One Item Less (1/3)

on February 12, 2010

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Kartikey Sehgal

Written first for DNA

Director Shyam Benegal, who has captured myriad expressions of life in his various films, had to free himself from the clutches of the item-number when he was making ‘Welcome to Sajjanpur’.

“He did not want to include songs in the film. He did so on the behest of the producers”, says writer Atul Tiwari who has worked with the director.

In one of the songs, that was probably required to be the item song of the film, a village girl wears tight pants and extensive make-up as her lover dreams of a life of bikes, cars and aeroplanes.

welcome to
The song from Welcome To Sajjanpur: “The dream sequence was an attempt to avoid making the song into another raunchy item number.” Image source.

Atul, who has written the screenplay for Shyam’s ‘Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: The Forgotten Hero’, speaks in the director’s favour.

“The dream sequence was an attempt to avoid making the song into another raunchy item number. It is to his credit that he tried to make every song integral to the plot of the movie”.

Perhaps the song and dance decision was propelled by the commercial failure of Shyam’s ‘Bose’. The epic was based on the last five years of Subhas Chandra Bose’s life and was without any item songs or self-generated controversies. It did not even create rifts out of the differing personalities of Subhas and Gandhi as some other films on Indian history had successfully done in the past.

Atul feels that  none of these gimmicks would have in any way proven beneficial to the film and could have, instead, spoiled the message.

bose
The epic was based on the last five years of Subhas Chandra Bose’s life and was without any item songs or self-generated controversies… Atul feels none of these gimmicks would have in any way proven beneficial to the film and could have, instead, spoiled the message.

But producer Sanjay Routri feels otherwise. “Anybody who talks of marketing as being detrimental to the film in any way should put himself in the shoes of the producer; the man who is spending money and taking risks”.

Sanjay has worked as the executive producer of ‘Johnny Gaddar’ and ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’ among other films. His range of work includes the assurance of the marketability of the movie; from getting saleable actors to listening and deciding if the item number would find favour among the audience.

He contrasts Atul’s line of thinking; “Songs and controversies are the best marketing tools for a film”, he laughs but doesn’t want to give examples. “In foreign films, trailers are released periodically to garner attention for a film; in India, our songs are our trailers”.

“You can check that in most films, it is either the item number or the controversy that aids the film”.

Atul, on the other hand, says that he belongs to a school of thought that consciously wants to avoid the pull of the item song and its interference in the film. He knows that in an industry where over 90 percent of the films find sustenance difficult, it has become mandatory to include an item song.

“But tell me, how many films do you remember that were declared a ‘hit’ because of the item song?”

Sanjay agrees that songs, and particularly item songs, are a tool only for awareness. “The solution to increase the success rate of Hindi films is better content. But songs and item numbers, if at all, will only attract more people into the theatre and not detract from the viewership”.

Writer Aatish Kapadia holds the same view on the power of the item song to garner attention but doesn’t think that people would go to theatres because of its presence.

aishwarya_kajra_re_400He is the screenplay writer of the commercially successful film ‘Aankhen’ and had no qualms in including an item number in the film. “I look forward to the item song in every film”. Aatish is a fan of the song ‘Kajra Re’ (photo: right) from the film ‘Bunty Aur Babli’; “I adore the song”. But he doesn’t believe that an item song can attract more people into the theatre. “People went to the theatre to primarily see Bunty and Babli and they looked forward to the item song”.

In Part 2: A film that lost out due to songs and an item number


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