ALI'S NOTES

COME, SAVE THEM. COME, SAVE YOUR SOULS
Who says this world of films is a world infected by heartless and ruthless hawks? Who says this world of films I love with my whole soul, whole mind and whole body is a world where every man and woman is a world by himself, a world built by himself, for himself, with a gate stronger than any gate to banish anyone else, even his near and dear ones at times from entering? Who says this world is a wicked world, a wild world, a world where only the wild, the wicked, the wily, the winners at any wild cost, even at the cost of destroying someone, thrive? Who says this world of films is just a slice of what the eternally burning block of hell is said to be like?

Like I always say I can give you any number of examples to prove them all wrong, to prove that the world they have taken for granted, the world they have imagined as the truth, the bitter, biting truth is not the real world. But just this one example will suffice. Some months ago I lost my young photographer, Mr RD Rai. He was snatched away by the icy hands of death after being struck down by a disease no man in the world, yes, no man in the world growing great in widsom has been able to find a cure for. He can land on any other planet, explore unknown worlds beyond his world, he can threaten to build a brave new world, but he still cannot find a cure for this curse. What are you, you petty little men who dream of defying destiny, of challenging God, doing about this curse?

Rai, an unassuming man who had come up the hard way (He came from a village, rose from being a tea-boy in a roadside hotel to be the senior photographer of Screen, on talent alone). Some of his photographs have made him immortal but he has left behind his uneducated wife who doesn’t know the difference between a fifty rupee note and a five hundred rupee note. I made an earnest appeal for help for Mrs Kamla Rai and her children. And I was moved, touched to the core of my being to see the overwhelming response of some great people in the industry. I succeeded in collecting a sum that could give Mrs Rai and her children some strength. I am sure some more men and women will come forward with offers to help my friend, Rai’s family. Rai an illiterate man wanted his children to get a good education. His dream can be fulfilled if some more men and women open up their hearts (and their purses will open automatically). I know it is difficult in these trying times. But try my friends, try not to lose this opportunity to save your souls covered by rust, dust and even muck.

Mogambo tastes blood
It’s men like Govind Nihalani, Rajkumar Santoshi and Priyadarshan (Priyadarshan more than the other two men) who have forced Amrish Puri to taste blood and now there’s no one, no power, nothing to stop him from moving on the prowl, looking for more and more victims, more and more blood (read roles for victims and the quality of roles for blood).

Amrish Puri was gradually turning into a man-eater, a monster, a Mogambo mouthing all kinds of mumbo jumbo and making mince-meat of heroes (some of them pint-sized in comparison) and finally being bashed, battered, blown-up or just left half-dead to be feasted on by hungry vultures. He would have continued playing this monstrous Amrish Puri, made pots of money and gone home to spend sleepless nights, wondering what he was doing to Amrish Puri, the basically very good actor, the man who had given acting a new definition, a new dimension in theatre.

It was while he was walking around like a Mogamboish robot from film to film that he met directors like Govind, Rajkumar Santoshi and Priyadarshan. They realised there was another Amrish Puri waiting to be provoked into some good and even great acting. They offered him the opportunities. He grabbed them, bit into them, tasted blood and made a meal out of every offer. That’s why you see a very different, very dynamic, even very daring Amrish Puri in films like Ardh Satya, Droh Kaal, Ghayal, Damini, Gardish, Muskurahat and Virasat. These are the films that have given Amrish, the amazing actor, a new life. These are the roles that will help him live long — very long as an actor, live and work to be remembered which is every good and great actor’s wish. Look out for Amrish Puri on the prowl. Any time is a time to attack, to draw blood and taste it now. Khabardar Mogambo bhookha hai!

No, no Nana
No, the people don’t want Nana Patekar to change. They screamed and threatened to set theatres on fire, tear the screens to shreds and strangle the talented young director Sanjay Bansali when he tried to change Nana, the Krantiveer, into Nana, the deaf and dumb man helplessly fighting the vagaries and vicissitudes of life. His love for peace and wisdom and life was what they hated. They just couldn’t believe that the Nana of Maaficha Saakshidaar, a violent film made in Marathi, Ankush, Pratighaat and Tirangaa who gave expression to the pent up feelings of an entire generation could let them down so badly, could give up the fight before fighting it. They (the angry masses) punished Sanjay. They rejected Nana and made it very clear that they were not paying through their nose to see a silently suffering Nana, making suffering a passion, even a fashion.

Nana should have taken the director of hits, Parto Ghosh and producer Pranlal Mehta, both of them experienced men in the selling of stars as products seriously. They should have realised what they were in for when they started Yugpurush, the story of a man who has been reduced to a vegetable after spending twenty-five years in an asylum. He comes back to society bordering on the brink of insanity. He dream-walks through a series of nightmarish situations which shock him back to insanity. He walks in a daze, delivers some sage-like sermons to people whose hearts are made of stone. And then when he can take it no more he goes back into a shell of his own, shocked out of all his senses. They (Nana, Parto and Mehta) had gone several steps ahead of Sanjay Bansali. How could they reduce the Krantiveer (revolutionary) into a hopelessly hopeless vegetable whose life has absolutely no meaning, no message, no substance, no nothing, and yet they made bold to call him a Yugpurush (a giant of an entire generation). It was a crime making such a film with Nana at this critical stage of his career.

True, Nana went out of his way to shatter his image to prove that he is an actor who can take on any challenge, any role and live it. But what about the producer who had a nervous breakdown just two days before the release of the film because people who had seen the film saw no hope for the man, or for Nana. The film with Nana, Jackie and Manisha Koirala couldn’t bring in even 10 per cent of the audience into the theatres on the first day. It was a bigger disaster. I know Nana took a big risk as an actor. He always wanted to do a role like this. He has done it, successfully. It’s a great performance but what about my friend, Pranlal Mehta, the producer?

It’s time to go back to your hut in Pune, Nana, go back and go into a retreat, do some rethinking about yourself, your career, about the industry you are working in, the conditions you are working in.

The showman acts
I wonder how Subhash Ghai failed as an actor even after doing twelve films as a hero, a leading man, the hero “who had a long way to go” like the late Atma Ram who directed him in Umang said. Today, when he has directed and is directing almost all the stars, big and small, I have found him doing some of the most difficult scenes he wants his stars to do in the easiest possible way. I have seen him make Madhuri Dixit blush after she just couldn’t blush even after several efforts. I have seen him make Manisha scream when she couldn’t raise her voice, after he showed her how to. I have seen him make Meenakshi Seshadri cry when she could only laugh, seeing him cry the way he wanted her to cry. I have seen him act out every scene he wants his artistes to perform, even Dilip Kumar. It is this one aspect in which this showman resembles the greatest showman ever, Raj Kapoor. Raj, the director was a model, a demonstrator. The artiste had to just see him perform and was sure to succeed if he copied even one-tenth of how he performed. Now it is Subhash Ghai about whom Jackie Shroff says: “I always give my best performance in a Subhash Ghai film because I just don’t have to work very hard on my performance. I have to just observe him carefully and do as he says. That’s more than half my battle won. That’s the feeling Subhash Ghai gives every artiste, even a junior artiste if he has to play a bit role.”

That actor in Subhash Ghai who struggled to make it an as actor and failed not because of his own fault but because his films flopped, is still alive. I found proof again when I was with him in Chennai last week. He was telling me about how an ordinary young human being dying to be an actor comes begging and pleading to find work the first time and then how that man becomes a star, some sort of a strange monster, a man who changes so much that he ceases to be a man and becomes a robot. Subhash was doing a one man show about how a man becomes a star and how much he changes. He was acting it out. It was moving, entertaining and enlightening. Said Ghai: “The first time the struggler comes in he walks in like a man walking on fire. He stammers and stutters trying his best to inspire you. You decide to sign him on the spur of the moment and there’s a spring in his walk. He strides in the air. He soon has his chamchas. The boy who once touched your feet now waves out. He has a man to help him wear his socks and his shoes, another man to comb his hair, yet another man to puff up his face, one man to light or hold his cigarette, one man to dress him up. The only thing he wears is his underwear. Then there are the men who fan his ego. ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘myself’ are the three words he loves most. All this is fine till the bubble bursts and then he comes back, bends and bows and begs again. Yeh ajeeb zaat hai staron ki. Inse door bhi rahna mushkil, paas bhi. You can’t do anything else. You are in a trap. You love them, you hate them, you love them again. You don’t know whether to pamper them, pity them or throw them out.” I want Subhash Ghai to put on this whole act (the making and breaking of a star) at the next Screen-Videocon awards. It will be a striking eye opener. The world will recognise the good actor the showman still is.