Bollywood and the unrecognized talents...

The Film industry is a slippery place. It takes just one friday release for a Superstar to become a Flopstar. Talent, creativity and integrity is traded for Glamour, fake fame and huge bank balance. I always wanted to be a scriptwriter (i have some 50-60 stories written in an old book) like Salim-Javed, but I was sure of one thing, I would never sweet-talk myself into the industry. I would never compromise (in whatsoever manner) for selling my story. This thumb rule of mine was more than enough to discourage me from joining the big, supposedly beautiful world of Filmdom. I happily settled for the corporate world (which does not have ethics but atleast values your hardwork and talent).

Anyways bollywood is filled up with shitty, money-minded fools I said to myself, until one day I saw my bestest friend Haresh's projectwork. As a part of our curriculum, we were told to shoot ads, short films and documentaries for almost every subject. As I had given up on my dreams, I never took the pains of putting my greycells into good use. But Haresh who has always been the creative blacksheep of my class had taken real efforts to prove all his detractors (namely the professors) wrong by making some of those really awesome ads. At first glance, the ads looked a bit amateur to us, but his sincerity was reflected through those ads and the concept was liked by everybody. Making an ad like the one's below without any professional training is commendable. Or atleast that's what I would like to believe.

Here are his sample ads:




http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6810634846283686511

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5505602168101724398

(sorry I could not paste the embedding code of the last two videos due to some error, so pasted the link)

There are many more and they look awesome but I could not find them anywhere, so sticking to these 3 videos. It's not that I am promoting my friend's talent or anything. Infact, I am the last one to do that. The reason why I wrote all this was because, I wanted to prove some points:

a)Creativity and Sincerity is NOT appreciated in Filmdom. Film-making is now equivalent to producing some FMCG products. Otherwise why on the earth did RGV call his film production house a factory???
b)You either find a godfather for yourself or compromise on everything (integrity, creativity) to enter this big, bad world.
c)Pay a huge sum and do a course from Whistling Woods or FTII (their course feee ranges from anything between 1lakh- 2 lakhs) and be assured of getting not much of returns for a loooooooooooooooong time.
d)Assist some idiot director or anybody for some good old 10 years, massage their ego and there you are...you will get to direct a movie when you are in your late 30's.


I know I am sounding like a huge pessimist or a sadist or any ist. But when I see some fool like Nikhil Advani making a crap named 'Chandni Chowk to China' and when I see Haresh's works...I wonder: What is it that Filmdom needs? A good for nothing storyteller endlessly torturing us poor souls to useless movies (Read my current man on Hate-list Nikhil Advani) or a genuine storyteller like Haresh who is passionate about the art (who is ethically too strong)? Why is it that the 'I call spade a spade' person has to compete with thousands, while a person with a saccharine tongue gets away with everything?

My conclusion: If Bollywood wishes to be considered on par with Hollywood or if it wishes to win that big OSCARS, then it has to recognize the right kind of talent and encourage them to make good movies. World Cinema would take notice of us only if we take the art of film-making seriously.