Film director Ram Gopal Verma, in a recent interview with Bollywood Hungama, shared his review of Aamir Khan’s latest movie Laal Singh Chaddha. Commenting about the mediocre box office performance of the film, he said that only a critic watches a film “seriously,” unlike an “average moviegoer” and that’s why, it is “very difficult to predict” what the audience wants. He told the publication: “Look at the box office scenario. Who would have imagined an Aamir Khan film would bomb so badly? If Aamir Khan doesn’t know how to make a hit film, then what happens to the rest?”
RGV made a comment about Laal Singh Chaddha while speaking about the changing behaviour of the audience today, which included the experiences of his friends and colleagues, and concluded that the decreasing attention span of people is proving to be a nightmare for filmmakers who are opting for theatre release.
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The director pointed out the differences between the present times and the pre-digital days where back then, exhibitors used to cut scenes or songs from prints according to their convenience. Doing that would slightly compromise the narrative of the film, but even then it used to do well. He said: “Most people don’t realize that a film is a series of shots and scenes. In every scene, what the audience will think is very difficult to predict! A critic watches the film seriously. I don’t think the average moviegoer watches the film with the same eye.”
He recalled the time when Saawariya and Om Shanti Om were released on the same day, and he had gone to the theatre with his fitness trainer to watch both of them. He noticed that his companion was distracted by a couple of things while watching Saawariya, and shared an interesting observation about the film when his colleague said, “Is picture mein daylight nahi hota hai kya?” (Is there no daylight in this movie?). The trainer then exhibited a similar behaviour while watching the second film, but this time, he was impressed with the film.
Commenting on the episode, the director said, “This is more relevant today. A lot of people feel that OTT is a threat. I personally feel that YouTube is a threat. It comprises so many kinds of videos, from well-packaged news to funny comedy sketches to viral videos of scandalous stuff done by politicians. Hence, the attention span is going down.”
He also shared similar incidents where a friend of his told him that he had stopped going to the cinema to watch movies. He and his wife found OTT to be a more convenient platform, but they get overwhelmed by the large variety of content and end up watching nothing. Another acquaintance of his was so conditioned to OTT that he found himself searching for his remote while watching a movie in theatres.
Ram Gopal Varma is currently working on his new film titled Konda.
