3 Idiots - Bollywood versus Writers
Interesting Article from khaleejtimes on the fight between Chetan Bhagat and the producers of 3 idiots.
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/weekend/inside.asp?xfile=/data/weekend/...
Namita Bhandare (Smoking Gun)
8 January 2010
I can tell you the precise moment at which I decided where my sympathies lay in the Chetan Bhagat versus Vidhu Vinod Chopra/ Aamir Khan/ Raju Hirani controversy.
It was when an out-of-control Vidhu Vinod Chopra (VVC) told a journalist he had invited to his press conference to “shut up”. I was already irritated with the idiotic statements flying out of the camp of the makers of 3 Idiots: ‘Chetan Bhagat is a publicity hound’ (so?). ‘The film is only five per cent based on his book Five Point Someone’ (so?).
But until then, I had been ambiguous. The makers of the film had not legally violated any of the terms of the contract they had signed with Bhagat when they bought the rights to his book. They had given him rolling credits as they had promised. They had paid him. They had even apparently paid him a bonus. So, what was Bhagat’s beef?
Arrogance, perhaps? Arrogance that now that they had bought the rights and got Bhagat to sign on a bit of stamped paper, they didn’t need to really keep him in the loop. Arrogance that Bhagat was a mere writer — even if he was India’s most successful author — and so, who the hell was he to take on the might of Bollywood’s most powerful?
Go back a week. At what point did an outraged nation wake up to the horrors of the crime committed by former director general of police SPS Rathore in molesting a 14-year-old tennis player called Ruchika Girhotra? The crime was committed nearly two decades ago. Ruchika committed suicide over 10 years ago. The harassment of her family has been going on for years. But nothing, nothing outraged us more than that self-satisfied smirk on Rathore’s face after being sentenced to a mere six months in jail.
That smirk did for Ruchika more than all the horror stories that have been around for close to 20 years. Suddenly, we were baying for Rathore’s blood. Suddenly, we wanted him to be stripped off his medal. We wanted his pension cancelled. We wanted him to face the more serious charge of abetment to the suicide of a minor girl. We wanted the school that had expelled Ruchika under duress from Rathore shut down. We wanted the chief minister of Haryana to pay. We wanted every cop who had tortured Ruchika’s brother to go down.
It’s the same story every time and everywhere. Manu Sharma, serving a life sentence for the murder of model Jessica Lal, manipulates the system to get bail. Shibu Soren, despite a pending murder charge against him, gets the support of the BJP to become chief minister of Jharkhand for a third time. The son of an arms dealer runs over homeless people while returning home drunk in his BMW. It’s a watertight case but suddenly the witnesses turn hostile. A feudal brother gets the boyfriend of his sister killed. The sister is then packed off to London, out of public view. “Why couldn’t they have sent her away earlier?” the mother, Neelam Katara, asked me. “Why did they have to kill my son?”
It’s the belief and arrogance that stems from it that the rules don’t apply to a certain class of people. What would it have really cost the makers of 3 Idiots to show some grace — to use columnist Vir Sanghvi’s word? Nothing. What is Bhagat asking for? “Make me the third writer of the story,” he says. Don’t even pull out prints. Just make the change in the official records and in the DVD/satellite version. Unreasonable? I don’t think so. But the film-makers are so bound by their churlishness that they’re now talking of going to court to sue for defamation.
Last heard, VVC had issued an apology for telling a journalist to “shut up”.
“I was provoked into adverse comments,” an apparently contrite Chopra said. “I am extremely ashamed of my outburst.”
Then the churlishness boils over like an out-of-control destructive force of nature: “I never want to meet Chetan Bhagat again. I have already given him the money.” So much quibbling, small-minded, mealy-mouthed quibbling.
What does VVC say on the sidelines of his press conference, according to a Times of India report? One: (when screenplay writer Abhijat Joshi was seated on a low stool at the press conference): “Don’t let Abhijat sit there, otherwise he will feel that we are showing him his place. Nowadays, writers have begun to speak a lot.”
And two: (with reference to Bhagat’s claim that his mother had wept when she saw how poorly he had been credited in the film’s titles): “He should have asked his mummy if she was going to cry before he signed the contract.”
Shut up? VVC should follow his own advice.
(Namita is a New Delhi-based journalist and author and writes on social, political and lifestyle trends. She is currently working on her second book)
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/weekend/inside.asp?xfile=/data/weekend/...
Namita Bhandare (Smoking Gun)
8 January 2010
I can tell you the precise moment at which I decided where my sympathies lay in the Chetan Bhagat versus Vidhu Vinod Chopra/ Aamir Khan/ Raju Hirani controversy.
It was when an out-of-control Vidhu Vinod Chopra (VVC) told a journalist he had invited to his press conference to “shut up”. I was already irritated with the idiotic statements flying out of the camp of the makers of 3 Idiots: ‘Chetan Bhagat is a publicity hound’ (so?). ‘The film is only five per cent based on his book Five Point Someone’ (so?).
But until then, I had been ambiguous. The makers of the film had not legally violated any of the terms of the contract they had signed with Bhagat when they bought the rights to his book. They had given him rolling credits as they had promised. They had paid him. They had even apparently paid him a bonus. So, what was Bhagat’s beef?
Arrogance, perhaps? Arrogance that now that they had bought the rights and got Bhagat to sign on a bit of stamped paper, they didn’t need to really keep him in the loop. Arrogance that Bhagat was a mere writer — even if he was India’s most successful author — and so, who the hell was he to take on the might of Bollywood’s most powerful?
Go back a week. At what point did an outraged nation wake up to the horrors of the crime committed by former director general of police SPS Rathore in molesting a 14-year-old tennis player called Ruchika Girhotra? The crime was committed nearly two decades ago. Ruchika committed suicide over 10 years ago. The harassment of her family has been going on for years. But nothing, nothing outraged us more than that self-satisfied smirk on Rathore’s face after being sentenced to a mere six months in jail.
That smirk did for Ruchika more than all the horror stories that have been around for close to 20 years. Suddenly, we were baying for Rathore’s blood. Suddenly, we wanted him to be stripped off his medal. We wanted his pension cancelled. We wanted him to face the more serious charge of abetment to the suicide of a minor girl. We wanted the school that had expelled Ruchika under duress from Rathore shut down. We wanted the chief minister of Haryana to pay. We wanted every cop who had tortured Ruchika’s brother to go down.
It’s the same story every time and everywhere. Manu Sharma, serving a life sentence for the murder of model Jessica Lal, manipulates the system to get bail. Shibu Soren, despite a pending murder charge against him, gets the support of the BJP to become chief minister of Jharkhand for a third time. The son of an arms dealer runs over homeless people while returning home drunk in his BMW. It’s a watertight case but suddenly the witnesses turn hostile. A feudal brother gets the boyfriend of his sister killed. The sister is then packed off to London, out of public view. “Why couldn’t they have sent her away earlier?” the mother, Neelam Katara, asked me. “Why did they have to kill my son?”
It’s the belief and arrogance that stems from it that the rules don’t apply to a certain class of people. What would it have really cost the makers of 3 Idiots to show some grace — to use columnist Vir Sanghvi’s word? Nothing. What is Bhagat asking for? “Make me the third writer of the story,” he says. Don’t even pull out prints. Just make the change in the official records and in the DVD/satellite version. Unreasonable? I don’t think so. But the film-makers are so bound by their churlishness that they’re now talking of going to court to sue for defamation.
Last heard, VVC had issued an apology for telling a journalist to “shut up”.
“I was provoked into adverse comments,” an apparently contrite Chopra said. “I am extremely ashamed of my outburst.”
Then the churlishness boils over like an out-of-control destructive force of nature: “I never want to meet Chetan Bhagat again. I have already given him the money.” So much quibbling, small-minded, mealy-mouthed quibbling.
What does VVC say on the sidelines of his press conference, according to a Times of India report? One: (when screenplay writer Abhijat Joshi was seated on a low stool at the press conference): “Don’t let Abhijat sit there, otherwise he will feel that we are showing him his place. Nowadays, writers have begun to speak a lot.”
And two: (with reference to Bhagat’s claim that his mother had wept when she saw how poorly he had been credited in the film’s titles): “He should have asked his mummy if she was going to cry before he signed the contract.”
Shut up? VVC should follow his own advice.
(Namita is a New Delhi-based journalist and author and writes on social, political and lifestyle trends. She is currently working on her second book)
Tags: 3, Bhagat, Chetan, idiots, khaleejtimes
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