Kunal Kohli's MSN columns

I recently came across these articles by Kunal Kohli, a Bollywood director from the Johar-Chopra camp, who has on MSN a column imaginatively called "The Kunal Kohli Column":
http://content.msn.co.in/Lifestyle/Moreonlifestyle/LifestyleIS_1242.htm
http://content.msn.co.in/Entertainment/Bollywood/special_kunalkohli_column.htm
Reading these articles just reinforced the notion that the Bollywood folk have distressingly been placed on pedestals, resulting in gigantic egos and are very much in need of a reality check.

In his first article, he describes how he had to re-evaluate the movie awards system in Bollywood when his movie Fanaa was not nominated for Best Film and he was not nominated for Best Director at the Screen and Filmfare awards. I congratulate him on realizing at last that in a country where every TV channel and unhealthy food brand has its own movie award, it really isn't much of an honor to win one of them. What I am amazed at is that it was his exclusion from the awards that led him to this introspection and subsequent conclusion. He clearly thinks so highly of himself and his movie that by not nominating him, these awards have opened his eyes and proved their worthlessness to him!

The second article would be fantastic were it a tongue-in-cheek article. Mr. Kohli is unfortunately, perfectly serious. The basic premise is that Bollywood has the potential to make a Grand Canyon sized mark in the global market, and eventually to buy out Hollywood. We have a lot of new and bright film makers with fresh ideas that would have universal appeal. I was quite amused to see Hum Tum (his first film) in the examples of movies with an unusual theme. Somehow, I really doubt the Western audience would want to watch Hum Tum when they can watch When Harry Met Sally with the delightful Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal instead. (Hum Tum is a shameless and blatant copy of When Harry Met Sally.) He further states that piracy of Indian movies results in enormous financial losses that could be used to make bigger and better movies. I hate to disillusion Mr. Kohli but the problem in Bollywood is a paucity of interesting stories, skilled directors and actors who do not ham their way to the end of each film. Regrettably, injecting more money into each movie is not the solution. Maybe I'm being myopic and/or pessimistic, but an Indian film maker making something on the scale of Lord of the Rings or even Spiderman is really quite inconceivable. They cannot even do a decent job of something like Salaam-e-Ishq. The second problem is that in Bollywood, bigger and better is defined as having more glitz and glamor, a la Dhoom 2, which I feel is the last thing we need. Indeed, if the movies got any glossier, we'd need sunglasses just to watch them. Finally, Bollywood movies in general tend to be so disappointing, that the audience feels loath to spend money on the tickets. So while I'm not advocating piracy in any way, I do think the industry needs to realize its responsibility to give us something watchable and enjoyable, and stop blaming us for their shortcomings.

I am also continually amazed at how much Bollywood overestimates the interest that Western society has in our movies. Indian movies make the kind of money they do abroad because of South Asians living abroad. Period. That is because these folks will watch any kind of Hindi movie, no matter how outlandish, garish or silly, because it re-connects them for a couple of hours to their home in India that they left behind. There is a very small group of westerners who will watch some of our movies, much like Chinese or Spanish movies, and we will lose this audience if we don't focus more on substance and less on barely-there stories and clothes.

Buy out Hollywood indeed! Just how deluded are these guys in Mumbai's Tinseltown? But enough about Kunal Kohli and his self-indulgent, self-aggrandizing and utterly misguided comments. I really should get back to work now.