Films are no longer being made for people who are angry,but for those who are having a party

Javed Akhtar: This lament is not recent. It was there in the fifties,sixties and even seventies. In the last 20-odd years,for the first time,the urban middle-class has become affluent and they have disposable incomes. This has brought in multiplexes where you have tickets costing Rs 350-Rs 500. Business has increased but if you look at it closely,the audience is shrinking. In the last 15 years,you can count on your fingertips the instances when the protagonist came from the working class. Today,films are not being made for them,films are being made for multiplexes. We have approximately 1,600 multiplex screens in the country and around 14,000 single theatres. Most films nowadays cater to a certain segment of the society,while films with widespread appeal like Dabangg and Raju Hirani’s film like 3 Idiots,are exceptions,not the rule. The rule is you make things that are beautiful,don’t talk about poverty,don’t talk about grim social problems,unemployment,farmer suicide,starvation—these are not sexy topics.

Vandita Mishra: How about films like Udaan and Band Baaja Baarat?

Javed Akhtar: Udaan has been highly appreciated. But here again,if I say I produced a film in Rs 3 crore and the film earns Rs 5 crore,I say the film has done well. In all fairness,we should not consider the success of the film in relation to its budget.

Shekhar Gupta: Rural India has disappeared from films now.

Javed Akhtar: Yes,because the urban population that has developed is purely urban. It has nothing to do with rural India,unlike during the fifties or the sixties when the urban middle class had a certain connect with rural India.

Shubhra Gupta: Your kind of storyteller is out of vogue. Do you think your son Farhan Akhtar has the same kind of story-telling skills that you have?

Javed Akhtar: I honestly hope not because it would not be a happy situation if the next generation is exactly like the previous generation. People should change and become better and to expect that we should make the same kind of films that were made in the seventies is not a good idea. I would not be happy to see that. Life has changed. When you compare the films of the seventies with the films of the forties,you realise that the tempo had increased because the tempo of life had increased. Cinema,music,theatre are related to society—they do not exist in a void. When society’s tempo and pace increase,inevitably this will be reflected in the arts. It is difficult to believe that a teenager of today would sing a song of K L Saigal. It is not possible because that tempo,that tune,is not in sync with today’s generation. Films like Pukar,Mahal,Mughal-E-Azam are great films,but I don’t think that kind of rhetoric would work today. At the same time,there is a sense of loss in me as far as the language is concerned. Someone has said aptly that a film dialogue should be like a poor man’s telegram. There should be some elegant turn of phrase,some wit,some really original coinage too—all of those are missing in today’s dialogues. Language is shrinking in today’s world. It is becoming strictly a vehicle of communication; but language is much more than that. It carries tradition,ethos,culture,those are missing now. And that,obviously,reflects in film dialogues as well.

I am happy to see that the government is bringing in a Bill on this issue. There is great receptivity among the Opposition parties. It is one of those very few Bills that have crossed the quicksand of the Standing Committee in four months. It has been passed unanimously without one voice of dissent. That is wonderful. In fact,the Standing Committee has suggested minor tweaks to make it even more foolproof. In the next session,I suppose it will become an Act.

Coomi Kapoor: But the producers’ argument is that the singer is just as important.

Javed Akhtar: We’ll be happy if they give this kind of royalty to singers also. We have no problem with that. This Bill is not creating a royalty or starting a new one. Such royalties exist across the world,we just don’t receive them in India. This Bill will protect that royalty which is prevalent but is generally taken away by a lopsided contract. When a musician like Pt Ravi Shankar or Hari Prasad Chaurasia signs a contract with a company,the company says we will produce your album,provided you give us the rights in perpetuity. So the rights are there,till the writer or music director signs off these rights. The new law will say that you can buy the copyright,but these royalties will not go hand in hand with the copyright. They are non-assignable.

Suanshu Khurana: Talking about Pt. Ravi Shankar,his recording of Saare Jahaan Se Achcha is still called an Indian HMV recording. It is not even attributed to him.

Javed Akhtar: Nowadays,any song you catch on TV has no writer’s name,music director’s name or the singer’s name,it is Saregama,or Tips or T-Series. This is unbelievable. It does not happen anywhere else in the world. Recently,at a music awards function,CEOs of different music companies went along with the musicians to receive the awards. Have you ever seen that happening at the Grammy Awards? It is pathetic.

Shefalee Vasudev: The India in which you carved out the character of the angry young man has become an India that is perhaps angrier still or has reason to be more outraged than earlier. But the angry young man seems to disappeared from films. The protagonists are happy dancing to bhangra beats,etc.

Javed Akhtar: As I said,films are no longer being made for people who are angry; the films are being made for people who are having a party. I don’t say multiplexes are a bad phenomenon because they have allowed us to make different kinds of films. I don’t think Indian cinema had ever seen this kind of variety before. But these films turn a blind eye to Indian social realities because people who are angry don’t buy tickets worth Rs 500. And anyone who can buy a Rs 500 ticket will not be angry. It is as simple as that. So if I am making a film for the multiplex,why would I make my hero angry? This kind of film will be patronised by people who are doing fine and don’t want to be disturbed. The fifties and sixties were different days: rich people were bad people,poor people were good people. It was so easy to see everything in black and white terms. Now,everyone is in a grey area,so where are the villains? We don’t have them any longer.

Vandita Mishra: When you were writing the scripts,how far was politics a direct influence? Did you have a political ideology or stance?

Javed Akhtar: A lot has been written on Deewar but at the time,we were blissfully unaware of any social implication or relevance of our scripts. We thought they were good stories and were having fun writing them. Perhaps it is good that we were unaware. When a writer is aware of the social implications and of a character in that socio-economic milieu,the writer is seated outside that ethos and is looking at it. But if you are unaware,you are breathing in that situation,you are part of the situation. So we were just average Indians and maybe we were in sync with the times.