Monday Morning Questions: What Do You Want to Ask Me the Week Before Thanksgiving?

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Happy Monday! My entire apartment is in an uproar!!! I got halfway through a reorganizing plan over the weekend, so now I will have to live with boxes and stacks of things everywhere for the whole work week.

Here is where you get to ask me anything, from “are you planning on watching the Bollywood Wives show?” to “Who is Zeenat Aman and why should I care?” Just keep swinging back here all week as you think of new things to ask!

Now, question for you! In honor of it being Thanksgiving next week, Which 6 Indian celebrities would you like to invite to your Thanksgiving dinner?

The challenge is, you need people you want to spend a long afternoon with, and who also all would gel well together. So, I think I am going to avoid Karan and SRK because they would get all cliquey and just talk to each other (for instance). Shraddha Kapoor would be nice and get along with everyone and probably help in the kitchen, so I’ll take her. Sonam and Swara would be a blast to have together, plus I don’t think they would get cliquey, they seem more likely to make new friends. Varun Dhawan seems like someone who would want to make us all laugh, but also wash his hands before dinner and be generally polite. And to finish off, I will take Rajkummar and Patralekha as my only “couple” guests.

38 thoughts on “Monday Morning Questions: What Do You Want to Ask Me the Week Before Thanksgiving?”

  1. Yesterday was Marjaavaan first anniversary and I saw people saying it was a hit. I checked and in fact it wasn’t flop as I always thought. It earned almost twice its budget (38 crore vs 65 crore). So with those numbers we can call it a hit, average or above average?

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    • It’s all such funny money! The biggest determination is if the distributors made a profit. So, based on that budget, did the distributors bid high or low? And how many theaters was it screened in and how much per screen? It sounds like the producers made money, but that’s not enough to say hit/flop.

      On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 8:36 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • It is also important to note that the budget number doesn’t always include everything. Cast and Crew salaries may not be included. Marketing salaries are almost never included. In the US the general rule is that a film should make 3.5 times its budget because, excluding the producers, nobody knows about the hidden costs.

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        • And in India, there are the hidden profits. The satellite and streaming sale numbers are CRAZY and usually come through even before the theatrical release. So Marjaavan may have done well at the bos office, but I doubt it got much in satellite and streaming sales. Versus a bigger name film that could make back it’s budget just by satellite/streaming and then who cares what the box office is.

          On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 10:11 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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          • That actually may not be true. I’m going off of U.S. trends and not Indian trends, so what I say may not apply directly, but what I have noticed here is that while bigger name films do well on streaming they only for a little while since many people have already seen it in theaters. However, smaller films that don’t do all that well in theaters, but get good public reviews actually have longer legs and trend longer on streaming services. It’s these streaming sales that hve made “slice-of-life actors” (the best term I could think of) like Ayushmann and Rajkummar bigger household name.

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          • If we are talking money, there’s a difference depending on how the contracts are written. My understanding is that most of the bigger films sell the rights in a big one time purchase. So, for instance, Fan made back it’s budget easily just from the satellite sale long before it released in theaters. Other films may receive percentages for each time they are played. So if an Ayushmann film goes back to the producers play by play on streaming, that’s a profit for them. But if it is a one time sale, you would have to count on Prime/Netflix/Whoever realizing the value of an Ayushmann film in advance.

            It does turn into money eventually of course, if an Ayushmann film is sold for a small amount and then has legs on streaming, the next similar Ayushmann film will sell for a larger amount because his success is proved. You can see that with Badhai Ho, I was stunned to see that Hotstar got the rights to that. But of course the rights were probably sold before it released and became such a sleeper hit. Netflix and Prime weren’t interested in some tiny film with nobodies, so Hotstar took it. Then comes Andhadhun, after Ayushmann has a proven record and with a director who had done well on Netflix already, and this time they grab the rights.

            On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 7:42 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • Near me, I feel like it definitely wasn’t a hit. At my local theater where I go for Bollywood movies, they’re usually there for maybe two weeks before they get booted out. Marjaavaan only lasted a week before it left. Whereas War was there for over a month. I had plans to see Marjaavaan the weekend it came out, but I got sick, and then the following weekend, it was gone.

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    • Oh how exciting! Makes me want to go to Rochester to see if I can catch a screening.

      I’m not too worried about censoring of streaming services, thanks to years of western streaming stuff only being available illegally, there’s already a thriving awareness of VPNs and illegal downloads shared by thumb drives. And the Made in Heaven audience would be the kind of super educated urban folks who know about it the most. It’s a meaningless political move.

      On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 9:08 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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        • If it’s the same as movies, there’s just the one version, and then the censors come in and chop it up. If I were the producers, I would say “who cares? Our audience is overseas, we can offer an Indian only version and everyone else can see the real version”. To me it feels more like the Western movies that come in and get censored for the India only audience, versus the Indian movies that can’t leave the country until they are censored.

          On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 9:23 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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  3. Priyanka finally seems to be doing some good work in Hollywood with the White Tiger, the film’s got good talk about her performance and award buzz, which is good for her future as a producer:
    https://variety.com/2020/film/awards/the-white-tiger-oscars-chances-1234831744/

    If the film turns out well (which it will), hopefully we get less of the attention seeking, exhausting PR free Miss World/Mrs.Jonas and more the actress in Barfi, Bajirao Mastani, The Sky Is Pink and even commercial fare like Gunday. Even better if we finally find the producer in her, who has consistently backed regional films Ventilator and hopefully give them a better platform. Or am I wishing too much?

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    • I am so tired of her PR! But on the other hand, her career seems to have revolved more around PR than anything else from the start. I’m not seeing an actor who is using PR until they can do something real, I am seeing someone who just really really likes doing the PR. I don’t think the PC Show will ever fully end. Oh well.

      On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 9:28 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • The only reason she’s quieter (relatively) is because we’re in the midst of a pandemic and if she started calling the paps right now, she would be attacked. Who knew there was a tiny positive impact that corona would make!!

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      • I’d forgive her endless PR stories if she was simultaneously doing good work. Her whole wedding hungama was just vacuous and when her professional career was in a vacuum, it annoyed the heck out of me. In fact, I didn’t think I’d hate an actress more for her public self till Deepika did her whole Chhapaak shenanigans and the aftermath. (Kangana is a whole different level)
        I like her as an actress and if she gets into doing some good work after this and Matrix 4, hopefully she won’t have enough time for her PR and let her work speak for itself.

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  4. I love your dinner guest choices. Thanksgiving is my favorite day of the year and I have thoughts.

    #1: you may not count her as a Hindi film person but Madhur Jaffrey. She’s more of a born-in-India, British and US-living actor. She is one of my heroines! She became famous as the person who brought Indian cuisine to the west as her acting career took a backseat. She’s my fantasy mom, so I’d want her there cooking with me. I just love her.

    2. Ayushmann and Tahira: I just really like them as a couple, they seem erudite and not into the Bollywood scene. I love how he tries to break boundaries (even though he doesn’t always do it well or the way we would prefer.)

    3. Rekha and Farzana: you know I love Rekha, and she’d be able to regale you with slightly covert tales of old Bollywood if she drank enough. My guess is that Farzana would say exactly zero words and just get drinks for Rekha, so I’m including another couple to make 7.

    4. Preity and Mr. Goodenough: they’re my neighbors anyway, and I need to get her on board for my show for next year, but mostly I think we’d have a lot in common. Dogs would play, she’d be a cool auntie to Hux and Gene seems cerebral which would go over big in my family. Leslie would enjoy the stock market conversation. I also think they’re western enough to bring really good wine.

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    • 1: Aren’t you worried about her being judgey? Or do you think she would be more of an encouraging helpful cook person, not a judgey cook person?

      2. Yes! And Ayushmann started as a VJ type, which means he is good at conversation, so they are going to be fun guests

      3. Oooo. I wouldn’t want Rekha and Farzana at a different kind of party, because I feel like they would be kind of reserved. But with this group, Ayushmann and Tahira will get the conversation going until Rekha feels comfortable joining in.

      4. Definitely Preity and Mr. Goodenough!!! And you have to ask her about her plastic surgery, I feel like at a private dinner party she would laugh about it and give you the whole silly story of deciding on the operation, and then all the photographs, and what a big deal it became, and so on.

      Thanksgiving is my Mom’s favorite holiday too, and what’s really great is that it is so flexible. We’ve had Thanksgiving dinners with 12 family members, and Thanksgiving dinners with three people at an Indian restaurant, and Thanksgiving dinners at the church for all the “Thanksgiving Orphans”, and it’s always great.

      On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 8:54 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • Nah I can’t see Madhur as judgy based on the interviews I’ve seen. Plus recent appearance on Padma Lakshmi’s exceptional show. I already have a judgy mother IRL so I must believe that MJ would be the opposite

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        • Okay, then she can quietly help you with the food while Ayushmann and Preity and Gene are charming and funny, until Rekha relaxes and gets going with her crazy stories, and then she will email you tips and recipes afterwards.

          On Thu, Nov 19, 2020 at 4:22 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • Oooo, yes! Karan would talk and talk until Kajol told him to shut up, Kajol would laugh at everything, SRK would relax and make his nasty jokes, Aditya would be revered and silent in a corner, Farah would be a blast yelling at people, and Boman would just be really nice and the only one to try to make you included and help with the dishes. Only downside is that with this relaxed group, they are going to drop in and out of Hindi all the time in a very frustrating way.

      On Mon, Nov 16, 2020 at 9:52 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • When I lived in Germany parties in two languages was the norm, and I didn’t understand much German, so I’m used to it. Also, it feels weird (perhaps even wrong) to me how the rich speak mostly in English, so I HOPE they would be speaking in Hindi too.

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    • They are still looking really good, but might be a little too long in about two weeks. I’d be scheduling another salon appointment, only the whole city is in lockdown again. But I do have a plan in my backpocket, I have a friend who sometimes cuts hair, so if I get really desperate I could have her come over and do it on my backporch. Or on her backporch. But probably I will just let them grow out and get them cut again in January.

      On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 8:52 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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      • Thought about it because my too short haircut has grown in nicely but not quite as expected and I’m pondering just growing my hair long again. Which I probably wouldn’t be as tempted by if it weren’t for the pandemic. Oh, and also because in the family zoom call last weekend, my haircut looked the same as two of my aunts’, while all the younger cousins my generation (but still 20 years younger) had long hair. I don’t want to be one of the olds :).

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        • I noticed the reverse with olds/young in my social circle. All my young friends have super cool razor shaved hair, like shaved sides and short dyed top, or undershaved so you can show it off or hide it depending. So there’s another option, borrow your husband’s electric razor and go crazy.

          On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 11:42 AM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • Saw something about this and wondered where it came from! It’s an odd alliance, would not have predicted an AirBnB promo, especially one that involved letting people into their home (one of their homes).

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      • I am unclear as to wether they are in the home or not. I’m assuming not, but there is a whole contest with essays and everything.

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      • I have a friend (the one who just turned 30 actually) who stayed at an Air BnB last time she was in India. It was in Delhi, it was a very rich couple with a nice house, the reason they were doing Air BnB was because all the kids left home and the Mom was bored, so they set her up with an account. She was super welcoming and fussed over them and so on. so, maybe it is onbrand in India? Maybe Air B N B there is more people with empty houses who just like to have guests?

        On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 5:47 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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    • WHAT??? Okay, that’s ridiculous. And I am guessing that their Delhi “home” is a house Gauri decorated just for this promo, right?

      On Wed, Nov 18, 2020 at 5:00 PM dontcallitbollywood wrote:

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