After I wrote my post yesterday, it occurred to me that I was being a tad unfair to producers. When you’re making a film, there are multiple risks at different stages involved.
The first is at the story level. Writing a story/screenplay is quite an art. Just because someone has a good idea doesn’t necessarily mean they will be able to translate it into a good story. A good story is driven by characters and conflict. There are ebbs and flows of emotion in the narrative and a good story paces them out well. An intensely emotional or suspenseful sequence needs a comic relief or downer immediately afterwards. You cannot pile an emotionally charged sequence on top of another.
Then there’s the direction. Just because you have a good script doesn’t mean it will translate into a good film. The director’s vision can either lift the script to a subliminal level (Lucky # Slevin) or reduce it to trash (Richard Kelly’s Domino). It has to be said here, though, that the chances of a good script turning out to be a bad film are rare, no matter how bad the director. As a caveat, I have to add that judging something like this is highly subjective. What I may consider a good script badly executed may well be someone else’s bad script made better.
Assuming the director’s vision translates the screenplay into a gem of a film, the marketing and promotion of the film may fail. The communication may leave the audience cold or target the wrong consumer group altogether.
Assuming everything turns out well – the script is good, the direction exceptional and the publicity succeeds in tweaking the viewers’ interest – the film may still turn out to be a box office dud.
You see, a film is a commercial venture involving millions of rupees. So, perhaps, the producers are not wrong to back winning horses against untested ones.
When tall, suave, handsome Kaustav Kapoor walks into her office, ditzy private investigator Kasthuri (aka Katie) Kumar has anything but detection on her mind. He is, after all, a scion of Bollywood’s first family—perhaps he has a role for her? Perhaps she will, at last, get to sashay down the red carpet in a designer gown, with flash bulbs following her every move?
But Kapoor’s intentions are much more prosaic: he wishes Katie to trace the heroine of his new blockbuster (and, if Katie’s read the glossies correctly, his life) who is mysteriously AWOL. Despite her misgivings, Katie finds herself unable to refuse the task entrusted to her, and thereon follows a bewildering hunt for the film star across a trail of corpses.
And if that isn’t excitement enough, she has to contend with the maddening and mysterious, but, oh-so-hot, Tejas Deshpande.
The first in a brand new detective series.
IN BOOKSTORES NOW.
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