Happy Monday! I am working, unlike 90% of people in America, because it didn’t occur to my boss to give me the day off. This is the curse of working for a small business with no regular Holiday schedule. Of course, the blessing of working for a small business is that I only ever work 8 hours a day and I am home by 5:30 most nights.
So, here I am at work while everyone else I know is out having fun. So, distract me! Ask me questions! On anything you want, from personal (“What movie are you looking forward to in 2017?”) to specific factual things you are wondering (“What movies are coming out in 2017 that I should look forward to?”) to general discussion questions (“What was good and bad about 2016 in film?”)
Only rule is to let me answer the question first (otherwise it is no fun for me!). Otherwise, anything goes!
dontcallitbollywood 
Have you ever gone to see a movie that you were prepared to dislike or hate but the chemistry between the lead pair was so amazing that you ended up loving it?
What’s your opinion about remakes?Not counting movies from the South or from Hollywood.Just Bollywood reaching out to its past and remaking one of the oldies.In your opinion, how long should they wait before remaking it?Which movie do you want to be remade? And who would be your dream cast and director?
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Ooo, fun question!
1. Chennai Express is the first one that leaps to mind. I wouldn’t say I was prepared to “hate” it, but the trailers and the reviews weren’t exactly exciting me about it. Plus, Rohit Shetty wasn’t my favorite director. Especially considering his weak female characters.
And then Deepika and Shahrukh completely sold me on their relationship in the film. Shahrukh was willing to make fun of himself, his age, his loverboy persona, his urban NRI style, all of it. And Deepika turned in an amazing performance, making me believe in this strong fearless woman who just wanted to live her life the way she wanted. And most of all, I loved the way they sold the romance, both of them bringing out new facets in the other and slowly coming to sort of “fit” together.
A couple of others that I can think of are Jab We Met and Humpty Sharma, both of them I wasn’t terribly interested in but just sort of saw because they were there. And then I ended up loving them mostly because of the main couple. But with those, I feel like the script and the director did a lot of heavy lifting along with the actors. But with Chennai Express, having seen other Rohit Shetty movies, I am pretty sure that Shahrukh and Deepika brought out something that wouldn’t have been there otherwise.
2. Remakes, whether from Hollywood or the South or the past, I think are good if they feel truly inspired, like the director just desperately wanted to make this film. And if the past film could be improved, or at least have a new element added to it, thanks to a different setting/time period/cast/director. Remakes like this would be, oh, Parineeta or Devdas or Shree 420/Raja Ban Gaya Gentleman. Or Silsila/KANK
But if it is already a perfect movie in every way, than there is no point to a remake. Any remake would just be a pale imitation of the original, almost an insult. So, no need to remake Sholay or Casablanca or Bangalore Days (even though I know they already did!). Also, if the director isn’t really inspired and is just doing it to cash in, don’t even bother. I’d be interested in a Dibakar Banarjee or Milan Luthria or Reema Kagti or Rohan Sippy remake of Zanjeer. I don’t need an Apoorva Lakhia remake.
I don’t think time is a consideration necessarily with remakes. If the remake deserves to be made, if it has something worthwhile and unique to add to the narrative, than any timeline is fine. Look at Bhansali’s Devdas and Dev D, they came out only 7 years apart, but they are such different movies that it doesn’t matter.
For movies that could be remade, hmm. Maybe Devdas again? After doing my massive Devdas weekend, I got really frustrated that Bhansali’s Devdas is the one most familiar to people today. I think the Dilip Kumar one is excellent and the only one people need to see, but unfortunately seeing as it is black-and-white and old and all of that, the newer generation is going to be resistant. I would love to see a new big budget version with new big stars and a big director that could better present the story to a new generation and wipe out Bhansali’s version from the popular consciousness.
For director, I think Dibakar Banarjee. I loved what he did with Byomkesh, which is another old familiar story often told on film. And a period piece and Bengali and set in Calcutta.
You would need a big name cast to make it work. But also people who can actually act. Maybe Ranbir Kapoor? His character in ADHM was kind of Devdas-y, in that he was frustrating and too trapped in his own head and incapable of seeing what was in front of him. I also might be interested to see what Varun did with the part, in Badlapur he showed that he was capable of taking a fresh-faced young man and turning him into an unappealing wreck of a person.
For Paro I would want someone who could convincingly go from a vibrant young woman, to a sacrificing and charitable matron. I’d love to do Sridevi, but I don’t know if even she can pull off playing a 16 year old at age 50. Alia would be fabulous too, but with her baby face, I just don’t know if she could do the matron role at the end. What about Sonam? She is such a costume based actress, I could believe her changing from a young woman to a matron just through a change of clothes. This is a real reach, but I would also love to see what Kirti Kulhari could do with that role, she had such a mature affect in Pink despite being so young looking.
For Chandramukhi, I wouldn’t actually want a great dancer. PC Barua didn’t use one, and Bimal Roy didn’t want one (Vyjantimala was forced on him). I’d want someone who could sell the idea of a tired older tawaif, not “the greatest tawaif in Calcutta”, but one who was okay at her job and getting kind of over the hill by the end of the film. Rani might be kind of amazing. A bit of a reach to play the younger parts, but absolutely perfect in older parts of the film where she is described as “still beautiful”. Oh! Or Kareena! She was so good in Talaash, selling the pain underneath the carefree facade.
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Two comments triggered by your answer: first, speaking of Jab We Met, did you see Shahid and Mira on Koffee with Karan? While he referred to Vivah in passing by saying it wasn’t like Vivah, his description of his arranged marriage sounds JUST like Vivah, including the hospital bits. (Apparently Mira’s pregnancy was complicated). Fun to hear if you know the movie well. Dev D was one of the early movies I saw and I saw it before I’d seen any Devdas…it was so confusing and then I saw Devdas and got it. I’d almost like to see a remake of it.
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I haven’t seen the Shahid and Mira one! I fell behind, because Kat and Anushka just sounded unutterably boring (they are both strict about not discussing their personal lives, and I don’t want Anushka to have to struggle to talk about her professional life with Kat on the couch). But I do want to see Shahid and Mira. Mostly I want to see Mira. The madness surrounding her marriage just blows me mind, and I am fascinated by the idea of this nobody Delhi school girl suddenly being thrust onto the world stage.
A remake of Dev D, you mean? See, Dev D is the much more faithful version of Devdas-the-novel, so to me it feels like a remake of Devdas, a real modern remake not whatever Bhansali was doing, would be kind of a Dev D remake. Kashyap shifted a few plot points and changed the ending (a lot!!!), but he was way more true to the characters and the sense of the novel than Bhansali was. He was just kind of confusing in how he presented it.
On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 5:00 PM, dontcallitbollywood wrote:
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I have to watch Dev D again. As I said, not knowing the story, parts were confusing. Though when I saw Shah Rukh’s Devdas after Dev D, Devdas made more sense than it would have. There is a lot of assumptions in both movies that you know the story, like Romeo and Juliet. Knowing the ending is actually important to understanding the play as it is going on. Same I think with Devdas. And as far as I can tell all Indians would know the ending.
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Yes, absolutely. It feels like the films are set up so you have that “maybe this time they won’t die!” feeling, even though you know how it’s going to end anyway. Bhansali’s Devdas in particular, since it came after the others, echoes and reflects on all kinds of images from the earlier films. And then Dev D reflects on Bhansali. Really, the only thing to do is what I did, give up a whole weekend to it, read the novel, and watch all 4 movie versions in order. 🙂
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A few months ago I watched the movie Manam. I can’t remember if I first read about it here or on Moviemavengal’s blog. You described it as happy making comfort food and she compared it to a cozy, warm cup of hot chocolate- both very apt descriptions. I loved the movie and felt the same way while I watched it. It was a warm, tight hug, whispering that everything is going to be okay. It was a rich and rewarding journey that I hope to take many times. What are some of your other ‘comfort food’ films?
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Hmm. Manam moved so far up my list of “comfort” movies, that it’s hard to even remember what my other ones were. Ohm Shanti Oshaana, I think. I love the romance part of it, but almost as nice is the way it builds the world of our heroine, the villagers and family around her who love her. Abhiyaam Naanum, which is a Tamil remake of Father of the Bride sort of, is another really soothing one. Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi is another nice one. Jacobinte Swarigun, which is SUPER STRESSFUL, but also strangely soothing. Really, looking at this list, it is any movie in which the focus is a bunch of good people who love each other working and living together. I guess any more about a family, whether it is a re-incarnation family like Manam, or a family of friends like Shahrukh and his best friend, his mechanic, his co-workers, who all come together in Rab Ne, or a family of a village like in Ohm Shanti Oshaana, or an actual family like in Jacobinte and Abhiyaam.
Well, that’s one category of “comfort” movies. When I am feeling really down, I also find extreme violence soothing, so I’ve got John Woo’s The Killer and Agneepath and Desperado. And District B-13 (the only French movie I own). Or, something really really beautiful is also good, so I’ve got Jaan-E-Mann and Sholay and Singin’ in the Rain lined up.
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Ohm Shanthi Oshaana was one of the first movies I added to my ‘watch later’ list on Spuul. It looks great. I can’t believe I haven’t watched it yet. I will have to remedy that soon. Also, I absolutely love The Killer (and A Better Tomorrow, Bullet in the Head, Hard Boiled, any John Woo from that period) and Desperado, so I will have to seek out Agneepath as well. That’s the Hrithik one, right? I’m a huge Tarantino fan, and I find his movies really comfortable to slip into. They have a flow and rhythm that I lose myself within. As strange as that sounds, about finding extreme violence soothing, I can totally understand where you’re coming from.
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Just to warn you, Agneepath has some AWESOME scenes of extreme violence, but also some really emotional parts. So if you are looking for the pure exhilaration of John Woo, it’s there, but it’s cut with some sobbing sobbing misery scenes.
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I watched Agneepath last night and it was great- a near perfect revenge thriller. The pacing was superb, a crescendo building towards the satisfying climax. The endings to these types of movies can often feel hollow. This really delivered the goods. I don’t have much of a Hindi reference point for this sort of revenge film, other than maybe Ram Lakhan or Baazigar. This also brought to mind the gritty, rain soaked streets of 70’s movies like Death Wish, Rolling Thunder and the dusty, operatic vengeance of Outlaw Josey Wales, or Once Upon a Time in the West. The songs were fantastic (I particularly enjoyed Katrina’s item number and the Priyanka/Drunk Hrithik song on his sister’s birthday). The action scenes were crisp and seemed more tightly choreographed and executed than in other Hindi action films. The violence was as brutal, unnerving and effective as anything I’ve watched in awhile. It was similar to Ghajini in the way that the violence conjured an emotional reaction inside of me.
The bad guys were just SO bad! Rishi and Sanjay Dutt were both amazing in their roles. The usual joyful glimmer in Rishi’s eye made him all the more deplorable. He seemed to relish his work of trafficking young girls and making the world a miserable place. Sanjay’s Kancha looked like he rose up from the depths of Hell itself, and turned Mandwa into a place where the devil could reside on earth. It surely must have been at least somewhat inspired by Apocalypse Now (both Kancha and the bleak, hellish landscape that he created). There weren’t many shades of gray, just pure evil, and it was refreshing.
Hrithik was incredible. I loved his performance. I haven’t seen a ton of his work (K3G, Mujhse Dosti Karoge, Dhoom 2, Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Bang Bang) but this role was a revelation. He brought out the humanity from within the darkness of the character. It reminded me of Stallone’s performance in First Blood, although I think this was even better. The sequence when he finally got to spend a day with his sister and he smiled for the first time since his childhood was beautiful. Then, when he broke down with Priyanka while eating supper outside after the fight with his mother, he became that child once again- so desperate for approval and affection. It made the ending all the more powerful. It hit me like a ton of bricks, leaving me sobbing deeply with tears rolling down. The child actor, who played the Vijay role early in the film, was very good and perfectly set up the emotional center of the story. Casting did excellent work finding young actors that resembled Hrithik and Priyanka.
Does the banyan tree hold any special meaning? I loved its imagery- so majestic and wise looking in the beginning and so gnarled, twisted and withered by the end. It seemed like the soul of the island. At first, it represented the Master and by the end, it had morphed into Kancha. There was almost a Passion of the Christ-like feel to the climactic scenes of Kancha beating and dragging Vijay along the path to the hanging tree. Often the religious imagery of these films goes over my head a bit. I was also wondering if the Ganesh festival had some significance to the story as well.
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Yaay! I am so glad you watched it! And I was going to give you a big long response, but then I remembered that I have an old essay I wrote about Agneepath floating around on my hard drive, and I could just post the whole thing as a new blog post.
A couple of things I’ll mention now, the Rishi Kapoor role, with the charm hiding the brutality, that is going to take on a WHOLE new significance after my next Kapoor post goes up on Thursday. Ditto Sanjay’s poor unloved son of a noble father who turns “evil”, if I ever get around to putting up a Sanjay post.
For Hrithik, you should definitely check out Jodha-Akbar. I think Agneepath is by far his best performance, but Jodha-Aakbar is pretty great too. Koi Mil Gaya is another good one, if you can get past the oddity of the premise.
The Banyan tree is holy in India, it is related to Krishna, and just generally an object of worship. A particular tree might be considered sacred within a neighborhood or village, you would tie threads around it or touch it or bow before it as a little gesture of worship. It’s also the national symbol of India.
Ganesha is the God of placing and overcoming obstacles. Since poor Hrithik’s whole life was about obstacles thrown in his way and him pushing them aside, that is appropriate. But much more importantly, the Ganesh festival is a Marathi/Bombay festival. This film is very firmly located within the Marathi location, more than most Hindi films are. Including the Ganesh festival and making it such a part of the plot is similar to, say, The Fugitive including the Chicago St. Patrick’s Day parade. Plus, it just looks really cool, right? Oh, and it also gave Dharma productions a little way to honor Ganesh, if you notice half the Dharma films use the Kuch Kuch Hota Hai music and a wheel over their opening credits, the other half use the Ganesh theme from this film and an image of Ganesha.
But the Most Important Thing to know about this movie is that it is a remake of an old Amitabh movie. I’ll go into this a lot more in my blog post, but the original film was essentially inspired by Amitabh. The poem that the title comes from, the Agneepath poem, was written by Amitabh’s father and he regularly recites it at public functions (Amitabh reciting his father’s poetry is about the most beautiful thing you will ever hear, by the way. Well worth finding a youtube video of it). And the whole idea of moving forward against all odds in this gritty depressing broken world, that’s every Amitabh film from the 70s and 80s in a nutshell.
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That sounds like an intriguing mixture of elements. I am pretty much game for anything. I’ll definitely give this one a shot.
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What does the term “nett” means in BO exactly?
Is it generally the amount of money a film makes after paying taxes?
Does it go to producers only, or does it also include the distributors share?
And by the way, is distributors share a fixed % (amount) for every film or does it differ depending on agreements? So this “nett” thing got me confused a little.
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It’s supposed to make you confused! Both in America and in India, film profits are purposefully obscure to help trick the taxes. Generally, “net” would mean the money the producers make after having paid the production costs. Or more generally, the money the film makes at the box office minus it’s production costs.
In America, this total is obscured because of the “points” system for recompensing artists. If Tom Cruise, for instance, contracts to receive 20% of the box office gross (not net), that means the budget of the film keeps going up and up the longer the film plays, because they have to keep paying Tom 20% of every dollar made and that counts towards the original production budget. Hollywood LOVES this system for two reasons. First, it helps them hide corporate profits from the taxwallahs, you would be amazed at how few Hollywood films, no matter how successful they are, make a “profit”. And second, because it helps them trick naive newcomers to the industry into working without pay, by promising them a percentage of the Net, not the gross. But of course the Net never comes, because the big stars and big names keep eating away at the gross.
In India, it is also confused, but in different ways. Firstly, of course, there’s the black money. Movie stars are often paid nothing on paper and a lot in gifts. Cash, jewelry, cars. It helps them with taxes, and it is also kind of a blackmail they might play on the producers, agree to one cost and then hold out for more money paid through different means or else they will hold up filming. Plus, you may have to pay protection money and blackmail money to the mob. All of this isn’t such a problem for the bigger films, and even for the smaller films it isn’t such a deal as it used to be back in the 90s.
Secondly, the question of the steps between the box office money and the producer and how they are connected to each other. In India, generally, the distribution rights are sold outright. The producer of the film bares all the costs of production. And then sells the distribution rights for the film to a distributor, and that is his profit. Lately of course there has been the satellite rights added on to this, which are often a good 50% to 60% of a film’s profit. And the music and DVD rights, which generally add up to around 10% to 20%. That plus the distribution is where the producer makes his money.
The key to understand about these production fees is that they are sold before the film is released, even before it is finished filming. The distributors buy based on a guess as to how profitable the film will be. And this is why the star system and star power is so important. Fan made back over half it’s budget from satellite sales alone, just because of the SRK name. That’s why it was so important that he was willing to lend his name and starpower to the film. On the other hand, because Fan flopped so badly (and Dilwale), he is going to have to take a small distribution rate for his next production because people have lost faith in the SRK name.
And this is also why “flops” and “hits” are so hard to figure in Indian film. Because they are based on the expectations for the film, which is what set the distribution rate, not what the film actually made at the box office. Or even what it actually made against it’s budget. So, Ra.ONE, for instance, set various box office records. And it made lots and lots of money for Red Chillies. But it didn’t make the enormous sums that the distributors were expecting and which they had paid for, and so it was labeled a “flop”. The same goes for Dilwale and Fan (which had much lower expectations, but still failed to reach them).
So, to answer your original question, “gross” is the total amount a film makes at the box office. “Net” is the total amount minus the production costs. The distributors rate and taxes are included in the total “net” amount usually. But, thanks to creative accounting both in Hollywood and India, “gross” is usually the figure people focus on because “Net” is an illusion.
In America and I think other western countries, the distributors take is a percentage of the ticket. That might be true in India as well some of the time, but the majority of the time I believe it is a flat rate, again based on expectations for how the film will do at the box office. “Net” and “gross” are not reported to give us any particular specific insight into how much profit the filmmaker’s made, but rather to use as markers to see how powerful the studio/star is at the box office, how much the audience liked them, how much money spent resulted in money being made.
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Thanks for your answer!
And, wow, things are even much more complicated then I thought!!!
Although it became a lot more clear now (thanks to your perfect answer!), I have a couple more questions to add. So, the trade figure and the producers’ figure. Movie sites often provide comparison lists of BO between both figures. Sometimes they are the same, sometimes differ (and also: the official figure is the producers’ figure, right?). Is it because some trade analysts do not include regional collections into the total? And sometimes the difference is rather big! I’ve also heard some producers fudge their collections, but I don’t know whether it’s truth since I don’t see the point of it. The distributors know the real earnings anyway (well, I assume, they do), so it won’t help future films to get better deals.
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Are we talking about Indian films now? unfortunately, there is no good centralized way to track box office figures in India. Rentrack is the system that is most used in America and some other markets. It’s a 3rd party group that literally calls up every movie theater every night and has them read off their ticket receipts. And there are spot checks as well to make sure it is accurate (I know this not from grad school, but because I used to work at a movie theater!).
But India doesn’t have a system like that. The “trade” figures are estimates at best. And so are the producer figures. Even the distributors don’t really know, since they could be getting a flat rate from theaters for the film, not a percentage of tickets. And without the “spot checks” we get in American theaters to make sure we are reporting everything, there are also all the tickets being sold under the table. You’ll notice in Indian trade reporting, it’s often described in terms of percentage of the theater, 30% or 60% or 80%. I always picture them just sending some intern in the office over to the closest theaters to look at the audiences and make an estimate.
Producers may under or over report the profits as they like in order to get around distributor fees, taxes, or to convince distributors to pay more money for the next film (remember, what little information distributors have is only available to the ones who paid for the rights to this film, not all the others who might still pay for the next one).
All of this gamesmanship and uncertainty is exactly why America and other countries started using a third party to track the box office info so the distributors, the production houses, the movie stars, everyone has accurate box office info.
there was a news story a few days back, Rentrack is FINALLY making a start in Indian box office, one of the big chains, I think PVC, is going to start working with them. So hopefully our Indian figures will get at least sort of accurate.
Oh, and this is also why I don’t bother reporting Indian box office figures on my site, beyond the very general “good” “bad” “average” categories. I focus on the global figures for the exact numbers, because those are the better figures (although still not 100%, not every theater is part of the Rentrack system, especially when you get to markets like UAE and Malaysia).
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Thank you!
BO is a complicated thing being made even more complicated by those involved. )
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