The masala is still stale

The masses (if I use the dirty word to describe them) — which includes my hip niece from Delhi — complain to me that (people of) my ilk try to make these so-called cool films with a dose of realism. But to them,it’s films like 3 Idiots or Rab Ne that give hope,even if it’s a mere three-hour hope. In India,life is anyway so tough that no one wants realism. Maybe a few of us — those who travel in cars,have a big house and don’t need to step out of ACs — have sorted out our lives enough to accept realism in films but we are few in number.

You might be surprised that I am talking like this. It’s because I am making what I make without any illusions — I know my audience is just one-tenth or one-fiftieth of a Ghajini. And I am not jealous. If you look at the history of any film society across the world,you will realise that it’s the mass entertainers that bear the burden of the “cool” films. Take Avatar for example. If the industry stops making that variety of films,the producers will not have the money to fund projects like mine.
And who says that an impossible story cannot be told well? Chak De! India can never happen in real life but I was hooked through the length of the film. It was a competent script that told an impossible story. If you can bring about the suspension of belief on part of the audience,you have done your job.

The second issue we need to consider is our yardstick of measuring success. Often,there are films that may not do so badly but are declared a dud because the production cost is so high that it can’t be recovered. If my film Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! had been made at a paisa more than Rs 8 crore,it wouldn’t have made money.>br>But how is it that the big budget comedies,which take the audience for a fool,fare well? Wanted didn’t even take itself seriously but did big business. Films aren’t failing for lack of script quality or as a rule. The audience doesn’t reject anything outright and goes for more or less every film. It’s the cost of making the film that decides the rest. Zoya Akhtar’s Luck By Chance is the perfect example of a good quality film that stars big actors,has oodles of good-looking visuals but failed to recover the money that went into making the film. If films are being made at Rs 100 crore,all it takes is five such films in a year to take the industry down.

The third and the last issue before we talk about scriptwriting is that of the class-and-mass divide of a different kind. We talk about this big multiplex market which doesn’t form even 30 per cent of the audience. Who has the money to go watch a film with four family members if the tickets are all priced at Rs 200? Hence,if a family has to watch a film,they will carefully pick two or three films in a year when they will give in to such rates. As a result,the industry is perforce to bank on one or two hits in a year where they will have to sell the film in the first two weeks before the next big-budget extravaganza releases.

As we approach the topic of quality scripts,let us first do a headcount of “good” scriptwriters in our industry — those who are consistent,experienced and creative. If you include scriptwriters who only write for their own films,like Abbas Tyrewala,your top-of-the-head list will include no more than 20 names,which is an exaggeration. If we presume they write only one quality script in a year,at most,we have 20 good films in a year. But that number,compared with the 100-odd films that release every year,will give us a reality check on our expectations.

If we try and increase this scriptwriters’ base,we have to see where the new ones in the industry are coming from. Given that we don’t have a script-writing school or workshops,the people whom we entertain today are usually English-speaking,public school-educated youngsters for whom literature begins at Enid Blyton and ends at the bestseller rack at bookstores,which will include Chetan Bhagat,Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh and some foreign authors.
If I tell this lot that I want a script,where is the literary base? Till the 1970s,you had literate writers like Gulzar and Javed Akhtar who read Indian authors,from Phanishwar Nath ‘Renu’ to Rabindranath Tagore to Saadat Hasan Manto to Bhisham Sahni,and had the literary base for plots,lines,characters and stories. Today,you have at the most five bestseller books in a year and only five films can be adaptations of those.

Another problem that we face today is that people don’t know what exactly a script is. They often come to me with stories,which they believe are scripts. There is no concept of screen development but pages are full of description. They don’t understand that an actor will enter a scene and either say a line or do some business. And often,this problem is the by-product of the depleting culture of theatre in India. Earlier,cinema heavily borrowed both actors and screenwriters from theatre but we hardly have any playwrights today.

The English language has inflicted upon us a curse that most of us today cannot read any other language. Many of the English-speaking scriptwriters that I earlier mentioned write their Hindi scripts in the Roman alphabet,which they then pass on to the dialogue writer. This is often the reason why characters don’t develop fully. There are only a few,like Jaideep Sahni,who know character,scene and voice at the same time.
Then,scriptwriters often have industrialised deadlines to meet. It isn’t uncommon to receive a call from the producer saying that they have acquired dates for a big star after two months and that is set as the scriptwriter’s new deadline. If you expect a story from a source that is not given time,money or training,in all possibility,he or she is going to come up with content by copying other films or books.

There are no fixed solutions to these problems but one has to prepare in advance. Usually,to avoid such working issues,I work a pool of writers. Today,if Urmi Juvekar and I are writing one script,I will call another good writer,giving him a good advance to write the story while I make my current film. When I return in six months,I will have his third draft ready and thereon,we can work on the script till it is ready. Oye Lucky was being thought of when Khosla Ka Ghosla had not even released. When I was finishing Oye Lucky,I was discussing three films with writers,one of which is my current project,LSD.
But more than anything else,what the industry needs right now is nurturing of scriptwriters in both theatre and cinema,a way to bring forth the talent from the interiors of India and more liberty to the new writers in terms of time and money so as to let their work flourish.

Dibakar’s Success Formula
*If you have a bad film,cast big stars and keep other costs low,the film might go well
*If you write a bad film,cast big stars and skyrocket the budget,you are staring disaster in the face
*If you have a good script,no stars and make the film in a controlled budget,it can work.
*If you a have good script,cast good stars and an average budget,the film is an assured hit.
*If you have a good script,cast big stars and the budget is also huge,you are at a risk.