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Cinenausea
(Mumbai, India)

EMAIL:
cinenausea [at] gmail.com

Mr. Pritish Nandy once remarked, ‘I don’t make films for people I don’t know’ (Temptations of the West, Pankaj Mishra, Picador). Let me add to that. ‘I don’t make films i don’t understand’. Not a profound addendum, but its close to what I feel about cinema. There are so many debates that involve us and face us up as we go along on this journey into the creation of illusion. Perhaps that may not even be correct as it is actually, the creation of ‘entertainment’; and illusion only happens to be the medium. ‘Should it be art or commercial?’, ‘Am I targeting the mass audience or the niche?’, (and also, as you debated, ’should it be a small movie or a big one?’), ‘do I put in songs or should I keep it gritty?’, ’should I keep it real or melodramatic?’; and more recently, ‘Should we do it on video or film?’, While many a time we may indulge in the deliberations on these issues, for me really, there is just one question. ‘What kind of a film shall I make?’

Before we talk about that, I just want to clear up one small issue. The relationship between a producer and a director. As Scorsese once put it, ‘There is only one way a producer can make a film exactly the way he wants it. That is to direct it himself.’ If you don’t want to do that, a producer has to rely on his director. Sure, ‘behind every successful director, there is a sonofabitch producer’. A producer who thinks he knows exactly what the audience wants, and the director who thinks his artistic talent is in tune with what the audience expects from cinema; each catering with full conviction of his abilities to the demands of the ‘abstract sense of audience’, that exists more often in their minds than on the theatre seats. The producer prides in his ability to understand and give the audience ‘full service’, (in advertising terms, not just satisfy the audience, but actually delight him). However, the director is no less of a whore. That leads me to explore the directors’ relationship with his audience. The audience is a voyeur. It wants to peep into the lives of other people, and derive a vicarious pleasure. The websites these days where you pay to peep into the lives of urban women are not far from the philosophy of cinema and its relationship with voyeurism. And the film director is their ally. He promises to show his audience exactly what is good, watch able and enjoyable. The audience has to get into a relationship with the director who will fulfill their needs to ‘peep’, and guides them towards what he thinks is the best way to enjoy. As a director, I understand that much about my relationship with my audience. The rest of talent is my ability to make this ‘peeping’ more attractive, involved and potentially gratuitous. I hope to get my audience to trust me. And when I have achieved that, ‘I am an ‘auteur’. Cinema and religion are not too different for my audience. In both, they come together to gratiate a collective idea. And in both, ‘faith’ is the element that gets them together (in a church or theatre) again and again. When the faith breaks, they will turn to some one else for their ‘lace of opium’.

Coming from advertising, I understand what kind of an ad to make. ‘It has to be distinctive, attention grabbing, associative, and has to have a single minded proposition (SMP). The way we do it is to create a brief.. There are two most important elements in the creative brief. The SMP and the ‘Creative Trigger’. Translating that into cinema, I know that my film has to comply with the proposed brief. I have to know (and write it down; which makes a great difference; each word measured and evaluated) what makes my film different from others’ (all the elements including treatment, twists and turns, novel ideas etc. And, how am I going to creatively dissociate it from other cinema. (and (only) at times, associate it with successful cinema). About the creative bit, I have always had a simple belief. Every film has to have a ‘ooh!’ point. It could be anything. A surprise end, unexpected and novel treatment, impressionable music, a titillating structure, unseen characterizations, a new take on the old (narrative or character) clichés, a confrontation with etched beliefs and assumptions ( a un-patriotic war movie perhaps). Anything that bowls the audience over because they have not seen this before. Coming back to the question. ‘What kind of a movie should I make?’ The other day, I took a cab from brick lane and the driver was a Bangladeshi guy. I was discussing the same issue with a friend of mine. The driver intervened and had a point of view. ‘I saw a Hindi movie recently’, he said. ‘It was called ‘Game’. The guys who made the film thought, my audience is stupid, so let me make a stupid movie for them. It does not work that way’, he concluded. I couldn’t have put it better, let alone have more appropriate credentials to make that statement. He had more to say. ‘They think that the average Asian is less intelligent than an average American or European. So they make stupid films. It really pisses me off.’ I should have concluded on that note, but I am not done yet.

You and I understand that it may not be about intelligence but about film literacy. And we have a long way to go before we can claim to be literate. But does that mean we should target illiterate filmgoers? I think I have an argument against it, if I can follow my thoughts. What do we do these days? We read the news, fornicate, watch reality shows and presume to know what kind of a film the audience will like. Ask anybody in Bollywood and they’ll tell you exactly what kind of a film will work. And yet, more than 90% of our films fail in the market. Why? The MD of the agency that did advertising for Avis (We are no.2, so we work harder), once put down a few principles he would work on with Avis. One of them said, ‘Avis will accept or reject any creative, but they will not to improve it.’ Although I cannot afford to subscribe to it at this point, you and I do understand the thought behind it. Sex is fine, but don’t rape the thought. Here’s another one. The assumptions we draw from failed or successful movies are not too simple to derive. An intelligent interpreter understands that you have to torture them to the point they start confessing the truth. And that’s not everybody’s cup of tea, to submit conveniently to a cliché. Here’s an analysis if you like. How many great Hindi movies can you count that have failed miserably in the market? Shantaram’s ‘parchayeen’, Guru Dutt’s ‘Kaagaz ke phool’, Raj Kapur’s ‘Mera Naam Joker’. Count more for me. If you can count them on your fingers, my point is made. In over 70 years of filmmaking in India, you can only count a few great movies that have failed. However, here’s another thought. Did these movies really fail? If we can talk about them fondly, so many years on now, I wouldn’t consider them to have failed. Look at them as long term investments. Wouldn’t you have any day made kaagaz ke phool than a few B movies that made some money, but which no one will remember a decade from now on? If you’d rather not, its your choice. But you surely understand the point attempted.

They say, serious movies don’t work. We need happy endings. Musicals (in the traditional sense) don’t get appreciated. Non-linier narrative is a risky thing, It shouldn’t be dark, cinema is fantasy and after a hard days work, they don’t want anything difficult. Melodrama is essential. These are not thoughts of wisdom. They are reflections on our own limitations. Chandni Bar was dark, it was dispassionate, it depicted homosexuality, prostitution, and tragedies in an un-melodramatic way, and had an appropriately abrupt end. Look at Gangster. They said, ‘oh, they killed the kid’, ‘Oh, fuck, they killed the guy’, ‘oh fuck they killed the girl as well’. This was certain not to work. Even the narrative moves back and forth. Not appropriate for the Indian audience. Traditional wisdom strongly opposed it. But it did work. It worked because it was treated in a novel way, and it was not self-conscious in its unusual storytelling, did not worry about complicated relationships, and it did not try to appease anyone. I have always understood that cinema is not literature. Therefore, keep the stories simple, but make the relationships complicated. If art of any kind is meant to reflect the political state of affairs of a nation, then we are at an abysmal state. The last time mindless cinema completely flourished was during the emergence of fascism as a major force, and when they did come to power, they encouraged it in full force. While millions died in the concentration camps, all of Germany was busy enjoying the new revolution of slapstick comedies in Germany. I am not trying to get political here so, I will abandon that thought there.

‘What kind of a film should I make?’ There is only way to make movies. That is to make the movies you would like to watch. There is only one way to approach it. With complete conviction. There is just one way to get to the audience. Be humble. Do not offend the audience by considering yourself to be more intelligent than them, and therefore try to reach to the Least Common Denominator. Lack of conviction shows. What works in life works in cinema. Honesty, truthfulness, conviction, humility, faith and ample common sense. And all of them put together. Before I end, a last word. I foresee a growth in the gangster drama in Bollywood, which, at present is at its nascent stage. Because three most potent tools of storytelling are best used in this genre. Suspense, sex and violence. I am a strong promoter of these elements; primarily because they make the story most engaging and deliver most impact. I do understand that we do not want to make movies that are a level below that of the drama that Bollywood audiences expect. That, however, does not imply that we stoop down to the level of morons. Even if they do not really exist other than in the make believe world of Indian cinema, or of that of the makers of cinema. I think this message is already too long to be polite. Before it turns positively offensive, I’ll sign off. Of course we can discuss further to no end. While we are not making movies.

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