“Rs 100-crore club has poisoned our filmmaking sensibilities”

“Rs 100-crore club has poisoned our filmmaking sensibilities”

IANSUpdated: Friday, May 31, 2019, 02:31 PM IST
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Naseeruddin Shah speaks about today’s race for making money than garnering appreciation by Bollywood filmmakers

Rs 100 crore at the box office is proving to be a “poison” for the Indian film industry, says acclaimed veteran actor Naseeruddin Shah, who believes making content-based movies more economically will be a step in the right direction.

Just last month, Naseeruddin featured in two films — “The Blueberry Hunt” and “Waiting”.

“The Blueberry Hunt” just came and went, but “Waiting” — a story on a special bond established by two people from different walks of life, who befriend each other in a hospital while nursing their respective comatose spouses — found many takers.

“This Rs 100 crore club has poisoned our filmmaking sensibility. It is as if we are finally admitting the real reason why we make movies… It is important that content-based movies must be made economically,” Naseeruddin said.

His reason: “You cannot expect a guy who plies a rickshaw or works on the road all day to go and see films like ‘Waiting’. He will not. He will go and see a ‘Bajrangi Bhaijaan’ or a ‘Happy New Year’ because he needs that.

“You cannot expect him to see a film about his own life … It’s unfair to even expect it,” said the 66-year-old, who in his four decade-old career, has featured in a mix of commercially entertaining as well as niche movies. He doubts if niche movies would ever appeal to labourers and factory workers.

“These films will
always be a niche activity. So, if these movies start aspiring to enter the Rs 100 crore club, then the quality of such films will suffer,” the Padma Bhushan awardee added.

The actor says a lot of filmmakers succumb to the “temptation of bigger budgets” very quickly. “When a small film succeeds, in the next film they want Amitabh Bachchan in it. So it’s a dismal scenario. I would agree that there are a lot of films coming which stimulate your thinking, but at the same time I would say they are still less ratio-wise as compared to the 1970s,” said the actor, who impressed viewers with his work in films like “Sparsh”, “Aakrosh”, “Masoom” and “Mandi”.

Drawing parallels between the 1970s and present times, he said that if earlier there were two or three content-based films, now there were 20 or 30. “But the number of rubbish movies have also proportionately increased. The percentage of people making new-age cinema is still very small. And I am afraid they will always be small. That is something experimental cinema-making people will have to live with… They will never have it easy,” he added.

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