Ram Gopal Varma is moving ahead to his next project which is touted to be an expose on media. Promising it to be an unforgettable experience, this is what he has to say about the many incidents which provided him enough food for thought -
A few days back one journalist texted me to ask if there was rift between me and Amitji, to which I replied in the negative. He sent the same message to Amitji, to which Amitji replied that he was planning to do 20 films with me. So now one would imagine that he would drop the story as the only 2 people who could confirm or deny the story have spoken. But he went ahead and put a story with a headline 'Kaput' Ramu and Bachchan relationship over'. He gave all kinds of reasons, what he heard or imagined and incredibly at the end quoted mine and Amitji's denials in small print.
Now why would he do that? It is simply because he knows mostly people read only the headline and even if they read the rest of it they will only remember the headline like always people remember the number of stars more than the reviews.
The proof of this is the number of media people who asked me about the rift taking their cue from that article and when I said 'didn't you read our denials at the end?' they grudgingly said 'yes' almost as if given a choice they will believe the rift part of it than the denial because the rift is news and it will help fill pages, web-space and TV footage whereas the closeness of me and Amitji will be expected and hence boring. So the logic is if so many media people and film industry people can have a field day discussing, speculating and getting entertained on it, the irritant it will cause to just 2 people, me and Amitji, can be ignored in the larger interest of making fools out of the common people.
Similarly a report mentioning a war between me and Karan Johar appeared where a reporter claimed that he has seen me lashing out at Karan on my blog. Now even a dim nitwit can see that I was joking and making fun of everything and most of all myself in that blog post. It's not that the reporter can't see it but he will choose not to see it as he wants to take out only what suits his own agenda.
Another interesting part of the media is the difference between the Mumbai media and the media elsewhere. It's primarily because the most of the Mumbai media hobnobs and rubs shoulders with the film people.
The film people out of their fear and greed and in order to use the media people open their doors to the media people and almost become informants to the media about the rest of their colleagues in the industry. So the media kind of looses its primary objective and tends to get embroiled in the camp culture of the industry.
An outcome of this rubbing shoulders with film people, results in the journalists stepping beyond their job responsibilities.
While this senior journalist initially in his position with Times of India and his supposed influence over the Filmfare awards wanted to use actors and technicians to make his classics, they all primarily obliged in fear of getting bad reviews and the greed of getting awards. He openly uses his position in the newspaper to write articles and bitchy pieces against several people who he wants to settle his personal scores with and on top of that he brags about it to all. It beats me how the management of those papers can't see this. Today he can't do it that much as Hindustan Times does not carry the same weight as TOI. It might be a good idea for him to convince HT to start HT Awards for him to be able to be back in business.
This particular journalist has a unique trait of calling up film people whenever they are in a low like just after a flop. He will call them with soothing words and gives them a shoulder to cry on. He gives and takes information from various film people and passes it on to all concerned. Most in Bollywood trust him more than the journalists who stay in Mumbai because he stays in Patna and he is a voice on the phone. So they feel safer confiding in him as he is far away, and imagine that what they tell him won't come back here.
The media elsewhere since it does not have that much of access to the film people is relatively unbiased and comparatively has much more integrity. Another big problem is that we all film people believe that 3 or 4 papers in Mumbai represent the whole country for the simple reason that we get only them into our homes. On a tour to 5 to 6 towns it came as a revelation to me and how much of a frog in the well I was when I realized every town in the country has its own media and I found far superior journalists there. I don't think it's because they are necessarily better journalists but I think it's because they live in a relatively far less polluted atmosphere.
On the brighter side, I don't think both us film folk and the media are all that bad because after all the pressures and the frustrations we go through, the least we are doing is entertaining the people in one way or the other. Whether it's a lie or a truth or half-lie, what is the big deal? If the common man's interest is in knowing who slept with whom? And who slapped whom? The media will supply it and us film industry folk will supply it to the media. I think it's a fantastic threesome.
I want to sum up this article by taking the line from 'Company' which best describes both us film folks and the media. 'Yeh bas hamare dhande ki jaath hai.'
P.S:- I am just on the verge of finishing a script I am working on about the functioning and psychology of media. So far you have seen the media exposing things and now I want to expose the media in all its naked glory. I promise you that it will be one f***ng hell of a strip tease. Cheers!
