Mahesh’s Making & Marketing Methodolgy
Folks,
Upfront let me add, I ain’t no fan of Mahesh Bhatt and can see through his persona in minutes. His aura of intelligence, deep thinking, anti establishment, etc, is just that, a facade. After all in a career spanning more than 75 films (as director or writer or producer), only Arth, Sadak, Naam, Saraansh, Zakhm, Gangster standout. Hence a success ratio of 6/75 , which in most professions and walks of life would be considered a failure. Almost all his films (including Pooja and Vikram’s) have the following standard “cut and paste ingrediants:”
(a) A basic celebration of earthiness
(b) A hero who always has a friend (aka the person’s only job is to be a shoulder to cry on or vent)
(c) The emotion of sorrow is always visually depicted by hitting the bottle (as someone who follows sports where almost every day someone is a loser, hence in sorrow if Mahesh’s films were a yardstick, we would be a world of alcoholics, actually it is au contraire, you celebrate with a drink!!)
(d) An intensity of emotions
(e) His rhetoric of “I don’t care about Hollywood” is equally matched by doing a “cut and paste” of Hollywood in some of his films
Ok, now that I have gotten that out of the way, waht is truly amazing and mind boggling is the practical, business brain of Mahesh and his films!!!
In all these years, in all the changes in audience tastes, with all the onsluaght of corporates, the star system, etc, Mahesh has been an investors dream come true. The Making involves, inexpensive products, the Marketing involves high octane songs and music that far exceed the quality of the film, the Methodology involves extensive use of family and newcomers to cut costs…..and more power to him for that. The net result are films that will probably be made for around Rs 1 to Rs 2 crore at a max (if not less), use tax incentive of places which have not been caught on camera before, like Korea or Jordan, etc, bringing the NET cost even lower. Couple that with strong CD sales, and you have a major chunk of the cost recovered there. Use sensationalism, almost all of which is hogwash or concocted “during that sequence Shiney actually slapped Emran so hard, he got caught up in the moment….etc,” enough to make it in the news, whereas in reality Shiney must have brushed an ant of Emran’s shirt, then let the family take over “aka this is Pooja’s best performance period…or when Bhatt saheb saw me in Jannat, he had tears in his eyes, etc, etc” ….and viola….you have a film that will most probably be wiped out by the first week……..but guess what….by then all the factors combined have recovered the cost, made a few bucks over that for the investors and nobody is poorer and nobody cribs. And so the machinery moves on.
Also Mahesh, maybe to cut costs, but for whatever reason, gives the highest number of newcomers (both as acting and crew talent) to the industry.
Anupam Kher
Shiney Ahuja (yes HKA preceeded, but Gangster got him into the Commerical world)
Emraan Hashmi (family)
Mohit Suri (family)
Anurag Basu
Kangana
Sanjay Dutt (relaunched when all seemed lost)
Gulshan Grover (not launched but packaged into a commerical actor)
Sushmita Sen
Vinay and Ranvir (again not lauched but made commercial)
Kunal Khemu
Malika (the leap from her debut to commerical viability was thanks to Mahesh)
and the list goes on. Not to mention the debut singers, musicians, etc.
And the best part is, he continues to do all that despite having only 6 accliamed films out of 75 and perhaps a “super hit” of approx 3-4.
So Jannat has been trashed, is probably trashy, Emraan is trashy, but the fact of the matter remains, the Bhatt machinery continues to work like a well oiled machine and he takes on the mantle (along with his daughter) of being the messiah of the newcomers….and maybe he is.
So to me, given my penchant for low budget (yet non exploitative), solid songs, sans stars (cause nobody, but nobody is indispensible in the creative world) and a touch of masala, entertainers, with limited marketing “spend,” Mahesh becomes as much of a force of “equalization” as a “former” Ram Gopal or a Shyam Benegal or a Rajat Kapoor (the commonality being all have done it their way and given commercial successes), in a Bollywood that is increasingly running bereft of script ideas, less of a “risk averse and more of a play safe,” mindset, than has existed in the past.
So to all the ”non family” talent that Mahesh has given us, I say a – THANK YOU! And everytime someone tells me that a KayKay Menon or an Aamir Khan or a Sudhir Mishra has oodles of talent (and they do), I look at a Mahesh to give us the “undiscoverd” KayKay, the “unshown on the big screen” Aamir and the “undisplayed on the creative horizon” Sudhir, who are definitely there in the plethora of TV/Stage/Modelling/Struggling creative talent of Mumbai and India and the world, but only few seem to have the courage, the conviction and most importantly the BUSINESS SMARTS, to showcase them.
Almost reminds me of the one positive I have learned in Silicon Valley. The Reliance’s can do what they have to in the Bollywood commercial world, the Naseer and Rahul Boses’s of this Arthouse world can do what they have to in the Bollwyood Arthouse world….all it takes is a GARAGE…a solid script with some solid actors and a solid director (mind you the key word is solid, not famous or known)…..and….the creative world is never the same again….both for the risk takers and the audience!!!
AND OF COURSE MY BIGGEST REASON TO ADMIRE MAHESH- HE HAS TOTAL DISDAIN FOR THE FESTIVALS/CRITICS/CANNES OF THIS WORLD- THE AUDIENCE IS KING….ALWAYS HAVE BEEN…ALWAYS WILL BE!!!
Sincerely,
Vivek”whenever ALLEGEDLY business savy filmmakers make a movie, it may be a hit or a flop, when a STREET SMART, WITH A HEART, NON-MBA, ANTI ESTABLISHMENT, makes a film and then a series of them, he becomes the ESTABLISHMENT and the LEADER” 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
His rhetoric of “I don’t care about Hollywood” is equally matched by doing a “cut and paste” of Hollywood in some of his films
>>> SOME of his films?
I have to 2nd Oz on that… try MOST of his films… if not Hollywood, then from somewhere but its copied.
You can add Manoj Bajpai & Irrfan Khan to this list. Both featured in character parts in Bhatt produced films before hitting the big-time on the big-screens… (Bajpai in Dastak & Tammana & Irrfan Khan in Kasoor). Ashutosh Rana had a string of Bhatt films at the start of his career (Tamanna, Ghulam, Dushman, Zakhm, Sangharsh) as well. The list goes on…
I think Mahesh Bhatt has lasted, and been successful all these years, because he’s very savvy at changing with the times. If in the 80’s he gave us Arth, Saaransh, Naam, Kaash & Daddy, the 90’s saw him shine with films like Dil Hai Ke Maanta Nahin, Sadak, Phir Teri Kahani Yaad Aayi, Sir, Hum Hai Rahi Pyar Ke (I think it goes downhill from there) and then in the new century he’s Produced some prolific films such as Raaz, Jism, Murder, Gangster, Woh Lamhe & now Jannat.
Whether you like the man, or his films, or not.. why lie, its very tough to argue against his success. Especially with all that you’ve so rightly hightlighted here Vivek (the low on budgets, high on curiousity value films).
Dont forget..he gets a lot from the dvd sales and the television rights…i guess most of movies are aired on air.in like 3-4 months from its release..the man knows his business…has lost the craft..or rather doesnt care about it…is RGV following the same trend without much success?
hell atleast RGV doesnt copy many hollywood stories..he copies his own movies..haha
Viviek, you make one good film and then write an article on Mr. Bhatt..here you mentioned six good film sby him..boss ek toh bana
Even though Yash Raj is considered the number one production house have they ever dared to launch newcomers?This reflects on their films too which in most of the times are tried and tasted formula films.Another good thing I like about Mahesh Bhatt films is that the principal characters are NEVER shown to be perfect(both the hero and the heroine).Be it Bipasha in Jism,Mllika in Murder,Kangna in Gangster and Woh Lamhe,Lisa Ray in Kasoor,or even in his earlier films Shabana and Smita in Arth,Pooja in Zakhm he has consistently portrayed principal female characters as flesh and blood human beings instead of the typical sati savitri and the “pyar hi meri zindagi hai” types.He has been responsible in introducing “grey” characters wherein the hero and heroine are shown as imperfect human beings.
@OZ, agree with you although of late he has copied less from Hollywood also movies like Arth/Naam/Sadak were originals. Funny how the desi Bollywood mind works, make an original and it does well, one would think, that should be the formula, but when you follow it up with a Hollywood copy and it flops and continues to flop, one questions what the makers of these films were thinking.
@Tony, I could be wrong, but I think Manoj got his first break, in Govind Nahalani’s DROHKAAL.
@OM, RGV is another unique case who stopped making the very kind of movies with the very kind of actors, that made him RGV.
@Rohan, I don’t believe you have to make a film to assess the film and the maker as an audience. My assessment was, at time as an audience. At other times as a scriptwriter, which I have the academic and pratical experience to back up (also member of the indian film writers asssociation)and as a producer, as mentioned in my article, I have nothing but admiration for Mahesh.
@Anindya, yep Mahesh has given us some super newcomers and continues to do so. Not sure how Yash Raj got the ranking of the number one production house though, wonder what Adlabs/Reliance, Eros, Studio 18 and Asthavinayak have to say to that.
Sadak was Taxi Driver + Cyborg btw.
My fav films of his in addition to Saraansh are the underrated Daddy, Saathi and Kaash.
In the beginning of this article I was like ….Good Lord , you actually write about people like this fool here ?
“AND OF COURSE MY BIGGEST REASON TO ADMIRE MAHESH- HE HAS TOTAL DISDAIN FOR THE FESTIVALS/CRITICS/CANNES OF THIS WORLD- THE AUDIENCE IS KING….ALWAYS HAVE BEEN…ALWAYS WILL BE!!!”
Then I realise …. Ahhhh … No wonder … You’re one of those people …
After seeing kasoor, i sweared i wont see any mahesh bhatt film ever. And trust me, I have still kept myself from watching any of the chalu garbage he dishes out every now and then. Even mallika and bipasha failed to convince that they are worth a dekho(its mahesh bhatt production).
I hate the candle songs which his movies always have.
I hate the emotional(over the top) love quota displayed.
I hate the montage songs which his movies would definetely have.
Disliking mahesh bhatt has its demerits, i dont even know Emraan hashmi even exist or not.
Yes i agree, i hate the charade, he always puts on the intellectual cap(WTF) discussing movies.
Good thing he gives break to so many ppl.
In reality, the guy has mastered art of making movies with the same old formula and repackaging the same old stories or borrowing heavily from hollywood and then infusing Indian elements into the movie making them viable for the indian audience….
He does not give a shit about creativity and its actually amazing that his movies work somehow with our audiences….He’s actually mastered the craft of marketing movies….rather than making movies…
To define him outrightly ,he is a GAS-BAG….
Kaash…Lovely movie…
Actually…. Mahesh Bhatt movies are not commercially successful with overseas indians.
But better than Yashraj movies i guess.
After Tashan every movie seems good.