Pardon me – this one begins straight on point.
“I’m not here to tell you who to fuck. Fuck a horse if you want, have a good time – but tell a good story when you narrate it. That’s what matters.”
My professor was (is) a unique person. He barely taught us film-making in the conventional sense of the word at all – instead, he used to get stoned and just…talk. He used to just say things. Those sayings would sometimes morph into rants – and at times, even hate speeches. But in the midst of those rampant monologues, I would fervently scribble down (almost) each and every thing he said.
“What are you writing?” The guy sitting behind me would ask, curiously peering over my shoulder.
“Everything,” I would say, while my hands were ready to note down the next thing he would say and my mind was reeling with the genius of the last thing he said.
Because seriously – how many different ways can one tell the story of fucking a horse?
I realize it depends on factors like these –
- How many people fucked that horse
- How many people saw it happening
- How many people narrated the story to others
- How many of those who heard the story told it to other people, and
- Who was the owner of the horse, if the horse had an owner
Let’s scurry past all possible permutations and combinations and arrive at a safe conclusion: there could be thousands of versions. Some would of course be more interesting than others. They would be hilarious, while others would be painful. Some of them could turn you on, and yet some others would probably make you puke in disgust.
One of them…a truly great one…could even make you want to have sexual intercourse with a horse.
Therein lies the power of the storyteller, and his unique perspective. For me, this is one of the most amazing things about this world – give ten people the same script (or a canvas, or a blank page, or a guitar), and they would create ten distinct works of art.
This realization is at the foundation of my ever so gloomy and cynical nature about the state of our commercial cinema.
“Don’t try to tell an original story – there are none. Instead, try to tell a story in an original way.”
The Hindi Film Industry usually tells unoriginal stories in unoriginal ways, and that is why a lot of people are done with it. Even when it does have an interesting story to tell, say, for example, Dangal… it is still told in a very uninspired, unoriginal way. And that is done out of one and one reason only: fear.
Most filmmakers (and established actors) today are afraid of experimenting with interesting scripts and narratives because apparently the Indian Audience at large is very unwelcoming towards change (as is generally believed). Them studios and production houses have put the most amount of pressure on them, limiting their artistic freedom to ensure it’s done exactly the way that ‘works’…
“Film is a lot like dreaming. It’s like you can give someone a nightmare or an orgasm. It’s mass hypnotism.”
…and filmmaking is an expensive hobby, no doubt. One of the most expensive hobbies out there. The urgency of earning back the money invested into it is completely understandable. But why do they so convincingly believe that playing it safe and sticking to the formula is the right way? Even sex can get boring. Everybody knows this. We constantly invent and explore new ways to orgasm, so why can’t we give the audience one too? In a new, fresh way every time? Why do we have to, say, just make them feel satisfied when instead we can truly satisfy them?
Maybe, when it happened two years ago, people behind the digital revolution of content thought the same. Thanks to them, we suddenly had the option of watching something like a web-series – not overtly dramatic, plausibly real, containing balanced and relatable humour, and because it was written to be an original telling of an original story.
This was exciting. We were seeing stories about people we knew – people we knew were so real. We were seeing a burst of short films, each about something new, something we probably always knew but had never thought of talking about to someone else. We were not having to hear beeps instead of lovely cuss words and we could see censored content. Art was being art in all its glory. It was all so perfect! But then…slowly…as everything started being hailed as ‘new, fresh and relatable’, that beautiful thought settled into its own comfort-zone.
So the stories have gradually become more and more unoriginal and the narratives are consistently the same tried and tested ones. We also realized, much to our broken but unsurprised hearts, that even the most original and earliest works of this revolution were ‘inspired’ from the West. More and more of these films and web-series are now being churned out everyday, and since they’re getting more and more expensive to make and more and more people are turning producers…more and more brands are therefore coming in to ‘produce’ this content. These brands are, unfortunately, under the misguided impression that these stories are nothing but mediums to market their own product. And the desperate filmmaker, like me, who is lost on the road between wanting to be heard and wanting to be known, semi-willingly squeezes in a scene that markets their product in the most hilariously ridiculous way, temporarily forgetting and subconsciously forgiving himself for disintegrating the sanctity and beauty of art, if he is even aware of such a thing anymore…
Till I knew him, at least, my professor was surely aware. He aspired, and perhaps still does, to a greater kind of cinema. All art is titillation of the senses, he said, and storytelling is not masturbation, it’s sex. There is someone at the other end receiving what you are throwing. I often find myself wondering what a beautiful thought that is, and that I should share it with people whenever I get the chance. And I often find myself wishing that my professor gets to make his film one day. Just the way he sees it. Just the way I hope to do so too. I do believe I have some interesting stories to tell and some beautiful ways of telling them…Stories about some hidden things in plain sight and things in plain sight we want to be hidden from. Stories that I do not want to contaminate with a forced moment of anything but which is true.
I promise you…none of them have anything to do with fucking a horse.
Meanwhile, beyond the settled dust of tired scripts and soulless narratives, beyond all that shameless brand placement, beyond practiced and perfected smiles and calculated heartbreaks, there are some silhouettes still lingering in the chaos…filmmakers who are daring to be true. Who are blind to the ignorance and ignorant of the blind – because they can’t really describe the world they are living in, what they see everyday and how they perceive it. They can’t really say how it’s different – how it seems so unique… but what they can do, and what they are trying to do, and what they hope they can do, is show you. Maybe you have already met some of these people and seen what they have to show. But in a higher probability you will come across a lot more of them in the weeks, months and years to come. When you do…be nice. They are some of the truly lost, most misunderstood and loneliest people you will ever meet.
And all these people, wherever they are, whatever they are doing, I say, hold on to your belief, please, and never let go. You shall prevail. Know that – “If you have something to say, there is a good chance there is somebody somewhere who’ll want to listen to it.”
And oh! The very last thing said by my professor that I have written in my notebook, almost ironically, reminds us all of the irony of that struggle –
“In this world, you are so dependent on the kindness of strangers…”
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[The author is a young filmmaker navigating the choppy waters of big, bad B-town. Visit his Facebook page here]
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