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More news →"I think AAG did more than a wonderful job when it comes to entertainment" - Ramu
Ramu explains his take on the media in the write-up below: The media is a reporting agency. It reports news. News is what you hear for the first time and for it to catch your attention the media has to make the news sound as dramatic as possible. The publications and Channels have no choice but to do that so as to be able to stay in business and make money. So finally is it only about just making money? Not necessarily intended by all concerned, it could also be for the individual egos and clamoring for fame among the journalists themselves. Most of the media people bitch about each other as much as they bitch about others. But again like any other industry you cannot generalize them. Like there are good, bad, ugly filmmakers, there will be good, bad and ugly media people as eventually they are all human. The interesting point is that how smoothly and without anybody consciously realizing the media has transformed from a truth telling machinery to a power-mongering and money-making enterprise. What the media basically does is, it just strips everybody and makes money out it. The only difference between a strip-teaser and the media is that a strip-teaser bares herself so that others can enjoy her and give money, and the media strips others so that some others can enjoy and give them the money. I know it sounds far fetched but does anyone out there believe that anybody in the media truly feel the gravity or the tragedy of happenings. They can hardly conceal the glee in their eyes when bad things happen. The badder the better, as there will be more eyes reading and watching them. Did you notice the pleasure they get in ripping films or personalities apart? But wait a minute. The film people are worse. For all the anger film people show against critics it is actually the film people who enjoy and relish the nasty and bitchy comments or reviews much more than the public who read them, that is, except obviously the people who are being bitched and commented upon. The reason for this is nothing but jealousy and jealousy is a human trait and like lots of other emotions it gets magnified in the context of the entertainment industry. The main reason for the jealousy is because people by nature cannot bear anyone else to be successful except themselves and one way of feeling successful even if one has not achieved anything is to watch with glee someone else fall down and to be ripped to shreds and the media supplies this pleasure to everyone in well-cooked great helpings. I truly think I deserve great credit for creating a project such as Aag to enable the media to dish out such fantastic entertainment to all concerned in ripping it apart. If entertainment is the sole purpose of a film, I think Aag has done more than a wonderful job, definitely much more than what it could have done in the theatres even if it turned out to be a damn good film. The pressure to perform and the fear of failure and ridicule are at utmost peak in the film industry more than in any other place and that is mainly because of the media. Nobody knows or is interested what decisions went wrong in an hoteliers or a cloth merchants business and how much money he lost but if a filmmaker makes a flop everybody will know that because of the media. Fair enough the media is also responsible for the fame it gives to the same. And fame is the key word here. Much more than money everybody wants to become famous, whoever comes to the industry they want to develop their own identity. There are so many who are all desperate to get their individual fame and identities registered with all concerned as much as the film people. So as a consequence they tend to fall in love more with the way they rip the film apart much more than they hate the film. The reporters is a truly thankless job what with day after day hour after hour to fill in so many papers and Channels and on top of that it has to catch eyeballs at any cost in fear of competition so they do it even if they have to be ruthless enough to hurt and scandalize personalities, and they do this to even to the people who they know on a personal friendly level. (Agar ghoda ghaas se dosti karliya toh khaayega kya?). When they get a certain whiff of an interesting story on someone a journalist's greatest fear would be that it will be denied by the person. But still the necessity of having to feed the media monster he will cook up something even in that situation.
"AGGAR may come along with RGV KE AAG" - Varun Bajaj
"We are deciding about the release date but there is a strong probability of our film AGGAR clashing with RAM GOPAL VARMA KE AAG", says Varun Bajaj, co-producer of AGGAR which is looking good to make a kill at the box office this month. "We are currently deciding upon the right release date for the film. It will either come on August 17, a week after CHAK DE INDIA or take RGV KE AAG heads on when the two films arrive on August 31. The decision should be arrived at within a day or two. If August 17 turns out to be the D-day then we will be enhancing the promotion of the film in a big way. We have quite a lot of ammunition available to fuel the film's promotion and you would see us going all out during the next few days", declares Varun Bajaj who is currently also involved in supervising over the finishing touches being given to Fardeen Khan and Kunal Khemu starrer JAI VEERU.
SHOLAY - 99, AAG - 49
If the disastrous box office response to RAM GOPAL VARMA KI AAG wasn't bad enough, further salt is being rubbed on the wounds with the film's original DVDs being now made available for a mere Rs. 49/=. T-Series, who hold the home video rights of the film, have launched the film's DVDs at a dirt cheap price. This is a strategy that the company has adopted mainly for those movies which have either exhausted their shelf life to a good extent or have been major failures at the box office. On the other hand DVDs of Ramesh Sippy's SHOLAY, which continues to find repeat audience till date whenever it arrives on the big screen or is beamed on satellite, are higher priced at Rs. 99/= on ULTRA. In fact even this price reduction has also taken place just recently as the DVDs were much higher priced till around a few months back.
"Filmmaker in me was dumb to experiment with Big B in Nishabd and Aag" - RGV
In a very bad and not totally darkened theatre (because of the light leaking through some vents and gaps in the closed doors) called Ramapriya in Vijayawada town in Andhra Pradesh, for the first time I consciously began to understand the phenomenon of Amitabh Bachchan. The film that was playing was Khuddaar and the scene which was going on at that precise moment was, when Amitji learning the lie his own brother told him, barges into the discotheque where his brother is grooving away with a girl. As he shouts at the DJ to stop the music and looks at his brother at the far corner with hurt filled eyes, a gang of vicious looking bouncers move towards him. He looks at them and with an emotion choked voice says that he will break their legs if they try to stop him. There was an audible gasp in the theatre from the viewers as he said this. The interesting point is that none of the guys in the theatre could speak Hindi as Vijayawada is a Telugu speaking town. So what did they connect to? It is just the raw emotions of anger, betrayal, helplessness and above all the hurt he managed to communicate through his body language, his voice and his eyes. As I looked at the faces of the people sitting in the theatre I could see a tremendous sense of awe, admiration, respect and above all a connectivity in their faces. Each and everyone of his viewers connected to him deeply through the characters he portrayed in his various films. Each and everyone wanted a brother or a friend or a leader like him. Even after volumes spoken and big fat books written on him, I think it is still very easy to underestimate his incredible influence and his unimaginable impact not only on cinema but also on at least on a couple of generations conscience. Kids loved him in Amar Akbar Anthony then and Kids love him now in Bhoothnath. I have seen street goondas emulating him from Kaala Patthar, Kaalia etc and modern day gangsters are awe-struck with his intensity in Sarkar. Women used to swoon over his romances then and today's women would want a life-partner like him. Old people back then wanted a son like him and today's old people see the reflections of their own life through his performances in movies like Baghbaan etc. His contemporaries back then were dying of jealousy and unable to understand what is making him tick and today's stars and technicians resume cannot be completed unless and until they feature with him at least in one film. For me Amitji is raw, real and gritty and he hit me like a thunder bolt both as a viewer and as a director. His charisma, his screen presence, his personality made such an impact both on me and millions of others like me unsupported by today's so-called massive production values. Unlike today's superstars he never had to hide behind catchy songs or lavish sets or exotic foreign locales etc. Any random man you pick on the road anywhere in the country, and if you ask him what you remember of Amitabh Bachchan, he is bound to come up with at least a hundred of his favourite scenes, dialogues or moments from Amitji's various films whereas if asked about any of today's superstars I doubt that they will remember beyond their hit songs and their films box-office collections. From the time of being awestruck with him in Zanzeer, Deewaar etc to consciously understanding his screen prowess post Khuddaar (which incidentally largely was responsible in influencing my own technique of shaping up characters in my films), my biggest desire cinematically was to do a film with him which eventually I realized in Sarkar. In the run up to the making of Sarkar in my several meetings with him I started seeing a very different side of him other than what I only perceived through his films. Behind the obvious power and intensity was a sensitivity and vulnerability and also listening to his thoughts made me sense his incredible versatility as an actor. By that time my proximity to him blinded me as a viewer of him as a star and the filmmaker in me got greedy and dumb enough to experiment with him as an actor which resulted in Nishabd and Aag. It's not so much only about the quality of those films that I am talking here but it is just the idea of casting him in those roles. By Ram Gopal Varma