Filmmaker Subhash Ghai is looking to script a new role. Whistling Woods - the film school in collaboration with Mumbai's government owned Film City is a project he has been planning for years now. In July, it will finally welcome its first set of students. Ghai says it will help meet the film industry's prime need for trained talent.
Anuradha SenGupta: For four years now this institute has been an idea, a dream in your eyes. Isn’t it?
Subhash Ghai: It was a dream with me for the last 20 years. Particularly, after watching and observing the environment of the film industry around me while working as a director and a producer. I used to be really in pain that how can you make a good film with such half knowledge people.
Anuradha SenGupta: Why do you say half knowledge, Mr Ghai? You yourself are from the Film and Television Institute in Pune. There are other training institutes in the country, then why do you think that the people you were interacting with in the industry were not trained people?
Subhash Ghai:Let me talk to you in those terms. We have been producing 130 films a year and we need 130 directors, 130 good cameramen, 260 actors. Do we have 260 actors that you can reckon with? It's a simple thing, simple answer. When you have 125 movies with only 10 good directors, what the other 90 are doing?
Making mediocre films with half knowledge. That's because they are self-taught people; this whole industry has been living on instinctive talent.
Like it happens in politics, besides running the government you have to think of politics. Similarly, in the film industry, besides making the movies, you also have to mind your social skills- how to get your work done from the people. We have to tell them their job.
Whereas in Hollywood, a director is a much-relaxed person because the producer gives him the script, he gets all professional help; there are production designers, besides several other professionals around him. Here, the director has to do the production designer's job. Director has to select the dresses, the fabrics; he has to tell the music director what kind of background score is wanted. So, everything is being done by the director here. Why 90 per cent movies are bad or dumped?
Anuradha SenGupta: So when it comes to the execution, as an industry we are falling short?
Subhash Ghai: Yes, exactly.
Anuradha SenGupta: What Whistling Woods would offer students, will it be a lot different from what the other film and television institutes are offering?
Subhash Ghai: I belong to the Film and Television Institute, Pune. Initially, I did a course in acting and I have a great sentiment and respect for that Institute. The only thing I found was that it was started in 1960, that is, 45 years ago. At that time, India had just got Independence and they took a Russian model to promote European Cinema in India.
When I went from Delhi, what I saw was Godavardhan Faloni whom I never knew. I knew Guru Dutt, Raj Kapoor, David Blain and many American directors. But who was Godavardhan Faloni - that I had to learn. By the time I came out, I started disliking my domestic market. Because we were taught Hindi cinema is bullshit and America is bigger shit.
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Anuradha SenGupta: So you are saying that there was a disconnect between what you studied and the industry that you had come to work with?
Subhash Ghai: That's right. That is why if you see that the Film and Television Institute, Pune, now in the 45 years of existence, must have produced 450 directors. 10 directors a year. I would like to know where are they? Do we hear of them? Even in Arts cinema, do you hear of 45 art cinema directors? Leave aside the commercial cinema where you will hardly find 10 directors from the Institutes and half of the people either belong to the acting course like me or from some other course.
Anuradha SenGupta: You have been talking about Whistling Woods since 2002. We were expecting it to become operational by 2004 end. It's 2006 July, which will see the first batch of students come in. Why did it take so long?
Subhash Ghai: I did not want to hurry up because I'm not making a revenue model.
Anuradha SenGupta: In fact, the analysts say that it will not impact the bottom line too much?
Subhash Ghai: That is a different thing, but the question is, my whole purpose was that once that we go for an Institute like this, we see to it that the philosophy and institute of culture is right or not. We had to visit 42 various Institutes all over the world and we had to do the research work for that. Building is nothing, anybody can make a building, more important was to look at the curriculum that they have.
Anuradha SenGupta: You had said that one of the things that you will teach here is the art of story telling. We are going to walk into a classroom with Subhash Ghai and get a master class.
Ghai ruled hindi cinema in the 80's with hits like Karz, Ram Lakhan, Hero, and Karma. In the 90's he had Suadagar and Taal. But the new century has been far from kind to the director. Although it didn't loose money Yaadein bombed and last year's Kisna did not match even that saving grace. It could be the time to learn some new tricks.
Anuradha SenGupta: So Mr Ghai, this is a typical classroom at Whistling Woods. How many classes would you be taking?
Subhash Ghai: It all depends on the dean. How much he feels is the importance of my teaching.
Anuradha SenGupta: But then it is your own institute?
Subhash Ghai: That's fine, it's my vision, it's my baby, I would say. But then when you hand over your baby to a teacher, then it is the dean who is the final authority to see to it. But of course, I would be participating in the faculty. I would like to teach.
Anuradha SenGupta: You would like to teach the art of story telling. That is what you had said many years ago?
Subhash Ghai: Yes, that's true.
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Anuradha SenGupta: What is the measure of a good story? Is it box office success? Because there are so many fantastic stories that have not received the box office score.
Subhash Ghai: Box office is a market driven patronage. Market driven patronage means how many people will like it. You speak the language of mass audience. You speak their language. Like during 80's, 90's, there were a mass audience of rickshaw pullers and tanga valas. So it had a different kind of cinema - loud, angry was there. Today if you see Rang De Basanti or Iqbaal kind of film, you find a different language in it.
Anuradha SenGupta: So a good story need not be appreciated by the market?
Subhash Ghai: Yes, it may not be.
Anuradha SenGupta: In your career of 27-28 years, out of all these various skills that a filmmaker needs, which skill do you think was your strongest skill?
Subhash Ghai: The human study, the characterisations. Developing the character were my key skills.
Anuradha SenGupta: But you were a shrewd producer also.
Subhash Ghai: I became producer by default. Had I been a shrewd producer, I would have produced so many movies and made so much of money. In my 25 years career, I made only 15 movies, so I was not making 15 movies in three years. I always made one movie at a time and gave my hundred per cent to it. Until of course, my company became public and we had to scale up the production house so we had to employ so many directors to do that.
Anuradha SenGupta: Eventually, in all these classrooms, you are going to see all these young hopeful students, with dreams in their eyes and hopes in their hearts. Why did Subhash Ghai who was a commerce student from Punjab University join the drama institute?
Subhash Ghai: Let me share with you. Dance, drama, music - the sole faculty always influenced me right from the childhood. I started acting and singing on stage when I was in sixth standard. When I went to college I used write, direct and act plays. My entire interest was in it than doing B Com.
My father wanted me to be a Charted Accountant so he pushed me into the B Com. I said fine but I will do my own things.
When my father was convinced that I was not fit for the Charted Accountant, then he advised me in 1965 that if I really wanted to be a movie maker, it was very important for me to go to a film school, study for two years, understand, relate myself, and then go for a competition.
Besides, he made me realise that I did not know anyone in the film industry. I was not the son of B R Chopra or Raj Kapoor. He told me that I would have to carry the wealth of really educated knowledge with me.
Anuradha SenGupta: What was that one film that changed your life. One film before you got into the institute and one during your institute days.
Subhash Ghai: If I remember one film that brought me to cinema, it was Ten Commandments. I was so much in the awe of its dramatic form as a school child that I saw that film seven times; used to skip my school and would not tell my parents.
Everything in it was so huge and larger than life. The other film, which changed my mind, was the movie Mother India which I watched 4-5 times. I was really not a very big movie fan or star's fan. Whenever I would watch a movie, I would watch things behind it. I would go deep into it.
Another film which influenced me was Doctor Zhivago. David Lean was always my favourite director. Because I could always see his picture post larger than life frames. The way he would picturise the nature, the God's existence, nobody would do. So I learnt the magic of cinema from David Lean.
But during my years at the film Institute, if I learnt the art of film making there was one guru called Retory Ghatak. He was the contemporary filmmaker of Satyajeet Ray and his films would live for another hundred years.
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Anuradha SenGupta: Why do you prefer Ghatak to Ray? Both of them have their own cult following.
Subhash Ghai: May be because of emotional reasons. Because I was his student and I was close to him. I have also been a great admirer of Satyajeet Ray.
But when you are close to somebody, you admire him more. I have seen him teaching us. I saw him giving the meaning of every frame, dialogue, composition, and he was quite fond of me. He always said, "You are talented, you should go but see to it that you make a mid path cinema."
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you think he would have liked the films you have made?
Subhash Ghai: He would laugh, telling you the truth. If Ghatak had been there, he would have laughed on my films. I remember he was alive when my Hero was declared a hit. When became the director of Kalicharan, he said, "Tell Subhash that he must now share a drink with me." I'm still waiting for my drink with him.
Anuradha SenGupta: In 2004- 2005, there came two films by Mukta Arts, one directed by Subhash Ghai called Kisna, another directed by Nagesh Kukunoor called Iqbal. Two films very different in scale, completely different directors in terms of sensibility. One film Kisna did not capture people's imagination, one did so. Why do you think so?
Subhash Ghai: When you pick up a subject, you must know what kind of audience you are catching on. When we picked up Iqbal, we knew about it that it is a two crore rupees movie and we will cover these two crore rupees as there is a niche market for it. There are elite audiences that appreciate good cinema like this, so I went ahead producing that movie.
There was another film called Aitraaz directed by Abbas Mastaan, a crime thriller which we had expected to work and it did work.
Lastly, there was Kisna which I had proposed to make. There were two responsibilities on my head. One was that I had to lead and second, I had to grow myself as a filmmaker about what I have been doing. I cannot go back and look at Ram Lakhan and Saudagar to remake them again.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you think you grew with Kisna?
Subhash Ghai: Yes, because I worked most hard on Kisna. I did a lot of research work. Kisna was the only film with which I wanted to be very authentic, because it belonged to the 1940's. But I knew one thing that either it is going to work too well or it’s not going to work at all.
I still believe in Kisna, I'm still proud of Kisna and I'm still very much sure that after 8 or 10 years, you will find Kisna make a place in one of the best films of Indian Cinema.
Anuradha SenGupta: You still stand by it?
Subhash Ghai: I stand by it and I always will.
Anuradha SenGupta: How much does it bothers you that as a filmmaker,Kisna and Yaadein have not managed to touch a chord and you are this person who the whole industry looks up to as the man who has given super hits?
Subhash Ghai: So what? With all due respect, what is my job? My job is to pick up a good story first of all. My story must not match any of my previous stories; I should not limit myself to one genre.
If made Kalicharan, I also made Pardes, Khalnayak, Taal. Every time, I have to make a different kind of movie. When you try to do so, you enter into a creative risk, whether it will work or it will not work.
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Anuradha SenGupta: Did you take a creative risk or were you actually eyeing that international market to which you were trying to provide quality cinema by picking up a subject which was an Indo-British story?
Subhash Ghai: May be. It could have been on my mind definitely. Because I wanted to deliver the story through an English character. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't work. But at least, I made an attempt, and I played well. Fine.
Anuradha SenGupta: This is what I think, perhaps because I've never made a film, thus it is easy for me to say so that If Subhash Ghai had directed a film in the genre of Jogger's Park or Iqbal and not a Kisna, that would have been a creative risk. Because Kisna, I have seen the film, it's a typical Subhash Ghai film. It has all the trademark of a Subhash Ghai film.
Subhash Ghai: That is exactly why I would not like to make Iqbal or Jogger's Park. That's exactly why I did not direct it.
I told my directors that I think this way but I cannot make this movie. Because my audience want my cinema to be larger than life. Technically, people expect it from you.
Anuradha SenGupta: Thus there is a trademark style, an auteur at work. But do you feel that may be it's time to change the style?
Subhash Ghai: Of course, I'm a dramatist who has to paint the changing people. All kinds of people - the history people, the present people, past people and also the future people.
It excites me when I feel that there is awe. This is the change here. Look at the songs picturised these days. The editors have taken over the songs and not the dancers. There is no choreography; there are no more dancers today. Everything takes place at the editing table, DI or the special effects.
As you can see, in cinema the video music culture has taken over. But it's fine. There is nothing wrong about it. Sometimes I brood about it that the things have changed. But the only thing that I feel sad about is that poetry has gone. The poetry today is not matching with the visual or gestures.
Anuradha SenGupta: You explained to us very lucidly why Kisna didn't work. Now I want you to explain to me why Iqbal worked?
Subhash Ghai: How much Iqbal worked? Iqbal was made in two crore rupees and it made 5 crore rupees, so it was said to have worked. You see. Kisna was made in 22 crore rupees and it still made 15 crore rupees, but there was still a loss of 7 crores.
Where was Iqbal ? At 5 crores and Kisna at 15 crores. It was a hit because of its price, because of the cost of the film.
Anuradha SenGupta: Absolutely, but that's the business of it. I'm saying that Iqbal captured people's imagination. People were talking about it. There was a word of mouth that spread.
Subhash Ghai: That is why I had produced it. I knew this kind of movie should be made and that's why we opened a new department called Mukta search light.
And I always tell them that don't make my kind of cinema.Mere pet pe laat nahi maro to apni picture banao, jis tarah bhi banana chahte ho. I give them a budget and the only thing I ask them is to tell me the story. I will tell them within this budget you have to make the movie.
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Anuradha SenGupta: In 2006, is Subhash Ghai a better producer than a director?
Subhash Ghai: If you are going by the past record, because you are passing a judgment on majority basis. You don't have your judgment. I would never pass a judgment on majority basis. I'm signing directors whose films have flopped. But when I saw their film I could see the talent and I said you come here.
Deewane was a flop by Nagesh Kukonoor and I signed him. Anant Balani's films flopped yet I signed him. So I never went by the judgment of the box office, because that is very unfair. You can criticise the performance of a person but not the performer. Performer has the talent. Spielberg has given 6 flops, yet America respects Spielberg as Spielberg.
Anuradha SenGupta: I'm not passing any judgment. I'm asking you to evaluate and share with us.
Subhash Ghai: That is what I would say now. If you are saying that the director has taken a back seat and the producer is still there, you are wrong. Both are equal seats for me but when I'm sitting in that chair, I'm a producer, when I sit in my own chair, I'm a director.
Suppose if I make a movie tomorrow, which becomes the biggest hit. What would you say? We always knew that you were a great director and producing films was only a side business. Finally, you are a filmmaker, am I right?
So the judgments keep changing from week to week, year to year that is the general perception.
Anuradha SenGupta: Does a filmmaker feel to a film, what parents feel towards the child?
Subhash Ghai: Yes, that's right. Particularly when the child is handicapped and does not receive recognition from the society. If you see Raj Kapoor, his most loved film was Mera Naam Joker, Yash Chopra still loves Lamhein. So the same way I love Kisna.
Anuradha SenGupta: Out of all the films that you have made, which is your favourite film?
Subhash Ghai: Movie which I'm making is my favourite. You will be probably surprised to know once the movie is premiered, I have never seen the movie again.
Anuradha SenGupta: Why is that?
Subhash Ghai: I don't know why. Perhaps, because I don't want to connect myself with the past.
Anuradha SenGupta: It's not because when you look at some of those movies you see how you could have done things better and that gives you a sense of dissatisfaction.
Subhash Ghai: Yes, sometimes it happens, sometimes I keep laughing, my wife then sometimes, she says, 'oh this movie is coming' and I say ‘oh god don't tell me I've taken this scene', it happens many times.
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Anuradha SenGupta: You told me once that the showman's tag has made you tired, it's like a crown, but you can't wear a crown 24 hours a day. Do you still feel like that?
Subhash Ghai: No, I think first of all it has disappeared. Thank god it has disappeared. The second thing is that it gives you a responsibility, like you know, you put a lawyer or a judge's cap and all that, and finally there is a burden on you; you have to make this, you have to do this. That shouldn't be, you should feel independent.
I may make a movie with a child and a dog, but let my right time come. Many people have asked me, when are you making an Arts film, I said I will be doing that, but let me come to that stage. Once I start doing that, then I cannot come back to making Taal and big films.
Anuradha SenGupta: Do you really believe that the Showman's tag is not attached to your name anymore?
Subhash Ghai: I'm not in love with this title, number one, so it doesn't bother me. Sometimes, they write, sometimes they don't write. Whatever they write, it's their pleasure, their delight. At least I'm not attached to it.
Anuradha SenGupta: From the first batch of students that come in, your dream will have become a reality. That time will you be sad that this project is now over, or will you be feeling happy that it's been achieved?
Subhash Ghai: No, no, I would say when the students join, it is a new beginning, where I have to join them and learn with them again, and grow with them.
Anuradha SenGupta: Subhash Ghai, wish you all the very very best.
Subhash Ghai: Thank you, god bless.
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