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My BlogRam Gopal Varma's Blogsite
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8/20/2008 My reactions to reactions1. This excuse of making films only to enjoy the process sounds irresponsible.
Ans: You got me wrong. I am not making an excuse, I am saying that it is the only choice any filmmaker has whether he realizes it or not. Every one of the makers of the 120 or so films made in Bollywood every year think that they are making a film which will be a big hit. No one in the right mind will go ahead and make a film aiming it to be an average or a flop film. 95% of them will not reach their intended objective. When the audience sees the final film they imagine it has been done with carelessness and a non-thinking attitude but that would never be the case. A viewer is spending a couple of hours and around Rs.100- to buy a ticket. A maker is spending a year or more and crores of Rupees. He would never be irresponsible because he has much much more to loose than the viewer. It happens because it is an extremely difficult thing to match the mind-state of the Director, where he started from and the mind-state of the viewer when he enters the theatre. It is too complex and too long drawn out for me to explain here. 2. You yourself have raised your bar and that’s the burden you carry.
Ans: Maybe you are right but that is also the reason I became what I am. 3. I don’t want to read articles posted by fakes like you.
Ans: Ok. 4. I think watching Aag will be scarier than Phoonk.
Ans: Let’s make a deal. If you shut up about Aag, I swear on your mother that I won’t make another Aag. 5. I think you source your actors from theatre. Mohanlal is known, Chakri and the Contract guy are Telugu actors. Phoonk guy is a Kannada actor. I won’t even get into how you get your heroines. Did you select Fardeen Khan because he gave you money?
Ans: Yes sir, Yes sir, Yes sir, you are absolutely right about what all you wish to be right. 7. You spelt Nietzsche wrong.
Ands: That was a typing error. Thanks for the lesson anyway! Where do I send the cheque? 8. Why are you an atheist?
Ands: Because I can go ahead and commit as many sins as I want without getting scared. 9. Stick to making movies. Sexist jokes don’t make good comedy.
Ands: Ok, Ma’m. 10. Only if a Government committee regulates the sensationalisation of news the media scene will improve.
Ans: I disagree. If it’s regulated by a Govt body it will just breed corruption and censorship which will make the situation worse. At least now the least the media is doing is to entertain us. A Government body will destroy that too. 11. I think most celebrities have found solace with internet blogs.
Ans: Definitely. At least there’s one place where they can communicate to whoever is interested or concerned without being edited, quoted out of context or lines being highlighted which were not meant to be etc. 12. Seems like you have very good material for the media film. Please don’t screw it.
Ans: I won’t screw it. I will fuck it. 13. Why do you target only Khalid, Deepa and Subhash?
Ans: Read my blog again. I gave them just as examples because I know them only. 14. Invest in a good screenplay, good writer, good cinematographer and a good music director.
Ans: Please don’t give away such brilliant strokes of advice for free. 15. Stop manipulating things.
Ans: Ok, Your honour. 16. In films you are driven by techniques alone and fail and in blogs you are driven by analytical views, so they come out good.
Ans: Partly true for most part. 17. I want to know if the confidence you exhibit is real or fake?
Ans: Why don’t you imagine whatever makes you happy? Why know and spoil it for yourself? 18. I think Ayan Rand has seeped into your blood.
Ans: Yes, but the problem is that she doesn’t come out as sweet. 19. I request you to use all your witty humour in the media movie.
Ans: Of course. Do you think there is anything more funnier than the media? 20. This journo rushed to the village to tell her about her husband’s death so that he can capture her reaction.
Ans: Thanks KG. I appreciate this input. You gave me an idea for a scene. 21. A wise man learns from others mistakes. A practical man learns from his own mistakes.
Ans: Yes. That’s what sensible men do, but mostly men don’t realize that they have made a mistake as they don’t think with common sense and that is because there’s nothing common about common sense. 22. Does your psyche fascinate you?
Ans: Actually after reading your understanding of mine, yours fascinates me more. 23. By the way, when are you going to get married?
Ans: Among all the weirdo’s I interact with, you take the cake. If you can take time off from whatever you do (which I am sure would be nothing) and look for a girl for me I will. Otherwise get sensible and at least make an attempt to ask a little more reasonably relevant question. 24. Are you patriotic? Do you respect our country? Can we expect a patriotic film from you?
Ans: NO. NO. NO. I am pretty much immersed in my thinking of how to serve myself and don’t even spend a minute in thinking of serving anyone or anything else. 25. Have you ever thought of making something like Mackenna’s Gold?
Ans: Dying to. 26. Are there any movies that made you cry?
Ans: No, but there are plenty which made me laugh when they made others cry. 27. Please take care of your looks and dress when you come on TV.
Ans: Why? You want to marry me? 28. I have a feeling I won’t like Phoonk.
Ans: If you don’t you can find me in the Versova graveyard. Come there if you dare. 8/14/2008 My take on the media.The media is a reporting agency. It reports news. News is what you hear for the first time and for it to catch your attention the media has to make the news sound as dramatic as possible. The publications and Channels have no choice but to do that so as to be able to stay in business and make money. So finally is it only about just making money? Not necessarily intended by all concerned, it could also be for the individual egos and clamouring for fame among the journalists themselves. Most of the media people bitch about each other as much as they bitch about others. But again like any other industry you cannot generalize them. Like there are good, bad, ugly filmmakers, there will be good, bad and ugly media people as eventually they are all human.
The interesting point is that how smoothly and without anybody consciously realizing the media has transformed from a truth telling machinery to a power-mongering and money-making enterprise.
What the media basically does is, it just strips everybody and makes money out it. The only difference between a strip-teaser and the media is that a strip-teaser bares herself so that others can enjoy her and give money, and the media strips others so that some others can enjoy and give them the money.
I know it sounds far fetched but does anyone out there believe that anybody in the media truly feel the gravity or the tragedy of happenings. They can hardly conceal the glee in their eyes when bad things happen. The badder the better, as there will be more eyes reading and watching them. Did you notice the pleasure they get in ripping films or personalities apart? But wait a minute. The film people are worse.
For all the anger film people show against critics it is actually the film people who enjoy and relish the nasty and bitchy comments or reviews much more than the public who read them, that is, except obviously the people who are being bitched and commented upon. The reason for this is nothing but jealousy and jealousy is a human trait and like lots of other emotions it gets magnified in the context of the entertainment industry.
The main reason for the jealousy is because people by nature cannot bear anyone else to be successful except themselves and one way of feeling successful even if one has not achieved anything is to watch with glee someone else fall down and to be ripped to shreds and the media supplies this pleasure to everyone in well-cooked great helpings. I truly think I deserve great credit for creating a project such as Aag to enable the media to dish out such fantastic entertainment to all concerned in ripping it apart. If entertainment is the sole purpose of a film, I think Aag has done more than a wonderful job, definitely much more than what it could have done in the theatres even if it turned out to be a damn good film.
The pressure to perform and the fear of failure and ridicule are at utmost peak in the film industry more than in any other place and that is mainly because of the media. Nobody knows or is interested what decisions went wrong in an hoteliers or a cloth merchants business and how much money he lost but if a filmmaker makes a flop everybody will know that because of the media. Fair enough the media is also responsible for the fame it gives to the same.
And fame is the key word here. Much more than money everybody wants to become famous, whoever comes to the industry they want to develop their own identity. The Khalid Mohammed’s, the Deepa Gehlot’s and all the other etc's of the media are all desperate to get their individual fame and identities registered with all concerned as much as the film people. So as a consequence they tend to fall in love more with the way they rip the film apart much more than they hate the film.
The reporters is a truly thankless job what with day after day hour after hour to fill in so many papers and Channels and on top of that it has to catch eyeballs at any cost in fear of competition so they do it even if they have to be ruthless enough to hurt and scandalize personalities, and they do this to even to the people who they know on a personal friendly level. (Agar ghoda ghaas se dosti karliya toh khaayega kya?). When they get a certain whiff of an interesting story on someone a journalist’s greatest fear would be that it will be denied by the person. But still the necessity of having to feed the media monster he will cook up something even in that situation.
A few days back one Ashwini Deshmukh from Mumbai Mirror texted me to ask if there was rift between me and Amitji, to which I replied in the negative. He sent the same message to Amitji, to which Amitji replied that he was planning to do 20 films with me. So now one would imagine that he would drop the story as the only 2 people who could confirm or deny the story have spoken. But he went ahead and put a story with a headline “Kaput… Ramu and Bachchan relationship over”. He gave all kinds of reasons, what he heard or imagined and incredibly at the end quoted mine and Amitji’s denials in small print.
Now why would he do that? It is simply because he knows mostly people read only the headline and even if they read the rest of it they will only remember the headline like always people remember the number of stars more than the reviews.
The proof of this is the number of media people who asked me about the rift taking their cue from that article and when I said ‘didn’t you read our denials at the end?’ they grudgingly said ‘yes’ almost as if given a choice they will believe the rift part of it than the denial because the rift is news and it will help fill pages, web-space and TV footage whereas the closeness of me and Amitji will be expected and hence boring. So the logic is if so many media people and film industry people can have a field day discussing, speculating and getting entertained on it, the irritant it will cause to just 2 people, me and Amitji, can be ignored in the larger interest of making fools out of the common people.
Similarly a report mentioning a war between me and Karan Johar appeared where Subash K Jha the reporter claimed that he has seen me lashing out at Karan on my blog. Now even a dim nitwit can see that I was joking and making fun of everything and most of all myself in that blog post. It’s not that the reporter can’t see it but he will choose not to see it as he wants to take out only what suits his own agenda.
Another interesting part of the media is the difference between the Mumbai media and the media elsewhere. It’s primarily because the most of the Mumbai media hobnobs and rubs shoulders with the film people.
The film people out of their fear and greed and in order to use the media people open their doors to the media people and almost become informants to the media about the rest of their colleagues in the industry. So the media kind of looses its primary objective and tends to get embroiled in the camp culture of the industry.
An outcome of this rubbing shoulders with film people, results in the journalists stepping beyond their job responsibilities.
While Khalid Mohammed initially in his position with Times of India and his supposed influence over the Filmfare awards wanted to use actors and technicians to make his classics, they all primarily obliged in fear of getting bad reviews and the greed of getting awards. He openly uses his position in the newspaper to write articles and bitchy pieces against several people who he wants to settle his personal scores with and on top of that he brags about it to all. It beats me how the management of those papers can’t see this. Today he can’t do it that much as Hindustan Times does not carry the same weight as TOI. It might be a good idea for him to convince HT to start HT Awards for him to be able to be back in business.
Subhas K. Jha has a unique trait of calling up film people whenever they are in a low like just after a flop. He will call them with soothing words and gives them a shoulder to cry on. He gives and takes information from various film people and passes it on to all concerned. Most in Bollywood trust him more than the journalists who stay in Mumbai because he stays in Patna and he is a voice on the phone. So they feel safer confiding in him as he is far away, and imagine that what they tell him won’t come back here.
The media elsewhere since it does not have that much of access to the film people is relatively unbiased and comparatively has much more integrity. Another big problem is that we all film people believe that 3 or 4 papers in Mumbai represent the whole country for the simple reason that we get only them into our homes. On a tour to 5 to 6 towns it came as a revelation to me and how much of a frog in the well I was when I realized every town in the country has its own media and I found far superior journalists there. I don’t think it’s because they are necessarily better journalists but I think it’s because they live in a relatively far less polluted atmosphere.
On the brighter side, I don’t think both us film folk and the media are all that bad because after all the pressures and the frustrations we go through, the least we are doing is entertaining the people in one way or the other. Whether it’s a lie or a truth or half-lie, what is the big deal? If the common man’s interest is in knowing who slept with whom? And who slapped whom? The media will supply it and us film industry folk will supply it to the media. I think it’s a fantastic threesome.
I want to sum up this article by taking the line from “Company” which best describes both us film folks and the media. “Yeh bas hamare dhande ki jaath hai.”
P.S:- I am just on the verge of finishing a script I am working on about the functioning and psychology of media. So far you have seen the media exposing things and now I want to expose the media in all its naked glory. I promise you that it will be one fucking hell of a strip tease. Cheers! 8/9/2008 Fearing fearI would describe fear as a feeling which comes out of being threatened with either emotional or physical violence, and it gets magnified especially if it comes from an unknown or an un-understandable source.
If you truly understand the mechanics and the motivations of the force which is threatening you, you won’t be half as scared. For example if you are confronted with a snake you will be chilled to the bone but if you can recognize the species, know what it’s poison contains, how it can effect your system, how fast it can move etc kind of details, instead of being scared you will think of ways of escaping it or killing it.
Similarly if you are alone at home at night and you hear a moaning kind of sound from inside a room where no one is supposed to be there, the slow wary walk of yours towards the room to check the source of the sound is when you will be scared maximum. That is because your own imagination takes over your mind. But once you see the source no matter how dangerous or frightening it is, you will either scream for help or run or attack it depending on you as an individual. You will simply jump into a defense mode and your fear at this time will be much lesser that what it was during the walk.
Belief in God I believe primarily comes out of fear because we have an overwhelming need to feel safe and we will never truly trust our family or the society or the police or the Government to protect us. Hence we are compelled to believe in a force which we desperately want to protect us in every which way and that is where God comes in and in order to feel the power of God we have no choice but to invent and pit his power against a counter point and thus evil forces like demons and black magic are invented.
Black magic is supposed to be used to hurt or kill an enemy by either practicing it or hiring its practitioners. Whether it exists or not, nobody can tell for sure, but I am truly stunned by the sheer number of people who in spite of their education and social status, how much they believe in it.
I think it’s mainly because whenever they don’t understand the reasons behind some negative happenings or at least when their minds refuse to accept the obvious for whatever reasons they tend to believe in the aspect of black magic.
I know of parents of this actor who was seeing a girl who they highly disapproved of. Unable to break their relationship and refusing to see a possible negative side to their own son they started believing that the girl did some black magic on him, and it started growing to the extent of them fearing everything about her.
I was always fascinated with the feeling of fear, how it consciously and subconsciously affects people in so many ways.
If you are traveling in a car on a highway and you see a very dirty looking truck coming from the opposite direction with broken headlights, peeled of paint and hanging bumper, that will scare you more than a slick looking well maintained truck. Logically speaking both will do the same damage if they hit you. But it’s somewhere your subconscious insight into the driver of the dirty truck that if he doesn’t care so much about his own truck he might not care so much about himself or you too.
Also if you observed when we with the whole family leave the house and go on a holiday for a few days, when we return, open the lock and step inside a thought fleetingly might cross our minds what the house and the various objects in the house have been up to while you were away.
Can we be really sure that the various inanimate things in our house we so take for granted in the course of the day don’t really come alive in the night after we go to sleep?
In "Phoonk" I attempted to use the above aspects of human psychology to accentuate fear. I went to the extent of attempting to make people feel not safe even with idols of Gods around.
To make the viewer fear and question everything and everyone around and what he depends on and what he believes in is the primary objective of "Phoonk".
Coming to the contest of watching “Phoonk” alone in the theatre actually no one realizes what the experience can be like. To sit in a large empty dark theatre let alone a horror film even a normal film can be a scary experience especially if you are sitting in the middle of theatre you will develop a nagging feeling that someone or something is behind your back. Actually even at home if you are alone by yourself it is very scary to watch a horror film. I would say probably it would be scarier at home than watching it in a theatre for the simple reason that there will be more hiding places in a home than a theatre for something to hide and pounce on you.
When Azam Khan, the Producer of “Phoonk”, asked me what I think will be the reaction of people who watch “Phoonk, I said the following 5 type of people could be there.
(a). One is the kind of a person who will be scared even before he enters the theatre as he connects to the intent of the film and his mind takes over after that.
(b). Another one will be a guy who will keep challenging the film to scare him. This specimen is commonly seen in theatres showing horror films. He will be booing and tittering in the silences, spoiling it for others. At heart he will be more scared than anyone else, so he tries to release his tension by making noises.
(c). Yet another one would not see most of the film especially whenever it is scary as he simply will close his eyes and ears.
(d). Also there will be a guy who will just watch the film without any feeling and this will be because he has absolutely no imagination at all. (Read ‘dumb’).
(e). And finally yet another guy might not even come to see the film not necessarily because he is scared of “Phoonk” but it could be because he saw “Contract”.
“11 things which scare me the most”(1). To be closeted in pitch darkness. (I would like to see what is about to kill me. It will be pretty dumb to die without knowing that.)
(2). Traveling alone on lone highways in the night. (God knows where it suddenly might lead to.)
(3). Being alone on a deserted beach. (I have this nagging feeling that something is lurking just under the water, just waiting to catch me alone.)
(4). Some women who don’t know anything and don’t listen to me about anything. (I so wish to God that he makes them with a built-in remote control.)
(5). The spirits of whoever died in the cast and crew of “Sholay”. (The police can protect me from the living, but who will protect me from the spirits?)
(6). People who are my well-wishers and can’t stop advising and patronizing me. (They just make me feel as if I am dying or dead.)
P.S: I love the critics and the people who hate and bitch about me and my films as atleast they make me feel alive.
(7). Children because they take the attention away from me and also keep making me realize that I am as kiddish as they are.
(8). Police-men because I have this nagging feeling that I am a criminal somewhere deep inside and they will some day find out.
(9). Criminals because I feel one of these days they might just think that I am letting too many of their trade secrets out and… well.
(10). Karan Johar’s films for the very very obvious reasons.
(11). My own films for even more very very obvious reasons.
Hey women, children, well-wishers, spirits, critics, Police-men, criminals and Karan, I was just kidding. And then maybe… I am not.
 My reactions to reactions:1. What is or who is shameless?
Ans: Nothing and nobody… as shamefulness is something which comes out of a social programming. If you have the wisdom and the understanding to see through the programming you won’t feel ashamed ever. 2. Apart from that quote about Khalid, you said so many other nasty things about Aamir. What about that?
Ans: I already said in my post, I wanted to state everything here as I can be sure that it will correctly come out. I can’t really know what all might have been printed, if it was misquoted or quoted out of context. If you still have doubts about me then let me say this that Aamir is a super fantastic gem of a guy and I am a selfish untrustworthy good for nothing guy. Fine? Happy? Smile now.
3. This Ilayaraja’s way of working will not work.
Ans: Got the point loud and clear. Thanks Sanjay. 4. How did you learn so much English?
Ans: You don’t have schools where you come from? 5. Truth lies always between… Ans: It always does.
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