Celebrated mediocrity: ‘100 crore club has poisoned film-making sensibilities’

Naseeruddin Shah disappointed over money doing the talking in Bollywood

NEW DELHI: Aspiring to cross the glorified figure of INR100 crore at the box office is proving to be poisonous for the Indian film industry, said actor Naseeruddin Shah. He believes making content-based movies, economically, will be a step in the right direction.

“This Rs100-crore club has poisoned our film-making sensibility. It is as if we are finally admitting the real reason why we make movies,” he said in an interview.

The actor added that these days, a lot of film-makers succumb to the temptation of bigger budgets quite easily.

“When a small film succeeds, in the next film they want Amitabh Bachchan. It’s a dismal scenario. There are a lot of films that stimulate your thinking, but at the same time I would say that their numbers are much less as compared to those of the 1970s.”



The actor starred in two films that came out recently: The Blueberry Hunt and Waiting. The latter was based on the a story of a special bond between two people from different walks of life, who befriend each other in a hospital while nursing their respective comatose spouses.

Despite its powerful storyline, Shah was of the opinion that the project may not do well commercially. “You cannot expect a guy who plies a rickshaw or works on the road all day to go and see films such as Waiting. He will not. He will go and see a Bajrangi Bhaijaan or a Happy New Year because he needs that,” said the Sparsh star.

“Such films will always have a niche activity. If these movies start aspiring to enter the Rs100-crore club then their quality will suffer,” he added.

Shah also pointed out that the number of “rubbish movies” making it to the forefront has increased exponentially, which is why he has high hopes riding on the regional cinema. “It is important that regional cinema develops. It is certainly happening in Marathi cinema. In Kannada, the alternative cinema has always been there and also in Malayalam. The signs are good, but trouble is that everybody is eying that Rs100-crore mark.”

Published in The Express Tribune, June 13^th, 2016.

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