COURTING TROUBLE: Gulaab Gang
If Gulaab Gang, which stars Madhuri Dixit and Juhi Chawla, managed to hit the screens on Friday then it was only by frantic legal wrangling. Otherwise it too was going to be victim to the tactic of last minute court cases filed to block a movie’s release.
Two days before the release, suddenly there came news that a court had ordered a stay on its release. This was at the behest of Sampat Pal Devi, an activist who had formed a group called Gulabi Gang in the state of Uttar Pradesh to fight against injustice.
The organisation has been written about extensively and there have been more than one documentaries on it. Indeed, some weeks ago a documentary called Gulabi Gang had been released. Anyone who saw the promos of Gulaab Gang knew that it was based on Sampat Pal Devi’s life and work.
And yet, the movie’s producers had apparently not taken her consent for the movie. It was this slight which is said to have made her move court and get a stay on it. To compound the problem, when the issue became public, the filmmakers said that there were many women’s organisation in the country and their movie was not based only on Devi.
All in all, they burnt all possible bridges for a reconciliation and when the court gave a stay on the release it looked like they were in for a serious crisis. The day before the release, however, the filmmaker appealed to a court and got the stay removed.
The movie was shown as scheduled. The reason such issues get out of control is usually because of a lack of generosity on the part of Bollywood. If you are a making a movie on a person’s life, surely it is common sense that you include and compensate her for it.
In an earlier age nobody bothered with such niceties but with the courts now stepping in more proactively for those whose copyrights or reputation are at stake, filmmakers keep getting into crisis.
Clash of schedules
Most actresses would die to be in Jacqueline Fernandez’s shoes. She has a movie with Salman Khan and it will be followed up by a movie with Ranbir Kapoor. But Jacqueline herself is not sitting so pretty and that is because she might just have to give up on one because of the other.
Kick, the Salman movie, is currently being shot but there have been delays in it resulting in Jacqueline not being able to keep the dates allotted to Roy, the Ranbir movie. For someone like Jacqueline, who is not even an A-lister heroine, the chances of Ranbir being patient for too long is slim.
For the moment, after some hurried consultation between Roy’s director with Ranbir, they have decided to wait for Jacqueline’s Kick schedule to end. But if it gets dragged on for too long, a fate that has been happening lately to many Salman movies, then Ranbir will have a new heroine opposite him. And for Jacqueline, that will be a bitter pill to swallow.
Twist in the case
In June last year, the young actress Jiah Khan was found hanging in her flat and it was thought to be a clear case of suicide. She had left a note behind blaming the two-timing of her boyfriend, Sooraj Pancholi, the son of the actor Aditya Pancholi. Sooraj was arrested for abetment of suicide and spent some time behind bars until he got bail.
He was slated to appear in a movie promoted by Salman Khan and the death threw his career into a tailspin even before it had begun. But he came back and, given the strong family connections to the industry, his career also stabilised and the movie was back in the works.
But the difficulty with putting the past behind him has come in the form of Rabbiya Khan, Jiah’s bereaved mother who claims that the death was not suicide but murder. She has been consistently saying this but with very few willing to be convinced.
Recently, however, she pulled a sting operation and suddenly it has become news again. Rabbiya went to many of the witnesses and secretly recorded them saying things which went against their police version. At first glance, there seems to be discrepancies.
Like one witness saying that the window had been opened to smoke a cigarette after the body was found but in the sting stating that it was already open. On the other hand, nothing in the sting seems to firmly indicate that Jiah was killed. Whatever the truth of it Rabbiya is no mood to let matters rest.
Sunny on fire
One person who is making her way slowly and surely without much of an acting prowess is Sunny Leone, the porn star who seems to have become comfortable in Bollywood. Her movie Ragini MMS 2, the sequel to the hit horror movie, is slated to hit the screens on March 21 and already the publicity is entirely around Sunny. Consider what is getting reported around her: in the town of Ghaziabad two cinemas received letters which threatened that blood would be shed if the movie is shown because it is against culture.
And this obviously has to do with Sunny and her past. Is it problematic? Not in the least because any publicity is good publicity before a movie’s release and will only add to people becoming curious to see the movie. Then came another news that Sunny had been manhandled during a public function.
Headlines reported ‘uncontrollable crowds’. She was doing the promotions from inside an auto rickshaw and some men tried to barge inside. Once more, so much easy publicity.
This is also one of the reasons why there is never going to be a dearth of offers for Sunny. The movie might flop, like Jackpot, her last venture but in the economics of low budget movies her presence itself becomes a draw to get an initial audience.
Send your feedback to [email protected]
BELOW:
1) CATCH 22: Jacqueline Fernandez
2) BIG DRAW: Sunny Leone