Lessons From The Failure Of ‘Guzaarish’

An argument often put forth by stars, especially, is that they charge only what the market offers them, that they don’t put a gun to the heads of producers or, in other words, don’t force producers to pay them what they demand as their fees. While the argument is not baseless, there is something known as responsibility on the part of stars also. Stars like Shah Rukh Khan and Aamir Khan don’t need to coax producers to pay them what they can easily command. In fact, producers would be falling over one another to sign the two Khans at whatever price they quote. If, in spite of this, Aamir and Shah Rukh don’t charge fees which can jeopardise the success of their films, what are the other stars talking about not putting a gun to their producers’ heads? The stars’ considerateness towards the producers’ needs has to come from within; it can’t be tutored. The greed for money is what drives everyone to work harder. But if the stars and technicians took a more compassionate view of the filmmaking process, they’d automatically feel like being more realistic, at least when it comes to demanding fees in the case of films devoid of universal appeal.

Actually, there aren’t too many producers or directors who are willing to admit to even themselves that their films lack universal appeal. So touchy are filmmakers about what they are making that even a hint by an outsider that the film may hold attraction for only a section of the audience would not go down well with them. That’s not the case in Hollywood where producers, directors and stars are quite open about the fact that their film may be targetting only a niche audience. But here, in Bollywood, any talk about lack of universality of appeal in a film is akin to telling the filmmaker that he doesn’t know his job. Indian filmmakers seem to be obsessed about pleasing all and sundry, whatever may be the subject they are tackling in their films. It is for this reason that no thought goes into budgeting films based on who the target viewers would be. This is truer if the film is being made with top-of-the-line stars and directors. To think that top actors and technicians would lack mass appeal would be blasphemy, it seems. Given this scenario, where is the chance to plan budgets according to the target audience when, the world seems to be the target audience for any and every film?

More often than not, it is the budgets in the film industry that fail, not the films. ‘Guzaarish’ is one more example of this. For, it seems to have gone down well with the gentry audience. Unfortunately, the size of the gentry audience in India is not large enough to justify the investment made in the film. The merits of the film come much later. What matters before that is that ab initio, the investments in films in many cases seem so prohibitive that those films seem to be dangerous propositions even before the public verdict on them is out. Some correction – sorry, a lot of correction – in budgeting is the need of the hour. Otherwise, we will have many more Guzaarishes to cry over. And then, as Hrithik Roshan’s character in the film, unable to bear the pain of his disease, pleads for court permission to end his own life, our producers may also want to kill themselves, unable to bear the losses they may have suffered due to horrendously wrong budgeting.