Bumboo is all set to release on 30th March across India and with this a debutant director should have felt elated and been jumping with excitement, but strangely I approach the date with mixed feelings. To complete a film, trust me, is no less a feat than climbing Mount Everest. Months of pre-production + Shooting + Post production + Marketing activity (in that order) costing anyone two years of his life all set to be judged and decided in 3 days flat. (infact the 1st day decides how the next 2 days will go!).
An exercise which involves close to 200 people (yes all those names which come in the end where you start walking out without reading) all set to be launched into the universe and awaiting its fate at the hands of ticket paying audiences (rightly so) & critics (half of whom are aspiring film makers waiting to get a producer and have fancy pens to give stars to film). But then all of this is the mechanics of showbiz and needs to be accepted. First lesson learnt. Film complete ready to reach audience.
All mixed feelings put aside and we approach the world for a release. It is here that we saw the reality of showbiz, well hidden behind grandfather clocks. Sounds of knives being sharpened, a few faces with raised eyebrows with a chuckle "ek aura a gaya phillum leke" attitude and a huge massive wall staring at us.
It is undoubtedly a fact that art in the end survives only on 'patrons', but before you can reach them, the shylocks in waiting are a group that will instill terror in your hearts with their attitude towards independent artists ( read 'cinema').
The most cruel of this is the media which plays favorite at the outset and goes on increasing the wall brick by brick as you approach them. I have now come to a definite conclusion that there exists a 'Indian media' (read Mumbai, Delhi) and a 'Bhartiya media' ( read rest of India ) where access to their readers is directly proportional to how much access they themselves have to the so called 'stars' in Bollywood.
Having literally being stone walled by 'Indian media', we decided to move our promotional activities within 'Bharat' and were pleasantly surprised by the warmth of the press and people be it in UP, MP, Punjab, Rajasthan, Haryana, Gujarat, etc. There was always one question we were asked 'phillum mai star kyu nahi hai' and at each point I had to say only one thing 'filmen script se banti hai, star se nahi'.
Thereafter, it was about the story, the script, our experiences etc and great coverage given and access given to reach their readers. As I toured at each point I had a reference of films that were releasing during our promotional campaigns with big stars and not doing well while at the same time there was a Pan Singh Tomar cracking their code and moving ahead with bravado. During all this my PR was pushing hard to reach more press within 'India' and suggested it was better I spoke to the press and appealed to their sensibilities about independent cinema and the support it requires and that in the end 'all artists were equal' and it was not for the press to decide whom to support but for the audience to choose. The reply?
'All men are born equal but some are born more equal than others…Sorry Mr Rajpurohit, we don’t need you'! There were news papers ready to sell their columns for money (officially called as 'MARCOM' supplements) but within that segment too, you did not deserve to be on front page, over the fold, under the fold ( no I am not explaining what these mean, you figure these out yourself!),"aapko hum last page ke last column ke last last line pe rakh sakte hai".. …paise? Utne hi jitney front page ke !!!!
I thought Radio was about music but here too the game is same as it exists in Print. "Star nahi , to aapka gaana nahi bajaa sakte...apke liye paid spots hai na, kyu chinta karte hai!" So you can have songs which have been allegedly plagiarized from middle east/Turkish/Arabian songs playing their own pungi (pun intended ) by star music directors (and danced along with stars wanting to join the 100 Crore club), but they wont play your songs, no matter what.
The last bastion for us to be stone walled was Television. Each channel will take your money and give you ad spots under ROS (figure this out too yourself!), but 'show integrations' are another subject. "sorry saar , aapke pass star nahi hai naa, nahi to aaj hi prime time mai le jaata". In the end I was only laughing each time I heard this and at one point we stopped asking. So much for independent cinema and so much for independent press.
This whole cloud of editorials we see in the press crying hoarse over 'star system' the state in which our cinema is , the fault of the film industry in not providing good meaningful cinema as is in Europe/Hollywood is all nothing but the elephants tusk which is kept for mere decoration. "Asli chbaane waale daant kahi aur hai aur who tumhe kachaa chabaa jayenge". A producer puts a huge amount of money and expects his money to come back and if the way to do it is the way the media is saying it should then what options are left for the industry? Yes the tail is wagging the dog here but that is the fact. As regards the audience I won’t say anything because they consume what is dished out to them. My only regret is that why doesn’t the audience rebel? but then that is asking too much from them. The have learnt the art of accepting from bad, corrupt governments to bad cinema and everything in between.
We tried. That’s all I can say. We are very proud that we did not get 'inspired' from a film and copied it but went all the way and bough the rights and gave credit to the original writer in our film. We are proud that we have original music. We are proud that we took brilliant actors for our film who will give any big star a run for their money when it comes to acting. We are proud that we made Bumboo and would come back again with another film if life permits.
And besides the all the sob story you have patently read above, we have no regrets, anger or remorse. Just mixed feelings; and before anyone from the enemy camp gives any justification (or lambasts us on FB, Twitter or on their mothers sari ) I would only quote what the Luisa Anselmi tells Guido in Fellini's 8/12: "Don't explain. I didn't ask you anything. Just spare me the shame of hearing you swear to a mess of lies."
God bless (if he did not see what you did so far !)
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