Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (37 page)

One evening in April 1996, alongside the cast and crew of
Sitaare
, I settled into my seat in the preview theater at Natraj Studios, located in Andheri— a northern suburb of Bombay dotted with a variety of film production sites—in order to view the rushes of the most recent shooting schedule of the film. We were watching a scene where the female lead, Tina (referred to as the “heroine” in Indian film parlance), goes to the library where the male lead, Anand—the “hero”—works, in an attempt to attract his attention. She asks Anand to retrieve books that are located on the topmost shelves, which requires him to climb a ladder. As the pile of books keeps mounting and unable to bear their weight, Anand finally falls off the ladder, and all of the books topple down. At that point, the dialogue writer of the film, Sandeep Desai, remarked to the director, “Forget the screenplay, Ganesh-
ji
, let’s stick in a song right here. It’ll be so appropriate. Let them just fall off that ladder and fall into Ooty.
⁹
We’ll have this set with huge, huge books, and it will be this great song!”

Perhaps the most iconic and distinguishing feature of popular Indian cinema, when compared to other filmmaking traditions
in
the world, is the presence of songs sung by characters in nearly every film.
¹⁰
Regardless of genre—from gangster films to war films, from murder mysteries to period films, from vendetta films to love stories—popular Indian films contain sequences where characters burst into song (often accompanied by dance) for a variety of reasons having to do with narrative, characterization, spectacle, or viewing pleasure.
¹¹
Desai’s remarks above exemplify perhaps the most stereotypical image of such sequences—that they simply appear out of nowhere and are completely extraneous to the narrative. While there are plenty of examples of Hindi films where the songs seem very loosely connected to the narrative, such a lack of integration is considered sloppy, lazy, or simply bad filmmaking within the standards of the Hindi film industry. To those unfamiliar with popular Indian cinema, song sequences seem to be ruptures in continuity and verisimilitude. Rather than being an extraneous feature, however, music and song in popular cinema define and propel plot development (Prakash 1983: 115). Many films would lose their narrative coherence if the songs were removed. One scholar has described the popular film as operatic, where the dramatic moments “are often those where all action stops and the song takes over, expressing every shade of emotional reverberation and doing it far more effectively than the spoken word or the studied gesture” (Prakash 1983: 115).

While the near ubiquity of elaborately choreographed and lavishly produced song sequences have become the marker of Bollywood’s distinctiveness in the global media landscape (
Figure 19
), rather than being a taken-for-granted feature of Hindi cinema, song sequences can be a site of tension, debate, and intense negotiation among members of the Hindi film industry. While I observed Hindi filmmakers spending a great deal of time and energy crafting the song sequences, I also detected a considerable ambivalence by screenwriters and directors regarding the presence of songs within a film’s narrative. A few years after I had returned from my initial fieldwork in Bombay, I had a conversation with Tarun Kumar through the medium of ICQ, an early Internet chat platform, asking him generally what his feelings were about songs in films: did he like them?

Did he feel constrained by them? Were they necessary? His immediate response was almost an academic explanation about the cultural antecedents of Indian cinema and cinema’s similarity with other performance traditions. “Cinema in India has to be viewed differently because we belong to the
nautanki
art form and that has been the tradition of enter
tainment, so the natural occurrence of songs in our movies is but an extension of that art form. Whether you see a street play or you see the
Ram Lila
they are all incomplete without songs, so they are to be viewed in that respect” (pers. comm., May 1999). When I told him that I wanted to know his personal feelings about songs, remarking that I had observed him in Bombay during scripting sessions being periodically frustrated with them, he replied, “Of course one would love to make a movie without songs, but the only really hampering factor is the economic and marketing aspect of songs. I am all for movies without songs, unless you are making a musical,
¹²
because not only is it frustrating to conjure up situations, but I feel songs also, to an extent, change the characters in a movie and sometimes also retard the narrative” (pers. comm., May 1999).

FIGURE 19
Song sequence with Aishwarya Rai, Abhishek Bachchan, and dancers during the shoot of
Kuch Na Kaho
, Mehboob Studios, 2000. Photo by the author.

Tarun’s frustration was directed at the overwhelming role of music in the marketing and financing of popular Hindi films, rather than with its association with traditional performance genres. Since the beginning of the 1990s, film music has had an increasingly important economic function within the Hindi film industry. The sale of music rights became another source of finance for filmmaking, as audio companies vying for the top production companies in the industry were willing to pay sums that amounted to as much as 25 percent of a film’s budget, since albums from successful Hindi films sold in the millions.
¹³
Many screenwriters and directors view having to create song situations as burdensome, however.
Most writers acknowledge that songs are not necessary to every film and can be awkward in certain genres, but point to the economic significance of music within the industry. Screenwriter Sutanu Gupta resigned himself to their presence, citing the pressure of music companies: “My kind of film, the kind of stories that I write—the song situations are difficult to find. I guess the songs have to be there and there have to be enough gaps between the songs, at least five or six songs are required, because the music companies want 40 minutes [of] recorded tape: that is the contract” (Gupta, interview, 18 November 1996).

The presence or absence of songs is the main way to categorize a film’s appeal and its potential audience. The lack of songs, or a deliberate omission, is interpreted as a way of making a conscious statement against the dominant form and circumscribing one’s audience. Songs are perhaps the single important element in denoting a film as “commercial,” or aiming for box-office appeal; therefore songs, along with stars, are important tools for producers in their efforts to raise finance and promote a film among distributors. Songs are usually recorded before a film commences shooting, and a few song sequences are shot early on in the production phase in order to sell a film to distributors. Punkej Kharabanda, who has played a variety of roles within the industry from managing a star’s career to producing, explained that filmmakers preferred to show a few well-produced songs rather than their entire under-production film to distributors. “Your songs are recorded, so they have an idea from the songs how good or bad they are. If they’re good, that really helps. People don’t like showing their films; they probably show a song or so, spend a lot on the song, show a good song, and that brings a lot of hype” (Kharabanda, interview, 17 April 1996). I noticed that during the four production schedules of
Sitaare
, comprising a total of 29 days, two schedules—13 days—were devoted to shooting three songs. Two of these songs were elaborate production numbers, which were then frequently screened for distributors in the producer’s continuing search for finance and buyers for the film.

Song sequences are often a site for filmmakers to assert their distinction and exceptionalism within the film industry, which further serves to market their projects within the trade. One of the most common ways of adding production value and novelty to a film is to shoot song sequences in picturesque foreign locales. Switzerland—with its meadows, valleys, and mountains—has been a favorite of Hindi filmmakers since the 1960s.
¹⁴
Since the late 1990s, however, Hindi filmmakers have been traversing the globe, shooting song sequences in locations as di
verse as Alaska, Egypt, Hungary, New Zealand, Norway, and Namibia. There is an element of the conquering explorer within producers who try to find locations. Filmmakers are constantly in search of locations that have never been shown on the Indian screen. Indeed, such an obsession with novelty led Philadelphia and the Bryn Mawr and Haverford college campuses to be the sites of the Hindi film shoot discussed in the previous chapter. Although some songs are set in foreign settings ostensibly because the characters are visiting or residing in that area, often foreign locations have a tenuous connection to the narrative and function more as spectacle and novelty. The producers of
Jeans
(1998) boasted how theirs was the first film to have a song that featured all “Seven Wonders of the World.” This particular song, during which the two leads sing of their love for each other at the Great Wall in China, the pyramids in Egypt, the Taj Mahal in India, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Empire State Building in New York, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the Colosseum in Rome, became the main marketing point of the film.
¹⁵

Hindi filmmakers’ penchant for shooting songs in foreign locations has led to new and unexpected value for these sequences in the eyes of foreign governments, resulting in financial incentives that, in turn, reinforce the commercial significance of songs. Since Hindi films circulate all over the world, many governments view such sequences as a way to promote tourism; this is referred to as the “Bollywood effect,” whereby dramatic increases in tourist arrivals from India are registered after several Hindi films have shot in a particular region. Thus governments have been courting Hindi filmmakers to shoot in their countries (Olsberg/spi 2007: 82).
¹⁶
From Malaysia to Germany, South Africa to Scotland, and Florida to Finland, representatives of tourism promotion boards and film councils have been visiting India, trying to market their respective regions to Hindi filmmakers and offering incentives, such as all-expensepaid scouting trips, monetary subsidies, tax breaks, technical and logistical assistance, and co-production arrangements. In fact, as filmmakers increasingly scout out new locations—Switzerland is now perceived as passé and overexposed—the Swiss government has been aggressively trying to woo Hindi filmmakers back to their country by offering free scouting trips since 2006, which include round-trip airfare between India and Switzerland, hotel stay for a week, and chauffeured transportation for location-hunting (Miller 2006).
¹⁷

In addition to their role in attracting finance and capital necessary for a film’s production, songs play an important part in filmmakers’ efforts to attract viewers. Nester D’Souza, manager of the erstwhile Metro Cinema,
asserted that films needed “two good songs to bring in the public. . . those two good songs are your trailers that bring in [the audience], so your first four days are full” (D’Souza, interview, June 1996). Since the onset of cable and satellite
television
in 1992, with Indian television being packed with film-based programming, songs have become the most significant form of a film’s publicity. Even before a film has completed production, sometimes months in advance, its song sequences start airing on the numerous film-based programs on television or appear as commercials in between other programs. At least two months prior to the opening of a film, its soundtrack is released into the market, which since the mid-1990s has been an event carefully orchestrated by the producer and the audio company. An event that seeks to maximize the marketing and publicity potential of a film’s music is the elaborate and highly publicized “audio release” function in Bombay, to which the entire glitterati of the film industry is invited, along with distributors, exhibitors, music wholesalers, and journalists. The film’s music is showcased by screening the clips of the song sequences, having the playback singers perform the songs for the audience, or putting on an elaborate stage show—with dancers performing to the film’s songs. An invited chief guest for the evening, often a prominent member of the industry, officially “releases” the audio—unwraps a package of CDS and audiocassettes and hands them out—to the cast and key members of the crew, while photographers and television cameras capture every moment. The guests attending also receive a copy of the film’s audio and occasionally other forms of promotional materials, such as press releases, posters, or film stills. Although this event is ostensibly for the industry and the trade, it also promotes the film to the general public, given the heavy media coverage, especially when famous film stars are present. Since 30–40 percent of the sales a film’s soundtrack happen prior to a film’s release (Chaya 1996: 42), filmmakers often interpret music sales as an early concrete indicator of audience interest in a film. Music sales also serve as the basis for the rankings of songs on television countdown shows, which function as another way to promote the film.