We watched the new Hindi release 3 Idiots this evening. This movie has gathered a lot of buzz and several of my friends recommended it. It was based on Chetan Bhagat’s novel ‘Five point someone - what not to do at IIT’. Since I went to school at IIT I could relate to some of the scenes and chareacters in the movie.
All in all it was an enjoyable movie with a nice story and good theme. But it did not blow me away. It was a bit too cheesy in some parts for my taste and 30 to 45 mins too long. It is bound to happen when the director also edits the movie. Directors tend to fall in love with the scenes they shoot so have a hard time cutting them out. The movie packed a bit too much Bollywood formula. The core story was good and different enough that it should have veered away from regular Bollywood shtick. I feel it had much more potential but underachieved.
“Sometimes a man meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it”
- Louis Sallinger from the movie “The International”
Everyone knows bollywood movies are very different from hollywood movies. They are pigeoned holed by the westerners as muscials with over dramatic story telling and acting.
Actually there is another major difference. Bollywood and other Indian movies have an interval. You may think that this is not such a big deal but it is. Every movie script has a beat structure. Beats are the critical points at which the story takes a turn. Most hollywood movies follow a particular beat structure. If you go to UCLA to study script writing they make you an expert at this type of hollywood beat structure. They follow a three act structure where in the first act establishes the main characters and the goal of the protoganist and the antagonist who makes it difficult for the protaganist to achieve the goal. The second act has the protaognist failing miserably to achieve the goal and looks down and out. The third act will have climax where the protaganist will beat the odds and the protagoanist to achieve the goal in a dramatic fashion. A typical hollywood script is 100 to 120 pages long. Each page yields one minute of movie so a typical hollywood film is 100 to 120 min in duration.
Now let’s look at bollywood. They have an interval at the middle of the movie. So they follow a totally different beat structrure. It is almost like two smaller movies with two climaxes one before the interval and one before the end of the movie. You add 5 or 6 songs to that and you get 3 hour long movies. So bollywood has developed its own beat structure to tell stories which is very differnt from hollywood and why it is very diffcult for the westerners to identify with them. It is not just the song and dance numbers.
Here is a fascinating talk on the influence of mythology on life and business. Unfortunately no emebed available. Here is the link:
http://www.ted.com/talks/devdutt_pattanaik.html
I would lik to wish a very Happy Deepavali to all my readers.
I hope this day brings much happiness and joy to your familes.
Sramana Mitra interviewed Robert McKee, a well known hollywood script writing guru from USC, where she asks him about the philosophy of storytelling. He does an excellent job of summarizing the essence of hollywood script writing technique followed by most of the writers.
SM: Can you synthesize your philosophy of storytelling in brief for the reader?
RM: I will do my best. I get asked that question all the time. Reducing story down to its simplest underlying element, it is the underlying form of all stories everywhere. A story begins when an event, which is caused either by human decision or random coincidence, radically upsets the balance of forces in a character’s life. This event causes the character to need to restore the balance of life, and to do that the protagonist character will conceive the object of desire.
An object of desire can be anything imaginable. It is what the protagonist feels they need to put life back into balance. It can be something physical. In a crime story it might be a dead villain. It could be something like a happy marriage. It could be something metaphysical like the meaning for life. The protagonist then goes off into their world into their own heart and soul as human beings and into the various dimensions of their existence seeking their object of desire, trying to restore the equilibrium of life.
As they do this, they will struggle against forces of antagonism that will arise from their own inner natures, from their personal relationships with other human beings or from the physical environment. Forces of antagonism will rise up and try to block them from achieving their object of desire. They will struggle towards that and may or may not achieve it. The story may or may not end up with a satisfying balance of life for the protagonist.
To go even further, we could reduce it down to five fundamental elements of any event. The protagonists desire to restore life’s equilibrium, the object of desire the protagonist either consciously or subconsciously believes is the key to life’s balance, the protagonist’s constant struggle to achieve that object of desire, and the forces of antagonism from all of their aspects of life to prevent them from doing that. It is really very simple universal form.
I have been called on occasion from people all over the world who have asked me that exact question. I get professors and teachers of philosophy asking that question after reading my book because they think that there is some profound philosophy. I am always touched when people think that there are profound implications of life.
Shahrukh Khan is the king of Bollywood and is a global super star. The whole world knows him apparently except in Newark airport. Reports say Newark airport security detained him for a few hours and only released him after the Indian consulate intervened. King Khan and his fans are unsertandably very upset.
MUMBAI (Reuters) – Indian Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan said he felt angry and humiliated after he was detained and questioned at a U.S. airport, sparking an uproar in India among his fans.
Khan, 43, one of India’s best known actors, was enroute to Chicago for a parade to mark the Indian independence day on Saturday when he was pulled aside at Newark airport Friday, he said.
“I was really hassled perhaps because of my name being Khan. These guys just wouldn’t let me through,” he said in a text message to reporters in India.
After a couple of hours’ interrogation, he was allowed to make a call, he said, and he got in touch with the Indian consulate who vouched for him and secured his release.
“Absolutely uncalled for, I think. I felt angry and humiliated,” said Khan, who had just finished a month-long shoot in the United States for his upcoming film “My Name is Khan,” which is about a Muslim man’s experience with racial profiling.
A U.S. consul official in India told a television channel they were inquiring into the matter.
I am not sure how airport security can detain him for such a long time even after being made aware of who Shahrukh Khan is. Imagine Brad Pitt or Tom Cruise getting detained for few hours at an airport. Indian president APJ Abdul Kalam had a similar embarassing moment when he was frisked by contenental staffers desipte being told who he was. The fact that both of them were muslims probably has something to do with it. I understand that not everyone has global awareness and the ariport staff were trying to do their job but they need to be more respectful once they are made aware of who these people are.
I am back from my six week India trip. It helped recharge and reinvograte me. I met with many freinds and reatives. I was able to spend quality time with my parents and other close family members.
I also got to spend significant amount of time on the business front. I met with a number of hospitals to talk to them about MDava platform and enabling their alerts. It was a very fruitful few weeks. It was a great experience to be on the ground getting the pulse of the market. I could also spend some quality time with our staff in Hyderabad to share with them our vision and the bright future that lay ahead of our company.
This trip crystalized my thinking on the major business opportunity that lay in front of us and I look forward to executing on it with urgency and purpose.
I have been traveling in India for the last few weeks. The contrast between the economies of US where I live and India can not be more dramatic. Things looked pretty gloomy in the US when I came here and exepected the slowdown to be evident in india as well. I was quite surprised to see people are still spending and there is still tremendous amount of construction going on. Sure, the IT industry has taken a hit as it depends quite a bit on the US and the west. But the local econonomy is still thriving.
India is a very chaotic place. You will see this on the roads where 10 vehicles pass through the space meant for 2. It is scary for people from countries like US to experience. Heck it is scary for me who grew up in India and travel here often. But some how people get from point A to point B without losing their limbs. it is quite amazing. The same thing is true in life in general. For some one who is not familar with the place you would think the society can not function in this type of chaos. It not only functions but gallops. India is even more advanced in some things compared to US. For example, one can make reservations and book tickets for trains (and soon buses) online. I get a mobile alert from the local repair shop where I checked in my laptop to fix its monitor. I can open a bank account without leaving my desk. A bank official came to me and took care of all the paperwork. I am serius. This is not because I am a big shot or anything. Almost anyone can do this. You can call the local grocery store with a list and they deliver for you (I know you can do this in US in some places). I can go on.
I see order in this chaos. I also see tremendous opportunities in this chaos. India is quite becoming. Some one said it is a functional anarchy. Quite true. I think there is no other way to grow this fast as a democracy.
I knew Rajeev Motwani, a Stanford CS professor, and his wife Asha Jadeja well during my stanford days. It was really sad for me to read about his passing away. He was always a very helpful person to even people he barely knew. He was a great technologist and a well known angel investor. I remember his family hosting a well known Indian dancer whom we had invited ro perform at Stanford. I remember us having a few drinks together that evening. He was a really cool guy. May god take care of him and his family. R.I.P Rajeev!
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