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Indian cinema needs to concentrate on original scripts, commented actor Anupam Kher recently. “We are a very young country in terms of entertainment, it’s only now the audience is getting more open to newer kind of cinema. We need to compete with ourself and also the bigger question is how many original movies are we making? We are suffering from Tarantino disease,” Kher said referring to directors inspired by the American filmmaker.
Though we have a bunch of directors including Bejoy Nambiar, Anurag Kashyap and Tigmanshu Dhulia who are coming up with original scripts, there still remain a big number of directors who look everywhere — including the West and regional cinema — for inspiration. These days, remakes are more common than a movie based on original scripts.
“Yes, we are lacking in making original movies,” says Delhi Belly director Abhinay Deo. He adds, “Everyone has a different take in life and a different mindset. This reflects in their projects. Directors take inspiration from other movies because they want to do an easy job. There is a lot of to and fro between north and south. I feel filmmakers use regional scripts to make films suiting the sensibilities of the masses here. Though some recent movies have proved that Bollywood is making original movies, we require more such attempts. But it will take a while,” says Abhinay.
Parzania director Rahul Dholakia agrees that Bollywood is lacking in original scripts. “Making a film involves a lot of time and money, so most people prefer to go for a ready-made script inspired from somewhere or the other. By and large there is the copy-paste section in Bollywood. But then we also have directors like Raju Hirani who are doing original stuff. Then you have Anurag (Kashyap) and Tigmanshu (Dhulia) who were originally scripwriters and that is why they do original projects,” says Rahul.
He adds, “A producer once told me — get a DVD of any popular movie, it will be easier for you to see what to direct and it will be easy for actors also to understand what to do. It is time for quickies and many take up such projects to make their jobs easy, and of course save and make money,” he says.
Trade analyst and film critic Komal Nahta says, “Bollywood is not only copying Hollywood, these days regional films are also becoming scripts for Bollywood movies. Reason being directors look for an easy way out and take the tried and tested route. If some movie is doing well in another language, it stands a fair chance of doing well in Bollywood too.”
Coming to the defense of his fraternity, I Hate Luv Storys director Punit Malhotra chooses to disagree. “I don’t think so. We are making original movies and it is well evident from the recent successful movies,” he ends.
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