Is there… err… really so much… in a name?
Print
One of books in Satyajit Ray’s Feluda series, “Bombaiyer Bombete” is about Jatayu (Lalmohan Ganguly) getting an offer for film adaptation of one of his novels and the three friends landing in Bombay where they run into many bloodcurdling experiences. On parsing through the film posters, Jatayu lamentably observes that none has the writer’s name. He is being comforted that “Contrary to Bengal, it’s only money and no fame for writer in Bombay cinema”. With the new “3 Idiots cast and crew vs Chetan Bhagat” incidents, it looks like things haven’t changed much even in the next century.
While completely agreeing that Chetan Bhagat should have been mentiond in the opening credit, I reaffirm my view that he doesn’t deserve much credit for the film’s storyline. If he claims the film is 75% of his book, he is simply doing injustice to the author in him. A book is not merely about the characters or incidents in it. What gives it life is the philosophy at its core, which in this case is different from that of the film. While “Five Point Someone” mentioned clearly as it’s subtitle “What not to do at IIT!” and had been a (for argument’s sake, faithful) chronicle of student life the institute, “3 Idiots” was Joshi- Hirani’s vehicle to comment about the Indian education system. It can very well happen, as they claim now, that they must have started with the book but ended up finding more stuff to tell than in the book. As Oz mentioned, it happened in the case of Charlie Kauffman in “Adaptation”. The film’s soul was totally different from that of the book. Am not getting into silly scene by scene comparisons like the fourth idiot But, if Chetan Bhagat wants credit for incidents which he created and has been used in the movie, so do the originators the ads and the forwarded e- mails from which most of the other situations have been blatantly copied.
Following the incident closely, like Pritish Nandy, do we smell a clever marketing ploy- “Read the book, watch the movie”? Though wholeheartedly supporting Bhagat for the thoughts in blog post about giving credit to writer, I wonder how valid it is in this case (The post, however, has an overkill of melodrama, which certainly would reduce his fans to tears). Isn’t the current drama by the author is completely out of the blue? He claims to have remained silent till now. But couldn’t he read the agreement he signed that he was supposed to be credited only in the rolling credits? Did he choose to remain silent then too? Or was he personally fine with that until there was this uproar from fans and tears from family? And what is the big deal in being not mentioned in the opening credit when majority of the audience know what the film is based on (err… actually NOT based on)? The only possibility is someone seeing the movie years after and missing the author’s name, which is quite sad. But I honestly wish such a situation won’t come. The next generation should have better films to watch than “3 idiots”!
Vidhu Vinod Chopra of course, is equally guilty. I really don’t understand what hidden agendas he had by not showing those few words in the opening credit? Even in “Adaptation”, the original source is mentioned just before the name of screenplay writer(s!). Did he, even in his wildest dreams, imagine getting an award for the “story” of the film? What a big joke! May be he was just following the Royal Bollywood tradition of walking over the writer, which if true, deserves extreme contempt. After all, Chetan Bhagat is not the obscure Jatayu! Legally also, the rolling credit was not in the 4-line format mentioned in the agreement, which would have been a bit more visible.
Once when the legendary Malayalam author Thakazhi Sivashankara Pillai was asked whether he oversaw the film production based on two characters of his uber famous “Chemmeen“, he replied, “I am not a father who peeps into daughter’s nuptial night to ensure that the groom is handling her properly”. But hey, why should we remember diamonds while playing with pebbles?
Tags: 3 Idiots, aamir khan, Adaptation, All is well, boman irani, Chetan Bhagat, Controversy, five point someone, Indian Media, Kareena Kapoor, Madhavan, prasanth vijay, Press, Rajkumar Hirani, Raju Hirani, sharman joshi, vidhu vinod chopra, vinod chopra
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Rahul Dholakia
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Varma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Sachin Kundalkar
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
too much of melodrama over all this already.. but i liked the way u rounded it up
Luv’d the jatayu reference!! (thats the bengali in me)
loading...
thanks, ankur
loading...
Prasahant, the Jatayu thing was the first thing which came to my mind when I heard of this fisco. Loved the reference. And Chetan Bhagat is a moron. So is VVC.
loading...
aur haan, sab kaminey hain!
loading...
Who’s guilty and who’s not – this can be stretched to an indefinite length. The emotional outbursts from both the camps, esp the futile attempt by Hirani and his gang to credit everything for themselves is a mockery to millions of readers who have read FPS and million more who would be reading now.
If Aamir says its just a publicity stunt by Bhagat, didn’t he know before shooting the “3idiots”, that publicity for CB’s FPS would be a sheer natural outcome. The bone of contention isn’t about rephrasing of FPS by Mr.Joshi, which took three painful years(as Aamir vociferously keeps stating) but its duly giving the credit to the idea that gave birth to this wonderful movie.
It’s high time bollywood should learn something from the west when it comes to copyright infringement/plagiarism or cheating of this sorts.
loading...
“It’s high time bollywood should learn something from the west when it comes to copyright infringement/plagiarism or cheating of this sorts. ”
What plagiarism has to do with in this case.They have bought the rights of the book, changed the story substantially. They have mentioned it in the rolling credits as per the contract … what else do they have to do?
loading...
Tut,
Methinks the 3i team should have been truthful and not publicly stated that the movie is ‘completely different’ from the book and has only 3-5% material from the book. The ‘plagiarism’ in this case comes from RH and AJ claiming story credit, when clearly the story is not theirs to claim – the screenplay/adaption yes, but not the story.
loading...
Quite a quote that from Thakazhi. You sure have made him famous here on PFC.
loading...
frankly i think chetan deserves to share story credits – film has the basic setup of FPS, lets not get into % war, but you can just say – story by – RK and Joshi, its not fair…i hope AK, RK and co. stops this powerplay and gives him due credit
loading...
According to me, its a wisely devised marketing strategy created by Aamir, Raju Hirani, VVC and Chetan Bhagat so that more people can watch the movie and also read the book. Also, the story of 3 idiots was not “adapted” from 5 point someone, simply few scenerios were incorporated into the newly created plot.
loading...
Just thought to add that the name of the movie based on “Bombaiyer Bombete” was Jet Bahadur which shocked Jatayu.
:glasses:
Nice example there
loading...