FILM INTERVIEW: SUBHASH GHAI
Director of ‘Taal’ Suggests Bollywood Fans to Watch ‘Cycle Kick’ This Weekend
.jpg)
Bollywood multiplexes will be inundated and flooded with six (SIX!) new releases this weekend, including Always Kabhi Kabhi, Bheja Fry 2, Bhindi Baazaar Inc, Bin Bulaye Baarati, and My Husband’s Wife. Among the Hindi film stars dotting movie posters of films released on June 17th are Kay Kay Menon, Minissha Lamba, Celina Lopez, Mallika Sherawat, Ekta Kapoor, and Giselle Monteiro. Yet, Taal filmmaker Subhash Ghai believes all those films should take a second billing to less mainstream releases in Shashi Silgudia’s Cycle Kick (Tom Alter, Ishita Sharma) and Sunny Bhambani’s Love Express (11 actors making debuts, released June 10th).
Of course, Mr. Ghai does have a pair of horses in the race: both films are produced by him under the Mukta Arts Ltd. banner. Yet, the 35-year Bollywood veteran believes movie stars have become too demanding in their fees, and the Hindi film industry has gone too corporate. With the costs of production also rising, Ghai wonders how producers and filmmakers will ever make a living, let alone a profit.
“When big corporate companies entered the film industry, the cost of production, as well as the cost of stars, witnessed a drastic jump,” Mr. Ghai told the Indian press. “A star used to take Rs.3 crore for a film, but his or her fees jumped up to Rs.30 crore. These big companies changed the grammar of business.”
Accordingly, Mr. Ghai has tried to avoid the current trend of big budget films with big ticket films, instead producing films such as Cycle Kick and Love Express, both which feature substantively fresh talent and meaty subject matters.
Yet, it is becoming harder and harder to take chances on new blood and “experimental” subject matters when financiers, many of whom just provide the funds, seek to protect their investments by attaching their money to cookie-cutter films with proven box office success. Just the same, investors heavily favor working with a star who has box office draw (such as any one of the Khans), as a Salman or Aamir or Shah Rukh, at least perceptively, guarantee a return on investment.
“There’s a lot of competition, and to please investors, filmmakers used to say, ‘See, we are working with a Khan.’ The economics went for a roller-coaster ride, and after an imbalance, filmmakers suffered losses,” Mr. Ghai told the press. “Now all the filmmakers are running into losses because they played it the wrong way. The pressure of a star on a producer is too high.”
Mr. Ghai went on to say that the record-breaking influx of debutant directors in 2011 is mostly the result of the “upside down” economics Bollywood is currently experiencing. After all, with so much money being spent on big-ticket actors and not enough revenues coming in to match, producers are cutting corners where they can, and hiring a cheap, new director instead of an experienced and qualitative one who costs more money is one of those cut corners.
“All filmmakers cannot afford to make a film with a budget of Rs 30 crore. Hence, they turned to newcomers; that’s why there are maximum newcomers this year,” Mr. Ghai said to the media. “I would call this the year of new talent, and you will see some new stars in 2012.”
Indeed, it only seems logical that the influx of new faces amidst dwindling profits would probably lead to a new generation of rising stars in the years to come, which is all the more reason to watch films such as Love Express and Cycle Kick -- films both produced by Mr. Ghai and featuring potential stars of tomorrow.
According to news reports, Love Express features 11 new faces, from the director to actors, from editors to sound recorders. Many of them have attended or graduated from Mr. Ghai’s alma mater at Whistling Woods International.
Cycle Kick, conversely, is an interesting social drama featuring faces who are as new to Mr. Ghai as they are to the rest of Bollywood.
Still, he says Bollywood today is nothing like it was 50 or 60 years ago.
“The best pictures were made in the 1950s, like Sahib Biwi Aur Ghulam and Pyaasa, because at that time, only the upper middle class used to watch the film, and the perception of other classes of people was that film watching is not good,” the filmmaker informed the press. “In the 1970s, the audience was the masses -- that is, right from the illiterate, labou class to middle class and upper middle class, all used to watch cinema. And then, with films like Taal and Dil Chatha Hai, the tastes of people changed.”
Hopefully the taste of audiences will change again, and more films like Cycle Kick and Love Express will be produced. After all, such things are always cyclical.
