Why Do I Write
Well I am a numbers guy and somehow also like to write. I am not saying that I write amazingly well but it’s something I consider that am capable of doing and something I deeply enjoy.
I read in a post few days back that people who want to make movies take up writing simply because it’s easy to do. I found this funny and offensive both at the same time. Funny because this was on a portal devoted to the world of cinema and offensive since the writer somehow was ascribing to the fact that writing is simple stuff when say compared to cinematography or the other technical aspects of film making. I read his post in detail and at the end could understand him since it was a struggler/aspiring filmmaker who most probably has not gotten the right break and hence venting his frustration on the new joiners into this industry. The Indian film industry is only based on networks and hence it’s quite difficult to get cracking on your project quickly. As this is a passion industry for many, there will always be entrants and every newbie will always have competition. Well I say kudos to the competition. This can only mean better content but sadly the author of the article did not feel so. He felt the only people who have worked in many different things can actually enter the film industry.
I was quite irritated by this comment. If this was the case, then we could never have had some of the greatest scriptwriters. Salim Javed never really became filmmakers, Paul Schrader never really was known as a director. Kaufmann reigns at the top really as an amazing storyteller. Some of the films that have really touched us had at the heart of it all a gem of a story and this is somehow completely forgotten. This post of mine is really not a tirade against the guy but against this perception. If you look at any of the blockbuster releases this Diwali, you will get a feeling that maybe; just maybe we are losing our focus on the storyline
I as part of the 70’s & 80’s generation have grown up on “Kitne Aadmi The”, “Mere Paas Maa Hai”, “I am your father, Luke” and hence feel the script storyline take the movie to the next level. Production & Post production are as important but only using them on a not well thought out script is a failure and we as a community are tending to fall for this
I remember an era of film making where the technical aspect was not really fantastic but the film still had you in its grasp and you watched it only because of its story. Remember “Rashomon”. Did we all see it for its technical capabilities or its unique form of storytelling and the narrative. Absolutely for the narrative and there are thousands of such cases. In Hollywood, only the blockbuster releases do tend to wave of the story and the winter releases center the film around the story. Here in Bollywood, Kollywood, toll…et al, we only focus on the look, style, camera work and almost many of the movies just ignore the story line
To end this tirade, I put in an amusing anecdote I heard about a famous Kannada director. He had made this super duper film which had all the best sensibilities and it flopped. A friend of mine who reports for a Kannada daily went up to the director and asked him how the movie flopped. I quote the director “Look, we got the music, cinematography, look, style all that right in this film. Yes there was a problem with the story but we will sort that out in the next film I make” thus making it amply clear that Story (part of PRE Production) is never really well thought out and making it more valid for me to continue writing my stuff to tell me tales.
So I shall continue to write and hopefully will meet at least one producer who will tell me that we need a story, script and only after that will we finalize the cast.
Lemme know how you guys feel about this
Ciao, Deepak
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
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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
One big example is the success of a large number of Bengali films which were made in the 1960s and the 1970s. Most of these films were not technically that great but they were mostly based on literature and had a good storyline to back them. Because of that people flocked to see them.
Making a film without a good story line but with advanced technique is like dressing up an impoverished and ill child with designer clothes and accessories and trying to make the child look good.
Carry on with the good work Deepak.i am also 70’s/80’s child and that time humein toh yeh ligts,camera look, yeh sab toh pata bhi nahi tha.sirf yehi pata ki film ki story kya hai aur story mein hota kya hai.
aur haan May the force be with you…
Hi Deepak, completely agree with you. I think writing for movie is as critical, complex and tiring process as any of the other aspects. I started toying with an idea almost 3 years back and now I have a complete script in my hand. The reason I took so long is because I was never happy with what I have written. When you rise above the lines you have written and try to see as a whole you realize that, “dude, try to relate it with the previous scene, you are contradicting your characters”. 1st draft and then 2nd and 3rd and finally you say, “boss, bohot ho gaya, aise to yeh khatam hi nahin hoga” and they you have what we call as a ‘bound scripts’ which is still not complete.
A writer in more like housewife, both there work are never done