An Open Letter to Bollywood

(If you work in Bollywood or know someone who does, please take the time to consider the following and feel free to forward these ideas to others in the industry:)

Dear Bollywood,

Please try making some films that are not: (1) Romances with love triangles and mistaken identities, (2) Gangster films, and (3) uncredited remakes/rip-offs of foreign films, like U.S., Japanese and Chinese films. I realize that you also make an occasional horror film, and I'd like to see more of those, but many of them have stunk, because many have either been rip-offs of some foreign film or another that are inferior to the foreign film, or they've engaged in most of the other things that I'm complaining about in this post.

Please feel free to make more films that are not musicals. Why is Ram Gopal Varma the only producer/director willing to do this? Many films are inappropriate as musicals. Many musicals have inappropriate songs, filmed inappropriately.

Please stop making almost every song about the same thing. Believe it or not, lyrics can be written about anything! You don't have to just sing about love, pining and not being able to sleep because of it. Maybe let someone other than Sameer write lyrics for once (and why not try letting a wider range of people sing--how about even your actors?). The only Hindi words I know are "Dil" and "Pyar/Pyaar", and I only know those two because EVERY FRICKIN' SONG IN EVERY FILM HAS THEM AS SOME OF THE MAIN LYRICS. Enough already!

Not every song needs to be filmed either as a travelogue with 25 costume changes or as a big production number with backup dancers.

Overacting can work occasionally. We all have Al Pacino films that we love, for example. But not every actor has to overact in every film! Encourage Bollywood actors to use understatement occasionally. Encourage them to stop mugging (making exaggerated, ridiculous facial expressions). And not every film has to have "sing-songy" catch phrases.

There are a lot of Indians who do not look like white, Western Europeans. Lots of them are extremely good looking. Why not put some in your films as stars?

The recent phenomenon of trying to be trendy is disturbing. You don't have to ape the latest technologically-oriented cinematography and editing. You don't have to try to be "cool" for kids in their teens and twenties. Try focusing on making films that are interesting artistically instead.

Finally, your running times are getting a bit better, but believe it or not, you can make good films that are only 90 minutes long or even less. Let the material dictate how long the film should be, not a belief about how long a film has to be, regardless of whether it suits the material or not.

Come on, Bollywood! You guys have potential. There's a lot of talent that's not being tapped into properly. Take some chances. Break some formulas. I know you have far more imagination than you've been showing. Produce some cinema that the whole world will be talking about (and buying). I know you can do it.


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