Mumbai: In the darkest days of Bollywood, the bearded instructor recalls, the prevailing attitude of directors and producers went something like this: “If you can write a postcard, you can write a script.”
Standing at the helm of a class, Anjum Rajabali, the writer behind The Legend of Bhagat Singh, is trying to debunk the notion—one student at a time.
Anjum Rajabali, head of scriptwriting at Whistling Woods International, at a lecture. His students are among the first wave of trained scriptwriters India has produced in nearly 40 years
Rajabali is the head of scriptwriting at Whistling Woods International, the media and film school founded by film-maker Subhash Ghai.
“The most creative force in making a film is the original script,” explains Rajabali.
“All others are bound by the script, so everyone else is either a derivative or a response, or a reaction to the script.”
The statement, in many ways, reflects a belief the film industry is trying to infuse into itself. And the 20-somethings seated before the professorial and offbeat Rajabali are hanging on to his every word.
Sporting designer stubble, Dolce and Gabbana attire and their Apple Mac laptops, they have the distinction of being among the first wave of trained scriptwriters India has produced in nearly 40 years.
Despite churning out 850 films each year compared with the 180 by Hollywood, budding scriptwriters in India had no recourse to professional training until four years ago, when the Film and Television Institute of India launched its intensive, one-year-long scriptwriting course. That course, also run by Rajabali, was established after a series of box office flops inspired industry veterans to rethink the need for, and the role of, a cohesive script.
The failure of insipid storylines and poorly constructed plots to generate audience, despite the pull of top directors and star-studded casts, led to the realization that a lack of focus on writing was the weak link, according to industry watchers. In their estimates, 70% of Bollywood films fail due to poorly-constructed scripts, with both grammar and structure falling short.
In this month that has seen a flurry of releases from Race this past weekend to 123 this weekend, Komal Nahata, editor of the trade publication Film Information, notes that of the last 150 films made in Bollywood, 125 would have failed to recover their investments and costs.
“Film-makers plead cinematic licence but, if the story does not gel well then the audience will notice,” he says. “The importance of training cannot be overemphasized.”
And, so, features that have been accepted as part of the quirks of Bollywood, namely implausible dialogue and a lack of context, are starting to be challenged.