Monday, February 13, 2017

An Actor Can Not Exceed The Script

The script is everything. A show or a movie floats or sinks on the strength of the script, or lack thereof.

In India there is a saying. A bad cook adds extra chili powder to everything. Mindless plot twists, and mindless use of sex and violence are often used as that extra chili powder.

There are countless movies about people falling in love. But the theme of deepening of love in an existing relationship is not much explored. How do you go deeper after you have been married 15 years? Such themes are not much explored.

Law enforcement is another perennial topic and rightly so. But law enforcement does not only struggle with those that might cross the law. Law enforcement struggles with itself, it struggles with diversity issues.

Why only law enforcement? What about commandment enforcement? The complex organizational structure of something like the Catholic Church is not any less fascinating than that of a large police department or intelligence agency.

And the four constantly intersect: human love, divine love, law enforcement, commandment enforcement.

Diversity is not just about sprinkling a few different kinds of faces on to the screen. Culture is a body of knowledge. Gender is its own culture. And gender, as we know by now, is not binary, but a spectrum, not just in society but also inside individuals. Inside every man there is a woman.

Technology changes the basic assumptions. Digitization is a huge force. For one it creates numerous fragmented markets of different sizes. Costs can go down.

Story telling is as old as humanity. Movies might be a new art form. But not story telling. Art speaks to society. Society speaks to art. Movies as an art medium are uniquely positioned to help humanity make progress on race and gender issues. I am talking social science fiction.

A better actor can better respond to the script but an actor can not rise above the script.

In the post 9/11 era intelligence agencies from different countries with fundamentally different languages and cultures have tried to collaborate. But pre 9/11 the two major intelligence agencies in this very country acted like they were in different countries.

Cultural diversity is not just skin pigments. Were that so it would be so much easier. Diversity is primarily sociology. You can have everyone speak English and try to cover it up, but it does not go that way.

This is now the era of global movie making where you confront diversity head on. You actually immerse into the different cultures in their natural settings across continents. Stereotyping falls flat. Intellectual laziness falls flat. The texture of diversity is real.

God has decided to come into mainstream movies and music, big time.

Monday, February 06, 2017

Stephen Colbert, White Guy From North Carolina



Colbert tried. Very hard. He made all the right noises on "Bollywood" and Priyanka Chopra's "50 movies." And then, boom, just like that, he gave it all away.

When you are a talk show host, and you have a guest on the show, you are like a cab driver, and the guest is that person in the back seat. But Stephen just could not resist. You might be the Quantico TV Star, seen in over 100 media territories in the world, Miss World, Bollywood heartthrob, but guess what, I am the one in the American living rooms every evening! I am The Stephen Colbert! Successor to The Jon Stewart! I am The.

He just had to do it. It is like Mitch McConnell saying to Barack Obama, you might be President Of The United States, twice elected, but guess who the white guy from Kentucky is! Wanna have beer?



What would it take to cure the attitude problem of the white males? A Great Depression maybe?

Hollywood is a specific place. Like in Manhattan there is Chelsea, or Hell's Kitchen, or the East Village. Hollywood is a place like that. And it must have been a forest at one point, hence the name. Somebody was looking for cheap real estate. In Mumbai, they have an unnamed Film City. It is still a forest.

By that token the right name for the counterpart in India would simply be Mumbai. There is Hollywood, and then there is Mumbai. But Mumbai is like Los Angeles. And Hollywood is no longer a place. It is the figment of imagination. It is a dream factory in the sky.

White liberals are the most racist people on the planet. The people in the other camp at least know they are being racist. White liberals walk and talk like they have no clue. They say being dead is like being stupid, you have no idea how hard you are being on other people. Being racist is like being dead and stupid at the same time. You have no clue.

Jesus Is Back, But He Is Hard To Look At

Live With Kelly, on the other hand. She is exemplary. She misses out on the racism like she was not even white. Maybe it is not racism, maybe it is sexism. Easily both.