The Dubbing Rub

KARAN Johar's Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, all gloss and candyfloss, made an awful lot of music and money at the box-office in 1998, but, surprisingly, it wasn't the year's top grosser. It was Titanic, the $200 million Hollywood celluloid behemoth, that sailed off with the distinction, mopping up Rs 55 crore from Indian shores. Though the audiences were lukewarm to most other foreign releases during '98, when Leonardo DiCaprio chats up Kate Winslet in Hindi on a sinking ship, it struck a chord all across the country.

And set alarm bells ringing yet again in an already crisis-hit Hindi film industry. The rumblings of discontent were first heard when the Hindi version of Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park turned out to be a box-office humdinger in the mid-'90s. Numerous other Hollywood films-Baby's Day Out, Broken Arrow, Godzilla, Independence Day, Armageddon-have since been dubbed in Hindi and, to the continuing consternation of the local industry, have raked in big bucks from India's cities.

So, when three powerful Mumbai film trade bodies-Indian Motion Pictures Distributors Association (impda), the Theatre Owners' Association and Cine Exhibitors Association of India-decided last week to keep dubbed foreign films out of Mumbai and adjoining towns in Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka, the move was to be expected. Some of the reasons cited weren't: Hollywood films are okay for the elite, said they, but not for the masses laced as they are with too much sex and violence. Shades of the Shiv Sena's moral police?

But as with everything the Mumbai film industry does, the latest action is fraught with confusion. When the resolution was announced, impda president N.N. Sippy spelt out the industry's strategy: the idea, he said, was to free up movie halls for re-runs of old Hindi hits. He also told the press that dubbed Hollywood films are contaminating the tastes of Indian audiences and desi films were consequently suffering reverses. But when contacted on phone, Sippy backtracked: 'The press has overreacted. The matter will be sorted out very soon.'

With several big films coming up in the weeks ahead, representatives of the four Hollywood entities doing business in India-Columbia Tristar, Warner Bros., Paramount and Twentieth Century Fox-are playing it safe. Expected, considering the clout of the three trade organisations, which control all cinema halls in the territory. Says Blaze Fernandes of Warner: 'There's nothing official about the ban, so it wouldn't be fair for me to comment.' Only a couple of weeks back, Warner Bros. released Tez Raftaar (the dubbed version of the Jackie Chan-starrer Rush Hour) in Mumbai.

But, according to sources in the industry, it wasn't without difficulty. Warner Bros. officials had to seek 'special permission' from the trade organisations for the release of Tez Raftaar. The release of Columbia Tristar's Khooni Aahat or Urban Legend, the sequel to I Know What You Did Last Summer, is believed to have been held up because of the prevailing uncertainty.

No formal circular has been sent to the Hollywood studios yet. Perhaps it never will be. The troika is content to play on the fears of foreign film distributors. 'What the exhibitors are looking for are monetary concessions from the Hollywood giants,' says an industry insider. 'Hence the arm-twisting. Only those who agree to their demands will be allowed to release their films.'

Which begs the following questions: how can legally imported and censored films be denied the right to be exhibited? Is it a ploy to protect the mediocrity of the Mumbai masala machine against external competition? If it's anything more, the Mumbai film trade troika hasn't established that as yet.