AMITABH
BACHCHAN
Neil Shah
Making forays into America. Amitabh Bachchan receiving his honor at the Lincoln Center in New York City in April.
The one thing Amitabh seems not to be is a poet – like his father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan. But even this is not entirely the case. “I tend not to speak much,” Bachchan once muttered in an early film, “Zanjeer.” And that’s exactly his secret: Amitabh’s appreciation for silence gives each of his words a lyrical and intellectual loftiness on level with poetry. He could be telling you he is doing the laundry tonight and you would still sigh with pleasure.
During a rare visit to the U.S. this April, Bachchan spoke to Indian Life & Style at the Walter Reade Theatre in New York, which hosted an 11-day retrospective of his films. Bachchan spoke about his hopes for taking Bollywood to Western audiences and challenged Bollywood to improve its marketing of Indian movies. So what do the next 10 years have in store for India’s greatest actor?
“As an actor, I don’t know if I’m going to be surviving another ten years. But Indian cinema is poised to grow very rapidly. With the kind of interest coming from other parts of the world, I’m quite certain that very shortly it will find a place universally, if it hasn’t already.”
With India on the brink of being a world-class superpower, Bachchan is confident his country’s entertainment industry will have its share of the spoils.
“I’ve always believed that the economic strength of a nation, for some peculiar reason, decides what’s going to happen to its eating habits, the culture, the clothes we wear, the films we see. These things become very exciting for the rest of the world.”
Bachchan says it’s likely that India’s entertainment industry will be among the three biggest industries in the country in the next 10 or 15 years. “So that bodes well for Indian cinema,” he explains.
Indian films have long enjoyed markets in non-Indian regions – from the Soviet Union in the 1950s to Israel, Pakistan, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Iraq and Iran. Not to mention today’s DVD sales to non-resident Indian markets in the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.
Bachchan envisions his own entertainment company, AB Corp. Ltd., as participating in this global surge by entering into more joint production partnerships with Indian corporations and eventually British and international producers.
“Our policy is to not be a 100 percent equity owner in any production. We want to hold hands with somebody, to share equity, make life easier for both of us. Risks are reduced” that way, he says.
But while Americans have shown some interest in the art-house epics of Satyajit Ray and Ritwik Ghatak, the traditional Bollywood film is still a tough sell for the West, with Indian producers failing to push their films and Americans not pulling them either.
Indian producers still have a “lack of knowledge of the conditions of the market and the possibilities of additional revenues coming in from other sources outside India,” Bachchan says. “There’s been a very conservative view… they’ve probably felt, ‘Why would an African want to see a Hindi movie? Will they actually see it?’ Indian producers are just beginning to realize that there is a huge market and people are actually watching these films, enjoying them. Now what we need to do is get a marketing structure in place to make sure that the product goes out to as many people as possible.”
There’s also been reluctance on the part of Indian actors and actresses to compete in the U.S. and overseas markets. Most of them – with the exception of Aishwarya Rai and a few notable others – still don’t have U.S. agents.
“It’s more to do with being a big fish in a small pond or a small fish in the ocean. They themselves will have to take their own personal decisions,” he says. “These are very personal choices.”
One of Bachchan’s most recent films, “Black,” has generated more Oscar buzz than most Indian films in recent memory. Was it made with an international audience in mind – as a possible vanguard for more Western interest in Indian film?
“Purely for an Indian market,” Bachchan says. “Sanjay [Leela Bhansali – the film’s director] was asked this question many times – whether he was deliberately making something for an overseas market. And his answer was, no, he wants his films to be seen by Indians first, and yes, if there’s interest from the overseas market, that’s icing on the cake.”
Bachchan is a very busy man these days.
Aside from his film roles, cameo appearances and endorsements, he will renew his role as host of “Kaun Banega Crorepati” this August. “I was contracted for 390 episodes. I have finished 305. Then we went off the air. And now I’m coming in to finish the contract,” he says.
There will be some minor changes in the format – the money’s gone up to two crores, for example, he says. The show’s producers have also improved the facilities for calling into the shows. “When the show first came on and people were phoning in, the lines were getting jammed because the telephone system was not equipped to handle the massive number of callers coming,” he explains.
It was the wide success of his first “KBC” show that resurrected Amitabh’s career as an entertainment figure and film actor – this time in the medium of TV.
Only the gods know what’s next.