‘Every vanity van in Mumbai is on our set today’: Zeeshan Ayyub says you won’t believe how much money Bollywood wastes on ‘useless’ things

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He continued, “They’ll never talk about the film itself. And now they’re stuck, because the hierarchies they’ve created are eating them up from the inside. The other major issue is formula filmmaking. Any intelligent person can tell that whenever they’ve started following a formula, their films have failed. Look at the recent films of this one production house. They had one big hit that that didn’t adhere to a formula; it featured newcomers and turned out to be a hit, and the other one was a formula film with big stars, but it didn’t work at all… Every argument and distraction will go away the minute they start taking more interest in making good movies.”

In a recent interview with Cyrus Broacha, director Sanjay Gupta revealed that a Bollywood star was quietly fired from a South Indian production for showing up with six vanity vans to set, with the expectations that the producer would foot the bill. He was let go after having shot a day on the project. He also revealed that an actor couple demands a separate set of vans, leaving the producer having to pay for up to 60 members of staff and 11 vans. Sanjay Gupta said, “I know certain actors who have six makeup vans. It’s mandatory. The first van is his personal space. This is real; I’m very serious. Wahan saab nanga baithte hain (Sir sits naked in that van). Then, next to that is saab’s other van, wahan pe saab makeup and hair karte hain (There, sir has his makeup and hair done). Uske baaju mein is the van jahan saab meetings karte hain (In the van next to that, sir has his meetings). Hear me out. There’s a fourth van, which has his gym. Wahan saab workout karte hain (Sir works out there). I said fine. You have to keep one thing in mind; workout van means he’ll bring his trainer, his assistant, the driver of the van, and the maintainance man of the van. That’s six people for one van. Then, makeup and hair and the stylists have their own assistants.”

More recently, director Mahesh Bhatt revealed that his granddaughter Raha, who is two years old, has a vanity van of her own on her mother Alia Bhatt’s sets. “I saw that there was a vanity which was for Raha. And Alia says, ‘Why don’t you go an sit in Raha’s room papa?’ I didn’t want to contaminate it. It had the feeling of a nursery school. It almost looked like a temple. I said, ‘No, no, no, the old man has no place there’,” he said in an interview with Humans of Bombay.

Others, including Anurag Kashyap and Farah Khan have also slammed entourages; Anurag revealed that an actor once had a five-star meal driven in to a remote location from Mumbai, which was three hours away. Farah, on the other hand, has taken repeated digs at stars with lofty demands, while others have complained about the skewed remuneration structure in Bollywood, where large upfront salaries are paid to actors who aren’t able to deliver hits.