Veteran actor Om Puri is irritated with Bollywood’s fickle obsession with good looks.
"Nobody has to tell me why I have never played the hero, barring two or three movies. I know.
HITTING REALITY In fact, when I first applied to the Film and Television Institute of India in Pune, they asked me to enact Mark Anthony’s speech from Shakespeare’s ‘Julius Caesar’. So I prepared it and did my piece.
Some members of the jury felt that I had no place in the industry: He doesn’t look like a comedian, he doesn’t look like a villain. At the time, I was very skinny, and obviously didn’t look like a hero. Where will he fit in? they wondered.
To that Girish Karnad and Jairaj, who were also on the jury, responded, He has got an A plus in his test, so on what basis can we not have him? It is his problem what he’s going to do in the film industry.
Anyway, here I am now 25 years in the film industry, having done more than 170 films.
LOVE THY LOOKS In the last 10 to 15 years, looks have become extremely important in Bollywood because we’ve been churning out love stories like nobody’s business, and that too only teenage ones. No mature love stories, please: We are Indians!
Sure, the hero can be 40, even 55 years old, that is ‘chalega’, but the girl has to be between 16 and 26! Looks now automatically play an important role, and in fact, we have reached the stage where we look like we are making advertisements. This is, of course, barring a few exceptions, which frankly are quite negligible: I mean, how many films are there today, which are not glamour-based?
From where I see it, the industry has unfortunately accepted the stance that we are simply entertainers we have no other contribution to make to society, other than to entertain. And it’s not necessary that there has to be aesthetics involved or it has to be tastefully done: It is entertainment at any cost.
I am not denying that it has a big role to play in our lives it’s a forum for people to get together and forget their worries. But, at the same time, if cinema is reduced just to entertainment, it’s a pity.
HERO NO. 1 If you look at the world cinema Japanese, Italian, even American cinema, though they also make a substantial number of rubbish films, they also make a number of good films. If they have a Tom Cruise who is ‘chikna’, they also have some rugged faces like William Defoe as heroes.
Like in the ’50s, we had people like Balraj Sahni, Ashok Kumar, Dilip Kumar, who were all heroes but not chocolate-box faces. They were talented people and the genius was recognised and accepted. But over a period of time, cinema has become very synthetic and that’s what it is today.
And I don’t know how much of this really sells because if it was selling, then excuse me, all films should be hits. It is pathetic that out of the 200 Hindi films that we make, not more than four or five films do really wonderful business.
Whereas in the past, in the ’60s and ’70s, when I was in drama school, every third film used to run for at least 25 or 50 weeks. Now, it is reduced to 20 or 50 days.
Even locations have to be chocolatey today: It’s not that we don’t have wonderful or rugged locations in India, yet producers prefer to go to Scotland or Switzerland to shoot song sequences. Why?
One must never judge a book by its cover. The cover might initially attract you but eventually it’s what is inside that will matter."
Om Puri spoke to Farhad J Dadyburjor