[This is the unedited version of an essay published in the Deccan Herald as Going, Going, Gone]
Memories of Silver
In a theme park near Bangalore, one of the attractions is a
recreation of an 'old-time village theatre'. The box office is a rickety wooden
shack with a tin signboard. There are faded posters of 90s movies with 'Coming
Soon' hand-lettered on them. You cross all these, smiling, and enter into the
actual 'theatre'. The best seats in the house are folding aluminum chairs, then
there are several rows of backless wooden benches, and the cheapest seating
area is just a sandy patch of ground. There are incandescent bulbs hanging from
the ceiling, shaded by clay pots. The 'movie' is just a 10-minute long
compilation of iconic scenes from old films (when I was there, they showed
Gabbar Singh's introductory scene from Sholay). Inspired by the atmosphere,
people around you clap and whistle at famous dialogues. You come out of
screening feeling refreshed, feeling like you've just visited a simpler, more
innocent time that has vanished forever.
Indeed, the way we watch movies has changed dramatically
over the past few years. Leave aside the shift from watching one movie a week
on Doordarshan, to having a dozen 24-hour-movie channels in your cable
subscription. Forget the difference between having a couple of small
video-cassette libraries in your neighbourhood, and of having the infinite
resources of online shopping and the internet at your disposal. Take just the
basic, most traditional, way of watching a movie by buying a ticket, sitting
with a bunch of friends and strangers in a large hall and staring at a giant
silver screen. Where once we had standalone, single-screen theatres with name
like Alpana and Minerva and Rex, standing on independent plots of land, today
we have shiny multiplexes, embedded into even larger malls, beckoning the young
and peppy crowd. The multiplexes, while ostensibly in the same business as the
single-screeners have changed every single part of the movie-going experience:
from the way tickets are booked, to the seats, to the projection equipment -
it's all new and 'improved'. But is it really a better way to be going about
things?
Take the way we decide which movie to watch. Once upon a
time, the first we heard of an upcoming movie was by seeing its trailer before
another movie. Or when we saw the posters in the lobby of the theatre. A week
before it was due to release, the posters would spread out from the halls and
onto every available public wall in town. If we were paying attention, we could
hear songs from the movie on the radio. But it was possible for most of the
movie to remain a secret. I still remember when Amitabh Bachchan's Shahenshah was released, it was not
until after the release, when some classmates had seen it, that the rest of us
heard the line 'Rishtey mein to hum tumhare baap lagte hai...". And we
knew nothing of, say, the hot-air balloon scene or the courthouse scenes. We
went to the theatre blind, relying on the superstar's allure.
Even after it was released, it was common for a good movie
to take time to find its feet, to benefit from the slow spread of
word-of-mouth. Sholay famously ran to
empty theatres for a while before the word got out and the crowds started
coming in. And the single-screen theatres were well suited to this kind of
business: they worked on smaller margins, they had less staff. When a movie did
do well, it could run for months or even years (we all know about the famous
Maratha Mandir theatre in Mumbai, which has been running Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge continuously, for the past 17 years).
Considering that the question to ask in those days was "Is there a movie
releasing this week?" rather than "Which movies are releasing this
week?" the model worked well. Almost every movie ran for more than a week,
if not in the main shows, at least in the matinee and morning shows. It became
a hit only when it completed 25, 50 or a 100 days.
That time is gone. Today, with the aid of multiplexes, a
movie can be declared a hit and recover its money on the first weekend. A
hundred shows run every day across all the multiplexes, mopping up all the
demand quickly. Publicity departments for movies run at full steam to bring the
audiences in as soon it's released. It's common to release details of the
movie, interviews with the stars, have cross-promotion with television soap
operas, sponsor TV shows and college events, even make up scandals and
controversies just to get the movie in the public eye.
Take any recent blockbuster movie. We know all the lyrics of
all the songs before it's released. We pretty much know what kind of story it
is, and we know exactly what the leads will look like. We’ve read the trivia
about the foreign shooting and the item song girl. We’ve seen the making-of
interviews on the TV channels. What sort of revelation are we expecting in the
theatre itself? And now that we're interested, we need to go see it on the
opening weekend. The culture of long-running movies is gone; can you imagine
even the biggest hits of today - Dabangg,
Ra-One, Bodyguard, running in the multiplex longer than a month?
This is admittedly not the fault of the multiplexes alone; the
very business model of movies is undergoing a change. But the frantic
money-gathering around the first few days (which makes every movie a hit) is
only enabled by multiplexes.
The rise of the multiplexes is killing not just the
single-screen theatres themselves, but also any number of supporting businesses
that grew up around them. Single-screen theatres tended to have a very basic
selection of snacks (although everyone remembers with fondness the popcorn
packets, the samosas in brown paper bags, and the crate of small Thums Ups -
not to mention the rush at the counter during the interval). But just outside
the theatre you invariably found several small snack vendors - a chaat wala, a
bajji wala, fruit juice, soda and peanut sellers. Some of these vendors became
well known in their own right. And medical shops, phone booths, even small
restaurants were always available nearby, patronised by the crowds passing
through the theatre.
The multiplexes, of course, have brought most of those
businesses in-house. Selling eatables at sky-high prices is a model borrowed
from US multiplexes, and it is the major source of revenue there. I'm not sure
how much it contributes here, but the prices are definitely on the incredible
side - a hundred rupees for a medium popcorn! Fifty plus for a sandwich! To
make things worse, the "security check" at the entrance looks out for
outside food with much more vigour than for bombs or weapons. It's even
included in the pre-movie notice in some places: For your own safety we must check
and remove all weapons, cameras, and outside food. Gone are the days when you
could bring in a pack of glucose biscuits to avoid the interval-time rush.
Single-screen theatres in smaller towns outsourced even
things like parking. This brings to mind a story my college professor was fond
of telling. At the theatre he used to frequent, the bicycle parking was handled
by local entrepreneurs who would rope off a segment of the pavement, leaving
just enough gap for a cycle to enter or exit. They would then sell space in
these improvised parking lots for movie-goers. (leaving your cycle outside
these lots would mean a mysterious loss of air in its tyres). When my professor
and his friends, in their college days, went to watch Dev Anand's Jewel Thief,
they got a proposition from one of the entrepreneurs to park their cycles in
his lot for 10 paise each. A competing lot owner then offered them the lower
rate of 5 paise. Seeing his customers about to switch, the owner #1 tried to
hold them to their word of honour. But finally, seeing them about to go to
owner #2, he spat at them, "Fine, go! But let me tell you, Ashok Kumar is
the Jewel Thief!"
Well, maybe bringing parking under the theatre's management
wasn't such a bad idea. On the other hand, competition and outsourcing kept the
prices of the food and the other facilities to the bare minimum. As each of
these simple, low-end activities have been brought under the umbrella of the
multiplex and turned into additional income sources, the average price of a
movie outing has been rising. This includes, of course, the prices of the movie
tickets themselves, but snacks/dinner, parking, and any number of extra
attractions provided by the surrounding mall. Where an evening outing to the
movies was something easily affordable by any class of people, today a movie
for two, with dinner, could easily go above a thousand rupees. And if you're
going on the weekend? Even more than that. Once a great leveller, movie
watching has become an elite activity.
Beyond all these disappointments, what sticks in the mind is
the boring homogeneity of the multiplexes. Once your ticket (printed by the
same model of printer everywhere) has been torn and you step into the lobby,
you could be in almost any multiplex in any town in India. It could be day or
night. The food counters are always the same, the decor is the same colour
shades, the walls displaying the posters look the same, even the security
guards all wear the same sort of uniform everywhere. Where are the large
lobbies with red carpets, the chandeliers, the paintings and distinct wall
decor that marked each theatre differently? What about all the fancy type faces
and metal letters announcing the name of the theatre, outlined in stark relief
against the evening sky?
Many single-screen theatres that had been around for a while
developed their own identities, for good or bad. Where this one was frequented
by 'mill workers' and was best avoided by families, that one was grand and had
a big lobby and air-conditioning and perfect for impressing out-of-town
relatives. Other theatres stood out because of the genres of films they showed
- in Bangalore, for example, Urvashi theatre near Lalbaug has been a hub for
Tamil movies, and every Kamal Hassan release is accompanied by a gathering of
his fan club there, putting up huge cutouts of the star. Rex, at the junction
of Brigade Road, on the other hand, specializes in the latest English
releases. Theatres like these come into
the common vocabulary of the local populace, become cultural icons. The Majestic
area, after all, is named after the long-gone Majestic theatre. The distinctive
outline of the Eros theatre in Mumbai has even been used as a backdrop in
advertisements.
The upswing of the multiplexes has been steadily drawing
business away from the single-screeners for the past two decades. As incomes
rose, and more big-budget movies were released (both Indian and foreign),
audiences were drawn towards the bright lights of the multiplexes which, let's
face it, provided a cleaner, more assured experience, even if more expensive.
The single-screeners began to be the second option - favoured by people with
lower incomes, or who desperately wanted to see a movie and could not get a
ticket in the multiplex. As time has gone by, many smaller single-screen theatres
have gone bust, their land sold out to developers to build malls and
apartments.
But all is not lost yet. Some hints at salvaging the
situation come from the way US single-screen theatres have reinvented
themselves - as specialists in specific genres, as hosts for film festivals, as
showcases for vintage films, as nostaliga trips. There's no reason Indian
theatres cannot do the same thing. Indeed, some venues are already doing it.
In Mumbai you have the Gaiety-Galaxy theatres which have
been rebuilt as a set of 7 smaller screens. They're now becoming famous as the
hangout for movie industry folks - they see a fair number of premieres, and
even when normal shows are running, there are camouflaged visits from film
stars and directors, to gauge audience reaction to the film.
In Bangalore we have the story of the erstwhile Symphony
cinema, on M G Road. When it got closed down 'for renovation', the general
sentiment was that it would get turned into another boring multipex. But it has
become a luxury single-screener, with the spaciousness of the old-style space,
and prices lower than other multiplexes - a new landmark. Then there's Rex,
which is actually doing well just because of it's strategic location. With the
large number of food stalls surrounding it, it has become a hangout spot for
college students. Hopefully these trends continue, creating and updating these
old landmarks with something new to look forward to.
To sum up, while the multiplexes are doing well and will not
go away, there is still something to be got from the older single screen
theatres - a trip down memory lane along with a pack of popcorn. Will you go on
one this weekend?
