Moviebiz Myths: No New Stories In Bollywood

Posted on October 8, 2009 by E
Filed Under Moviebiz Myths |

As myths go, there isn’t one more toxic (to the industry and the business) than the one where people state confidently that there is nothing new to say. I spent a few hours at the studios where the music for a major Summer 2010 Bollywood release is being produced.
I gotta tell you, some of the stuff I heard in that room would blow the minds of cinema audiences around the world.
None of it was the bullshit that masquerades as ‘insider gossip’ in the birdcage liner delivered daily by your newspaperwallah. These were tales that would make your hair stand on end. These were anecdotes that would have most viewers curled up in foetal balls in appropriately dark corners of their homes, gibbering like idiots because they suddenly realized that the world was a scary place. And they would all make for fantastic cinema.
How I wish economics and business sense would coalesce enough to enable the bringing of tales like the ones I heard to the silver screen. I promise you, just on the strength of the Hints, Allegations and Things Left Unsaid (oh how I love that Collective Soul album name!) I sorta-kinda heard in that studio, there would be no shortage of kudos (or global dollars) for the filmmakers capable of translating their life stories into efficient slices of cinema.
This is why all the storytelling teachers in the world tell aspirants to ‘write what they know’. If only the lure of ‘glamour’ wasn’t so seductive.
Sigh.

   

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