Every incident is micro-managed to gain maximum publicity. Curiosity is generated and the public is made to wait for days together for the events to unfold. The media/event-managers are desensitized and they neither care for the trauma and desperation of the participant nor for the consequences of such unethical event management, much like Sitara Devi in the movie.
In 1988 we had one Hero Hiralal, but in 2009 we have hundreds of Hero Hiralals on every show in every channel. What was a figment of Ketan Mehta’s imagination is now unfolding in every drawing-room with people glued to their couches waiting for their Hero Hiralals to appear on-screen. Phata poster, nikla Hero!
Tags: Amitabh Bachchan, deepa sahi, hero hiralal, ketan mehta, kiran kumar, naseeruddin shah, rohini hattangadi, sanjana kapoor
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
gr8 man…even i remember seeing this film when i was very young…there used to be talk that when somebody dies in a sealed tank , there will be crack in it indicating the soul has come out of it
funny but this we used talk in class 
as far as reality shows are concerned, they have become alternative to saas-bahu serial…full of drama and over sentiment
phata poster nikla crazyrals! nice one buddy!
thanks Rals: u brought back those old memories of movie-watching courtesy DD.. i remember watching it and bing in awe to see Naseer in such a commercial role, since he had done only arty movies prior to that. (even masoom was ‘different’).
makes me wonder how ketan could come up with such an alien idea for its time?
@Satyendra: yes, it was one of the first few commercial ventures that naseer worked in. after this came tridev and then naseer was totally into masala movies
@JP: out-of-the-box thinking…tats why i called it ‘ahead of its time’
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back then i did not understand much, just saw it for entertainment value. but recently when i re-visited it, i was amazed by the concept and ketan’s thought process.
Ya now we think about the film it was like 20 years ahead of its time.Kudos to Ketan….
Along with this film and another called Maalamaal(1988), I had become a die hard fan of Naseer, even before I had heard of ANY of his other work.
Oh, and Oye Oye from Tridev!
Naseer always felt like having so much fun in these movies!
@Prakriti: maalamaal had a guest appearance by sunil gavaskar
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maalamaal, jalwa, karma and hero hiralal paved the way for naseer into commercial flicks :D
I was wondering about a remake of Hero Hiralal set in 2000s. How about Irfan Khan in the titular role? with Priyanka Chopra as roopa and tabu as Sitara? any ideas?
I think “The girl on the bridge” released in 1999 and directed by Leconte has similar/copied theme. May be inspired from Hero Hiralal, which was released in 1988. But I am not sure if there is an older version of “the girl on the bridge”.
@Omprakash Seresta: the movie originally released as ‘La fille sur le pont’ and was in french. english release saw the title changed to ‘girl on the bridge’. the story is different though, its abt two halves making a full. a girl when abt to commit suicide is saved by a knife-thrower who then uses her as human target to attract more viewers. they earn a fortune doing this, so on and so forth. here, suicide is the premise of the movie and not the climax
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in 1951, a hollywood movie named ‘the girl on the bridge’ was released. here again, a girl trying to commit suicide is stopped by a man. they wed and live happily until a man from her past turns up at her doors to cause some disorder in her life
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incidentally or otherwise, woh 7 din starts with the same premise
Rals- nice write-up, even I saw the move years ago on D.D.And yes the initial commercial ventures of Nasser like Jalwa,Malamaal,Hiro Hiralal etc were all good.He had even starred earlier in Subash Ghai’s Karma.With Tridev being a blockbuster, he went into an overdrive with commercial movies mainly for visibility and money I guess.Its good that he managed to regain his balance later on.
BTW Woh 7 Din is the remake of a tamil movie- Andha Ezhu Naatkal.
@Sethumadhavan: i mentioned w7d only to bring-in tat elememt of suicide being the premise of the movie; i do know that its copied from a tamil movie.
by the way, apart from the cultural setup of w7d, was there any other changes in terms of scripting?? did they change any other element?
nice one rals- brings back pleasant memories. Yes, Phata Poster, Nikla Hero!!
Rals- No apart from the cultural setup there’s no difference as such between Andha Ezhu Naatkal and W7D.But both are certainly watchable any day even today – especially for the 1st half- which is a laugh riot
It reminded me of an old Tamil film with Sivaji Ganesan and M.R.Radha(He was a male actor) called Bale Pandya. It begins with Sivaji trying to commit suicide and then Radha stops him assuring him that he can die later when the time comes. In the meanwhile Sivaji starts enjoying life and even falls in love. A hilarious movie.
With Hero Hiralaal Naseer shows that his NSD training can really kick some commercial ass as well!!
Among his Ketan Mehta collaborations – this one is probably a close third or second. The top slot goes to the arrogant police officer from Mirch Masaala!!
BRILLIANT OBSERVATION!!! YES, THE KETAN MEHTA HAD THE THOUGHT OR THE VISION TO SEE WHAT CAN BE A TRP RAISING EVENT.. UNKNOWINGLY OR MAYBE IF THE CONCEPT THEN WAS HAPPENING IN OTHER COUNTRY TV SHOWS… WIERD WHY HE DIDN’T DO THE SAME AND MAKE SOME REALITY SHOWS….
Another movie that comes on my mind is Phir Bhi Dil Hai Hindustani … agreed the movie was a bad make, but a touch on the basic core storyline shows how situation is indeed … yellow journalism, sensationalising news, every news anchor or film critic or sports commentator wanting to be a star himself, in any possible way, the best being trashing others or dramatising things and hyping it up at any cost…and truly as the movie shows the hanging of one person becomes a commericial event, it did happen in India (in one of the rare hanging that happened) Dhananjoy Chatterjee was to be hung and every in news you had special report on the cell he was living in, his inmates, his behaviour, how is going to hang him, how thick is the rope… to an extent that in a couple of days a child had actually hung himself up with the kind of excitement that the news tried to create… same can be seen being applied to Kasab case, where are a straight crime/justice/punishment news is covered as Biryani/perfume/newspaper/smiling at judge news…. similarly with saddam hussain….
Crazyrals… this discovery of yours is huge
@PS:that was a nice comment, really morale boosting. the post was waiting for such a comment and i am so glad that u concur with me. thanx…
well what to say Crazyrals, I am still in awe of the observation… I was a kid when I saw Hiro Hiralal in DD… and vaguely remember the movie, this post just made my ears go up straight reminding me of the entire storyline… actually searching up more about the movie now…