An evening with a Hollywood editor

Yesterday, I spent nearly two hours in the company of a veteran Hollywood video editor.

His name is Kris Trexler and he is an Emmy Award winning editor. Los Angeles-based Trexler has been nominated for the Emmy’s five times in his 30-year career. Twice he has won it. He has worked on hit TV shows in the US, such as In Living Color, Ellen, Titus, According to Jim, and Rita Rocks. He has also edited some music videos of Michael Jackson and Tina Turner and has worked on the taped segments of the Academy Awards.

Most recently, Trexler has been editing the hit Disney dance and comedy show, Shake It Up. After three successful seasons, the show is folding up and Trexler has been hired to edit another hot TV show in Hollywood. His new work starts from next month.

Trexler was addressing some local video editors in the Singapore Media Academy (SMA) in a talent forum yesterday. He is a regular visitor to Singapore and he conducts an editing master class here once a year. He also taught editing at Nanyang Polytechnic a couple of years back and loves Singapore as a city.

Trexler is a self-taught editor. He did not go to any film school. He learnt all the tricks of the editing trade on the job.

Trexler started out in his editing career at a time when digital editing was just taking birth. There was a demand for technicians who could learn to edit films (video) on computers and Trexler jumped into the fray. He became one of the pioneers of computerised video editing, using the revolutionary CMX system to edit “All in the Family” and “The Jeffersons”, top rated CBS network comedies in the late 1970s.

Ever since, he has been constantly employed. He works for eight months and then takes a four month break. It is during the break that he conducts his editing classes.

Video literacy and editing

Today, video is ubiquitous (thanks to smartphones and YouTube and Facebook) and there are plenty of awfully edited videos on the Internet, he said. If people could learn the basics of editing, they could really improve their home videos.

I call this need video literacy. Today we live in the world of videos—from surveillance footage to our casual videos taken through our iPhones and iPads. They all end up somewhere on the Internet. Like we learnt how to read and write in school, how to use syntax and grammar, the same kind of literacy is required to handle the language of video.

In the SMA forum, most of the discussion centred on editing software.

Trexler lamented how Apple’s Final Cut Pro (FCP) X has disappointed professional editors. FCP was a great piece of editing software and after Apple discontinued FCP 7, it fell out of favour. When Apple had announced FCP X after a hiatus of several years, Trexler was over-excited. He wanted to use it to cut his next project on. When the product was finally released and he downloaded it from the App Store, he was disillusioned with what he saw.

The new version is not convenient for editing longer footage, he said. Creating and using duplicates is a problem with the software. However, he thinks that FCP X is great for editing documentaries.

After his initial rejection, Trexler is slowly coming to terms with FCP X again and is exploring it.

Hollywood is a 100 percent Avid town, Trexler said. All Hollywood editors use Avid to edit their footage. Most Hollywood productions use multi-cam footage (videos shot with four-cameras, A, B, C, and X). It is easier to edit such footage on Avid. Avid also has some unique features which other softwares don’t have, he claimed.

Trexler also appreciated Adobe’s editing software, Premiere. He said the software has evolved over the years and many editors are using it now (though not in Hollywood). Apple’s loss (after the folly of FCP X) has been Adobe Premiere’s gain.

If you are budding video editor, Trexler has one simple advice for you: you should learn both FCP and Avid. If you know how to use FCP, it should not be difficult to learn Avid in a day.

That’s what Trexler thinks. You want to try?

[First published at CIO Asia]

Hollywood in the theatre of terror

In some recent Hollywood films, the good guys and the bad guys come from the same institutions, part of the US military or intelligence establishment. Is this a Freudian slip on the part of Hollywood? Is Hollywood trying to tell us something?

Look at some of the Hollywood releases in the recent past: A-Team, Losers, Salt and if you go a little back in time, Green Zone, Traitor, and Body of Lies. What do these films have in common? On the surface, they are action movies, about characters from the US military or intelligence agencies. But beneath the surface reality, there is even a deeper reality: the good guys and the bad guys in all these movies come from the same institutions, part of the US military or intelligence establishment. Is this a Freudian slip on the part of Hollywood? Or is this deliberate?

Freudian slip or not, this looks like a departure from the past. In the cold war days, there was a clear enemy—the communists. There are hundreds of films that have Russians and Vietnamese guerillas as villains. Anti-Nazi Second World War stories are a staple even today (Inglorious Basterds, Valkyrie). For a while, Japan was also cast in a villainous role because of its rise as an industrial competitor (Rising Sun, 1993).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Russia, Hollywood’s villains changed. The former Russian agents would still pop up on the screen from time to Time (Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies, The World Is Not Enough, Salt), but the villain increasingly came from Asia, especially the Middle East (True Lies, 1994; Executive Decision). There would also be scenes of North Korean and Chinese prisons (Spy Game).

Post 9/11, Hollywood’s focus has been on the War on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. But increasingly, the recent trend of Hollywood actioners to have both the protagonist and the antagonist from the same establishment (related government agencies) makes one wonder. Is Hollywood trying to tell us something? Or is it a chink in the psychological armor of Hollywood, betraying the fractured moral landscape of America?

It can be argued that Hollywood is largely about make-believe and to try to understand the world or the American foreign policy through the prism of Hollywood is an erroneous exercise. But to see Hollywood and Pentagon without any umbilical cord will be naïve too. In fact, Pentagon has been known to keep close ties with Hollywood. It has helped in producing films such as Patton, The Green Berets, From Here to Eternity, Transformers, Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, Crimson Tide, Black Hawk Down, and Top Gun.

According to David Robb , former journalist for Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter and author of Operation Hollywood, there is often a quid-pro-quo agreement between the Pentagon and Hollywood studios. For making military-themed or war-themed movies, Hollywood needs Pentagon’s help to shoot on military locations or use military equipment—this is important as it saves cash for the producer.

This Hollywood-Pentagon relationship goes as far back as 1927 (The first Oscar-winning picture, Wings, was made with support from the US Air Force) and even today, says Robb, if a Hollywood producer has to get Pentagon’s assistance, he has to toe Pentagon’s line and show the military in a favorable light (submit five copies of the screenplay, accept their suggestions and changes, and get approval from them before release). In this sense, Hollywood is seen as an “aid in the retention and recruitment of (US military) personnel”. However, the flip side of this deal is that filmmakers have to make compromises in the storyline to suit the image of the US military establishment.

But all filmmakers are not ready to knowtow to the US military. Some of the best Hollywood war movies have been made without the forces’ help: Apocalypse Now, Platoon, MASH, Catch-22, Full Metal Jacket, Dr Strangelove, Three Kings. In recent times, anti-Iraq/Bush war movies such as Redacted, Rendition, Battle for Haditha, Stop Loss, In the Valley of Elah were also produced without the military’s help.

But of late, it looks like there is an open rebellion against the military in Hollywood. The only other plausible reason is that Hollywood is unable to find any other convincing villains but from the establishment. That’s why, even some of the not so serious movies are showing the villains from the establishment. They are depicted as rogue (such as double agent David Headley who was involved in the terror attacked on Mumbai). For example, in Joe Carnahan’s A-Team, an elite army team led by John “Hannibal” Smith (Liam Neeson) is imprisoned for a crime they did not commit in Iraq. The guy who frames them is a CIA agent (Patrick Wilson). In Sylvain White’s Losers, an elite United States Special Forces team sent into the Bolivian jungle on a search-and-destroy mission is presumably killed by their own mission commander. Phillip Noyce’s Salt fits into the cold war era spy thriller genre but it still has the enemy coming from within the CIA itself (though, for a twist, the rogue agent works for the Russians).

Similarly, in Green Zone, Traitor and Body of Lies—damage to US interest is shown to be done by an insider. In Green Zone, a movie inspired by the non-fiction 2006 book Imperial Life in the Emerald City by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, director Paul Greengrass shows that the lie that was fed to the US administration, and in turn the public, for Iraq’s having weapons of mass destruction came from an insider with other interests. Likewise, both Traitor and Body of Lies—the two films that powerfully handle themes of Islamic terrorism—highlight the bad apples within the US military establishment.

The question that begs asking is this: how come Hollywood is showing the fracture in the US defense establishment? How is this schizophrenia of moral polarity being allowed so unchecked?

Has mainstream Hollywood recently discovered its tongue, and the pleasures of freedom of expression? Or is it the case that Hollywood’s new heroes must ask tough questions and fight against the rot in their own midst. Perhaps in a post 9/11 net-savvy world, Hollywood can’t blatantly show the propaganda of the US military any more. The filmgoers are aware of the bungling of the US military: lies about the WMDs in Iraq, the Abu Ghraib episode, rendition, atrocities committed by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, loss of American soldiers in the war zone and so on.

At a psychological level, Hollywood’s new heroes are also trying to sooth the guilt of ordinary Americans in whose name more than a million of people have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. If there are bad Americans who are causing pain in the world, there are good Americans too who take care of the bad ones. That seems to be the psychology at work in Hollywood.

Meanwhile, Pentagon is focusing on sci-fi movies aimed at younger audiences for military recruitment. So you will see more of War of the Worlds, Iron Man and Transformers in coming years.

Here is an Aljazeera documentary/discussion on Hollywood and the war machine with Oliver Stone, the eight times Academy Award-winning filmmaker; Michael Moore, the Academy Award-winning filmmaker; and Christopher Hedges, an author and the former Middle East bureau chief of the New York Times.

Coming soon to your computer screen

If talks between Hollywood studios and YouTube don’t break down, film buffs would have less reason to make a trip to the pirated video sellers.

More on my MIS Asia blog

Om Farah Om

She is the daughter of a mother so obsessed with films that she watched a movie on her way to the hospital to deliver a baby. Her father was a filmmaker and her brother, now a director, earns a living making fun of Bollywood's hamming actors. She is married to an editor-filmmaker husband who edits all her movies.

Judged by the filmlore dictum that you are as good as your last film, Farah Khan can lay claim to be the hottest director in Bollywood at this time. She directed the blockbuster of the year, Om Shanti Om (OSO) (Red Chillies Entertainment), beating the much hyped Saawariya (Bollywood's first Hollywood-backed film, financed by Sony Pictures) in the box office battle. The two films were pitted against each other, releasing on the same day during Diwali last year.

Saawariya was directed and produced by one of the most celebrated directors of Bollywood, Sanjay Leela Bhansali. While Om Shanti Om has emerged as the highest grosser of the year (netting in over Rs 100 crores in 5 weeks), Saawariya has been declared a flop (grossing some Rs 38 crores in the same duration).

(Update: Even though Sony Pictures maintains that they are not disappointed in Saawariya's box office performance, Mahesh Bhatt writes in his India Se column, Jan 2008, that "according to experts and insiders, Saawariya is going to lose not less than Rs 30 crores. And this is a conservative figure").

OSO, headlined and produced by Shah Rukh Khan, has been such a commercial hit that it is being dubbed as the most successful Bollywood film ever. And despite its being based around hackneyed themes of reincarnation and double role, it has won appreciation from both the masses and classes of India, a feat in iteself.

"After watching Om Shanti Om, I felt that the spirit of Manmohan Desai has been reborn as Farah Khan," said a film buff from Varanasi, referring to the one of the most successful directors of the 70s and 80s Bollywood, Manmohan Desai, who was well-known for his lost and found formula films that have now become legends of Hindi filmlore.

Writing in his column in Mint, India's top journalist and columnist Vir Sanghvi said that films like OSO have made the elite of India drop their snobbish notions about Hindi cinema. He said: "There was a time, not so long ago, when India was divided into people who saw Hindi movies and those who saw Hollywood movies... (These days) It’s entirely acceptable to want to see Bollywood and Hollywood films on the same weekend. And even when the film is an unabashed, joyous retread of Hindi film clichés and a homage to the movies of the 1970s—say Om Shanti Om—it becomes such a rage that its appeal cuts across all socio-economic groups."

The Feminine touch

In the last 100 years or so, Bollywood has produced scores of capable directors but Farah Khan, 42, is the only 'woman' director to have got nominated for the 'Filmfare best director award', India's one of the most established film honours. That was in 2004 for her debut directorial venture, Main Hoon Na (MHN). MHN, a masala potbioler headlined by superstar Shah Rukh Khan, was huge commercial hit. This year, Farah Khan outsrtipped her earlier success with Om Shanti Om.

In an industry where men rule and females just provide the backdrop, the question to ask is this: How did this 42 years old choreographer-turned-director make a superhit movie, a feat no female director in Bollywood could achieve so far?

Though Bollywood has had female directors like Sai Paranjpaye, Aparna Sen (though based in Kolkata) and Kalpana Lajmi who have made sensitive films but they mostly worked in a, if you will, a parallel universe, Bollywood's mainstream being shut off for them. They have made some important films like Rudaali (1993), Chashme Buddoor (1981), 36 Chowringhee Lane (English, 1981), to name a few, but they were never counted among the top directors in Bollywood. The qualification needed for getting the top billing is determined by the commercial successes of their films. In recent years, veteran lyricist and filmmaker Gulzar's daughter Meghna Gulzar (a film grduate of New York University who debuted with a commercially flop, Filhaal, 2002 ), Tanuja Chandra (Dushman, 1998; Sangharsh, 1999), Leena Yadav (Shabd, 2005), and Reema Kagti (Honeymoon Travels Pvt. Ltd., 2007) have donned the directorial hat too but they haven't tasted much success. If there was any doubt that women cannot deliver box office blockbusters in India, Farah's success has disproved it byond doubt.

But like any 21st century woman, Farah does not take the gender-tinted compliment. “I’m a choreographer, and a director. That I’m a woman too is incidental,” Farah stated. Her point is that she’s different from her male counterparts “perhaps not in directorial skills but definitely in organisational abilities”.

As they say, the devil is in the detail, Farah's shoots encompass much detailing and a woman’s touch. “I do make an extra effort to put flowers and fruits in the actor’s van...That could qualify as a “woman thing” to do...Or blaming my temper on PMS... Or coping with morning sickness while shooting a funky number like Dard-e-disco,” she told The Hindustan Times. Interestingly, Farah is expecting triplets in Februray and she was was going for checkups between shoots, at times taking four injections and then returning cheerfully to the sets. “How many men can boast of that?” she asked.

Pregnancy. Cinema. Pain. Melodramatic moments. All these are not new to Farah. In a weird sense, life has been imitating art in Farah's case.

Farah comes from a film family. Her father Kamran Khan was a successful producer of small-time films. Her mother also came from a film family, her sisters were the once-famous child artists, Honey and Daisey Irani (the former a successful film scriptwriter, the latter now a TV producer). Life was idyllic with "swank cars and plenty of homes". Then suddenly things took a bad turn. Writes Shoma Chaudury in Tehelka: "In 1973, the inevitable happened. Kamran Khan tripped in the casino of life: he made a film that was a colossal disaster. The failures began to cascade after that. The money disappeared, the houses disappeared, the cars disappeared. True to the ironies of Bollywood, the film was called Aisa Bhi Hota Hai."

The idyllic childhood turned into a nightmare. Farah's father took to drinking and never recovered. The family moved to a small space in a relative's house. While still a student, Farah began to work to help the family. She would work "at whatever she could lay her hands on: colony surveys, tuitions, teaching Mithun Chakravarty’s son Michael Jackson dance steps. One time, she won a dance competition prize to Mauritius but she had the ticket converted to money to help her mother keep the household going."

The turning point in her life came with Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikandar (1992) when producer Nasser Hussain took her on as an assitant director, and when the film's choreographer walked out of the project, she was asked to do the dance direction. Thus was born the choreographer Farah Khan who redefined dancing in Bollywood, making it hip and happening. Since then, she has choreographed for over 70 films, including for superhits such as 1942, A Love Story, Dil Se, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge, and Dil Chahta Hai. She has also done international projects such as the broadway musical, Bombay Dreams, and choreography for Latin Singer Shakira for her performance at the MTV Music Video Awards.

Now a successful filmmaker, Farah does not want to do much choreography and wants to focus on film direction. Who can contest that idea?

However, Farah's critics argue that Farah's success at the box office is more to do with her being backed by the king of bollywood, Shah Rukh Khan. The superstar banrolled and acted in both her films. Though Farah's talent and ingenuity cannot be discounted, there might be some merit in this argument. But only time can test the veracity of this criticism. And for that, we will have to wait for her next few projects. But more than an individual success, Farah's success can inspire other upcoming women directors to buck the trend in Bollywood . Like Farah, they too can raise money and market their films, which has discouraged many women from helming films in the past.

An edited version of this article appeared in The Weekend Today, Singapore dt. Jan 5-6, 2008. In the print edition, it was wrongly mentioned that Daisy Irani is based in Singapore. The error is regretted.

On Prakash Jha

There are very few film directors in Bollywood who are not only critically acclaimed filmmakers but are also commercially savvy entrepreneurs. Prakash Jha is one of them.

From Hip Hip Hurray (HHH, 1984) to Apaharan (2005), Prakash Jha's cinematic journey has been long and varied. Jha, who made his directorial debut with HHH, a movie featuring youngsters focussing on sports, has wowed audiences with his politically sensitive films like Gangajal (2003) and Apaharan in recent years. Both the films have been commercial and critical successes.

But Jha is not the one to rest on his past laurels or limit himself to the director's chair. Today he is charting a different path, shaping a new future, not just for Bollywood but also for his home state, Bihar.

Jha, who has recently floated his own production house, Prakash Jha Productions, after more than three decades of independent filmmaking, was in Patna when I spoke to him. "We are building multiplex cinemas in Bihar and Jharkhand," he said. "We have just started building four. We have acquired 16. We intend to build one multiplex in every district which is totalling about 30."

Writing, direction, production and now distribution--Jha has done it all with a great impact.

From Bihar to Bollywood

Prakash Jha was born on February 27, 1952, in Patna, Bihar. After finishing school, he migrated to Delhi. In 1970, after graduating from the University of Delhi, he moved back to his native place to work on family farms. But the love of cinema drove him to the learning portals of the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune in 1972. Ever since he came out of the film school, he has spun celluloid dreams. He has been working independently since 1974.

Jha began his career as a director with Hip Hip Hurray (1984), starring Raj Kiran and Deepti Naval. He got instant recognition with this film. His next film, Damul (1985), further strengthened his reputation as a director. Damul's theme was socioeconomic and political exploitation. It depicted the caste politics of rural Bihar. This announced the arrival of a new voice in the offbeat movie genre. The movie bagged six National Awards and a couple of international honors, which added to his prestige.

Post- Damul, there was no looking back for Jha. The following years, a number of films came from this talented filmmaker and he started making sensitive films keeping an eye on the commercial elements of cinema. These included Parinati (1986), Bandish (1996), Mrityudand (1997), Dil Kya Kare (1999) and Rahul (2001). Apart from features, he has made 42 documentaries till date. He also contributed to the genre of Hindi sitcoms on Indian television with his comedy series, Mungherilal Ke Haseen Sapne (1990), which became very popular.

Changing Lanes

As the art film movement began to wane in India in the 1990s, Jha tried to change track and make a place for himself in the mainstream movie world of Mumbai. His first commercial venture, Bandish (1996) failed at the box office despite having stars like Jackie Shroff and Juhi Chawla in the cast. An undeterred Jha mounted another ambitious project, called Mrityudand (1997). The film, a tribute to women, had reigning superstar Madhuri Dixit in the lead role. Set in rural Bihar, it featured two protagonists, played by Dixit and Shabana Azmi, who challenge the social mores designed and controlled by the male order. Jha's gamble paid off this time, as the film got both public and critical appreciation. He had made a place for himself in mainstream Bollywood. His next few films, Dil Kya Kare (1999), Rahul (2001), Apaharan and Gangajal cemented his position in Bollywood as a leading filmmaker.

Over the years, Jha's ouevre has been increasingly dealing with political issues, especially set in the backdrop of Bihar. While Gangajal depicted the good and bad elements of the police force in Bihar manipulated by its wily politicians, Apharan explored the complex relationship between a father (Mohan Agashe) and son (Ajay Devgan), set against the backdrop of a thriving kidnapping industry in Bihar. His next directorial venture, Rajneeti, will again deal with a similar theme. "It is a take on the India democratic system, loktantra as we call it," he told me. The film is in pre-production stage and shooting is expected to start in Januray 2008.

New Initiatives

Founding a production house of his own has marked a new beginning for this filmmaker. He intends to produce 4-5 films every year under his banner. "I will make evey kind of film which I think will work," he said.

The first film to come out of his stable is Dil Dosti etc. (2007) which has has been helmed by a debutant director, Manish Tiwari. Does it mean his production house will promote new talent?

"Yeah, I am quite open to it," he said in affirmation.

Speaking of Dil Dosti Etc, he said, "This was a first time director Manish Tewary with a cast of small time actors and it works very well for its cost."

The response to this new film has been good. "It is doing pretty well in most of India. Apart from the eastern territory which is Bengal and Bihar, the film is doing extremely well in Delhi, Jaipur, Indore, Bombay, Mysore, and the first week collections have met our expectations," he told India Se.

As a filmmaker, as Jha has changed gears, so has the filmmaking scene in an ever-evolving Bollywood. More and more corporate houses and even Hollywood studios are getting into Bollywood. What does he make of this transition?

"I don't think the variety of films is likely to change very much. The Indian market is also in transition. You didn't hear a few years ago like weekend collections of films, films recovering their cost in one week in India. So, the full texture of marketing is changing rapidly. That is what is attracting the western studios," he said.

So, is Jha afraid of these changes? Will he work with the Hollywood studios if given a chance? "Given a chance, I think, means if there is a subject which is acceptable and there's a market for it, then why not?" he said.

But Hollywood's studios have this reputation of limiting a director's creativity. Will it not upset him? "I don't know. I haven't dealt with them. And if marketing begins to dictate your content, then so be it," he said candidly.

For such a fearless filmmaker, nothing can come in the way of achieving greater success.

A version of this piece appeared in India Se (Nov. 2007). Khoya Khoya Chand, directed by Sudhir Mishra, is Prakash Jha Production's next release.

Why are Hollywood movies so bad?

American film scholar Prof Ray Carney on the Hollywood system of filmmaking:

Why are Hollywood movies so bad? The best way to answer the question is simply to take you behind the scenes on a quick cook's tour of how movies are really made. I warn you. It's not a pretty picture.

The first thing you never want to forget about the movies in that–first , last and always–they are business deals put together to make a quick buck. To say the obvious, the goal is to take $7.50 out of as many pockets as possible. Everything is directed to that interest.

There was an interview in the last Saturday's Globe with Sydney Lumet that more or less sums up the current state of the art.

Lumet's comments are all the more telling in that they don't come from some wild-eyed radical, but from the ultimate Hollywood insider. Lumet has been making successful, money-making Hollywood movies for more than 40 years.

On the other hand, of course a Stalin movie would never really be made precisely because it would be controversial and would alienate blocks of viewers, and jeopardize profits.

What Hollywood is in favor of is not controversy, but pseudo-controversy. On the one hand, you want people to think that your movie is really new and different and controversial; but on the other, you don't want to actually create a disturbance. You don't want to force viewers really to have to think or to learn something. If you are dealing with politics in particular, the formula involves taking a topical issue–Watergate, Vietnam, the Holocaust–but making sure that it is situated at a certain distance from the average viewer's experience or knowledge.

Hollywood movies take our common-sense understandings and sell them back to us, with a slight change of clothes. It's a little like one of those MacDonald's Happy Meal promotions. You add a new spice or condiment or action figure to deep people's interest, but basically you give them the same fast food over and over again.

In terms of the production of these films, timidity is built into the system at every level. Movies originate as "deals"–business arrangements hashed out between producers, directors, writers, and a group of stars, in which the movie itself becomes an almost incidental after-thought: The real goal of each of the parties is to protect his or her financial interest, and to maximize the final product's "bankability."

In the service of doing that, the overriding goal is to secure a name star at any cost. When I talk to beginning directors, it's usually the first story they tell me: How they took their first script to a studio–sometimes a marvelous script–and were told the project could only get a green light if a particular "name" actor plays the lead–if Johnny Depp or Tom Hanks or Tom Cruise can be persuaded to do it–no matter how ludicrously inappropriate that particular choice might be for the role.

Then once a real "star" signs on to a production, the dynamics of the deal allow the star to demand as many rewrites as he or she wants until they are happy with the script.

If this interests you, you should read the entire article/talk script.

Bollywood, on the other hand, is not much different.

Bombay's hottest director Anurag Kashyap wrote this on Bollywood way back in 2004:

Things have changed for Indian cinema. Foreign funding is on its way here. Venture capitalists are squeezing in through the door. Everyone from Bandra to Jogeshwari is making the next 'crossover' film. (If that's not enough, now there's even a company called Crossover!) Everyone's speculating as to who's the tallest poppy in the field.

Do we really believe all of this? We certainly seem to. But then why are our films not working? Where is all the insane amount of money pumped into the industry going? Why is everybody adding mysterious alphabets to their names? When successful cinema is all about the beauty of the story being told, then why are Mr 'Numerology' Jumani and Sunita 'Tarot' Menon key decisive factors in the success of our films?

Furthermore, he adds something that instantly links up with the Hollywood scenario described above by Ray:

Every time I, as a filmmaker, go to a producer with my script, he asks me, before so much as laying a finger on the document, 'Who is the star?' Directors who don't have a single 'good' film (or a 'successful' one for that matter, as the two are not synonymous in this country) to their credit are heading corporates, taking decisions on how films should and shouldn't be made. They are so plum in their newfound job security that they don't take a decision until and unless it is everyone's decision. So that if they fail, everyone is responsible, not just them.

One head might roll. A bunch of heads generally gets a second chance!

Anurag's No Smoking is releasing today in India. Writes The Guardian: "While a slack pace, unsettled internal logic and a goofy subplot undo much of director Kashyap's hard work, the film has a slick look. If and when Bollywood does deliver a crossover hit, it's likely this film-maker will be behind it."

In a recent rediff.com interview, the Black Friday and No smoking director also blames the Indian film journalists for the poor film appreciation culture in India:

No journalist in India watches cinema, unlike film journalists abroad. Go to a film festival, you see so many journalists there.

Indian journalists don't watch cinema, they only cover gossip. That is why nobody has a clue about cinema. They don't even know what questions to ask. They ask the same questions: 'What is John doing? What is Ayesha doing?'

The problem with this country is its media that covers cinema. Our cinema is immature. Our media is very immature. Our critics are worse than our filmmakers. Our film journalism is the worst in the world. Barring a few critics, nobody has a clue what they are talking about.

Hollywood goes to Bollywood

PATRICK FRATER writes in Variety:

Warner Bros. on Tuesday unveiled its first India production, the action comedy "Made in China," for which it will hold worldwide rights.
With the film -- helmed by Nikhil Advani ("Salaam-e-ishq") and produced by Indian shingles Ramesh Sippy Prods. and Orion Pictures --Warner joins Viacom, Sony and Disney in the accelerating Hollywood race to make movies in India.

Though Hollywood fare flourishes overseas, it accounts for a small percentage of the box office in India --the world's second most populous nation. For example, Hollywood fare accounted for 85% of Spain's B.O. in 2006 but only 8% in India.

Since more multiplexes mean the Indian B.O. pie is growing, Hollywood is determined to increase its share -- and rather than bringing Western influence into the movie biz, the plan is to get into the Bollywood game.