Let’s fight movie terrorism!
When the twin towers got hit on September 11, 2001, we all felt bad… we all watched CNN… we all condemned terrorism but that’s it. We didn’t do anything about it like the way we are all doing now. Lighting candles, wearing black, walking out in numbers, being vocal on the net, writing letters, filing petitions… today we are angry and scared. Because we got scarred on November 26, 2008. But seven years back we chose to just watch not realising that we can bear the brunt soon enough.
The same thing is happening in the movies, too! I’m not kidding… Buy a ticket of Dil Kabaddi and find it out yourself. Before that don’t forget to catch Woody Allen’s Husband and Wives on DVD.
They haven’t spared a sneeze. Everything, absolutely everything has been COPIED. Forget all the characters, including the most innocuous ones, even the smallest detail has been copy-pasted. For example, they haven’t stopped at the girl student, she has to celebrate her 21st birthday party, the lights have to go out at the party, it has to rain outside, the lightning has to come in through the windows, the kiss between the student and the professor has to be lit up by that lightning. Yes, the director – Anil Senior, he calls himself – must have been carrying a portable DVD on the sets.
That brings me to the dialogues. Unchanged again! Translated at places – ‘Can we ever break up?’ becomes ‘Hum kabhi alag ho sakta hai kya?’ – and kept untouched at others – ‘Don’t defend your sex’ stays ‘Don’t defend your sex’! Then phrases are not tampered with… bullshit and asshole are used at the exact same places.
See, films have been copied like this many times before and we all know that. Mahesh Bhatt, Vikram Bhatt, Sanjay Gupta, David Dhawan… the usual suspects have been there, done that. But the point is when a Dil Kabaddi does it, we need to be scared. When a film starring Irrfan Khan, Rahul Bose and Konkona Sensharma does it, we need to be scared.
Come on, we have already entered phase two of the plagiarisation scene in Bollywood. Rakesh Roshan paid Ram Sampath Rs 8 crore for the Krazzy 4 title track, Dharma Productions gave Pritish Nandy some 3 crore for a song in Dostana and Rabbi wants something from Onir for a song in Sorry Bhai!. We are indeed understanding COPYRIGHT!
In a situation like this, we need to get tough. We need to tell the US producers which of our films are copying what. I know this sounds suicidal and more like a same-side goal, but unless we do this, unless people here stop duplicating DVDs, trust me, we will be in a big soup. Because the day they copy us, we won’t be able to do a single thing.
Imagine a film like Mithya being copied in Hollywood. Can a small production house like Planman fight it out in the US courts? Can we save our films if we are returned the favour? Yes, it’s likely that they will buy the rights before they copy our movies but what if they don’t? What if we are meted out the same treatment as we have been dishing out for decades now?
If payback time comes, we will be pasted guys! Would like to hear what all of your feel about this and whether we could do something about this. We talk about stopping piracy… look at our movies, they are pirated at birth… How can you pirate them further?
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
@pratim-
Hollywood studios are not very keen on filing cases against these copycats because they they dont want to displease them.The reason is most hollywood studios are planning to produce movies in bollywood and in that case they may hve to join hands with these indian producers.
I think that the more important problem right now is that we are not concerned about plagiarism as long as the movie entertains us. Neither the film makers are proud enough not to copy something nor the audience is respectful enough towards true creativity.
Einstein had once said that creativity is about how much you are able to hide your sources of inspiration. But in the hands of our bollywood film makers the hollywood movie they get inspired by remains some undigested disfigured food remnant.
up to what extent copying is creativity? tell me something about gurudatt,gulzar,shekhar kapoor etc. chori to chori hai…woh ek scene ho,idea ho ya poori film ho.
Thats shocking. No, not your concerns about holywood illegally copying bolywood(that was tongue-n-chick, right !?) but the manner in which dilkabbadi is copied. They just dont bother that people here actually watch woody allen who is not exactly an obscure filmmaker and they will be caught in no time. Yet, this goes on. These replica films could work in the ’80s but how could they do something like this in 2008? aur woh bhi woody allen?
“Sangharsh” was one of my fav. movie until i have seen “The Silence of the lambs”. The whole plot is copied brazenly from this hollywood movie. When will we stop taking this inspiration guyz….???
There are lot of issues,history,culture in our country on which great movies can be made. When will we start exploring our own country for ideas…???
P.S.:-”Sangharsh” is still one of my fav. movie because of Ashutosh Rana’s acting.
:D Then everyone shall watch Dil Kabaddi on pirated vcds/dvds. :D
I’m surprised that actors of such repute are willing to do these films. Do they not care at all?
Hollywood has started to sue and it will continue. When they see the amounts to be made on one had and the terrible economy on the other, they will have no compunction.
Is there a writer behind this masterpiece? Is someone so arrogant that they’d put their name to something they’ve merely translated?
@ pratim –
i share your concern about plagiarism, BUT PLEASE DO NOT TRIVIALIZE TERRORISM by drawing an analogy to creative piracy.
I agree with Dabba. Your point stands on its own without the terrorism angle, anyway.
I think not only Hindi but even vernacular films have also been plagiarising since a long time.
Pratim- I completely agree with you on this issue & there are already instances of hollywood waking up to the situation in India.Remember Sony trying to sue David Dhawan & team for Partner being similar to Hitch?
But why the reference to terrorism in your write-up’s title?cant it rather be – something very specific to piracy?