The Dark side of Fame

Movies that deal with the reality behind the glamourous Bollywood garner mixed reaction

I saw Luck By Chance. And found it ponder-worthy. I messaged a friend: 'It's an insider deconstruction job an abrasively funny, no-holds-or-jabs-barred portrayal of the film industry'. The next day I talked about it incessantly with my office colleagues over lunch. Cinematic merits apart, the film compelled me to think: 'Why is it that even the industrywallahs themselves seem to hold such a cynical view of the Hindi film industry? Why are people, who bring happiness to so many, projected as unhappy victims of fame or manipulative perpetrators of unhappiness?'u00a0

From the classic Kaagaz Ke Phool in 1959 to Luck By Chance in 2009, over the last 50 years, most films on films have held up a mirror to Bollywood that reflects more warts than dimples.

Let me begin with Luck By Chance even as I order DVDs of older films to prop up my mercurial memory.u00a0u00a0

Luck By Chance is Zoya's pride, Madhur's envy. This time the sub culture focussed on with funny but scalpel-sharp incisiveness is the film-world. It is a film right down Bhandarkar's alley, albeit with less high-drama and more gloss and satirical bite.

If Madhur's Fashion was about the many compromises Priyanka Chopra makes in her struggle for success, including going to bed with a benevolent promoter, the story of struggling actor Farhan Akhtar follows a similar trajectory in Luck By Chance. Farhan cheats on his girlfriend, Konkona Sen, and sleeps with his film's de-facto producer Dimple Kapadia's daughter Isha Sharvani to smoothen the path of his career.

But we are digressing. Fashion was about the modelling industry, LBC is about the film industry and the focus of this piece is 'Films on Films'. My very first attempt at scriptwriting was a film revolving around a film star. But an accomplished veteran forewarned me, "Films on films don't work, it's difficult for the audience to relate with them. They want to see the glamour, and not the grime behind stardom."

Like most films made on films in the past, LBC too, projects the film industry in a glum light, for all its side-splitting jokes. It is a cynical look at the entertainment empire.

Somehow, though I have been here writing about films and have spent considerable time over the last 26 years of my life in the studios, I don't think it is as bleak or as ruthless. Yes, like in the film, there are star moms who are like "crocodiles in chiffon saris" and yes, there is a large-scale dynastic monopoly, yes, there are actors who drop out of films for better opportunities and there are actors who have to embrace obscurity and/or the stage (in LBC, doing theatre almost equals embracing obscurity).

But to suggest that choosing between success and failure in the film industry implies choosing between compromise and principles is, in my view, not true.

One can argue that Zoya's characters don't necessarily represent the tribe, and that these are but the demands of drama; but since Akhtar is an industry insider her cynicism holds weight and demands thought.

Zoya is not the only industry person to have taken recourse to showing the film industry in a not-so-flattering light. Her colleagues, both in Mumbai and Hollywood have done the same.u00a0u00a0
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Fifty years ago, Guru Dutt made Kaagaz Ke Phool (1959) which revolved around a sensitive film director (Guru Dutt) who can't accept the see-sawing nature of fame in the largely indifferent world of films the sun is setting on his career even as it's rising on the career of his muse and lover (Waheeda Rehman).

While he drowns in alcohol and self-pity, the voiceover declares, "Naam aur shohrat milne mein bhale hi der ho jaaye, nam-o-nishan mitte der nahee lagti." (It may take time to be famous and make a name for yourself in the industry but it doesn't take a lot to erase a famous name altogether.)

"I am still big, it's the films that got smaller," says ageing actress Gloria Swanson in Hollywood's definitive classic about itself Sunset Boulevard. She is unable to accept her decelerating stardom and continues to inhabit an imaginary world where she reigns supreme. She watches films from her heyday even as she nurses a glass. Ultimately, both the protagonists of Sunset Boulevard and Kagaz Ke Phool fade away.

"I am ready for my close-up," announces the actress as she is led away by attendants from a mental asylum; while Guru Dutt enters his old studio to the melancholy strains of 'Dekhi zamaane ki yaari, bicchde sabhi baari baari' and dies on the director's chair. When the studio hands open the door next day, the producer sees an ashen-faced Dutt slumped. One of his admirers (Mohan Choti) recognizes him and gazes at him affectionately with tears in his eyes. But the producer snaps at the glazed onlookers and tells them to get rid of the body because his heroine has only a day to spare and they can't waste 'set' time.

A full 25 years separate Guru Dutt and his niece Kalpana Lajmi's movies on the movie world, but the perspective didn't metamorphose much. The ageing actress-mother perceptively played by Kirron Kher in Lajmi's Darmiyaan was another tragic figure. Every frame of the film was doused in defeatism.

The Mahesh Bhatt-directed Arth and Kaash (Smita Patil and Jackie Shroff played dysfunctional film stars in them) were released in the 1980s while the Bhatt camp's Showbiz was released in 2007, but both were testimonials to the tag-line of Showbiz which proclaimed it was all about 'The Dark Side Of Fame.'

This association of fractured psyches with cinema cast its shadow over Sudhir Mishra's recent Khoya Khoya Chand too. Coquette Sushmita Mukherjee, in her very first scene, takes struggling writer, Shiney Ahuja aside and tells him "Pehle baap banane ki zaroorat hoti hai, phir baap se nijaad paane ki." (First you need to make a Godfather, then you need to find a way to get rid of him).

When Soha cries to Shiney that her co-star Rajat Kapoor has sexually exploited her, he counters, "Istamal toh aapne bhi kiya, jo hua, aapne usse hone diya.' (You used him too, whatever happened was with your consent).
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Khoya Khoya Chand goes to great lengths to establish that there are no permanent enemies or friends in the industry, it all boils down to success.

After watching the film, I was left with a lingering hangover best encapsuled by Guru Dutt's eternal song "yeh duniya agar mil bhi jaaye toh kya hai' and it found expression in my Facebook status.

Hrishikesh Mukherjee's universe was more sun-shiny. From all the films on films, Mukherji's Guddi was the frothiest and most amiable, albeit sometimes a tad too much so on the other side of the scales (okay, so I am difficult to please). Dharmendra (playing himself), is a good person in real life, but Hrishida presented him as a paragon of virtue in Guddi; with seemingly endless reservoirs of time to be able to make a besotted fan (Jaya Bhaduri) see reason. Yes, Guddi showed the grime when an underpaid electrician has an accident on the sets but it also showed onscreen miser, Om Prakash (who has just shot a scene wherein he plays a miser and says he has been using the same ghee-ka-dabba for 35 years) fishing out Rs 100 for the ailing man. I root for Guddi because of Jaya's terrific performance she stood in for us, the audience, who looks at the world of films with alternating enchantment and cynicism.

A quick mind scan of films on films that gave us a glimpse of industry home truths without leaving a bitter aftertaste throws up Sridhar's Pyar Kiya Jaa. In this capricious comedy, Mehmood was a wannabe film director who also assumes the onus of being a Pygmalion to Mumtaz. He wants to make Mumtaz, a dunce who is good at dancing, a "top ki heroine". Om Shanti Om too used its filmi backdrop just to squeeze out a few loud laughs.

I am surprised Ram Gopal Verma has never attempted another film as light as Rangeela. It was a fascinating fairy tale romance between a black marketer and a star aspirant. When Canon-cap-sporting director Steven Kapoor Gulshan Grover as a wannabe Stephen Spielberg u2014 instructs Urmila to keep exactly four strands of hair on her forehead for the realistic touch, you end up in splits while she splits her hair. Aside: it would be interesting to watch Rangeela II about the dynamics of the relationship between a black marketer (Aamir) and his star wife (Urmila).

Later, though, the same Ramu had a more dour look at Bollywood in Naach and Main Madhuri Dixit Banana Chahati Hoon. Madhur's Page 3 too skewered the film world with hand-rubbing glee.

Lonely, needy actors have almost become a subgenre from Nutan in Sone Ki Chidiya to Hema Malini in Tere Mere Sapne to Kangana in Woh Lamhe.

Emraan Hashmi says: "In India sports and films are like a religion. They are evergreen concepts but for them to work as films, they need to be relatable to the common man."

For now, I am keen to see if the grime-and-glamour saga Luck By Chance works. If it does, I will swipe the dust off the script of my film on films.

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