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June 13, 2000
5 QUESTIONS |
Refugee's flying start
Komal Nahta
The only reason for the combined condemnation was that the music was slow. Nobody really appreciated its old-world charm. But there were a few who were confident the music would grow -- slowly and surely. Today, not only is the music popular, it is gaining listeners by the day. In fact, the Refugee's music and promotional trailers have generated so much craze among the trade and the public alike that people are now eagerly awaiting the film's release. An indication of the excitement the Abhishek Bachchan-Kareena Kapoor debut is generating comes from Nagpur where, reportedly, about 15 shows of the film have been booked completely by various organisations. And this, almost a month before the film's release (expected on June 30)! Refugee, like Josh, is headed for a flying start! In Delhi too, the film is being booked at fantastic terms! And now, fragrant movies! A revolutionary concept in cinema viewing, which may go a long way in fighting cable piracy, will be introduced on June 23. Nagalingam revolves around making cinema a fragrant experience and is helmed by Babu Ganesh, who has not only acted in, produced, directed, but also handled many other aspects of this Tamil film. Apparently, the theatre will be filled with fragrance whenever there is a scene showing flowers on the screen or, say, when the heroine performs a pooja in the temple where aromatic incense is being burning. Likewise, there will be fragrance of different kinds of flowers in the theatre, before and after the interval. This has been made possible with a very small investment of Rs 1,500 per show by using a dry ice machine to spread the fragrance suiting the sequence on the screen. Jaipur's Rajmandir cinema used to do this. It used to spray perfumes of different fragrances in its various air-conditioners during the shows, irrespective of the scene on the screen. It used to be a different experience for the viewers. Coming back to the present revolution, Ganesh hopes the movie, made at a medium budget of Rs 70 lakh in this age of high-budget films, will fetch big returns. He is also ready to help anyone who wants to take advantage of his experiment, free of cost. Kya kehna!
Earlier this week, Ramesh Taurani, director Kundan Shah and Preity Zinta went to Jaipur and attended a show at Gem cinema. They also addressed a press conference there. Result? The publicity the film got saw its collections jump by almost 15 per cent. As against Rs 2,71,000 in the second week, Kya Kehna! collected Rs 307,000 in the third week. The trio then visited Baroda, Surat and Ahmedabad on Saturday and Sunday to interact with the public of Gujarat. Little wonder then that more number of prints of the film are being added every week. In the second week, a total of 22 prints were added in the whole of India, taking the number of prints in circulation to 175. A further 21 prints were taken out in the third week and, now, in its fourth week, four extra prints have been employed. As Kumar Taurani puts it, "Producers are not realising the importance of publicity. Sustained promotion even after a film clicks is very, very necessary." How true! Speaking of which...
While the pink definitely shocks, the effort and the expenditure involved shocks even more. Incidentally, David Dhawan's wife, who has seen the rushes of Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega, was heard telling Preity Zinta how much she liked it. The film also stars Salman Khan and Rani Mukherji. This is one film that is expected to take a great start when it releases on August 4. Sameer is a sona munda It is now common knowledge that Salman Khan had replaced Chandrachur Singh in Tips Films' Kya Kehna! mid-way during its making. And it was Salman who arranged a meeting between producer Ramesh Taurani and Chandrachur and saw to it that they settled their differences. As a result, Chandrachur was back in the film and Salman (who had not shot for it) was out. But not many may be aware that, even before the film was started with Saif Ali Khan and Chandrachur Singh, the original choices for the two roles were Sameer Soni (of China-Gate) and model Vishal. But both declined the offers, the former because he did not want to play the villain. But even before Kya Kehna! could be released, Samir felt he had committed a blunder. To apologise to the Tauranis, Samir acted in Tips' two video albums of Tips! And he promptly returned the cheque the Tauranis sent him for the videos, with a lovely letter reiterating how he had blundered in refusing Kya Kehna! offer and, to make up for his incorrect refusal, he would not accept the cheque for the video albums.
A look at the week
Komal Nahta edits the popular trade magazine, Film Information. Do tell us what you think of this column
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The film industry is very impatient. Nobody here, it would appear, has time to wait and watch. As soon as the music of J P Dutta's Refugee was released, the trade lost no time in pronouncing it would not work.
At a time when many producers don't even bother about a decent pre-release promotion of their films, the attitude of Tips' Ramesh and Kumar Taurani comes as a pleasant change. Not only did they spend a fortune on the pre-release publicity of Kya Kehna! (which ensured a brilliant opening to the small starcast film) but they are, even now, leaving no stone unturned to further publicise their film.
Both producer Sajid Nadiadwala and music company Super Cassettes, which holds the music rights of Har Dil Jo Pyar Karega, are going all out to promote the film. The photographs have been printed on silver paper, giving them an extraordinary metallic look. Super Cassettes' music hamper contains not just the film's music cassette and CD, but a number of other things -- a calculator, a writing pad, a note pad, tea-coasters, a pen and a trendy baseball cap. All of which are either in shocking pink coloured packages or are actually coloured shocking pink.