Friday, April 20, 2012

Dinesh Kamath's old article on Ekta Kapoor that was published in Newsband



Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Telefilms and Vishal Bhardwaj will jointly produce a romantic film called Dreams. Bharadwaj will direct the movie. Though the cast is yet to be chosen, it is certain that the film will be a love triangle of two girls and a boy. Ekta has been toying with the idea of making this film for a long time, but she wasn't able to get the right director. Once she saw Bhardwaj's last film Kaminey, Ekta went ahead and thrashed a deal with the director. The script is ready and Bhardwaj is now finalizing the cast for the film. Ekta, in fact, was impressed with films like Omkara and Maqbool which were also made by Bhardwaj. At the success party of Ekta's Love Sex Aur Dhokha, all heads turned when Vishal Bhardwaj entered because Ekta's parties mostly have their regulars who are biggies from the television industry, actors who have worked in her films and those who are currently working in them. But later everybody realized about the business deal that Ekta had made with Bhardwaj. For your information, all the three actors cast in the film Dreams will be big names. Vishal will start work on this Ekta's project as soon as he completes his Saat Khoon Maaf.
After the luminously lauded Love Sex Aur Dhoka (LSD), the unlikely duo of director Dibakar Banerjee and producer Ekta Kapoor are all set to come together again for what promises to be the most intense love story of 2011. Dibakar wrote a new love story specially for Ekta's Balaji Films and presented it to her as a belated birthday gift. Dibakar considers Ekta as a dream producer because when he and Ekta came together for LSD, Ekta gave him a free rein. She saw to it that Dibakar was in a happy frame of mind while making LSD. Ekta wanted Dibakar to return to her only when she had a true-blue love story to make. Dibakar came to her with the story as soon as he got one.
Ekta had done a lot of promotion work for her ambitious venture Once Upon A Time In Mumbai. Her stars, Ajay Devgan, Kangna Ranaut, Emraan Hashmi and Prachi Desai, made appearances on various telly shows, including Indian Idol 5, CID and Dance. Ekta ensured that the hoardings that had gone up across the country were in the hand-painted style of the 1970s, the decade in which it was set. It was impossible to get all the hoardings hand-painted, but Ekta got a few done for select locations in the city. She didn't want the 70s experience to remain incomplete for her audience so she got artists to wield the brush for her. The response from her friends and industry veterans was mind-blowing.
According to Ekta, to succeed in the creative economy, intuitive knowledge of viewers' tastes and an ability to pick ideas that resonate are necessary. Instinct is everything, she says. According to her, you need to evolve and re-evolve to align yourself with changing tastes. Great content is all about great basic thoughts - things nobody has seen all around, but no one has been able to pick up and use as a concept, she says. A few years ago, Ekta had received an unusual invitation from the British Council and the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, to speak to a group of young people undergoing a weeklong management programme to become entrepreneurs for a 'creative economy'. Thus this mercurial star-kid turned serious creative economy entrepreneur. Ekta considers herself as an entrepreneur but not in the conventional sense. She has learnt business as time passed, but she does not have a B-school education. Ekta has the ability to know and smell her viewer. Whenever she is catering to the housewife sitting at home, she tries to know her taste. So, instinct is the driving force that stands out in her case. The second and most important thing is 'evolving'. Ekta has realized that the taste of the viewer can constantly change. She can sniff out the need for change. She constantly restructures her business to cater to changing taste. She has become successful by doing a certain kind of content as per her instinct. She has the ability to reach out to people constantly. Ekta is one of those persons who listen to their instincts and live by their own rules. She has disciplined herself to become a perfect professional. She has succeeded in balancing creativity with discipline. She possesses that instinct of picking up the right professional and the right thought. She has been able to harvest creativity in a disciplined way. She cares for passion more than talent because talent can be built, but not passion. She just does what she loves. She doesn't care about what the audiences want because she knows what they don't know they want. All her television works are more entertaining, more colloquial and more understandable because she believes TV is all about great basic thoughts. She chooses those things that everyone can see all around but no one has picked up. The thought behind Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi was that every day, every generation passes on a legacy to their men; they give their businesses, their homes and everything else to their sons. But the women are expected to give their kitchen, their son and their power to the new woman who comes in. It is actually so much tougher for the Indian women to give up something on which her whole life depends. The thought behind Kasauti Zindagi Ki was cursed love. Everyone in the world probably has had one love that did not materialize into a relationship. A thought like this is a basic great thought.
Ekta has launched a new television show Bol Niti Bol, which tells quite a different story from her usual fare. At 17 episodes, the show tries to reach out to the youth. Bol Niti Bol is a web diary of a 17-year-old girl. Niti speaks about her life, her friends, her loves and heartaches, and connects the world through her web camera. Each episode is a short update from her about the new events in her life who she met recently, the boy she likes, her crushes, how she handles people who hit on her and so on. Ekta was clever enough to use the internet to promote this show. She has come up with this show just to entertain the youth, not preach to them. She is sure that the show will encourage the youth to express themselves and speak their heart out.
A film inspired by the controversial life of the dreaded gangster Dawood Ibrahim would undoubtedly be incomplete without a reference to the actress Mandakini who was allegedly involved with Dawood. Obviously, Ekta couldn't have convinced the actress to make an appearance in her film Once Upon A Time In Mumbai. So producer Ekta and director Milan Luthria had decided to get Mandakini's look-alike who was an actress of Australian origin called Amy Kingston, and who bore an uncanny resemblance to Mandakini. The sequence of the film was this way: Emraan, whose role is on the lines of Dawood Ibrahim's life, meets Amy. He cheats on his steady girlfriend Prachi Desai, befriends Amy and promises her that he would get her a crucial role in a big film. She had a song and two scenes. But when the film got released, it was found that this whole Mandakini episode was omitted. God knows why!
The tremendous success of the film Once Upon A Time In Mumbai has given a terrific boost to Ekta's image. Ekta has already attained the position of top TV serial producer. Will Ekta, one day, manage to become the top film producer too? Let's wait and see!

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