By now you must have realized that the audience plays a big part in a film’s success. Bollywood people might have the power to make, direct, ghost direct and produce any film they want with rapist predators, creeps, harassers, perverts and this dickhead, but you have the power to decide whether you want to watch it or watch it sink so deep as it disappear without a trace.

As the audience, you are what makes or breaks a film. By now, you must have also understood that most of these Bollywood people have no morals. They don’t care about the victims, they only care about the box office.

So it’s no point getting angry or upset that Ajay Devgan stood by and let Alok Nath get a paycheck or if the cardboard box looking actor works with this dickhead.

The #MeToo movement might have calmed down, it might even have passed. But people’s memories are not that short, especially when you have daring reporters around who are not afraid to ask these supposedly responsible actors about their involvement in hiring an accused. Even if it is to get a soundbyte, they are doing their job right.

What’s the point of saying, “Oh, why is he working with this creep” or “He has the power to do something”.

By now, you must have also understood that only a creep will understand another creep. That’s why they go on working with each other like nothing happened.

Many years ago, there was this whisper going around at how this cardboard box actor had this fetish where he has girls servicing him in the bathroom at parties. Not just any girls, but the foreign ones. The ones that appear as dancers in the Hindi films. Those days, it was still a new thing and he must have thought these foreign girls are harmless. Well, they still told on him.

Check out the blind item from Rajeev Masand. By the way, years ago when this actor was getting big in his head at the box office, he started referring to himself in third person when he was doing interviews. It was so funny and creepy at the same time. We know we mentioned it a gazillion times before, but it’s just that it makes us laugh and freak out at the same time at how this actor thinks he is so important that he has to address himself in third person. Famous film critics and former editor of Filmfare magazine, Khalid Mohamed, once said Shah Rukh always said he would never be like other actors by referring to himself in third person but the minute he got so sucessful and became King Khan, he started doing that! So, maybe it’s an infection that only affects successful box office stars!

Bollywood Blind Item

Shelter for the Accused

In further evidence that there has been little consequence for those named and shamed in the MeToo wave, it turns out a filmmaker who had to exit his under-production film after being accused of sexual harassment some months ago is already plotting his comeback.

The director was accused by more than one woman, and after the leading man of his film distanced himself from the filmmaker, he had to quit the project.

Now, according to well-placed sources, one learns the filmmaker has been meeting a buffed- up action star for a film together. The actor was on a lucky streak last year that sadly ended with his most recent release, a spy thriller that tanked at the box office.

According to sources, the actor has had multiple meetings with the director and they’ve agreed on a script. Since the actor is likely to produce the film himself, it could be easier to hire the director without opposition from other parties.

Ironical because the actor has worked with the director previously (in a multi-starrer film) and famously complained that he did not enjoy the experience.

Just months ago there were rumours the director (also a popular television personality) was putting together a one-man stage performance he was intending to travel with since film work was proving hard to come by.

It seems however that public memory is short, and Bollywood’s attitude towards harassment is dismissive at best. Sigh.

OSOP Guesses

Filmmaker: Sajid Khan

Buffed-Up Action Star: John Abraham