The festival madness

Of late we are noticing the tussle between filmmakers of ‘Shivaay’ and ‘Ae Dil Hai Mushkil’. Thanks to the scuffle both the movies got huge publicity and I doubt if both producers need to spend a single dime on promotions after that.

If they still do, take it from me that it is the most senseless decisions in the history of Bollywood promotions. Thanks to the “hungama”, both movies reasonable anticipation before the release.

I, however, as an audience, now have a bone to pick up with Bollywood producers. This whole Diwali and Eid obsession have frankly become irritating, to put it mildly. It is an indicator of two points. First – Because of their greed to work the numbers, Bollywood has started discounting what matters the most; the content of the movie.

Second – We the audience can make a movie a big hit only if it is released on a festival. Frankly, this strategy is far away from both truth and common sense. Movies have been released on Diwali have bombed big time in recent years.

I have always believed and even the recent history of Bollywood will point to the fact that the audience is smart enough to realise and respect content. They need not be released on a Diwali or an Eid to get numbers. I quote three of my favourite examples on this point.

In a day or age, where we are being fooled into believing that audience is time and attention challenged to respect content without promotion.

‘Jolly LLB’ was driven on the shoulders of Arshad Warsi and Boman Irani – and they do not draw a huge audience at the box office. Yet the movie came out from nowhere and grew huge on the viewers’ inspiration, becoming a rocking hit.

‘Neeraja’ – Sonam Kapoor, today is as hot on the box office as the terrace of an igloo is, yet her brilliant performance as the air hostess and super content of ‘Neeraja’ made big numbers. And on the parameters on which the movie made returns, it made the producers look smart enough. ‘OMG - Oh My God’, which was driven on Paresh Rawal’s charisma and his lucky mascot co-star Akshay Kumar.

‘OMG’s content was lifted by Paresh’s brilliant histrionics and it fetched big numbers on box office and made ‘PK’ look like a poor copy cousin, despite ‘PK’ having better numbers at the box office. As irony and Bollywood will have it ‘Jolly LLB’ has gone back to the mathematics of promotions and bigger star for its sequel ‘Jolly LLB 2’.

In fact, almost as a coincidence my biggest and favourite example of how content and director’s conviction still drives cinema and audiences – SS Rajamouli’s ‘Baahubali 2’s first look has been revealed to the audiences recently in Mumbai. ‘Baahubali’ to the best of my knowledge was released in the most non-holiday space.

I don’t recall or remember its stars doing any kind of promotion in north India. I doubt if people knew of the star status of Prabhas, Rana, Sathya Raj or Anushka Shetty. Yet they connected with the movie big time. The movie worked purely on conviction and content presentation of its skilled director.

Why did Kattappa kill Baahubali? At some level, this line has at least today, gained at least half the status of “Kitne aadmi the…” from ‘Sholay’. Trust me that it is a huge feat to achieve.

We all look forward to ‘Baahubali 2’ like eager kids and Diwali or Eid or no Diwali or no Eid we will still go and watch this one in droves.The whole fight around festival releases is an ironic reminder of deep down how confident our filmmakers are of the content they make.

It will probably take another part of ‘Baahubali’ to briefly remind our arrogant filmmakers in Bollywood that true content and true cinema does not need a festival for its release. Sometimes a good movie with compelling content in itself creates a Diwali when released.