Where angels fear to trade

This year much changed for the better, and as much for the worse, in a key sector of Mumbai show business: the trade. That’s the nickname, as it were, for the large and amorphous network of distributors, exhibitors and financiers.

Today, there are so many sub-divisions in this network that a newcomer to the movie world is flabbergasted. Where to source finance? Where should he or she even start pitching a film which has been completed against Herculean odds? How will the labour of love get to at least a few multiplex auditoria, forget the single screens?
Alas, the noose is tightening for those filmmakers who aspire to secure funding or have made excellent films independently, but don’t have any “contacts” in the inaccessible cabins of the corporate film production offices. Earlier, potential distributors would be shown a film, or its rushes, at “trial shows” at preview theatres. If the distributors felt that the film showed commercial promise, immediate deals were struck for its release in the various
centres of India and overseas. Simple!
Most of these dream merchants were located in south Bombay’s Naaz building where the buzz began at noon and continued till 9 pm. Today, a majority of the distributors have shifted to the suburbs, near and far-flung. There is no singular hub for the trade. The power-centres are scattered, just like the business itself.
The old guard of distributors is near-extinct. Brothers Ram and Laxman Chhabra, who specialised in collaborations with the Chennai-based multilingual film production studios, wielded as much clout as any movie mughal. The distribution and production offices of Basant and Deluxe would witness round-the-clock negotiations. And owners of smaller outfits and commission agents would meet at the coffee house around the corner, where gossip about an impending film’s prospects at the box-office would mingle in the air thick with cigarette smoke. Bets would be laid about its fate, at high stakes.
The coffee shop has gone, Naaz building is a former shadow of its old glorious self, and the art-deco Naaz cinema at its base, has shut shop after years of showing soft-porn films. And to think, this cinema toted up so many hits — right from Nasir Husain’s Tumsa Nahin Dekha which established the career of Shammi Kapoor to the breezy entertainers of Shashi Kapoor, Dharmendra and Sunil Dutt. In fact, along with Jaipur’s Raj Mandir, it was rated as the luckiest theatre in India.
Today, Shyam and Balkrishna Shroff of Shringar Pictures are among the few survivors at the Naaz. Shyam Shroff, a pleasant, softspoken tradesperson replies... very slowly... with long gaps… between each… word. He is tentative, diplomatic even, but one can sense a certain edge to his carefully expressed thoughts and opinions. Business is not what it used to be. It’s much too chancy. When a filmmaker approached him in connection with a film, Shroff thumbed up the subject, but unlike the past would not remit any advances for its production.
The mantra for the newcomer — who doesn’t drop big star names — is, “Let’s see your film after you have finished it. Then we’ll talk.” But after that assurance, it’s still a long haul. Lately, a gifted debutant filmmaker managed to screen his self-funded film before the “creative team” of a corporate film production company. The team loved the film but concluded that its theme — a noir thriller — didn’t align with their de facto policy of supporting “happy” films. That the company also produces sex-laced films wasn’t open to discussion.
A radically different filmmaker, who’s currently going through a lean phase, can still talk corporate honchos into a contract for 12 films helmed by different directors in a year. Not even a handful of these are delivered in the year, blocking the route for fresher talent. Ask Mr Radical about this, and he responds, “See, at the very outset, the corporate company approves the script and the star cast. These companies also virtually rule the distribution and exhibition systems. So one has to go through them. If I haven’t delivered all the films promised, clauses in the contract safeguard my rights to deliver them at a later
date because of unforeseen delays.”
The point is that Bollywood’s trade works by increasingly arbitrary rules. The situation may not have been ideal before the entry of the corporates over 12 years ago, but at least the trade mechanisms were fathomable. Matters have become more complicated with the top stars demanding a chunk of the profits from the ticket sales — if reports are to believed, Salman Khan has begun insisting on 70 per cent of the cash gains.
Directors with a couple of hits under their belt, turn producers themselves. The logic is why agree to a meagre salary per project. In the event, corporates which can surmount the system that they have inadvertently created, thrive in the market. Still, one big flop and the budgets of their films under production are drastically reduced. Incidentally, corporates funded by top industrialists as ancillary businesses have packed up since they couldn’t endure the yawning gap between their start-up films’ investments and profits.
Revered international studios from Hollywood have also strived to help themselves to a slice of the Bollywood cake, but again with fluctuating results in both the production and distribution sectors. Obviously, matters are in a state of flux, what with the primary aim of earning maximum profits. A filmmaker must first guarantee the “deliverables”, that is a film must be a success even when it’s at the stage of inception. Result: medium- and small-budget films are the least wanted, unless of course they are directed or backed by directors like Anurag Kashyap and Dibakar Banerjee who have made money in these “untouchable” domains.
The year, then, didn’t offer any new window to independent, rule-breaking filmmakers. The National Film Development Corporation (NFDC), which spawned a new wave of films in the 1970s, sought to return to the scene with news about its market events and seminars at film festivals. How about making cinema instead? Here’s hoping that in 2013, the trade acquires a measure of clarity and a sense of purpose to let a hundred films bloom. Or else, cinema will continue to be an excuse for “time pass”. Sorry but actually it’s high time that the trade attempted to reach the next level.

The writer is a journalist, film critic and film director