Film Writers Can Defy Big Money
By Vidyadhar Date
01 March, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Writers are not there just to make money. They want to express ideas. They should not be dictated to by big business. This was the contention of several participants in a three-day conference of film and television screen writes and writer directors from different parts of India organised by the Film Writers Association in Mumbai from February 25.
Tom Schulman, a former vice president of the Writers Guild of America (West) and Academy award winning screen writer of Dead Poets Society, said that if he wanted only to make money he would have gone into real estate or some other profession. Writing is different. Here, the writer wants to say something important. By the way, his film challenges conformity, the status quo.
A screen writer is the most important part of a film and producers know this but they do not want to publicly recognize the importance of writers. He also cited the name of Howard Lawson as an important American screen writer. What Schulman did not mention was that Lawson was one of the most radical writers who refused to testify against his colleagues during the witch hunt against leftists in the American film industry in the 1950s. And Ronald Regan, the then president of the Actors Guild, was prominent in his campaign against left wing writers who were some of the most outstanding people.
Interestingly, the local delegates were inspired by the resistance put up by organized unions of American writers and others in the film industry. U.S. writers have gone on strike seven times. The result of the resistance is that the pension funds of artists and workers in the American industry are over two billion dollars, more than the combined turn- over of the Indian film industry, as Anjum Rajabali, secretary of the Film Writers Association, said.
America now has stringent, exemplary regulations to protect the rights of writers as was made clear at the conference. However, the interesting point, again not mentioned, is that it was not always so. Actually, the writing of Charles Dickens, the eminent 19th century English writer, was freely pirated for several years and Dickens made this point during his visit to America. But the Americans took no action for several years.
Sociologist Shiv Vishwanathan stirred a controversy in his keynote address saying social responsibility should not be thrust on writers. That was fair enough. But then most great writing has always taken up serious causes. Shabana Azmi, actress and daughter of Shaukat and Kaifi Azmi, recalled that she grew up in a family that was very much part of the progressive writers movement with strong convictions.
Anjum Rajabali said entertainment had come to mean only fun and laughter though some of the greatest stories in the world were tragedies. Unfotunately, some film writers had begun to see themselves as suppliers of raw material which could be developed into products that fulfilled consumer demand at the instruction of the industrialist.
Shiv said despite its major achievements, the film industry remained Brahminical in its approach, its agency was the middle class and it neglected dalits.
Javed Akhtar, leading film writer, said some writers are trying to change the structure but by and large films were being deprived by some people of emotions, these people want instant gratification, instant profits and so there was a lot of violence in films. K Hariharan, film maker, scholar and analyst, stressed the need to challenge the status quo by involving the audience.
Concern was expressed over the neglect of the genre of films for children during a discussion chaired by Chandita Mukherjee, script writer and producer of Bharat Ki Chhap on TV. Gulzar, writer and poet, said there was virtually no writing for children in Hindi and Urdu and in the country there were professional writers for children in only three languages, Bengali, Marathi and Malayalam. Satyajit Ray’s family was involved in writing for children for generations and Ray himself made films for children.
Nila Madhab Panda, award winning maker of children’s films, said our record in the field of films for kids, was disgusting. The fact is it is possible to make good films with a low budget. He sold his house to raise money for a film and said jokingly that his wife was about to divorce him.
The general view was that children were badly treated in families as viewers, exposed to mindless programmes while they ate food. Even episodes from the crime serial CID were thought by some parents as fit for children. This was a pity considering that Amol and Chitra Palekar’s Kachhi Dhoop was such a good TV programme for kids years ago . Writer Kamal Pandey felt we had a good tradition of mainstream films, successful films for children like Jagriti and Boot Polish. Why make separate films for children ? Big directors should make films for children. That would give them a humbling experience.
Film writers were now being given more recognition, more rights from the producers’ association which had at its helm directors like Ashutosh Gowarikar and Vipul Shah.
Vidyadhar Date is a senior journalist and author of the book Traffic in the era of climate change. Walking, cycling, public transport need priority. [email protected]
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