Tollywood runs out of ideas

Manasu gati inte
Manishi bratuku inte
Manasunna manishi ki
Sukhamu ledante…

Nothing succeeds like success. And nothing fails like failure. That’s the state of the Telugu film industry. Even as the apparently divided Telugu film fraternity concluded its three-day jamboree to honour itself, the dark clouds of uncertainty are forming in the horizon.

One of the largest film producing states, Andhra Pradesh had an enviable record when it came to making good quality films. There were the days when doyens like LV Prasad produced films that spelt class in every sense of the word. Legends like NT Rama Rao and Akkineni Nageswara Rao carried an entire movie on their shoulders. The same cannot be said of today’s tinsel town heroes.

Today, Tollywood is all about heroes. The rest don’t matter in the scheme of things. More than half of a film’s cost goes in the form of remuneration to the big names. An average Telugu movie costs close about Rs 10 to 15 crores, while the big budget ones cost a bomb. In a state where declining audiences and television serials are killing the silver screen, movies are a flop even before they reach the theatres. The economics simply does not work, as the box office collections do not come anywhere close to investment.

Even talented artists are hard to come by. Even in the sixties and seventies, Urvasi Sarada was so disappointed by the decline of standards that she migrated to the Malayalam film industry. In fact, today the Telugu film industry has imported most of its heroines who are models and item girls in Bollywood. Is the state, which spotted and groomed gems like Jayasudha and Jayaprada so bereft of talents that it is forced to depend on girls from other states? Does only glamour matter when it comes to the leading ladies?

Real estate tycoons who are flush with cash bankroll most of today’s movies. It’s a different story that many of the earlier real estate tycoons like G Punna Rao of the infamous GPR Housing, went bust as their movies flopped. The people who bought plots in GPR Housing were tricked and are now literally on the roads. History is now being repeated. And when the movies flop, thousands of people who invest in lands promoted by these real estate tycoons find that they are holding on to worthless pieces of paper.

The main problem with today’s Telugu movies is lack of realism. Very few movies connect up with the lives of today’s middle class, which is the prime target audience. Last year, saw two rare exceptions. Bommarillu and Godavari were two movies that broke away from the hackneyed themes and presented refreshingly different storylines. While Dil Raju’s Bommarillu made a neat pile of profit, Sekhar Kammula’s Godavari just broke even.

Abburi Ravi, the young man who wrote the cracker of a script for Bommarillu, slogged un-noticed for years working in ad agencies in Hyderabad. Struggling to make his ends meet, the young man almost gave it up in disgust and wanted to go back to Bhimavaram, his hometown. His passion was scripting movies and he knocked the doors of many producers and leading men hoping to tell them the stories he had painstakingly written. None him gave a second look and he was turned away rudely by many of the so-called big names of the Telugu industry. Today, the same big men are pleading with Ravi to write a movie script for them. The clock has turned a full circle.

The problem with life-like scripts and movies is with the audience, laments a Tollywood producer. “Movies goers in Andhra Pradesh are not mature enough to watch serious movies like they produce in Bengali or the Malayalam film industry,” adds a Tollywood producer who burnt his hands in trying out the new wave cinema. That might be stretching the logic too far. No doubt filmgoers in the state share a part of the blame, but the bigger share of the blame should lie with the movie-makers themselves. If Godavari and Bommarillu can be a hit what stops them with coming up life-like stories? Most of today’s Telugu movies are remakes of Malayalam or Tamil movies. This shows the drought of ideas in our backyard.

A serious scene set in a rural backyard in Konaseema is on and suddenly the hero and heroine break into a song and dance sequence in the Swiss Alps. Take the movie watcher seriously and respect their sensibilities. We are not morons.

Buying up the theatres to celebrate 100 days of a movie is foolish and leading men of Tollywood should stop living in a make-believe world. Fans associations are good to a limit, and after that they become a nuisance. And to add to that the news on the business front will not be music to the ears of the big bosses of Tollywood.

The news that Anil Ambani is buying up a number of the theatres in coastal Andhra Pradesh is a pointer of the scheme of things to come. News is that the Ambani junior will use his movie making behemoth, Adlabs to get into Telugu movie production. Known for his tightfisted way of operating, Anil Ambani will use his clout to steamroll opponents. Krishna Vamsi, Teja, Puri Jagannath, Bhaskar, Sekhar Kammula – you have got competition!

It is a wake-up call for Tollywood. A Chiranjeevi or a Nagarjuna can no longer guarantee to set the box office on fire. Get real, Get ready.