1 week Ago By Mid-day
Explaining brouhaha over box-office (BO) numbers, superstar Aamir Khan told me in an interview once—it was chiefly an outcome of corporate firms taking hold of film production in Bollywood.They talked up footfall figures. Heavily advertising, thus, in their posters, press material.
Those movies may not have done as well. But these companies were listed in stock markets.Their market cap could go up by a couple of thousand crores, if they registered a hit.
What’s fudging/hedging a few crores here and there, if that prevents a stock drop, or pulls up stock prices several times, instead? Aamir mentioned this to me circa 2009. Is this roughly when/why the average Bollywood filmgoer simultaneously began to fixate over BO? Yes. And, no.
Indians are obsessed with numbers. It starts from growing up, with numbers—board results, college entrance tests, competitive job exams—defining everything they’ll do for the rest of their lives!Assumption is: good score = good mind. How do we reduce everything to this? At the movies, a storytelling art-form, foremost—quantitatively, BO; qualitatively, consumer/star ratings.
Hence, good numbers = good film. Except, you can actually gauge a good film only over time, right? By what survives public memory. That’s a long game.
We live in the moment.I’d interviewed Aamir shortly after Ghajini (2008), an uncredited remake of Christopher Nolan’s Memento, primarily produced in the South, where there isn’t corporate influence; film industry is run by family firms and independent financing. Ghajini was widely publicised as the first film to cross R100 crore at BO.
This is couple of years after Aamir’s Rang De Basanti, 2006—i.e. same year as Lage Raho Munna Bhai, Khosla Ka Ghosla!, Omkara, Dhoom 2, Golmaal, Vivah, Kabhi Alvidaa Naa Kehna.
..What a year/array! Unlikely, the first Indian R100 crore film is remembered, let alone quoted, cited, rewatched as ones above.
That said, I see some value of BO for lay viewers, while one still can’t argue with lunacy of fighting over domestic, net, global, gross, etc, as if they were chartered accountants. BO = footfall. It might help you pick between Bengali Sweet House, opposite Nathu Sweets, in Delhi’s Bengali Market—if you saw a bigger crowd in either shop, since menu is the same.
Yet, movies are meant to be different from each other, no? Yes, but what if there was enough sameness in the difference, too! I suppose, Aamir’s action-avenger Ghajini became a game-changer for Salman Khan, instead. A façade between multiplex, single screens seemed broken.Wanted (2009), directed by Prabhu Deva, also from down South, came after Ghajini—effectively turning around Salman’s career, while he was switching between genres until then, barring the loved garbage, Garv (2004; same space)!What followed Wanted was a series of hero-villain, bread-butter, revenge dramas, with predictable tropes, catapulting Salman aka Bhai to the sameness of a Telugu/Tamil superstar, up North.
If a genre works, others could follow too. They did. It didn’t work the same way.
Everybody else just had to try, harder, and work their own ways. As they have: Aamir, SRK, Ajay, Akshay, Hrithik, Shahid, Ranbir, Ranveer..
. Salman remained the most inexplicable still. Which is what makes desi showbiz such a tough punt; forget profession.
Imagine a movie-industry centred on an individual’s stardom, while that product, the star, contains formula X, that nobody can explain (or replicate)!You can still see the point of people at Nathu Sweets, knowing exactly what to expect, each time they enter. There’s merit in consistency. Best way to watch a Salman film’s at Bombay’s decrepit Gaiety-Galaxy.
I did once. Bhai walked in on the show. Couldn’t hear a word from the screen.
That was Ready (2011). Couldn’t understand a word of that movie, once I could hear it thereafter, either! Why was Ready such a hit? When you can’t figure that, hard to tell why a Salman film’s a flop then! Worst way to watch a Salman film is at home, as with Radhe (2021; dropped online, during pandemic). Another way is to slip into a quieter theatre, week after release, as I did with Sikander—watching Bhai as Raja/King Sanjay Rajkot, hopping around Bombay’s kaali-peeli taxis!For villain, there’s a bearded politician in sleeveless jacket, who’s a mantri/minister named Pradhan aka ‘maut ka saudagar’.
He’s after Bhai, with cops behind him, because this hero prevented rape on a flight! Bhai is busy bettering lives of three people his deceased wife donated her organs to! Ah, what?Sikander’s a commercial “disaster”—having already surpassed R100 crore at BO (Bhai’s 18th such); quite weighty for a “bomb”. I find blokes blaming script for Salman’s film failing. You’ve watched India’s GOAT superhit, Pushpa 2, albeit made on much grander scale than Sikander.
I dare you to tell me its plot—from first scene, of the hero speaking Japanese, to the last, while I was tearing my hair. I suspect, if inexplicable stardom = kingdom, then Salman’s simply not expanded his empire. In a way that, perhaps, Allu Arjun or others have, from South to North.
Also, why must South accept a stereotypical North Indian action-hero, with enough of their own, already? That means, either Salman’s core/captive audience doesn’t grow. And that’s fine. It’s huge, anyway.
Or, like others, even he has to try harder. That sucks! Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbag@mid-day.
comThe views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper..
