Writing for low wages

LAHORE: The scripts of Lollywood productions in the past two decades have largely been laughable - but this wasn’t always the case.

While films in the 1960s and 1970s highlighted issues like the class divide, inter-faith relationships and the problems with the political structure, they made way for raunchy potboilers whose scripts relied on crude humour.

It’s a logical process. Pakistani filmmakers need to pay scriptwriters well to be able to make good films.

Even though there are several film associations in Lollywood, some of which are busy feuding with each other on a daily basis, writers do not have any association who would fight for the rights of a community.

According to a film industry insider, if the budget of a film is Rs10 million, the writer earns around Rs50,000 for writing script and dialogues.

Nasir Adeeb, one of the most celebrated writers of Lollywood and whose dialogues in Maula Jatt are part of Pakistan’s cultural lexicon, said that he left writing scripts after Sultan Rahi’s death.

Adeeb says, “In 1997, I used to get Rs150,000. Now I consider it humiliating to write a script for Rs50,000”.

He said that he was accused of promoting violence through his scripts but the film industry could never get out of the pattern set by him. “The scripts of my films, which were written in the 1980s, have been widely copied over the last 10 years. There have been no new writers and the existing scriptwriters have not been able to reach people on a personal level,” he said.

Adeeb believes that the film industry could fare better if the writers are paid well. “I have been asking producers to increase writers’ pay since 1988. They didn’t listen to me. I had realised that formula movies wouldn’t last for very long and this is exactly what happened. Shaan’s pay for one film reached Rs1 million and the writer’s came to Rs 50,000. Actors became more important than the writers, and the result is in front of everyone.”

Another former film writer said, “Writers such as Asghar Nadeem Syed, Wasi Shah, Amjad Islam Amjad and Zafar Miraj are quite well paid. They get around Rs250,000 to Rs350,000 for writing a 13-episode drama serial. Why would they the script of a film for Rs 50,000?”

According to the film writer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, several actors do not bother to learn the script and speak their own dialogues, which has resulted in low-quality films.

Director and writer Rukhsana Noor agrees that a script writer is key to a film’s success. She said that Lollywood had suffered overall which had resulted in writers’ wages being decreased. According to her, people like Syed Noor and Nasir Adeeb used to get paid well for writing scripts. “There aren’t many educated script writers in the film industry and cannot be paid in millions. Someone will have to come forward, make films and then the writers can also get their due share,” she said.

Noor teaches scriptwriting at the University of Punjab’s Institute of Communication Studies. She said that if five out of 40 students in her class learnt to pick stories from the society she considered it her success. “It is a very important technique. People don’t even know what the difference is between a screenplay and a script. This is showbiz and we need to have skills to get a result,” she said.

She said that young people had a talent for scriptwriting but it could only be capitalised on by engaging them in the film industry. “If movies are made, then young people can be engaged and made to work on good stories,” she said.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 24^th, 2010.