Intelligence & The Fine Actor !!!
Hi Folks,
Another observation that I wanted to pen. The role of the IQ
(mind)/intelligence and the creative person. I could be totally
wrong but I am giving my observations and then you’ll can decide for
yourselves. By the way I am of the firm opinion that things like Ivy
League or IIT or CPA or Medicine ARE NOT signs of intelligence (they
are not necessarily not, but are not necessarily so). What they are
signs of mastering the methodolgy to first pass the Entrance exam
and then a keen sense of observation to go with the flow and come
out of the system.
I am talking intelligence in the sense of a fine grasp of thinking,
articulating and expressing, when there is no pre set standard or
methodologies (hence no Brilliants/Aggarwals/Sukh
Sagar/Kaplan/Princeton, etc , etc), it is that first creation of a
process which others follow.
So let us look at the GREAT actors of their respective era’s:
AB, Balraj Sahani, Dilip Kumar, Guru Dutt, SRK, Aamir, V Shantaram.
Here the list stops.Sure I am missing out a lot of names but will
ger to them in a minute.
Among the females the PATHBEARERS of their respective era’s are:
Madhubala, Nutan, Geeta Bali, Zeenat Aman, Dimple Kapadia, Ash,
Sush,Rekha again I am missing some significant names but will come
there shortly.
Almost all of the above have above above average intelligence as
evidenced in the way they communicate/articulate/think and also as
evidenced in their actions. Again I realise that AB is a second
class B.Sc from Kirori Mal and Aamir dropped out after 10th grade at
Bombay Scottish, but that again goes back to my point that it is
probably not because they were not intelligent, but cause they were
not interested in the mundane topics being taught in the general
school and college system in India.
There are two exceptions to the rule: Rajesh Khanna and Hema Malini.
Two very low to average IQ folks who rode the crest of popularity of
their respective era’s, but I still maintian, they probably will not
qualify in the list of ALL TIME LEGENDS (although both come very
close)
Also a few reverse exceptions, i.e. Highly intelligent, but
moderately popular and in that bucket include Naseer, Om, Smita and
Shahbana. But here I think their intelligence hurt them cuase they
wanted to tread a path which they felt was the right one, not
necessarily the most popular one.
Then we have what we call the second quartile. Amongst the males,
Raj Kapoor, Rajinder Kumar, Dharam, Shatru, Bharat Bhushan, Vinod
Khanna, Salman, Sunil Dutt, Sanjay Dutt, Akshay Kumar, Sanjeev
Kumar, Anil Kapoor, Mithuin, Rishi, Raj Kumar all very illustrious
personalities but perhaps not the most intelligent (I know Sanjeev’s
name will raise a lot of eyebrows in moderately intelligent, but I
am standing my gun).All of these fine actors but the lack of high
intelligence made the difference between good and great.
Among the women we have, Bina Rai, Sharmilla Tagore ,Sridevi, Jaya Pradha, etc. Again very
successfull tenure, but fell short of all time legends by just a few notches of the IQ factor
By the way I am defining the overall persona here. Not the choclate
boy Punjabi looks or the fair complexioned girl. Personality in my
definition is a lot more. That is where tier 1 had the edge. Their
intelligence was apparent in the characters they played.
Let’s take the argument to behind the scenes.
Here as far as the director goes, the intelligence factor is even
more pronounced. Dumb filmmakers generally make dumb films and I
mean dumb films, some of Charles Chaplin or David Dhawan films might
seem dumb, but there is a very keen mind ticking away behind these
films, trying to ascertain what will work what won’t. By dumb I
mean, folks who never get it, or folks who by a fluke get one
blockbuster and then that is it (both before and after) cause they
could never quite fathom out what went right or folks who cannot
think beyond their egos. Classic case in recent times is 4 people
making Bhagat Singh movies at the same time. That has got to be one
of the stupidest things to be done…all because the mind had
stopped working or perhaps there was no mind to start with.Shekhar,
Ahutosh, Sudhir, Karan (yes his candy floss is a very thought out
and well executed strategy), Aditya, Yash, Mansoor (he of the IIT
bombay fame)
Exception to the rule – Mahesh Bhatt, either he has camouflaged
intelligence (i.e. it is just an act by puffing cigarettes and
making gestures, trying to imply intellugence) or he seems to have
locked away whatever intelligence he did have for reasons best known
to him.
List of dumb filmmakers, I don’t have to put it here, they make the
other 98% of Bollywood films and continue to do it year after year,
never getting it, as to why they are flopping.
In the Indian American world too. I think three of the most
intelligent filmmakers are Nagesh, Piyush and Nisha G. Of course
Mira is super intelligent, but we all know that.
In case of N,P & N, it is not some quirk of fate that their films
are liked and respected, it is the result of a highly intelligent
mind.
So with that I rest my case,
Sincerely,
Vivek”yes yes Namit Kishore Kumar and joing the gym and eating
salads is essential, but where are they going to start an I.Q class
for acting hopefuls” Kumar
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
- Vivek, Would love to see the reasons behind you categorizing each actor in your post above. It would be only fair to put forth your reasons… for example when you say Zeenat Aman is a Path Breaker… would love to know why you say so… or for that matter when you lablel Sanjeev Kumar as “moderately intelligent” – surely you may have observed certain characters (or all of them) he played, in the way he portrayed them, that makes you think such… appreciate if you can draw the whole circle for us to see.
Vivek, it is more of how intelligent were the directors rather than how intelligent were the actors. Example, Dimple. She was acting in some very stupid movies till a guy like Nana gave her a role in Prahaar. Thats when ppl realised that she was not a bimbo (say like Miss Moroe). Concentrating on the directors will unfold a lot of mis-conception we have about our actors.
Oz/Muzzy, will document that in a Part 2 to this article tomorrow, wherein will try and attempt to analyze why I say, what I say, about the folks, I do say about.
So what’s the average IQ of our filmy audience? If that is low then, would not that reflect actors/directors IQ i.e brining it down.
:-?
A good actor is one who constantly reduces his/her learning to ashes and starts again, beginning to collect thru good observational skills and descipline. Lots of words there, but the true flavour an actor would bring to whatever they portray lies in this mix of whatever knowhow they have thru observation and how they manage to meld it with the person that they are…
and as much as our film personalities seem to know these terms and claim “it was a great learning process”…when one sees the work, one wonders what the learning was…and where is it showing.
where can any new learning happen if production houses turn islands recasting their favourite stars to avoid the pain of team and relationships building (and I mean true working relationships) …in which case the bonding that they always talk about is the stale redundant party they’ve always had and continue to have, and are euphoric about celebrating their mutual admitation clubs and refuse growth….
theatre (again there’s mainstream theatre and alternate ones…) to a large extent, in both the worlds however still maintains this fluidity and actual learning and if genuine actors were seeked out of this medium (as they have been in the past in film history, but not recently) we may see more of a professional flavor and some interesting work in Indian cinema
Interesting point of view. But does seem a bit simplistic though without adequate substantiation.