They love it, they love it not. Now that The Dirty Picture is solid gold at the ticket windows, the dream merchants — film producers and corporation types — are once again turned on by sex, in the movies that is.

Schizophrenically, money monarchs thump their chests that steamy stuff sells... but if one semi-sexy pout-pourri crashes, it’s lamented that the Adults only certificate has substracted the audience drastically. And in any case, there is so much access to skin shows on internet.
Come on guys, make up your minds. No hypocrisy please. I evidenced the double standards on starting a film titled Silsilaay which no one saw, because the producer blew majorly hot and cold. “Phantastic! Phantastic!” he raved on hearing the script. And when he saw the results of a Riya Sen photo-session shot, he blissed out, “Kya baat hai! Hit hai hit.” Next: when the shoot commenced, Phantastic Producer turned turtle, arguing, “No sex, nahin chalegi.”
Riya’s raunchy pix were shredded. Tabu, Bhumika Chawla and Celina Jaitly had to be portrayed as prissy poppets in a film about the rebuttal of sexual exploitation. Producer broke into a sweat when he saw the rushes of a kissing scene, instructing the editor, “Lip to lip nahin, show the boy being kissed on the cheek only. Vulgar hai, vulgar.”
Huh, I reasoned that the kiss was aesthetically shot by cinematographer Santosh Sivan. No dice. I was being naïve, aesthetics are as alien as extraterrestrials in showbiz. I surrendered, became the monk who sold his Maruti-800.
Producer released Silsilaay as if it was an embarrassment. A guest appearance by Shah Rukh Khan was no palliative. The actor wasn’t even thanked with a spray of rajnigandhas. Later, I was told that the producer had used the five-minute SRK pop-up to snag a cool price for, as it turned out, Silly-silaay. Eeeesh.
Don’t know what the fickle-minded producers want really. In any case, does Indian cinema even make sex movies? Much hair is split about kissing. Emraan Hashmi has his bad lip days. Mallika Sherawat after some thousand kisses turns into a hissing snake woman. And the hallowed Yashraj banner has to insist on liplocks in contracts, so there’s no reneging, be it Kareena Kapoor or Katrina Kaif. Sensibly, Vidya Balan doesn’t justify her screen smooches with statements on the lines of, “Oh, they were integral to the script.” (When anyone says this, my flesh crawls). Truly, what’s the big deal? Out there in world cinema, nudity is okay. Decades ago, the holier-than-thou Julie Andrews had to do it. Ooooh well.
Ooof course, if I were to suggest that nudity is permissible in our movies, I’d be fed to the lions. So, I’ll let the point rest there. And move on to an investigative report I’d once attempted on the sleazy world of porn movies. Yup, many of them are shot in a remote suburban studio complex of Mumbai. And it’s no secret that a boisterous C-grade filmmaker-actor masterminded these show-all shoots. A hotseller in the porn market showed a group of portly women frolick with a six-pack abs monster, and head for the studio’s shrubbery, the camera going whackily wobbly.
Quite naturally, the report incensed Mr Boisterous. He threatened to sue, yelled that he would get the newspaper ruined by his close politician contacts. On being patiently informed about the incriminating evidence gathered, he backtracked, turned rosogolla sweet, “Oho, don’t take offence. You’re like my brother.”
Next, he sent me a collection of those shrubbery porn adventures, a spray of gladiolii, a jazzy shirt with a message, “Enjoy!” Now what do I deduce from that? Dirty pix, like them or hate them, they sell.