Even for a typical commercial film, the audience wants to see a great story: Manoj Bajpayee
In Lucknow recently, actor Manoj Bajpayee talked about making the right choices on the career front, how TV has changed over the years and what makes Lucknow different from other cities. Excerpt…
How do you find Lucknow?The city is looking great. I shot my movie Bhaiyya Ji here. I was here for two months and not a single mishap occurred while shooting here. The city is quite welcoming. Lucknow has a very good mix of rural and urban India and that is what makes it special.
You seem to be in a comfortable zone of late doing mostly web shows and films.Yes, I am very happy working and getting the kind of work I always wanted to do. Like for instance my latest show Silence 2: The Night Owl Bar Shootout. And if people are loving the choices that I am making, I feel lucky. With people thinking that I have become the king of the medium, well, yeh king wagerah ka jo tag hai na that makes me uncomfortable. It is a creative journey and in creativity some days are superior while some are not so good. If you look at my filmography, pre-OTT, I have always been doing things that I thought were right and that’s the basic rule I follow. I should love the character when I am reading it and it has not been written before ever. By God’s grace, 95 percent time, I have made the right choice.
With the advent of the OTT, do you think getting audiences to multiplexes has become difficult?There are a few films that the audiences have seen in theatre and that is setting the right mood among the industry people. I am personally urging everyone to go to the theatre if they think there is something worthy to watch. And yes, you are right that now the medium of OTT has entertained people for a longer time during the pandemic and people are taking time to go to the theatre. Plus, they also want to be sure that their time and money will be in good use. So we as filmmakers should always concentrate on the right films and put all our right intentions behind them. The audiences today, even for a typical commercial film, want to see a great story.
Do you miss the craze of the bada parda, the 70 mm screen?I always had a craze for the bigger screen and that was the reason I left theatre and came to Mumbai. But over time I realized that these Box Office numbers which are thrown on your face to cover the mediocrity of the product are also doing a lot of harm to cinema. This has been happening for a long time. If we talk about the making and the craft of filmmaking and story, then we will be doing a lot of favour to the industry. And if you are just throwing these numbers to prove that just because of those many eyeballs you got and on that basis, you say a film is a hit, and the hit film is a good film, then we are in a dark hole. We have to make a credible film.
Talking about theatre, there was a time when a lot of theatre actors used to venture on TV. Even you did television at one time. But that has become a rare scenario today. Somewhere on TV, we started following the same template. Earlier the stories used to be amazing written by some great scriptwriters and the show used to be run by credible directors. But somewhere in the middle, we lost track. We started making the shows too commercial. So with the advent of OTT, the first onslaught that happened was to television. And then we also went into games and reality shows and we have overdone that also. So you start losing the audience when they feel they are being taken for a ride.
Can we ever see you coming back on TV?Why not? It has to be a great proposal. I am open to any medium. I have done theatre, TV, cinema, and OTT. I am here only for great stories and performances.
Can we ever think about saturation for a medium like OTT?I think we are in the time of saturation and then it will peak again. Every medium goes through this. There is always fatigue that happens in mediums. Even though the OTT is right inside your home, you can not expect the viewers to keep on consuming the content forever.
Talking about your social media account, we rarely see your personal side on it. There is no personal side to my life. My brothers and sisters are in Delhi and we have lost our parents two years back and my wife is not an extrovert kind and likes to do her own thing. My daughter is in a boarding school.