Bored Bourne Bummer

**

The director clapped his hands together to draw the attention of those milling around the set trying to look as important as they could on a Hollywood set.

“Guys, (Clap Clap) I know this is an extraordinary situation. We have a very low budget. And yet this should look like one of those big releases of the studio. Any ideas how we do this?”

After a deathly silence when one presumes everyone tries to remember the storyline of the previous movies of this series. Sigh. What was that about?. About a grim assassin who tries to remember “ The director tries to get sound bites back into the funeral like eerie silence

“Why was he born?”

“ No idea why he was born boss but sure know somewhere in Cambodia?”

“ Guys Guys focus , why was he Bourne ?. Like why and how did he remember he was Bourne”

“Boss we already addressed that in 3 movies since 2002. The movie goers have caught on . Maybe we should now just say he gets his memory back?”

The director glares back at his inept new recruits. The studios were really on his case with their low budgets. He had decided to shoot the movie straight on the sets without a script. He did not remember why.

“Ok so here’s what we do. We just erase the audience’s mind of the last ten years of the character and reboot them to remember that the hero has forgotten. Clear”

Well it was not clear but the crew nod their heads.

“Secondly, we head to Greece “

“ Greece?

“Boss why would Bourne go to Greece after he has forgotten ?”

The director glares back

“ Because it is the cheapest place on earth you idiot. Besides we get free demonstrations to show. Gives the movie a very serious political thriller look and keeps the audience guessing on what the demonstrations have to do with the story line. Makes for lot s of free action scenes”

The crew is in awe now. The director of photography raises his shaking hand. He has a case of nerves and has had unsteady hands. It always did that after 5 straight glasses. And besides he had agreed to do the movie for free ..Well 50 glasses actually.

“ Yes ?” The director raises an eyebrow

“ Do you think I should do something different “

The director is impressed

“ Well here’s the deal . I do not want to keep repeating ad nauseam about the budgets right. We need to make the audience feel there is a lot going on. So you need to keep it only to tight close ups with reactions of the actors. The people have to guess from the actor’s reaction the tremendous action that must be unfolding in front of the characters. Give your camera a lot of emotion. Remember you are the real actor. The man with the camera. Every time there is a blow thrown, shake your camera like dizzy”

The DOP smiles. “ Of course I can do that “

Raising his shaking drunken hand “ I can ask move the camera so fast through the iron piles at the scrap yard that people just won’t know what’s happening and I will run like crazy with the actors. I think 30 minutes into the movie the audience should be rubbing their eyes wondering if they were seeing things which indeed they will be “ ( breaks into a dizzy smile)

The director smiles back “ Yes you are now catching on. Remember I do not want the camera to be steady for more than 5 seconds at a time. Never should the audience guess that we shoot the main portion in the toy store in Greece. Well there is a huge cost of the toy cars that will be destroyed but I am sure the studios won’t mind losing 2000 dollars”

“Ok so I just thought up the story line. ( How brilliant am I) . Jason is in Thailand sorry Greece like Rambo . But times have changed . So he won’t be cutting trees in a monastery with a scowl to show off his well-toned muscles. Instead we will have a free kick boxing betting fight where he earns his money and every time his head is hit he will remember he acted in this movie before.”

“ Cut back to the home country. We will have the usual dingy room with no windows and important looking people walking around doing nothing while an aged Tommy Lee Jones talks to his new assistant who is a cyber expert. You know nowadays you have to talk a lot of gibberish about computers and show crazy graphics where each call is traced to the caller and one can see the label on their vest. Show a lot of monitors old and new and make sure we get that Snowden type character written in . If necessary make it sound like an Indian name because all these IT kids seem to come from out there.”

The director pauses looks around for compliments. He just had made up the brilliant script of most looked forward to in a quartet of series of an action thriller brand. He had even got a bored Damon back.

“ So do I remember now?”

“ Oh No you don’t . We are going to show the graphics of the windows screen from one of our spoilt monitors which just keeps vibrating to reflect the state of your mind. You just keep that scowl on your face going. You can imagine you got the script to this movie and how annoyed you are. The director wants to bump you off and his assistant will have to make up her mind”

Matt perked up “So does she ?”

Director is annoyed “ We will figure that out Matt as we go along. For now let’s get all these scenes at the toy store shot. “

Matt pipes up “ But what do I do now? “

Director “ Just give 2000 tight close-ups of all possible expressions you can give while trying to remember or stress before and after a fight. I know it is a tough role but remember we have a reputation to live up to “

Matt nods his head and looks towards the bored crew. They pick up their kits and start moving towards the toy store for the night. Their first shot is a spectacular scene where 200 cars are demolished on the street as an evil agent chases the good agent to save the secrets of the greatest nation on earth. It is good fortune that they do not have to explain what happens to the dead 200 drivers in 90 seconds of a car chase on the streets. That was worse than a terrorist attack. Lucky the audience never bothered with such details Two weeks later the shoot is over.

Matt sidles up to the director. “Hi just a couple of doubts” “Yes?”

The director says “ When we bash up more than 200 to 300 cars on the street in the chase will it not mean that many deaths in a night for no reason”

The director is annoyed. He has specially shot the scene in a Benhur parting the seas fashion where a SWAT car cuts through swathes of cars without a dent.

“Don’t cha worry. The Audience is either dumb or numbed out with the opening dizzy scenes” They will be too zonked out to question anything. They will be still trying to remember the gibberish explanations of the story three scenes back. So just rest friend”

Matt is still not at rest “ I want to know which part of the lift was I really hanging to when he escapes the people chasing him while the lift is moving.”

The director is angry “ Look that is not important. What is important is to make the scene look very very slick and give the audience a feeling of mysterious ways of working of the security agency”

“ Ok man, fine. DO I remember in the end ?”

“ Are you nuts. Don’t you want the money. Do you want me to make the next one with Jeremy ?”

Matt is suitably chastened and hastens to forget he even asked those questions. But he for sure was keen to know why would a man who forgot why he existed want to know why he turned into a trained assassin and be scrutinized by the agency and be upset about it. He only remembered he was paid handsomely for the movies before. Fine . He sighs and grimly forgets.

(Someone was shaking me hard. My wife is shaking me.

“It is over . Get up. Enough you sleepy head. Paying ten hard earned dollars to sleep in blasting Air conditioning.”

I am still trying to remember how I wrote that fictionalized account of a movie in the making. I am still trying to remember. I groggily walk out behind 300 other groggy members of the audience. Sigh who wants to remember this. But yes I remember I passed out in the first frame of a chase scene with a shivering camera. What a bummer! )

The burden of answerability

The burden of answerability Decades back. A tired Saturday Evening. Pleasures of a Saturday morning included, being allowed to sleep late, provided the home work was completed proactively. Extended sport sessions in the basketball ground bang opposite home and then a tiring session of cricket till we were no longer able to visualise the rubber ball hurtling at reasonable speeds and either knocking off cheap plastic framed spectacles or hurting you in the wrong places. We then headed home reluctantly trying to stretch the time available.

Mother then announces that Sharma Uncle and family are hopping over. Now usually the prospect of a family friend with two kids coming over for a casual weekend chat should be an inviting proposition. But we readied ourselves for some nerve wracking competitive conversation which would eventually leave us in miserable knots of inferiority complex.

After very polite Namaste’s usually supported by Japanese style physical gestures of utter humility - bending to the guests with folded hands, hoping fervently that the guests hearts could melt and they could be less probing than usual. The family trooped in with Uncle Sharma leading the pack followed by the kind Aunty and their kids almost hidden behind their soda lens spectacles. They all settled down for on the only sofa that we had covered with a beautiful throw to carefully hide the stitches of the rexin cover that was giving way. It was a standard practice for the children to ensure that the guests were served with water in clean glasses wiped dry from the outside on trays. Serious efforts to avoid eye contact with Uncle Sharma always failed. And then the ordeal could begin.

“So beta? Kaise chal rahi hain padhai” ( Son , how are your studies progressing “)

I would shrink. Hoping against hope that my parents missed that one. Not on a Saturday night please. Now my parents were not the quintessential snorting about studies all the time,types. Nor the type of parents who wanted their kids to be holding important looking books every time they entered home or room. But yet they were curious about my response. The comparison was yet to start. Uncle Sharma does not wait for the answer. He knows from my pathetic face it is not going well. So he decides to patronize himself.

“Well Aditya did not do well this time” He looks disparagingly at his elder son who stares back with an equally admonished look. My heart lightens. Perhaps I am not so bad after all. However the next sentence undoes that feeling in a hurry

“ He just managed 98.2 % this time “ . “ And you ?” Uncle Sharma challenges me almost sure that no one can come close to his champion son. But he wants public endorsement. And especially from parents of academically challenged children perhaps. My parents look at me nonplussed. Waiting for my answer. They are not too sure about it either. What was it that their son had mentioned as his result. They remember he said something like 75% of the children in the class got lower than him. But how much did he actually get ? They must have been kicking themselves for not asking me earlier. Wait till this Sharma goes home, my father must have thought at that time before I get down to the interrogation. This guy had given us all the environmental parameters with apt discussion but failed to mention his own marks.

My percentages or rather my lowly life is saved in the nick of time by neighbouring Babloo and his mother who saunter in just in time. Why? Well (twinkle twinkle) he has scored 98.7% and now the war is between these two while I retreat wisely to do my homework. Years later when I got to work there was another round of ducking to do. It was which Aunty’s daughter or son had got the highest starting salary.

“Mera beta tho ….or mere beti tho…itni kamaata/i hain “ ( my ward earns this pay packet blah blah )

I could see preening mothers proudly boasting to my mother challenging her to bid a better figure for her son. Again my parents had forgotten to ask me my starting salary. So how much ? My mother’s raised eyebrows seemed to say hoping against hope that her son was close to being a TATA on the sly. I frowned not at all interested in becoming a commodity on the auction market. Besides I just could not beat their inflated figures by a long mile.

My mother flipped it on its head “ we don’t ask our son such personal questions . It’s his life “

Sigh of relief. This burden of answerability chases you through life. It just crops up in different forms.

At work it is related to designations, salaries, mentions etc. But the most intriguing and repetitive is the one on the social front. What did you for the weekend or where did you go for the holidays. The children want to know if we are really planning to go to Maldives for the weekend. Or to Madrid for a film festival. Their friends had done that.

“Papa you are not even taking us to Les Miserables “

Ok so one by one. I choke on Maldives on the weekend. Maldives is one thing but on a weekend. A lifelong ambition cannot be condensed into a weekend plan by donating 60 % of my monthly salary. ( Wait don’t go around fishing out calculators and air fare websites. That was just an even number I threw !) . Next I am not the event manager for film festivals that I chase the film stars and go to a film festival. I nod to the children

“Check the parents of your friends will you?. I am sure Their father is probably a mechanic with the stage arrangement and must be hitching a free ride to Madrid”.

I knew I was being nasty but then it this burden of answerability was killing. Like who actually chases film actors who themselves desperately seek freebies everywhere. And last but not the least going to Les Miserables. Well Victor Hugo never envisioned his 1862 work to be a musical that will romp around the world making moolah.

“Why don’t you read it?” That was enough to deter them for the moment. And if it did not work I knew what had to be done to move the chain of burden of answerability. I had to find an Uncle Sharma in the neighborhood with children who scored in their 90’s and could be a good foil to the challenges I faced at home. And in the meantime I look up the events page of the local newspaper to rack up events that I could imagine having attended to on the weekend and to be able to speak about with a causal air reflecting carefree expendability of excessive wealth , to all those who had managed heavily competitive events on the weekend.

And my pen dived to to the paper as I encircled my first heavy duty page 3 event. Aah the burden of answerability!!

Sultan -Sober Salman Startles

Disoriented flailing of arms, some funny squeaky dialogues, and wide eyed stares juxtaposed with some catchy rhythms in soothing Rahat Fateh’s voice is reflective of Salman’s work till date. Watching his movies is an adventure that I usually approach if at all, with a lot of trepidation. I know they makes millions and his fans swear by his Dabangs, but sitting through script less lukewarm fares is not my kettle of tea. However sometime back we had a pleasant encounter in Bajrangi Bhaijaan. The second cup of tea that I dislike is physical sports which require people to bash each other up and ascertaining that there are enough bones crunched that may take a lifetime to repair. People safely behind the wire mesh cheer the blood spilling. Is this not as bad as putting poultry, dogs and other assorted animals to fight each other and something that is frowned upon, but then that is a different discussion.

Sultan alters that opinion in an entertaining manner in the trend set by Million Dollar Baby, Rocky and more closer home in the recent Mary Kom. Home grown movies in India also have the added splice of emotional encounters that can nicely fill in the awkward story jerks in Hollywood movies. But yet stretching it to 2hours 50 min was a risk. Indian films need to learn to shape scripts with sharp brevity and make them memorable movies. And people are running out of time. You see they have other tasks and responsibilities to complete. Like this young girl two seats away from me who did not switch off her mobile for the entire length of the movie. I wondered if she was taking serious study notes or perhaps tweeting the movie line by line. But one thing was certain. It irritated me no end. Like having a smart phone screen beam at you with its full fluorescence. I wanted to reach out and ask if there was some way for me to help perhaps do a bulk tweet from my phone too, to reduce the responsibility and load.

And yet as a sober Sultan (Salman) entered the screen play his new underplayed character starts growing on you though you do live with the fear of his jumping into his antics soon.( he does that very briefly in a song) He is a saddened recluse of a wrestler, retired to a quiet life in the irrigation department due to a tiff with his wife Aarfa (Anushka) the reasons for which become clear as the story plods to the intermission. Surprisingly you find little to fault in the storyline as it peacefully unfolds moving from the resilient wooing by Sultan of Aarfa and admonished for being a good for nothing spurs him into putting his and his well-built body to good use. The spate of medals that follows gets to his simpleton head resulting in an incident which paves the way for separation. So does a commercial boxing event organizer (something like an IPL event) manage to get an out of shape Sultan achieve his glory?

The movie is flinchingly predictable and yet manages to keep your attention thanks chiefly to the cast which embodies sincerity into their roles. Chief among them Salman and Anushka. Salman gets into the SRK Chakde mode of brooding and brings out a nicely underplayed controlled performance. The serious work on his body is visible as it fluctuates in size and shape to punctuate the timelines with his fame and falter. There is applause worthy scene where a downhill Sultan gets into a dressing room and has a tragic soliloquy with his emotions. Watch the unedited scene as he frustratingly struggles into a shirt while sobbing away heartbreakingly. That scene moves and proves that the till now man-errant perhaps has something deep down there to be discovered. Anushka deserves accolades for her characteristic support to the main protagonist though and presents a fuller answer to the need for fuller woman oriented films, however we see less of her in the latter part of the film. There are other multiple characters all around the script that do unfailing justice to their roles. You cannot ignore a fantastic Randeep Hooda and decent portrayals by Amit Sadh and Anant Sharma as the trainer, entrepreneur and friend respectively The photography is serviceable, the stunts obviously do look over the top but reflect the efforts taken. (Not surprising the main protagonist was pushed to make a politically incorrect metaphor). There was some controversy with the numbers but think that Rahat was a refreshing change and apt choice for the song Jag Ghoomeya. Wonder what prompted a serious movie to dip into an obscene and very badly contrived prompt for a song like Baby ko bass pasand hain..ugh ! Salman almost forgets his character and starts flailing his arms again before being edited out J. Shekhar Ravjiani do a decent job otherwise.

It is not a great film but one that deserves a round of applause for helping Salman to discover potential and the audiences to move Hindi cinema to a more appreciable art than just an assembly line of junk scripts intermixed with some rare gems. It requires some patience but takes care to keep you rooted.