Uday Bhatia examines the recent trend of publishing Bollywood screenplays.
 Writing on Indian cinema tends to fall into two broad categories. On the one hand, there are solemn volumes which examine cinema’s relation to everything from anthropology to pataphysics and, as a result, are pretty much incomprehensible to the general public. On the other, there are the coffee-table variety – beautiful to look at, trivia-heavy, extravagantly priced. Recently, however, a different kind of film book has begun to appear and multiply: the published screenplay.
It started in 2006, when Nasreen Munni Kabir’s The Immortal Dialogue of K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam was published by Oxford University Press. Kabir is the author of biographies of Guru Dutt and Lata Mangeshkar and a compendium of conversations with Javed Akhtar. Her motive to produce a published screenplay, she said, was “to preserve in book form the wonderful use of language, exceptional poetry and psychological layering that underpins the dialogue” of Mughal-e-Azam.
The result, transcribed in Urdu, Hindi, Romanised Urdu and English, was a hybrid: it looked like a coffee-table book, was priced like one (Rs 1250), but proved, on closer inspection, to be a lot smarter than its cohorts. The formula was repeated with similar books by the author on Awaara and Mother India. Kabir is now making plans to tackle Guru Dutt’s Pyaasa and Bimal Roy’s Devdas. While she felt the four-language format and quality of illustrations necessitated a higher price bracket, she did admit that “the price is a problem. These are collector’s books, but that said, I hope we will find a way of lowering the price for the next batch.”
The last 12 months have seen a steady flowering of the screenplay book trend. Early in 2010, Yoda Press published the screenplay of My Brother Nikhil and plans to do the same with Rang De Basanti next. Two Vidhu Vinod Chopra-produced scripts have also rolled off the presses: Lage Raho Munnabhai in August last year and 3 Idiots in June 2010, both published by Om Books International.
Chopra has even started a screenplays division that aims, as per a published statement, to bring to the public “screenplays of the greatest Indian classics and more recent films”. Smriti Kiran, head of this new division, and the one responsible for compiling the 3 Idiots screenplay book, explained why this was a necessary step. “We have a rich and vibrant legacy of films, a lot of which is no longer available,” she said. “This is what we plan to change by creating a comprehensive archive.”
Kiran’s views are echoed by Dipa Chaudhuri, editor at Om Books International, who worked on the Mughal-e-Azam book while at the Oxford University Press, and more recently on Lage Raho Munnabhai and 3 Idiots. “It is important for the author to resurrect the context in which the film was conceived and shot. But when we talk about the V Shantarams and the Guru Dutts, that context is no longer available to us, except through the mouths of those who were alive then and [who] may not be around for much longer. So these books become an important part of cinema history documentation.”
All the screenplay books in the market aim to offer more than just a script. Kabir’s books include her insightful commentary (aided, as she pointed out, by “dozens of interviews with film personalities who have spoken about the classics they worked on”), while the 3 Idiots screenplay has interviews with the director, producer, screenwriter and cast. Kabir said, “Screenplay books must be presented in a very precise way. Film students wanting to study dialogue can watch the films on DVD or even on YouTube, so the key is making these books relevant in another way.”
Some sceptics argue that while maintaining one’s cinematic heritage in text has its own importance, it skirts the main issue. If preservation is the key, why not focus on restoring the films themselves? As Chaudhuri mused, “I would have liked to know more about Raja Harishchandra, but that isn’t possible now.” That this landmark 1913 film, the first feature-length production to be made in this country, no longer exists in complete form is a tragedy that has frustrated countless film buffs. As more and more films of similar vintage teeter on the verge of extinction, it might be more prudent to embalm the entire dinosaur, rather than preserve bones for future generations to assemble skeletons from.
The Immortal Dialogue of K Asif’s Mughal-e-Azam, Oxford University Press, Rs 1,250. The Dialogue of Awaara and The Dialogue of Mother India, Niyogi Books, Rs 1,250. My Brother Nikhil: The Screenplay, Yoda Press, Rs 295. Lage Raho Munnabhai: The Original Screenplay & 3 Idiots: The Original Screenplay, Om Books, Rs 295 and Rs 495 respectively. |
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