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On the whole, Bollywood people are very smart now to not appear tone-deaf. They know how and when to say the right things, courtesy of the right training. AC was saying the right things but he couldn’t escape sounding like a control freak which explains why he wanted a studio, he wanted to be in control.
Read More »Dissection: The Romantics’ YRF Documentary – Missing Parts & Missing Actors
Moving on…
Aditya Chopra spoke about the downs the company went through which made him realize that it was now up to him to give the company a successful hit film. For that to happen, he had to go back to directing. That’s how ‘Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi’ happened.
Anushka Sharma finally comes on screen since that film was her debut. She talks about how ridiculously quiet AC wanted her to be about this project even to her parents. Didn’t AC think it through? What will her parents think since they live together? Clips of the film are shown, AC said he was under a lot of pressure but being on the sets made him happy. Maybe it was because he was away from all the stress, the office stress, and personal life stress.
He is shown to be directing on the sets of the famous song from that film that featured a lot of heroines including his wife opposite SRK.
AC talks about the challenge of the film was to make the audience believe that Anushka’s character was blind enough not to see the difference between her on-screen husband and the hippy guy. The film being a hit proved he was successful in doing that. The reviewers, though, were not so blind:
Right before the film was supposed to be released, the dreadful Mumbai Attacks happened. Clips of the attacks are shown so that you remember what Mumbai went through. But AC was like, his film was going to come out in 2 weeks and a lot of people were advising him to push back the film but he didn’t because he didn’t believe the film will not work. He believed hordes of people will flock to the theatre to watch RNBDJ. The movie did well and YRF was back on track!
Now AC talks about the failure of ‘Befikre’ and it hit him badly. In this whole documentary, he tried to appear well-aware and knowledgeable but in this very moment, he tried to put across his reason why ‘Befikre’ was such a colossal flop and disappointment. Here’s his logic:
Bear in mind that the film lifted so many scenes from other films or should we say the film was inspired by foreign films that were accepted by the audience then and yet he thinks it didn’t work because the audience didn’t expect that from him.
Read More »Dissection: The Romantics’ YRF Documentary – Part 3
Check out PART 1, if you haven’t already.
This episode is special…
Because it addresses the big elephant in the room:
Nepotism!
That said, we don’t know why this is being asked over and over again by those who come from film families. It’s a waste of time because they will never understand what it is like to make it as an outsider. It’s just useless to ask them!
But here asking Aditya Chopra a question about nepotism is important because he’s the man who backed his brother continuously until both realized it was pointless.
What he says, though, his defense doesn’t really matter because he is missing the point here. On one hand, he doesn’t realize that he gave a hard time to the newcomers he launched by criticizing their looks, physique, acting, and whatnot but when it came to his own brother, he failed to see what was missing. Isn’t it ironic? He was allegedly advising Ranveer Singh and Anushka Sharma honestly but he wasn’t upfront with his own brother. Or perhaps, he was just blind!
AC forgets to mention that ample chances were given to Uday. Most of which were from Yash Raj Films and AC even greenlit Uday’s first directorial debut starring the man himself.
Then, Uday Chopra, the man himself comes on screen explaining how he decided to become an actor after he couldn’t make up his mind about what he wanted to do in life. By the way, he still looks good! In this documentary, he comes across as those young boys who grew up with money but are lost as to what their purpose is in life.
His best-friend Hrithik Roshan makes an appearance, ’cause why not they are besties after all. HR said he was shocked when he found out Uday was going to be an actor. Why? Didn’t he realize that Uday basically saw how HR became an actor and became a sensation when he made his debut and Uday subsequently realized he too wants the same thing? That’s how he build up his body and even wore colored contact lenses but acting-wise, he was mimicking SRK. Bollywood already had SRK and one HR, a mix was not really welcomed at that time. He, more or less, didn’t have what it takes to make him stand out…That is until ‘Dhoom’ came along!
By the way, should this be the most disappointing film AC decided to produce?
Speaking of SRK, AC really did want his brother to make it. Here’s what we found from a news article years ago.
Again, see what we meant about lifting stories from the West and then pretending the idea is original? ? ? ?
AC talks about his stint as a producer and he starts with ‘Mujhse Dosti Karoge’. We thought he was going to talk about how it’s the film where he got his future missus in it while he was still married to the first missus. But no, he talks about how he so didn’t want to produce that film. It seems Mr. Producer (AC) has a hard time getting over things that he was forced to do or rather in his case, he DID NOT want to do them. Funnily though, he doesn’t mention Rani Mukherjee at all…Not even what they did with her character, making her less attractive than Kareena Kapoor’s character. He doesn’t even mention Kareena! He only mentions Hrithik. Maybe he has a problem mentioning women or giving them credit by calling them out nicely. What he also doesn’t mention are two facts that we have known which are the idea of this film came from Karan Johar who told this story of bangles to the director Kunal Kohli and he loved the idea so much that he wrote a script based on that. Second was, according to Kunal, though it was a big flop and disappointment in India, it was a huge hit in the UK.
What was AC’s point in bringing up ‘Mujhse Dosti Karoge’? To prove that he was right in guessing the film was not going to work from then on, his dad gave him complete control since AC seems to know what worked and what didn’t.
AC goes on to name the films that he decided to produce and how these films became hits. Again, he never mentioned how ‘Hum Tum’ changed things for Rani, Saif, and even Kunal. He only said begging his dad to let him produce this script and then after, they showed off the Rani, Saif, and Kunal winning Filmfare Awards for the movie. For some reason, they didn’t mention Saifu won his first National Award for ‘Hum Tum’!
Rani does appear at this point in the documentary but she talked about the same thing that she spoke about in other interviews.
AC moves on to talking about ‘Dhoom’, taking full credit that he came up with that story and concept but never mentioning that the story was lifted (or inspired as they say) from several foreign films. AC is proud of ‘Dhoom’ because it was such a hit as he thought it would be and the movie relaunched the career of Uday, Abhishek Bachchan, and John Abraham. John then comes on talking about the film from what appears to be a gym?! AC does not mention Esha Deol or Rimi Sen at all. They did become famous with this film as well.
Lily Singh comes back on screen again talking about how ‘Dhoom’ is the first action film from Bollywood.
Then they are showing how ‘Dhoom’ influenced the youth and Lily Singh!
Yeah, Lily Singh!
Moving on to talking about ‘Dhoom 2’ by HR…How it became upscaled and got bigger and better.
According to Lily Singh, ‘Dhoom’ is better than any Hollywood action film.
Nothing interesting here except AC mentioned how he made being desis cool again instead of being NRIs. No mention of how the story was slightly lifted from ‘Catch Me If You Can’.
The documentary refers to how big of a deal this film was, both to YRF and India.
AC said it was his own instinct that made him launch newcomers. Shanoo Sharma comes in because she’s the main casting director over there. Wanna be a YRF hero or heroine? Befriend her! No, we are just kidding. But those with connections to her did make it though, including that Pandey kid! So knowing her does help.
Of course, the documentary cannot skip over their biggest talent. The one that AC takes credit for launching: Ranveer Singh! How time has gone by! Now Ranveer himself stepped out of YRF talent since they kind of let him down. He could have said no to their silly stories but…
AC comes on to say he initially didn’t think RS looked good at all…Kind of funny considering he thought his brother had potential. See? This is what nepotism is and they will never get it. Ironically, this part is in the same nepo episode. Ranveer tells the story of how he met AC and all that but never addresses the strong rumors that his dad financed the film. Also, RS looks so different now. That freshness that he once had is gone! Maybe because he’s constantly everywhere.
AC finally mentions Anushka Sharma in passing and she comes on for a min. Ayushmann is next. He is currently their most successful talent since RS left.
At the end of this episode, they made sure to make their talent talk about the non-filmy background they come from and their middle-class upbringing to show that YRF also welcomes people who are not like them.
Uday comes back on. AC calls him very talented and hardworking. Uday said he never imagined people would not take to him.
Clearly, these star kids come in this line thinking that they will be famous and loved like these big stars are. They don’t realize the hard work and sacrifice that went behind making these actors superstars.
AC mentioned that Uday realized that this wasn’t for him.
So does that mean they would have continued giving him roles if he was still keen to pursue acting?
Nothing much here, they are just discussing how they hate being called Bollywood because it’s a term that was given to make fun of Hindi films or Indian films as if they are low-grade. Kind of funny considering some of these actors speaking here have claimed in the past they don’t watch Hindi films, they prefer European cinema! Like watching Hindi films was below them!
Yash Chopra has always mentioned that the studio was a gift for his son, Aditya. Isn’t having a studio for them mean being in control? No one else can have that control but them. It also makes him powerful in the Hindi Film Industry. Yash Chopra also probably didn’t realize then that this meant his son was always to be there in the studio, it would be his reason for staying in, hiding from the rest and he would never be interested in going out and meeting people like Yash used to do. In fact, he did complain all AC does is work in the studio the whole time.
Pamela Chopra, Uday, and Aditya all speak about the studio thoroughly but never mention the person who also had a hand in making YR Studio happen: Payal Khanna, Aditya’s first wife. She does appear in the photographs of the launch, though, but no sign of Aditya anywhere. No surprise there!
Everyone goes on to mention how it’s a first-class studio that has Hollywood people in awe. To support this theory, they showed clips of Akon singing ‘Chamak Challo’ in the studio and Will Smith rehearsing in one of their dance studios.
Uday talks about how YRF can do no wrong, and so does AC. This was at a time when their films were working at the box office.
Uday connects the bad phase of YRF with his mother’s sickness. Uday mentions he got close to his dad during this time since his brother was so busy working.
Actually, the bad phase also started when Aditya started focusing on something else. Or should we say, someone else? The year 2007 started badly for YRF but it was also the beginning of a bad phase for someone else: Rani Mukherjee.
So much drama, some of you might aware of that already but obviously, it is never mentioned in the documentary because this is about Aditya Chopra, the smart guy.
Father and Son reportedly had an argument about AC’s decisions as it was really getting bad for them. Imagine being on a high then suddenly, every film starts flopping.
More than losing money, it also meant losing face. For a man who liked being in control, it’s not hard to believe how this must have hit him.
But the flop phase also coincided with something else that was happening…
So that was a little flashback to what was also happening simultaneously that year.
Part 3 will be updated tomorrow.
Stay tuned.
Read More »Dissection: The Romantics’ YRF Documentary – Part 2
Today’s dissection post is going to be about ‘The Romantics’, the Yash Raj documentary released on Netflix on Valentine’s Day this year.
If you have no idea what it is or have not seen it, here’s the trailer:
We have been planning this post since we saw the documentary because there was something about it…
Hmm, it gave us major narc or even megalomaniac vibes! As if they created a whole documentary to show or rather remind people (industry people + the rest of the world) how and why they are this powerful. It was as if the interview Anurag Kashyap did to criticize Aditya Chopra (AC) and Yash Raj Films really got to them to the point that Mr. India himself had to un-Mr. India himself and come in front of the camera to remind people who he was and what he is! Going by the positive reaction when this doc was released, it worked in reminding people what YRF is and how powerful AC is. Only a few saw it for what it really is!
But after watching all four episodes, it’s clear that this is not your usual documentary. If you have seen documentaries about Bollywood, as they did with the Jiah Khan case. It had both sides + professional opinions on what could have happened to her. In other words, it wasn’t biased and it didn’t glorify her situation. This documentary is clearly a PR exercise to erase all the bad decisions they have made that exist in the minds of the audience and their industry peers.
If it wasn’t for Adi’s nod, the project wouldn’t have happened. He not only greenlighted the project, he also personally supervised every aspect of the project. Smriti Mundhra is on board as the director of The Romantics. But it is Adi who decided what goes, and what not. SKJ Bollywood News
Obviously, it was disguised as an ode to the late Yash Chopra and his romantic films but it turned out to be a documentary glorifying YRF and letting everyone know that the man helming this big studio is super smart in case you get fooled by the films he green-lit.
Compared to other documentaries, this one is biased and produced by the Chopras which meant the big man himself had full control over what and who to show in the four episodes. He did the smart thing, though. His name is not credited as a co-producer but his brother and YRF are credited. The director herself, Smriti Mundhra, has connections with YRF as her father was the first man to bring Yash Chopra films to the States. He had his theatre there that showcased Yash Chopra’s films.
The Romantics – Episode 1
They do start with an introduction to Indian cinema but most of their clips and visuals are all from Yash Raj Films. The first episode is about that and how Yash Chopra became a director and his marriage and wife Pamela Chopra’s influence on him.
The details have already been out there in public for years as both Yash and Pam have always been vocal about their relationship. What is new here are the pictures and their wedding video which had to be re-processed by YRF to be presented clearly on video.
There are some funny stories about Sridevi and her mother. Rishi Kapoor talks lovingly about his equation with Yash. According to the director of this documentary, Rishi shot his part before he fell sick again. But he does look quite well in the video, so much so we thought they might have interviewed him at the ‘Jab Tak Hain Jaan’ premiere.
As the episode ends, they bring in snippets of Aditya Chopra by showcasing many unseen pictures of him as a child and young man.
It plays off as a big deal that he is finally going to be on camera, which is because the man is not social, or whatever you would call that. He has always been scared to appear on camera. His near ones always play it off like he’s that way ’cause he doesn’t want to be recognized when he goes to watch films and all that. But the man truly seemed scared of being photographed and he used to go to great lengths not to be pictured. As for being interviewed, it was said that he refused interviews due to the drama that happened with his first film.
The Romantics – Episode 2
This episode is about Aditya Chopra and everyone’s perception of him. Then they move on to how smart he was before he became a director and how he was always interested in working in films.
The story of Hrithik Roshan and Aditya Chopra always competing in dance competitions has been outed years ago, there’s no actual video of him dancing but it was told he won every dance competition against Hrithik. He was, after all at that time, the son of India’s biggest director so…#justsaying
They talk about this diary that he had as a kid about movies and box office collections. Anupama Chopra once mentioned this somewhere. He sounds like a kid who was obsessed with movies and nothing else but movies.
And then boom!
Aditya Chopra appears on camera voluntarily for the first time in years.
He talks about meeting SRK and how he approached him for ‘Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge’. Though he didn’t mention that he wanted a Hollywood actor for the role, Tom Cruise, his father shut him down and then he went to Saif Ali Khan but Saifu didn’t have free dates.
AC mentions how he didn’t want the couple in DDLJ to rebel and elope but wanted the boy to gain the trust of the father because that’s how he thought things should be, he grew up in a secure family environment, he said. Kind of funny when he did the same (rebel and move out) when his parents didn’t accept you-know-who.
Why not Kajol?
He spoke about DDLJ at length focusing on SRK and KJo but not really discussing why he chose Kajol in the film. Why was he also interested in getting Kajol for his other films? He never really got into that.
If you think about it, Kajol is mad and for someone like him to want her in his films, there must be a reason. There are fun snippets of Kajol annoying him, trying to get him to talk to the camera but he wasn’t having any of it. There are also fun parts of SRK joking around with Yash Chopra, who fully entertained him.
SRK takes credit for that fight scene at the end of the film. Strangely, we vividly remember watching the film and our old lady exclaimed: there’s no need for this action scene in this film, it ruined the flow of the film!
Moving on, everyone invited to talk in this series barring the senior actors, talk about the effect that DDLJ had on them. Basically, actors who get paid big money were asked their opinion about the first film of the man who pays them that big $$.
And Lily Singh. She gets introduced and she also goes on to talk about the effect DDLJ had on her. What about PC? Why was she not in it? She was so besotted with the character Raj that she almost got him years later. ?
Then they showed random clips of SRK getting mobbed to prove how everyone went crazy when the film was released. Some of these clips were actually from ‘Veer-Zaara’ promotions in France. ?
The long cinema run of DDLJ
You all know how long this film has been running in theatres. They make it a point to remind us every hundred years!
Here’s what we don’t get. The cinema owner Manoj Desai mentioned how when they stopped running the film, he got phone calls asking and threatening him why and how does he have the audacity to stop showing this film? Isn’t it strange he doesn’t question or tell us where these phone calls were coming from? Was it the underworld? This is the same man who appears in videos criticizing actors with no fear and he last spoke about how the overconfidence of Vijay Devarakonda destroyed his film. Vijay had to meet him in person and apologize. So we are wondering how come, this person can be scared of random calls coming in. So scared that he decides to keep the film running in cinemas at his own cost? Obviously, it’s not running houseful every day, so how does it cover the expenses? Does it make sense?
Or shall we go by the original story doing the rounds that Yash Chopra wanted his son’s first film to be historic, so their company pays this theatre to keep this film running? Kind of like how they are doing everything they can to have their latest release ‘Pathaan’ break records. Does this make sense?
Last public appearance of Aditya Chopra
According to AC, DDLJ winning max awards was a great thing but he stopped attending awards because he didn’t want validation from them and he didn’t want to keep on counting his awards. Yet, he had no issues proudly showcasing or rather showing off the other awards his production won in years after that. Whatever happened to you don’t believe in awards? His dad used to attend most award ceremonies, though, and pick up their winning trophies.
He makes no mention of the drama that occurred before that. How he didn’t give credit to the others who assisted him in making this film a reality, including Honey Irani who wrote the screenplay, and Javed Siddiqui who wrote the dialogues. Both didn’t appear in the credits at all as Yash gave his son sole credit for writing the screenplay and dialogues.
If you think about it, has AC on his own been able to recreate that DDLJ magic with his other work, his other films? To this day, he is still using DDLJ’s success to remind the audience what he made. The man recently recreated DDLJ into a Broadway story. He wouldn’t have to do that if his other films were big successes. So was he really solely responsible for its (DDLJ) success? Or was it with the help of seasoned industry veterans? Are these people crazy or greedy for demanding their share of credit?
We have noticed when watching a few Yash Raj films that they credit AC as the story writer. It’s quite something since he is running a huge studio and yet he has time to write so many stories. To be fair, most of these are ideas based on Hollywood films like ‘Bunty Aur Babli’, ‘Dhoom’, ‘Ladies vs Ricky Bahl’ and so on.
Sound familiar? ? ? ?
A hidden Blind Item
END OF PART 1…
Check out PART 2 HERE.
STAY TUNED!
Read More »Dissection: The Romantics’ YRF Documentary – Part 1
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