Monday Morning Questions: What Do You Want to Ask Me the Last Week of September?

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Happy Monday! I spent the weekend hiding from the rain and wishing I didn’t have to walk the dog.

This is where you can ask me anything you want, if you are curious about a particular actor, or trying to understand a certain plot point in a film, or just want to know if a liked one of your favorite movies or not. Keep swinging back here all week any time you have a question.

Now, question for you! Simple one that will hopefully be fun. What are some of your favorite rom-coms you would like to see remade in India? Books or movies?

I have a very long list! Starting with 4 Weddings and a Funeral, a straight up Hindi film 3 hour movie version, with lots of wedding songs and love at first sight and so on. And lots of little side stories. But not with the feel of the original (like Jhoothi Hi Sahi), with something totally Indian feeling.

Then there’s the ur-rom-com, Bringing Up Baby. Shy scientist and dizzy heiress, love at first sight, wild misunderstandings, crazy relatives, it would be wonderful.

Brigette Jones Diary! But actually grasping the idea of the original book, where our heroine is a gorgeous smart charming woman but the reader only picks that up in hints because we see her through her eyes. Call me crazy, but I think Katrina might be perfect for this? Beautiful, but kind of fragile, I can believe she spends her life thinking she isn’t good enough while everyone around her from friends to love interests think she is amazing.

Sliding Doors. Cool idea for a movie, plus perfect for the interval structure, right? First half shows what happens if she makes the train, second half shows what happens if she doesn’t.

500 Days of Summer. But only if they get it right, hit the point that a lot of people missed even in the American movie that our hero is wrong, and selfish. You can’t force a girl to be in love with you, it happens or it doesn’t, and it isn’t her fault if she just isn’t that into you. Wouldn’t that be great to see in an Indian film? The whole perfect magical love story with that thread of “but is this as magical for her?” running through it.

Okay, stopping now, what about you? What are your favorites that you would want to see made into films?

60 thoughts on “Monday Morning Questions: What Do You Want to Ask Me the Last Week of September?”

  2. Far & Away- proud heiress and street smart guy elope together from Ireland to America in a period setting.They hate each other and then fall in love.Adapt it to a rustic Rajasthani to Bombay travel with Sobhita Dhulipala and Ranveer Singh. Sobhita has an old world,polished charm & I want to see her in a proper rom-com. Ranveer would be great as the man-child.
    Sliding door was remade as a Tamil movie called 12B with a gender flip.

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    • Yes, this would be a great remake! Especially because both settings have the tension of a rich woman who truly does not have the skills to survive on her own and the poor boy who ends up taking care of her because someone has to. I would love to see a rich sheltered woman who offers to pay the poor struggling orphan boy on the estate to take her to the city, only she loses all the money she took with her and ends up having to rely on the poor boy to take care of her in the city. And then the tension when her family tracks them down and they still haven’t confessed their feelings, she thinks he doesn’t want her because she is rich and useless and he thinks she doesn’t want him because he is poor and her family can give her a life of luxury.

      On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 7:25 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  3. Have you heard David Nicholls’ One Day (either the book or the Anne Hathaway-Jim Sturgess movie based on it)? I’d like to see that remade, though I’m still trying to figure out who’d I cast as the leads.

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    • I’ve heard of it, but haven’t seen/read it so I don’t have a good sense for the characters of the two leads. I do think the idea is cool, and would be fun to do in India partly for all the time passing stuff. The movie posters in the background, the songs playing, and stuff.

      On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 8:19 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  4. Oh how about One Fine Day with George Clooney and Michelle Pfeiffer as single working parents with adorable kids who falls in love? It is such a simple story but would work well with actors in their mid-late 30s or even early 40s with oodles of charm.

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      • YES!! Both couples would be perfect. It could be such a great “comeback,” for Shahrukh and Kajol, especially if they promoted it as a low-key, simple romance between mature adults. I think it could have a lot of appeal to the urban and foreign audiance. Also, frankly it would be refreshing to see a rom-com targeted toward this audiance that isn’t trying to convey any underlying deep messages. Plus, it will have adorable kids, because Indian movies almost always have adorable kids!

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        • Oh oh! RANI SAIF!!!!! I love them together, and this is their sweet spot, she is organized and in control, he is a charming mess.

          Alternative suggestion, what do you think about reversing the genders of the character personalities? Rani divorced her husband and her son is mostly raised by him and his paternal grandmother. There’s reasons for it, she feels guilty for walking out on the marriage, thought her son needed his father more than a mother, she was a mess post-divorce and his grandmother seemed so together. But when the grandmother ends up in the hospital and in desperation asks Rani to take the son to school, Rani ends up finding her own way as a parent and realizing she wants to take a more active role in her son’s life. And meanwhile, Saif is a loving single father who runs his daughter’s life like clockwork and judges Rani a bit for being so uninvolved until he starts to see how she is trying.

          On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 10:20 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • I love reversing the gender roles. Rani was focused on her career and really thought giving the child to the father and grandmother was the best option because then the child would still be living in a dual parent-esq house. And, she had the choice to do that and trusted her ex-husband to be a good father and the grandmother to be a good substitute mother. Saif had no choice. He had to be a single parent, and therefore, just created a system.

            On the other hand, seeing Rani has the organized one and Saif as the blustering, charming mess just feels so natural.

            In One Fine Day Michelle Pfeiffer was older than George Clooney and credited first, so maybe another good pairing could be Aishwarya and Abhishek? Although, Aish-Abhishek on camera chemistry is generally awful and I don’t know if they would have the charm. Okay, nevermind, let’s stick to Saif-Rani, Saif-Kareena, or Shahrukh-Kajol.

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          • What if Rani is kind of like her No One Killed Jessica persona? Or Mardaani? Obsessive and passionate and tough and making it in a man’s world. Not the usual fancy “clothing designer” kind of female workaholic, but one where we can really see why a child wouldn’t fit with her life. Anything more male and high pressure, surgeon would work too. So we can see that she still has the Rani organization, it’s just all work based instead of life based. Meanwhile Rani’s kid is a sensitive little boy and she has a hard time toning down her “all boys together” kind of tough girl attitude. Maybe she has to take him to work and he sees a crime scene photo, or a body at the hospital, or something else that really upsets him. We can see why she doesn’t believe she is a good parent for him to be around, but over the course of the day they start to find ways to connect and she gains confidence in her parenting until by the end of the day when she learns the grandma will be in the hospital indefinitely (broken hip or something, not fatal just a reason she can’t run after a kid), she asks her husband to let him stay with her for now because she wants to be more in his life. Maybe they were planning to put the son in boarding school next year because the husband’s job is getting more demanding and the grandma is getting older, but Rani instead says she wants to step up and become the primary caregiver so he can stay living at home.

            And then Saif could be the opposite, struggling middle-management ad agency type guy who is incredibly put together as a parent but his work is always a last minute rush to stay on time and on top of things. But he ends up nailing the client presentation and getting a promotion because he does a last minute change to the spin to be aimed at working parents, based on his own experience. Plus we can see a little bit of Saif’s ex for contrast with Rani, the way it looks when a parent just completely checks out on their child (maybe Saif’s ex has remarried and doesn’t like the reminder of her daughter as part of her “perfect” life, Saif stops by to ask her for emergency childcare help and she is throwing a party for her other children and won’t even let the little girl join in, says she doesn’t want her sons’ classmates “confused” by meeting his sister). Rani at least has a relationship with her son and feels bad for not being around more, even if she isn’t good at parenting, versus a non-custodial parent who seems to want their child erased from their life.

            If we do older-younger, what about Rani-Shahid? Or Rani-Ranveer?

            On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 11:42 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • No, personally ShahRukh and Kajol with exubarant, no-nonsense-business-sense and feisty divorced Kajol and a more conservative, restraint but with a dry-sense-of-humour widower ShahRukh, both having teenage kids…It would be just taking an idea of the American movie, everything else would be another story…a mature love story both wanted to make after MNIK.

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          • If they are teenage, we could expand the idea of one day to more of a school trip thing. Maybe they both miss the bus for the special senior trip, Shahrukh and Kajol split the cost of a car rental planning to drive the kids to meet the bus. But they keep missing the bus and it turns into a week long road trip for the 4 of them.

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          • Love the story idea of Rani being obsessive, passionate and tough and her little boy being sensitive. And Saif being the opposite with maybe a very precocious daughter who stands up for Rani’s son in school.

            However, I hated how “manly” Rani was made out to be in both Mardaani and No One Killed Jessica. I would want the character to be strong but still feminine. Maybe more like Preity’s character in KANK.

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          • I can see her being more feminine, but I would want a male type job so there would be that expectation of passionate interest in the work and demanding work hours and so on. Hmm. Maybe a newspaper reporter? Wears a rumpled sari to work, doesn’t use bad language but doesn’t flinch when her co-workers do, passionate about tracking down the details of her articles and getting everything right, not afraid to ask the hard questions? Her apartment is always a mess, her son finds it disgusting after his proper settled life with his father and grandmother, and he doesn’t like the way she is always distracted when she is with him, and how her co-workers tease him when he goes to the office, and so on. But maybe after spending the day together, she figures out how to stop scaring him, and he figures out how to enjoy being a little more relaxed?

            On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 9:21 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • I think I like the surgeon idea best! A surgeon is known for their skills and isn’t required look manly but the job itself could be considered a very male-type job. A surgeon also explains why she is so obsessive and passionate and also willing to give up her son.

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          • I like it! She is very precise and practiced at her job, does a small amount of make-up perfectly, has her hair smoothly pulled back, no jewelry, same kind of outfit every day (plain sari perfectly draped). But her personal life is a mess, her maid is always tsking about food left out and dirty clothes on the floor of her tiny uninteresting apartment, she sleeps at the hospital half the time instead of coming home. At work she is stern and a perfect teacher, very respected, but struggles to translate that to understanding a sensitive little boy. She looks down on Saif for being so disorganized with his work life, but at the same time also feels a little inferior to him because he is so effortlessly good with children.

            On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 12:02 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • Perfect! This is also making me think that if you haven’t seen One Fine Day or Imagine Me & You you should because they are both such happy movies for when you are sick.

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          • I think I saw One Fine Day with my parents in the theater when it first came out. So definitely time for a rewatch! And I haven’t seen Imagine Me & You at all.

            On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 1:00 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  5. Hi hi. My question is, does anyone know how to do a text only version of this website so that I can read and comment during work hours like I used to? I’m in an open office now and all the judgy McJudgersons are cutting back my DCIB time. Nights and weekends I’m too dang tired and/or doing errand/chores, and/or actually watching movies. Argh.

    Real question. What was the deal with IIFA giving Ranbir and Deepika “Best Actor/Actress of the last 20 Years” awards? Was this discussed already in another post or comment section? It just seems so bizarre to me. Like, just do a lifetime recognition if you feel like their body of work merits it. Was it just to get them both there? So confused.

    Romcom remake: Valley Girl (deep cut from the 80s), Moonstruck, or Murphy’s Romance (I haven’t watched this in so long–I need a rewatch!).

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    • First, I am totally willing to email you text only copies of posts. But then it is hard to comment and stuff. Instead, I think disabling images on your browser might help a lot, although you will still have to deal with the video embeds (although they should show only as black blocks on the screen): https://merabheja.com/stop-images-showing-web-pages/

      You can also copy the whole post and past it into a word or other document as plain text.

      Second, we have NOT discussed IIFA! Someone commented saying “can you believe the 20 years awards?” and I hopped over to look at the full list and it all made sense. fine fine fine, and then I got to the 20 year section and WHAAAAAT???? It must be “these are the people who signed on to perform and we don’t have anything else to give them so we will invent something” category, but it is still crazy. Also, Rakesh Roshan must be dying if he got the 20 year award.

      Murphy’s Romance is a great option! A lovely May=December romance where we actually root for the couple and they acknowledge their age gap as the main issue between them. Anil Kapoor in Silver Fox mode and….who? Who can believably be Sally Field?

      Had to look up Valley Girl, looks like a great option for a Bombay setting, totally translatable to a fancy Alia Bhatt type rich girl and a street kid. Alia and Ranveer again, or is there some other cute boy that would work?

      On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 10:17 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • Thanks for the link. Will try to disable images. I like the conversations in comments too, so I hope I can get it to work.

        Glad I’m not the only one who thought the IIFA 20-year thing was bonkers.

        Love Anil Kapoor for James Garner. Sally Field is a tough one. Radhika Apte? Anushka Sharma? Someone who can be sparkly but also bring the drama when needed, pretty but not stunning.

        Valley Girl–what about Alia and Rajkumar? His sidekicks from Stree would make good sidekicks in Valley Girl too. The girl’s parents also have important roles in Valley Girl as a pair of long married hippies with plenty of spark remaining in their marriage, who are very supportive of their daughter and are a bit kooky. Maybe they could be Shah Rukh and Juhi, or I have to admit Shah Rukh and Kajol would work well too.

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        • I would go a little older for Sally Field, I feel like her character is supposed to be someone who used to be cute and young and has been beat up by life a bit and is passed the cute-young phase. Rani maybe? It feels like she and Anil don’t have enough of an age gap, but that’s just because Anil always plays about 20 years younger than he is. Anil at 60 and Rani at 38 feels about right to me.

          I want Alia’s actual parents to play her parents in Valley Girl! And they can just play themselves, an Anglo-Indian hippy type who married an artist type and then their daughter ended up raised in the world of private schools and fancy designer labels and so on, but still has their outsider sense of things. Alternative idea, can we make Valley Girl just be Alia’s life? With Ranbir playing the jerky boyfriend and Someone Yet to Be Named playing the rebel who is really better for her than the boy from the same class?

          On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 10:55 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  6. The movie Parey Hut Love was a Pakistani remake of Four Weddings and A Funeral so I think that is as close as we’ll get for a South Asian remake of it a least for now, especially since its a blockbuster from what I’ve heard.

    But for a film into a book then I would like to have Kalank turned in to a book. As I watched it it felt like it would make a good one, with more character depth and complexities added through the text as well as many POV’s and all the added sections like Roop’s time at the newspaper expanded. If no one won’t write it then I might as well do it myself on AO3 at some point.

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  7. I read your book over the weekend and I wondering about the issue of film quality. While I recognize a difference in the quality of the picture between U.S. and Indian films of the 90s, I don’t recognize a difference in the quality of the film used today. But I’m not an expert, AND I don’t watch a lot of U.S. movies outside of cartoons. A friend asked once, and I said the quality improved around 2007, but I just said that because to my eyes Om Shanti Om appeared to have good color saturation and looked like what I was used to seeing in the West. When did the quality of the film used in Hindi movies start to improve?

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    • There’s a few things happening. One is the simple lighting quality and stuff like that, images can look better or worse depending on factors related to how the movie was filmed. Another is color correction and other post-production work, I think Hollywood starting do that much earlier than India. And then there is the degradation of the film itself, the physical object. The film stock in use in India post about 1990 seems to have degraded faster than what is used in Hollywood. If you look at an Indian film and a Hollywood film from the 1970s, you won’t see much difference. The film degraded the same and the post-production work was similar.

      The other part is the actual transfers. The films of the 90s were transferred to DVD without any attempt at restoring them. So they are scratched bad transfers, the color tone wasn’t checked to make sure it was right, some of them are too light some of them too dark, it’s just messy. Once films were transferred to DVD direct from fresh prints at the time of release (instead of from old prints thrown together years after release), the quality improved a lot. Once Digital cameras became the norm, the quality was even better.

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  8. Random question because I just finished watching Saathiya last night: there’s a trope where someone is in dire medical straits and admitted to the hospital without anyone in their family knowing where they are, and someone else takes responsibility for authorizing emergency surgery, usually by lying about who they are. This is presented as heroic, but…seems kind of troubling to have relative strangers lying to authorize medical care for people they know little about? Is this just a movie thing that I’m overthinking, or am I missing something?

    Also random, SRK geek question: I noticed in the song videos that the lighting in Raees is spectacularly good to him, where the lighting in JHMS is cooler in many scenes and doesn’t do him any favors. Have you noticed this, with these or other movies? Are some directors better at making their stars glow?

    The only straight rom com I’ve seen lately is La La Land, which would be better as an Indian movie but doesn’t really inspire me. Let’s see, young leads with striver vibes and dancing chops. I’m lost, no idea which young stars can dance. I just kept staring at Ryan Gosling and thinking gosh, he is no Gene Kelly.

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    • I don’t fully understand the Indian medical system, but it seems like a lot of stuff is different. So I think stuff like “who takes responsibility” is actually sort of real? Like, people paying cash for medical procedures, and being asked to pay in advance, is a thing. And blood drives for specific patients because there isn’t enough blood available in blood banks. And patients (or their friends or family) are responsible for going out and getting medicine even while they are in the hospital. It’s different.

      Totally agree about lighting with Shahrukh! I think it’s partly when the film is more focused on him maybe? With JHMS, he and Anushka both had to be lit, and the pretty pretty scenery, and all of that. But Raees had a lot of scenes with just Shahrukh so it could all be about just making him look good.

      Well, Shahid is the same age as Ryan Gosling, and he could totally do a striving dancer role. Heck, what about Shahid and Kiara?

      On Mon, Sep 23, 2019 at 10:14 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • OK, let’s go with Shahid and Kiara! It would make me happy to see them in a story where they’re mostly nice to each other, and she gets the happier ending.

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      • I’s the same very skilled cinematographer for Raees and JHMS (Mohanan), so I’m sure the kind of lightning was exactly what they wished for the kind of story they told.
        Btw., Mohanan told me – among others – what you are writing about the different focus. And they went with the weather underlining the mood in JHMS. They barely did something artificial.

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          • That makes sense, and I think it worked, added to the subconscious feeling that you actually were traveling Europe with these characters.

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          • So interesting that it was the same cinematographer! That makes sense, Imtiaz wanted that naturalistic look. Because of the setting, though, you get that thin gray light in northern Europe, vs. the warmer yellow sunlight in India or southern Europe (like in the first part of Tamasha). It just did no favors to his skin tone, I wonder if that’s why some people thought he looked older.

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  9. Now, a question that every time you ask for random questions crosses my mind: what about the scene-analysing of DDLJ???
    There is a reason why this movie is still shown in the Mumbai cinema…and it isn’t only for nostalgic reasons. And, honestly, I like your writing more than Anupama’s about this movie. Even her book about ShahRukh gives me more questioning about her take on him than what she wrotes about the film industry.

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    • My new theory! If I can find a computer program to do automatic screenshots, that would make it soooooooooooooo much easier. And faster. Perhaps a good sick day project?

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    • Ek Tha Tiger! It’s got a light goofy touch, and the Kat-Salman chemistry is as good as ever.

      Best Salman movie in recent years is Bajrangi Bhaijaan, but it might be hard to track down.

      On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 7:23 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • Looks like it’s on Prime, thanks! Any opinions on which of these would be better with kids? We watched Dhoom 3 over the weekend and now they want to know about the other Khan.

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        • Ek Tha Tiger, definitely. Sultan is fun, but it’s got depth (blech!), whereas Ek tha tiger is just kind of silly and fun.

          On Tue, Sep 24, 2019 at 10:05 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  11. Just saw this post on Ayushman looking to profit share after the sucess of Dream Girl instead of charging a fee. https://dbpost.com/after-success-of-dream-girl-ayushmann-khurrana-will-share-profits-instead-of-charging-fees-for-movies/.

    Thoughts? It seems like a good idea if it keeps upfront costs down. Also, I assume it gives him a bit more control and input into the movie. Not sure how accurate the profit share numbers are for the other actors but Aamir’s 80% seems ridiculous! If Aamir takes 80% does everyone else share 20%?

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    • Thanks for the link!

      Here is my post on the topic from a few years back: https://dontcallitbollywood.com/2016/02/08/what-do-akshay-kumar-and-jimmy-stewart-have-in-common-warning-boring-accounting-info-below-although-there-is-a-little-shahrukh-right-at-the-end/

      Profit sharing is all about net versus gross. If it’s Net, than the percentage doesn’t actually matter depending on how the accounting is done. If the producers and backers get a flat amount of of the Gross and Aamir gets a cut of the Net, they will still end up with more money than him unless the film makes a truly huge profit. Net profit percentages are a big gamble on the part of the stars.

      For example, say an actor gets a salary of 25 crore to be paid after the release of the film. And another actor gets a 50% cut of the Net profit. The film ends up only making 60 crore. 20 crore of that is paid to the first actor. Now only 35 crore is left. The second actor gets only 17.5 crore despite having such a large percentage.

      Net makes sense once a star is so confident in their abilities that they believe the film will always make enough money to cover all the other expenses with profit left over. But with something like Thugs, for instance, Aamir ended up doing that film for free because there was no profit at all. While Amitabh and all the rest of the cast got a nice pay out and were laughing all the way to the bank.

      On Wed, Sep 25, 2019 at 8:41 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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