Of stories and screenplays

If there is an industry that (supposedly) thrives by defying conventional logic, movie industry would be it. Even the famed casinos of Las Vegas pale in comparison to the sheer volume of bets that is witnessed every Friday in the tinsel town. Scores and scores of new talents, old talent, forgotten talent, long lost talent and all kinds of other talents fight it out for a wiggle room on the box office. Those who are already strongly entrenched, try to cement their temporary places for as long as possible. Eventually the one who manages to bring back people in waves, to spend their hard-earned leisure time of 120+minutes and money manage to compete in another Friday in foreseeable future. Those who fail at the first hurdle either vanish without a trace or banished to the end of the long queue for the start line. At times, movie industry operations resemble MLM, where someone comes up with a product and the earliest seller escapes with the slightest of losses with the last buyer set for the biggest doom. Despite knowing that their product (read movie) has nothing to improve the craft or rake in the best of moolah, people still willingly pour good money after bad, in the greed of making quick profit, distributor or last line men be damned. Despite crossing several decades as an independent industry no one is yet to successfully decipher the winning formula. Why do some movies tick, even with worst of content, while some fail miserably despite having the best of stories in paper?

I recently came across 2 movies which were the trigger behind this post. First up is Prince – by Sivakarathikeyan who was aiming for a glorious hat trick of BO hits with this one. His immediate previous movie, Don, is what you call an BO equivalent of a viral hit, where no one knew why it became a popular hit, despite having no storyline, no comic elements, average music. When that movie was launched in OTT, it was panned by everyone wondering how in the world it became a 100-crore winner during theatrical release!! Maybe to avenge being fooled by the previous movie or for various other reasons, Prince was made a pauper. On paper, the story would’ve made a funny short story in a weekly magazine and even for that the ending would’ve been stale. What made the actor choose that script is anyone’s guess. Either he wanted to explore other state businesses or simply relied on couple of one-liner jokes to deliver the movie banking on his previous successes. The other movie that I saw was “Poochaandi” made by Malaysian crew, I guess. It looks amateurish and you would need some patience to go through the first 20 minutes. After you invest that time, it really hooks you in. Again, the climax could’ve been anything but the one shown. But for a low budget attempt, it was quite well made, and the story was reasonably gripping. The ghost effects could’ve been made better as it gives more of a fancy dress competition feel which is a dampener. Compared to the previous movie, this had all the ingredients for a good thriller but on paper, it might’ve sounded more of a drama serial than worthy of a movie. The presentation made all the difference. 

If Poochandi had the budget and scale of casting as Prince, it might’ve seen much bigger success and for all you know, might’ve failed as bigger as well. Unless someone breaks open that magic formula, BO will continue to haunt as many as it thrills those who are lucky enough to succeed.