This is SUCH an interesting episode!  Much much to discuss.  Nothing super scandalous, but just interesting statements on society and all.  (first episode discussed here, and second here, third here, fourth here, and fifth here)

First, the opening!  Which really needs to be dealt with completely separately from the rest of the episode, because Karan gives a little speech that isn’t about the episode at all.

This whole season, Karan has been doing this kind of clever structure where he is in his dressing room, and a faceless camerawoman is asking him questions, and he is ducking them and joking.  The point is to do the same kind of intro that talk shows usually do, talk up who will be on the show and why we should care and all that.  But instead of a boring prepared speech to the camera, he does it as a joke-y dialogue while getting ready in his dressing room.

But this time, he isn’t talking about Salman at all.  He’s talking about how this is his 100th show and he is very proud.  And he kind of looks back to the beginning and says how this started out as a hobby, but has become so important to him.  At first, everyone told him not to do it, because he is a serious filmmaker and he won’t be taken seriously.

That is interesting!  The way we have a vision of what “serious” and “important” people are supposed to be, and if you vary from that, you aren’t serious any more.  This is a problem not just for Karan, but for Indian film in general.  If Shahrukh makes a 100 Dear Zindagis and Salman makes a 100 Bajrangi Bhaijaans, it doesn’t matter, so long as they also made one Happy New Year and one Dabangg, and therefore they aren’t “serious”.  And in a bigger sense, popular Hindi film can crank out all the Airlifts and Neerjas and Pinks it wants, the international film people will never take it seriously because it also makes Prem Ratan Dhan Payo.

(thank goodness they make Prem Ratan Dhan Payo!  It’s so warm and pretty)

But what Karan is saying is, he decided he didn’t care!  This is him, why not be himself and be happy and frivolous?  Which was his attitude in decided to host Koffee, but also seems to be his attitude as a producer.  Dharma makes love stories, it makes crowd-pleasers, it makes happy films.  And it also makes serious things, when Karan feels like producing something serious.  He’s not going to limit himself just because people expect it.

That’s the first part of his little statement.  The second part is VERY VERY interesting!  He talks about how he took the decision to take the show and do it as himself, and now it is at 100 episodes and he is “proud to be myself and I hope someday people envelope me for myself, all fun and fabulous.”  OH KARAN!  I wish you could just come out of the closet, and have a public relationship and be loved.  I love you already, if that means anything!

 

And then the show proper starts, and it’s totally unrelated to that statement, so wash it from your mind and start fresh.  To my notes!

My first note is “family business”.  Because that’s what Salman and Sohail and Arbaaz are describing when they talk about how their family functions.  Karan tosses them some softball questions about how they all work together and all, and he opens it up to a discussion of why Salman is SALMAN and Arbaaz and Sohail aren’t.  And all 3 brothers had an honest discussion of how that worked out.  Well, Arbaaz and Sohail had an honest discussion, Salman himself just got uncomfortable.  Which I found super sweet!  He was visibly uncomfortable whenever his brothers ran themselves down in comparison to him, because he didn’t like to hear them talking themselves down.  And even more uncomfortable when they talked him up.

But Arbaaz and Sohail were pretty relaxed about discussing how things worked out.  Salman launched first, he made it big, and he works unbelievably hard to stay on top.  They tried acting, didn’t work as hard, didn’t make it big, and now they are doing producing and directing and doing okay in their chosen fields, and they are all right with that.

(Remember Freaky Ali?  Sohail’s little movie that came out earlier this year and made a nice little profit?)

But what also comes out, is Salman talking about how he is constantly getting advice and discussing career choices with his brothers.  And we can see how happy they are all together in the interview, how much confidence and support Salman gets just from being around his brothers.  Basically, what I’m saying is “it takes a village to raise a Superstar.”  Maybe Salman is the “face” of the family, but he needs a supportive team back home and loving people to come back to, to make it all work.

Although all 3 brothers also agree that Salman is carrying the most weight.  He works every day, all day.  He doesn’t take vacations, at most will carve out 4-5 days to join the rest of them for family getaways, but never takes time off otherwise.  He works out every day, he is on set every day, he doesn’t stop.  Even just when he signs a film, he was there helping out with planning Dabangg, suggesting things for the script and coming up with his own lines and his own dance moves.  And it’s the work ethic and the never letting up that is the reason he is the star and his brothers are the support team.

(I love Dabangg.  Someday I’ll get around to posting on it.  Oh!  Maybe for Salman’s birthday!)

Karan also pushes for some details of their “unusual” living arrangements, and Arbaaz and Sohail oblige and describe how their apartment is laid out and all, and Salman tells a little joke about it.  But then Salman sort of ties it all together by pointing out that their life is the regular one, the one that millions of people in India live, sort of by implication pointing out that the rest of the film industry are the ones living the odd life by living separately in their huge apartments and houses.

And he’s right!  There is no reason for us all to be obsessed by how the Khans live together, they are just living the life of a middle-class family like any other.  But in case you are interested, Salman and Arbaaz and Sohail explain that when they were kids, they lived in a smaller unit with only 3 bedrooms, so the boys were in one, and their parents were in the other, and “of course Alvira got her own”.  Awww!  Such good brothers!  Anyway, when they got older, they bought the unit next door and the boys got their own rooms, and now Salman moved downstairs to a little one bedroom unit, so they are all still close.  And when it is explained like that, it all kind of sounds normal!  More normal than, say, Shahrukh with his massive mansion and massive high rise behind his mansion.

And then they all take turns telling family stories.  Nothing terribly surprising or scandalous, just nice and fun.  The sort of thing you might tell around the family dinner table and then everyone laughs.  And they tell it the way you would around a family dinner table too, kind of overlapping and correcting each other.

Here was my favorite, which started as a story about how someone ended up staying in Sohail’s bedroom for a year.  But then they remembered that he finally left when Sohail came home one night with Seema.  And then they started remembering the Seema story.  They eloped, and needed to get married that night before her parents woke up the next morning.  So Sohail knocked on the door of his parents’ bedroom and woke his father up and explained the whole thing, and Salim asked to see Seema, so Sohail brought her to the door.  And he liked her, so it was fixed!  But then they went out for the ceremony, and Sohail’s friends had kidnapped an Iman (I think?  They were using a colloquialism I wasn’t familiar with) from a nearby Masjid, and he took one look at Salim and went “No!  I won’t do it!”  Because, turns out, it’s the same Iman that Salim’s friends had kidnapped 35 years earlier to marry him to Salma!

(aww!  Look what a nice young family they were!)

I also liked their comments about how Arbaaz always got the most girls, they used to call his room “The Burmuda Triangle”, because all the girls of Bandra would just get sucked into it and disappear.  I liked them talking about how of course they are all afraid of their mother and of course she still sometimes has to give them a slap.  And the first thought  is always “Oh no, what if she hurts her hand.”  I liked Karan apologizing because his mother just called Salman a couple days ago to complain about Karan, because Salman always says to be good to your mother as his TV show sign off.

But what I really liked was all the little comments and statements that helped give us a whole picture of the film industry if you put them together.  For instance, Karan kept nudging around from different directions at the idea of feuds versus hanging together.  And they kept coming up with different examples and stories trying to get at the same truth.  Which is that these professional issues don’t affect personal relationships.  And personal relationships shouldn’t affect professional.

The boys claimed that was the tone they knew from childhood, for instance when “Dad and Javed uncle broke up”, Salim sat them down and told them that they should still give “Javed Uncle and Honey Auntie” the respect of an “Uncle” and “Aunt”.  And that this shouldn’t effect the children, Farhan and Zoya are still their friends.  This, between Salim and Javed, shouldn’t effect them at all.  And the same thing was true when Salman and Shahrukh were having their problems (which Salman insisted on clarifying was only because of a small problem, and then not having time to really sit down and work it out), Salman made it clear that Arbaaz and Sohail and their wives and their kids should still be friends with Shahrukh and Gauri and their kids, this had nothing to do with them.

And, in a larger sense, Salman talked about (and Karan and his brothers confirmed that this is what they had always seen from him), how he is always happy when a film does well, and sad when it doesn’t, no matter whose film it is.  The industry has to rise together and help each other.  And he also talked about (and Karan confirmed), he always has a list of other actors who he recommends for parts.  If he can’t do a role, he will suggest names to the producer.  And even if he wants a role, and the producer isn’t sure, he will give him a list of other people to consider. What was really impressive, was he used as an example Maine Pyar Kiya, which he really really wanted, but Sooraj wasn’t sure if he would take him, so Salman suggested some other young actors, his friends, to look at instead, because if it was a good role and he didn’t get it, he wanted it to go to a friend.  But what really impressed me, is that Salman just had to think for a second, and then rattled off the 5 names he gave to a producer almost 30 years ago.

(Thank goodness he ended up taking Salman! I can’t imagine anyone else in that part)

Salman doesn’t get a lot of credit for being the “smart” Khan.  Aamir has all his intellectual films and international cred.  Shahrukh has his super witty interviews.  But watching this, and from other things I’ve read, and most of all just because his career is what it is, Salman has a little extra going on just like the other two Khans.  He can remember details of things that happened years ago, at another point in the interview he remembered songs and lines from not even his own movies.  And he talked about how he came up with the Dabangg dance moves from something he saw at a wedding years earlier.  He may not have as much verbal intelligence as Shahrukh, and he may not talk about deep social stuff as much as Aamir, but he’s got a mind like a steel trap for details.

But mostly what all three boys are saying is that the industry is about more than just the rivalry and the profit and the business.  It’s about friendship and relationships and doing the fair thing in the long run.  And they are saying that not just as 3 nice guys, but as three men who have spent the last 40 years with a front row seat to how the industry functions best.  And you can see that is the underlying message of all their stories, how the house is always filled with friends, how Salman’s exes are still a part of their life, how Shahrukh and Gauri when they were starting out used to come over every night for dinner and “pictionary with baby” (pictionary?  So specific, it just leaped out at me.  And who is “baby”?  Aryan?  Or Arpita?).  And even in this episode you can see that comradery, when Karan completely fails to get a rivalry going between the 3 brothers for his quiz, and instead Salman and Arbaaz just cheat so that Sohail will win.