I searched frantically for my
pink ear-rings that would go with the white top I was wearing. As I put them
on, my little sister busted into the room and in her child-like voice said,”Didi, dadu aapka kabse wait kar rahe hain!”
I replied, struggling with the ear-ring, “Apoo!
Dadu ko bolo bas 5 min aur.” We were already late for the afternoon show. I
wished we would reach on time and grabbed my purse. Announcing along the way to
the people in house that we would be back only by evening, I dashed towards the
door.
The afternoons in summers are
pathetic! Especially when you are in a town where 80% of the day there is no
electricity in the house, a house that dates back to 1960s. A house where all
my uncles and aunts had spent their childhood playing under the huge mango tree
in the garden (It is still there!). A house situated in a dirty lane of the
dirty town Gorakhpur in this dirty country’s most populous state. My school had
shut down for a straight 2 months in the middle of the year and like the
obedient migrant birds, I flew down here to visit relatives.
After much deliberations and
coaxing (which took most of our morning), Dadu had agreed to take the bachcha party, to the nearest cinema
hall to catch the latest release, Ek tha
tiger. Its star cast was all over the place last week promoting the film
and this excited my cousin, Ajita. She would stage a drama in her peculiar nautanki style to persuade Dadu, the
eldest in the house, to grant us permission to watch films. This time too, the
trick worked much in our favour. As the rickshaw puller parked the vehicle in
front of the gate, we could clearly see Salman Khan’s craze everywhere. Truck
loads of people, had come down to watch him and only him, barring the charring
heat. The place was brimming with people,
overflowing onto the nearby road. Long queues of head-strong visitors
that ran miles and miles stood patiently
waiting for the ticket counter to open. As I wiped the dripping sweat
drops from the forehead, mine and Ajita’s eyes met and we shrugged our
shoulders. Getting tickets won’t be easy this
time.
| Photo Courtesy: Internet |
.....
In the evening, Dadu was
uncontrollable as he vent out his angst on our way back home. It was as if the
pressure cooker had been left to whistle non-stop in pressure, letting out the
hot white fumes. I so wanted to tell Mumma to put that off but when Dadu is
around, you need to learn to shut your chattering machine.
It is usually not easy to tick
him off but when he sees “the sad state of Hindi movies and the poor choice of
today’s young minds”, his blood boils. Rightly so, one can evidently smell how
zealously passionate, he was,
and still is, about films. The towering racks
lined with innumerable VCDs, neatly stacked, are a testimony of this. Sangam,
Awara, Teesri Kasam, Pyaasa, Shree 420,Guide, Do Biga Zameen he had it all
there. He at times boasts of how he used to dedicatedly save money from his
day-to-day spending to take my Dadi for the latest cinema, the tiny theatre was
showing, two lanes away.
“I don’t understand this 100
crore figure thing”, he lamented,” they have reduced the art of film making to
mere business”, he exploded into the house. Now, that sent me off thinking.
.....
The so-called 100-crore club is a
nomenclature coined by the media in the most recent past, a term used by the
film industry to segregate the more successful stars from the rest. The term has
become rather ubiquitous and everyone from the commoner lining the street
leading to Film City to the spotboy on the set is talking about it. It’s cool, it’s coveted, and it’s for the crème de la
crème. The latest status symbol in Bollywood: The 100-crore club!
| Photo Courtesy: Internet |
It
all started with Ghajini in 2008, the first Bollywood film to gross 100 crore
at the box office, taking only 18 days to do so. It was followed up in 2009
with 3 Idiots which took
half the time to reach the magical figure. Incidentally, 3 Idiots remains the
highest-grossing Bollywood film of all time with worldwide collections of Rs
339 crore (domestic + overseas). Hence, in that regard, Aamir Khan has been
labelled as the inaugural inductee of the club.
If
2008 and 2009 had one 100-crore film each, 2010 saw that
number double, with Salman Khan (Dabangg)
and Ajay Devgn (Golmaal 3) entering
the club. While the latter took 17 days to breach the mark, the former did it
in 10 days.
In
2011, that figure rose to five films (Ready, Singham, Bodyguard, Ra.One and Don 2)
with Bodyguard garnering
100 crore in a record-time of 7 days. Suddenly, every top Bollywood actor,
mostly the Khans, was in a race to make it to the exclusive club. Salman Khan
had breached the mark thrice in succession, while Shah Rukh was the last of the
ruling Khans to get an entry into the coveted club.
In
2012, eight films (Agneepath, Housefull 2, Rowdy Rathore, Bol
Bachchan, Ek Tha Tiger, Barfi!, Son of Sardaar and Jab
Tak Hai Jaan) have grossed 100 crore. Salman Khan, who’s become his own
competition when it comes to box-office collections, broke his own previous
record set by Bodyguard as
his Ek Tha Tiger rushed
into the 100-crore club in five days flat. The film is the highest grosser of
the year with worldwide collections of Rs 246 crore. Dabangg 2 was 2012’s ninth film in the 100-crore club, and
Salman’s fifth straight – a “historic record” as trade analyst Taran Adarsh
puts it. From one to two to five to eight, and from the Khans and Ajay Devgn to
Hrithik Roshan to Akshay Kumar to the Kapoors – Bollywood’s 100-crore club has
only grown manifold. Nowadays, the buzz preceding the release of every other
big-budget film has its mention.
| Photo Courtesy: Internet |
This
year, only a few films so far have been able to add to its population. Films
like the Ranbir Kapoor-starrer Yeh
Jawaani Hai Deewani, the multi-starrer Race 2 and Mohit Suri’s Aashiqui 2 crossed the magical number.
Aanand L. Rai’s Raanjhanaa, starring
the unusual pair of Dhanush-Sonam also touched that mark with the combined
collections of its Hindi and Tamil versions.
Is
the 100-crore film a myth and a product of impeccable PR machinery? Or is it a
result of a transformation in the economics of the film trade?
Part II http://peechepardeke.blogspot.in/2013/09/its-all-about-money-honey-part-ii.html
Part III http://peechepardeke.blogspot.in/2013/09/its-all-about-money-honey-part-iii.html
No comments:
Post a Comment