Dabangg: Live from Chandan Talkies!

Let me start by telling the K Jos and A Chos what they have been missing in their movies and why does a Dabanng come and leave them with a feeling of powerlessness. So much so that K Jo had to release his movie one week earlier. Sample this: Dharma productions, the production house of Karan Johar is coming with stuff like: Agneepath's remake, I Hate Love Stories (a trashy remix of its own cliched rom-com movies), Dostana 2 ( a sequel to an already dim-witted original), We are Family (remake of Stepmom), Cootchi Cootchi Hota Hai (animation remake of their earlier hit Kuch Kuch Hota hai) - now take that: how many times did you read the word 'remake'.
Can anyone get more original than this? Are you done with your stories? If you do not have the ability to tell a story, please dont keep making movies, just because you have a production house to run and some fashion designer's nephew and some heroine's brother waiting/wanting to test their directorial skills.
Same goes for priya Aditya Chopra sir, the other day I was watching DDLJ on Set Max and it made me think, what a genius of man to have made this movie. It's like The godfather of bollywood, the one that set trends for the decade and more...for movies to come. Its almost like cause of that one film - bollywood survived the next decade; by making its remakes and adaptations and other loosely-inspired to the blatantly copying forms. The problem that happened later is that people even started loosing respect for DDLJ which was a genuinely made great film. But look at this year: your titles suggest that could you have lost the plot?: 'Lafangey Parindey, Badmaash Company: hangovers of a Kaminey. 'Yaar tum logon se nahi hota toh rehne do na'


Now lets come back to the topic: Abhinav Singh Kashyap, the man on the fringes of bollywood comes up with this absolutely winning formula called Dabangg. If someone has seen Spike Jonze's brilliant film Adaptation with Nicholas Cage in double role then thats whats happening in the case of the Kashyap Duo. The brainy Charlie Kauffman like screenwriter is making movies that are completely anti-bollywood (but within the realm of bollywood) and his twin brother Donald Kauffman in this case Abhinav Singh Kashyap comes up with this stylized trashy potbolier and with all the winning collections at the box office. Anurag Kashyap tweets that Dabangg's first 2 days of collection is equal to the collection of all his movies combined till date. Take that: The curry western music in background, the guitars free flowing and from the sunset comes a silhouetteish figure of Abhinav Kashyap and stands tall, takes out his gun and clicks the trigger and we hear the gun shots ring in the air! dhiskiyaaon! Of course Donald Kauffman is a result of imagination but its come true in the case of these two Kashyap brothers.

Essentially what makes Dabangg special is the way it remains true to the nature of bollywood: The audience goes inside the dark hall not to feel cheated but to get entertained. And entertain toh bahut kiya Dabanng ne! Its a movie that people in Mumbai will tell you: 'It has to be seen inside a Chandan or a Gaiety/Galaxy to know its true value. I went to Chandan, Juhu - one of the last 'action heroes' cinema hall left in suburban Mumbai.
Chandan cinema is the pulse of a nation like us, stuck between development and its third world nature. The seats in Chandan are all plush, it gets all the big movies on day 1 and yet when it comes to the crowd and ticket-price: Iska dil abhi bhi hindustani hai. Salman Khan's entry into the movie gets such a huge roar that it would have been wonderful if the screen would have frozen for a good 20 seconds and the camera could revolve inside a theatre doing a bullet-point photography and get the slow motion reactions of the people in frenzy. Popcorns being thrown in the air, whistles, catcalls, cheering, jeering - all happening in slow motion -As all of this was happening around us, for a moment I thought: 'Hey we are back to the wonderful days of Housefull boards, the madness and the magic of cinema. You go to a cinema to sit with a thousand people and watch the movie, together. The multiplex movies have not given us those moments.

If you gauge the situation of the previous two Super Hit movies then the secret of their winning formula remains: the content has to be re-hashed from bollywood's own repository of revenge stories, but the stylized packaging has to be unique to get the product moving inside the market. 'Once upon a time in Mumbai' was exactly that. Ajay Devgan's character was very well written and so were his dialogues. You can read them here. But Dabangg didnt have many such dialogues, but it had Salman Khan coming on a Eid Mubarak day. 'Dialogue se yaad aaya...' The writer is back in bollywood, so what if right now 'clever dialogues' are the need of the hour. But great writing is being paid off. And great writing while being honest to the cliched content of the movie. Don't try to be too clever, else the audience will reject you. Be clever in the realm of the content-of their context. Just take this case in point: Mr. Stephen Chow. highly highly creative films packaged with amazingly stylized content. That brings me to one more secret formula that we have (and Mr. Chow doesn't have). Songs! We love our songs: 'Tere Mast Mast do nain" led to amazing lunacy levels inside Chandan talkies. The crowd was whistling in rhythm of the song! And when Mr. Chulbul Pandey came on the terrace top in Munni Badnaam hui, it was chaotic rhetoric, I thought the theatre would break into a happy joyous riot-like situation.

So the conclusion remains: Watch Dabangg inside a single screen cinema hall and you will know where these mind-boggling figures of opening collections come from. Inorbit multiplex ki Rs. 280/- ki ticket mei woh power kahaan jo Rs. 60 ki ticket ko Rs. 200/- ko black mei bechne se hai...


p.s: Once the junta is done with this Dabangg mania there is a very interesting film coming up at a theatre near you. please dont miss it. For Real by Sona Jain. I will be writing more about the film. but for now here's the theatrical trailer of a very very fine and sensitive film.

© Copyrights 2009 www.bhaandgroup.blogspot.com. All Rights Reserved. Hardik Mehta

Lessons on filmmaking : from the office peon

Now we all know how in most cases a student fiction film turns out to be – it’s almost an exercise in testing a viewer’s patience – (except a few rare student films or filmmakers who have genuinely dished out brilliant stuff.) The rest of us learn the hard way. Thus, the first cut of my final graduation student film was no different – it had some really bad editing, wrong choices of camera lens & angles, pretty ordinary framing, wrong lighting, continuity errors and if that was not enough – there were the wonderful amateur actors!

Agreed the thrill of working with a Super 16mm ARRI camera, the different kinds of lights, the AVID editing machine etc is something you wont get to do daily in life, even when you are into the film industry - but at the helm of everything lies the story – even with all the blunders you make while making a film – it is important that you are able to tell a story. The normal audience is not going to react to your ordinary lighting or the one odd bad cut. If the protagonist or the characters are not going to appeal to the audience – then it can be termed as a failure. Even the best of the equipments/filmmaking tools are not going to save it. Thus with all of this in mind, when I watched my final film made a year back, I thought it just doesn’t work for me now – along with the technical errors, which I cant undo now, the film was just way too long and dragging at times (which I think is a recipe for disaster for a short film) thus I thought its time to re-cut and trying seeing it in a new light. Probably adding a few aspects, which I have learnt by being in the film industry since last 7 months. With these thoughts in my mind – I started re-editing the film – thanks to the availability of an editing machine (read: FCP on Mac Pro) from a friend. Now when you have had made the cuts for the day, as a principle I never watch it then and there before retiring. I always prefer watching the next day – and see whether I can still stand those cuts. Its something I picked up from copywriting – if you have written a tagline or a copy for any product – if you read there itself, its always going to look great. But if you come the next morning and read it and even if then it appeals to you – then that line will be a winner, if not – its time to re-work. So with that thought in mind, when I was doing the re-edit of this film at a friend’s office place – the only person who came early morning there was the peon of the office. Now he used to see me working in early morning hours – but he kept himself busy in his daily chores but obviously if a film is being cut who can resist their eyes and observations. One day when I came and started watching the film, the peon joined me and I told him, am yet to cut so please don’t see and he said its ok, he wont give any reviews on it. After we finished the screening (read:15 mins) he was smiling, I looked towards him from the corner of my eye and as I was just going towards the computer, he said.
“itna achcha toh hai, badal kyon rahe ho?”.

How could I make him understand all those technical errors, which I just mentioned above and my desperate attempts to try and restructure the film – but as I started conversing with him, I realized probably for him as an audience this is working. He loved the fact that the Boy in the film is running and is tensed because his mother may get angry with him. What we call “empathize” – he could do with that character. I agreed to his points and didn’t touch the film then.

Agreed, this doesn’t make the film the way it had to be. It doesn’t make the film a good one. But what I learnt is as they say, “you never know how an audience will react”. I couldn’t judge how a normal film viewer may like it. I was always under the impression that if you have to show it to your contemporaries then what are the faults they are going to see in the film rather than watching the film. Have heard stories of how filmmakers say that “you should always make what you like to see” – and that’s why I was trying to modify but in the end I modified it a little and left the rest as for some particular individual it was working. And this aint an excuse to make a perfect film with all the technical finesse and the right tools to use while telling a particular story – but it is just one of the observations that I would like to share with the future filmmakers. Hope you like the film.




The film is called “The Homecoming”.

Part 1

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=HS9IvatU_I0


Part 2

http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=csw92T32jtE