Badman
It’s not often that Bollywood is able to make fun of itself, even if the star who is game for this subversive idea is a yesteryear villain. It’s another experimental format for the web: a movie split into four parts. Viacom 18’s latest foray into the digital realm is Voot, an app that promises to feature original content. Part of the offering is Badman, Soumik Sen’s hilarious, albeit nostalgic, effort that pays homage to Bollywood villains of the 80s. “Today there are no more speciality villains,” says Sen. “Yesteryear villains are no longer relevant.” Take for instance, Gulshan Grover, who in more recent times acted as a docile dhaba owner in I Am Kalam. Some would say he’s getting on with the times, but Sen wants to remind us of the good old days.
In Badman, Grover leads an association of Bollywood’s evil men — including Ranjeet and Shiva Randani (Captain Zatak) — who are lobbying a petition for reservation in the Hindi film industry. “There used to be clapping when we entered,” says Ranjeet in Badman.
Grover, who plays a 60-year-old, is still attempting (and failing) to blend in with the cool kids. “He realises the only way he can stay relevant is to make a film and launch himself as a hero,” says Sen. “So Badman is a meta film: a film-within-a-film structure.” And if the idea of a film with a sexagenarian as a hero isn’t wild enough, Grover wants to take a leap and cast those heroes against whom he played villain during his peak. But this time, they will be the villains. Then after speaking to actors like Rishi Kapoor and Jackie Shroff, Grover zeroes in on Chunkey Pandey.
“I never pitched a film like this to anyone,” says Sen. “I always wanted to do a Bollywood mockumentary but it never happened.” Luckily, this Internet boom is now providing a creative solution to experimental works. “It’s edgier newer stuff which will not necessarily require a theatrical release,” says Sen.
The end result is a zany, tongue-in-cheek film that is not shy about making fun of itself. There’s Farah Khan choreographing Grover’s venture, but also lamenting that this is perhaps the end of her career. “Gulshan’s dancing is atrocious,” says Sen. “And Farah says, ‘Is gaane ke baad meri to career khatam. Shah Rukh aur Salman ke baad mein abhi Gulshan ko dance kara rahi hoon’.” It’s deliberately self-deprecating. And if the subtle, clever humour doesn’t hit the spot, there are in-your-face gags: Pandey’s attire camouflages the upholstery he’s sitting on. He’s called a loose canon because he lets one rip when something bad is about to happen. Watch out for cameos from film critics Raja Sen, Rajeev Masand and Anupama Chopra, who vociferously declare Grover’s effort to be the worst film ever made. “Even the Viacom CEO plays himself,” says Sen and when he gets the end-product says that it’s “utter trash”.
Badman releases on May 26
Txdrmy
It’s a dark night and a glib taxi driver is trying to make small talk with his passenger. The scene is the setting for an upcoming web series, Txdrmy. Created by independent filmmaker Srinivas Sunderrajan, the five-part show is yet another attempt to explore meta fiction.
His previous works include the 2010 feature film The Untitled Kartik Krishnan Project, where actor Kartik Krishnan, who plays himself, chances upon a cinema blog and intends to make his own short film. With Txdrmy, Krishnan delves into the meta waters yet again. “I love the genre. It’s personal,” he says. “The biggest task was to see if people would welcome it too.”
The show features has-been actor Omung Kapoor (Siddhant Behl) trying to revive his career by exploring digital distribution through a web series. Kapoor plays a taxi driver who has out-of-the-world conversations with his passengers.
“As he starts getting into the character its starts affecting him in real life,” says Sunderrajan. “There’s a clear shift between what is actually fiction and what the series is.” Each episode, six to seven minutes long, was shot over three days in September 2015.
“If one episode is 30 mins, you need to generate that much interest,” he says, referring to the short duration. “And all of them end with cliffhangers. I didn’t want people to see one episode now and wait for another one for long. I wanted all the parts to be out.”
In fact, writing Txdrmy took Sunderrajan only five days. The series, initially commissioned for production house HumaraMovie, has now got Ping Networks as co-producers. As for the name of the show, the creator deliberately removed all the vowels to “use Internet jargon as an analogy to force people to think laterally,” he says. “The brain fills the gaps. The blanks are open to interpretation for people, which should be the new wave of filmmaking where content has to make people think.”
Ironically, Txdrmy actually doesn’t make sense and it’s not supposed to. So don’t draw blood scratching your head trying to decipher it. By the filmmaker’s own admission, “One thing that was common to everyone was ‘I don’t understand anything.’”
But each part unravels a new facet of the protagonist’s character, giving us a glimpse into his mind and personality. And between all this, there are some bizarre and eccentric conversations that go on.
For instance, there’s one episode which focusses on a passenger’s likeness to Dev Anand; another one where a traveller believes she’s god-looking for her own creator. Look out for guest appearances by Sunderrajan’s friends Hussain Dalal and Vasan Bala, who play Kapoor’s passengers.
Txdrmy releases on YouTube in June
Ho Ja Re-gender
There are a million ways to identify your gender without having to resort to social norms. Just like sexuality, gender is a spectrum you need to find your own place without having to resort to the pressure of being someone you’re not.
Ho Ja Re-gender brings reality television to the Internet. Directed by Ekant Babani, the new web series brings gender equality to the forefront. Six contestants face their problems when they’re compelled to fulfil tasks the opposite gender has to carry out every day.
“We design a journey for them through mission and tasks,” says Roshni Ghosh, the show’s creator, who previously worked on UTV’s Emotional Atyachar. “It’s both inside the house and outside in the real world. They have to go as the opposite gender.”
The contestants wear make-up, prosthetics, do voice modulation, to swap genders. The missions were shot on hidden camera. “With this show, the journey is one of self-discovery,” says Ghosh. The roles are reversed to throw the contestants off balance. It’s as simple as having the men manage the kitchen and the women turn into handy men who fix things. Reductive as it sounds, viewers will be surprised to see the discomfort of the contestants once they walk in someone else’s shoes.
After the deluge of mediocre reality television we’ve been subjected to in the past few years, it seems that Ho Ja Re-gender will have to really up the ante on the format of the show. “Using entertainment as a format, we want to start a dialogue and discussion on contextual gender roles,” says Ghosh. “Re-gender is not a man versus woman concept.”
The six contestants are Lasheeta Sahay (a girl discriminated for her gender), Farah Kader (who men find intimidating), Kirti Gautam (a sheltered housewife), Vishal (a chauvinist with set ideas of women’s roles), Jackie Deol (who thinks it’s his birthright to bed multiple women) and Joey Debroy (the only one open to new ideas). All six have been picked through five stages of casting, after word-of-mouth publicity, to get legitimately affected people who were willing to bare their lives for public scrutiny. “The contestants took a lot of convincing to open up on camera,” says Ghosh.
“They were very uncomfortable initially, and one contestant even quit the show halfway.” The first season with episodes which are 30 to 40 mins long are spread across 20 parts. Ghosh says there’s ancillary content that complements the show which will be released as well.
Ho Ja Re-gender releases on Arré in June
Kult City
In a first of sorts, we’ll have a chance to watch something that’s been termed as a “a lo-fi sci-fi web series rooted in India.”
An anthology series, spanning eight episodes in the first season, Kult City allows viewers to see Mumbai like never before: watch it’s real people do extraordinary things. In this case, however, don’t expect heroic acts of bravery; instead imagine out-of-the-world creativity. One episode features an old Gujarati real estate agent, an average everyday man with no special features. In fact, you’ve seen him everywhere. But this cellophane man is selling real estate on Mars for a time when Earth becomes inhabitable.
Another episode features the last descendent of Ravan’s progeny. A struggling actor (one with ten heads at that) is the last of his lineage and must procreate to keep alive the family line. Then there’s the cloud archaeologist who’s fighting a gigantic commercial system that’s made a business out of selling clouds.
“There’s poignant context to the stories,” says co-director Zain Matcheswalla. “Each episode is a standalone but they cross-reference each other.” Matcheswalla and the show’s creator, Arati Kadav, run Short Film Window, a website that’s dedicated to showcasing short films from all over the world.
With Kult City, the two have used characters that are real people with fantastic jobs. Kadav says, “If everything in the world is the same, it’s just that one guy who is different.”
But the primary protagonist binding all the episodes together is Mumbai. “The characters all exist in the same world and Mumbai plays a big role,” says Matcheswalla. “We explore different parts of the city, including spots in Andheri Lokhandwala, South Mumbai and other parts not normally explored.” They even managed to shoot on the Metro and the mills around Mumbai, thanks to a small cast and crew. Small budgets have some benefits, after all.
“If you plan well, you will get better results rather than stopping the whole mono rail,” says Matcheswalla. This way, they got an authentic setting with real people in the background. The duo hopes they create bigger fantastical universes with larger-than-life stories in season two.
With little focus on sci-fi as entertainment in India, Kadav and Matcheswalla are keen on bring ing the genre to the forefront.
“As a storyteller, a sense of wonder is your biggest gift,” says Kadav. “Through sci-fi you can tell a lot more about reality in a fun way. Especially if we can take advantage of our rich mythological history of magical stories and fables. Somewhere along the way we’ve lost a huge opportunity by not making use of our culture. There’s no representation of the genre,” says Kadav. The duo is seeking to change that.
Kult City releases on YouTube in June
