Mahesh's marketing methodology

Upfront let me add, I ain't no fan of Mahesh Bhatt and can see through his persona in minutes. His aura of intelligence, deep thinking, anti establishment, etc, is just that, a facade. After all in a career spanning more than 75 films (as director or writer or producer), only Arth, Sadak, Naam, Saraansh, Zakhm, Gangster standout. Hence a success ratio of 6/75 , which in most professions and walks of life would be considered a failure. Almost all his films (including Pooja and Vikram's) have the following standard "cut and paste ingrediants:"

(a) A basic celebration of earthiness
(b) A hero who always has a friend (aka the person's only job is to be a shoulder to cry on or vent)
(c) The emotion of sorrow is always visually depicted by hitting the bottle (as someone who follows sports where almost every day someone is a loser, hence in sorrow if Mahesh's films were a yardstick, we would be a world of alcoholics, actually it is au contraire, you celebrate with a drink!!)
(d) An intensity of emotions
(e) His rhetoric of "I don't care about Hollywood" is equally matched by doing a "cut and paste" of Hollywood in some of his films

Ok, now that I have gotten that out of the way, what is truly amazing and mind boggling is the practical, business brain of Mahesh and his films!!!

In all these years, in all the changes in audience tastes, with all the onslaught of corporates, the star system, etc, Mahesh has been an investors dream come true. The Making involves, inexpensive
products, the Marketing involves high octane songs and music that far exceed the quality of the film, the Methodology involves extensive use of family and newcomers to cut costs.....and more power to him
for that. The net result are films that will probably be made for around Rs 1 to Rs 2 crore at a max (if not less), use tax incentive of places which have not been caught on camera before, like Korea or Jordan, etc, bringing the NET cost even lower. Couple that with strong CD sales, and you have a major chunk of the cost recovered there. Use sensationalism, almost all of which is hogwash or concocted "during that sequence Shiney actually slapped Emran so hard, he got caught up in the moment....etc," enough to make it in the news, whereas in reality Shiney must have brushed an ant of Emran's shirt, then let the family take over "aka this is Pooja's best performance period...or when Bhatt saheb saw me in Jannat, he had tears in his eyes, etc, etc" ....and viola....you have a film that will most probably be wiped out by the first week........but guess what....by then all the factors combined have recovered the cost, made a few bucks over that for the investors and nobody is poorer and nobody cribs. And so the machinery moves on.

Also Mahesh, maybe to cut costs, but for whatever reason, gives the highest number of newcomers (both as acting and crew talent) to the industry.

Anupam Kher

Shiney Ahuja (yes HKA preceeded, but Gangster got him into the Commerical world)

Emraan Hashmi (family)

Mohit Suri (family)

Anurag Basu

Kangana

Sanjay Dutt (relaunched when all seemed lost)

Gulshan Grover (not launched but packaged into a commerical actor)

Sushmita Sen

Vinay and Ranvir (again not lauched but made commercial)

Kunal Khemu

Malika (the leap from her debut to commerical viability was thanks to Mahesh)

and the list goes on. Not to mention the debut singers, musicians, etc.

And the best part is, he continues to do all that despite having only 6 acclaimed films out of 75 and perhaps a "super hit" of approx 3-4.

So Jannat has been trashed, is probably trashy, Emraan is trashy, but the fact of the matter remains, the Bhatt machinery continues to work like a well oiled machine and he takes on the mantle (along with his daughter) of being the messiah of the newcomers....and maybe he is.

So to me, given my penchant for low budget (yet non exploitative), solid songs, sans stars (cause nobody, but nobody is indispensable in the creative world) and a touch of masala, entertainers, with limited marketing "spend," Mahesh becomes as much of a force of "equalization" as a "former" Ram Gopal or a Shyam Benegal or a Rajat Kapoor (the commonality being all have done it their way and
given commercial successes), in a Bollywood that is increasingly running bereft of script ideas, less of a "risk averse and more of a play safe," mindset, than has existed in the past.

So to all the "non family" talent that Mahesh has given us, I say a - THANK YOU! And everytime someone tells me that a KayKay Menon or an Aamir Khan or a Sudhir Mishra has oodles of talent (and they do), I look at a Mahesh to give us the "undiscoverd" KayKay, the "unshown on the big screen" Aamir and the "undisplayed on the creative horizon" Sudhir, who are definitely there in the plethora of
TV/Stage/Modelling/Struggling creative talent of Mumbai and India and the world, but only few seem to have the courage, the conviction and most importantly the BUSINESS SMARTS, to showcase them.

Almost reminds me of the one positive I have learned in Silicon Valley. The Reliance's can do what they have to in the Bollywood commercial world, the Naseer and Rahul Boses's of this Arthouse world can do what they have to in the Bollwyood Arthouse world....all it takes is a GARAGE...a solid script with some solid actors and a solid director (mind you the key word is solid, not famous or known).....and....the creative world is never the same again....both for the risk takers and the audience!!!

AND OF COURSE MY BIGGEST REASON TO ADMIRE MAHESH- HE HAS TOTAL DISDAIN FOR THE FESTIVALS/CRITICS/CANNES OF THIS WORLD- THE AUDIENCE IS KING....ALWAYS HAVE BEEN...ALWAYS WILL BE!!!

Sincerely,

Vivek "whenever ALLEGEDLY business savy filmmakers make a movie, it may be a hit or a flop, when a STREET SMART, WITH A HEART, NON-MBA, ANTI ESTABLISHMENT, makes a film and then a series of them, he becomes the ESTABLISHMENT and the LEADER" Kumar