Seventeen Tomatoes

Any controversy is good controversy when it comes to promoting movies in Bollywood.  First it was the ‘3 Idiots’  with Chetan Bhagat and Chopra-Hirani-Aamir fighting over the credits and now its ‘My Name is Khan’ with Shiv Sena and Shah Rukh Khan fighting over whether Pakistani players should have been involved in IPL-3.  It is interesting to note that when it came to ‘3 Idiots’ and ‘Five Point Someone’ controversy both the movie and book did excellent business after the controversy.  ‘Five Point Someone’ was already one of the bestseller in the Indian market but that was way back in 2004.  The movie ended up reviving interest in the novel.  And even more interestingly, both Bhagat and Hirani told everyone to read the book and then see the movie to compare the two.  Now that’s called cross-promotion.

Shah Rukh started promoting ‘My Name is Khan’ the moment he was held up for questioning by US Immigration for 66 minutes (not 2 hours as he told everyone).  Anyone who has visited US should know that they do extra questioning based on where you come from, what you look like, what you wear on your head and God Forbid if you have a common name (read muslim name).  So, why the fuss?  Has anyone noticed the attitude of Indian Immigration Officers at our airports.  And now Shiv Sena wants Shah Rukh to leave the country and goto Pakistan because he supported Pakistani cricket players to join IPL-3.  I am not saying any of the above controversies have been created by ‘My Name is Khan’ team to promote the movie but its still a controversy that may help the movie, which is based on racial profiling.  And that’s my friends is called gross-promotion.

2009 has been a great year for Indian cinema with movies like 3 Idiots, Delhi 6, Dev D, Firaaq,    Kaminey, Kurbaan, Love Aaj Kal, Paa, Wake Up Sid and my favorite Rocket Singh.  Ranbir Kapoor has  been a revelation as an actor this year with three diverse roles in ‘Ajab Prem ke…’, ‘Wake Up Sid’ and ‘Rocket Singh…’.  If ‘Ajab Prem ke…’ saw comedy timing of Ranbir coming to fore, ‘Wake Up Sid’ saw him create an unforgettable character out of simple story, but it was ‘Rocket Singh…’ that showed his full range as an actor.

Shimit Amin and Jaideep Sahni have made some of the best movies in recent years with ‘Ab tak Chappan’, ‘Chak de India’ and now ‘Rocket Singh…’.  Unfortunately, ‘Rocket Singh…’ hasn’t done very well at box office unlike ‘3 Idiots’ but the whole point of the makers of the movie was to be true to the script without compromising on authenticity of the characters.  Akshay Kumar may have made ‘Sardars’ cool in the movies but Ranbir is the one who played it with utmost sincerity.  The movie is now being shown in some ethics classes as it does make that point without being ‘preachy’ (Swades was another of my favorite movies which was accused of being ‘preachy’).

Movies are a mirror of the society, so whether it was the freedom of 50’s or skepticism of 60’s or anger of 70’s or back to family values of 80’s or romanticism of newly rich of 90’s or more recently emergence of youth power.  Movies like ‘Rocket Singh…’, ‘Dev D’, ‘Wake up Sid’ or ‘Kaminey’ are testament to that emergence.