Spoilers Ahead by Rajeev Masand: A library of stars
The days of DVD parlours meant great new flicks—and a chance to see what Bollywood itself was watching
A gorgeous profile in The New York Times a few days ago alerted me to Good Luck To You, Leo Grande. It appeared to be a smart little indie centered on the sort of tricky themes like ageism and female desire that aren’t frequently addressed in mainstream Hollywood films. But the real icing on the cake was that it stars my all-time favourite, Emma Thompson who, in my opinion, is the greatest living female actor in the world… and someday I’ll dedicate an entire column to explain why I believe she’s better than even Meryl Streep.
The piece had piqued my interest, but the problem was that the film had dropped on Hulu, a top US streamer that, unfortunately, one doesn’t have access to here in India. Now, it’s true that increasingly some of the more popular Hulu originals like How I Met Your Father, Little Fires Everywhere, Pam & Tommy, and Dopesick do show up on Hotstar (both streamers fall under the larger Disney umbrella so there’s sense in sharing potentially ‘hit’ shows). But an intimate drama about a widowed schoolteacher in her sixties who recruits a young male prostitute to introduce her to the sexual pleasures that she never experienced in her marriage is hardly the kind of populist fare that Hotstar may be eager to add to their landing page, where their vast library of children’s titles rests.
Which left me with not a lot of options. I could wait for a film festival or a local film club to screen the film at some point in the future or I could hope that some streamer would have the good sense to license the title for India soon. Or, I could download a torrent file of the movie and settle in to watch it in as soon as a few hours. Basically, I could pirate it. Now because this third option is illegal, I’m not going to explicitly tell you how I managed to watch the film, except to say that I did. Literally hours after reading the NYT piece.
Close encounters of the filmi kind
The thing is most people would rather not watch a pirated movie. Even the best ‘HD Rips’ tend to have sketchy sound, and can you remember a world before subtitles? But what do you do? Contemplating whether to do the deed or not, I got nostalgic about DVDs and visits to local DVD libraries. ‘Teenage’ in South Mumbai’s Cuffe Parade neighbourhood was among the first to pop up; it used to be the go-to-place for renting VHS cassettes of Hollywood films back in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. VHS tapes transitioned to LDs (laser discs), which quickly made way for VCDs and DVDs. Teen Batti resident Jackie Shroff and fellow “townie” Suniel Shetty could often be spotted there on a Friday or Saturday night picking out the latest Hollywood action flick that they had their heart set on watching.
Arguably the most popular (and easily the best-stocked) library was Sarvodaya, located in Mumbai’s Pali Hill area in Bandra. This was where you’d inevitably bump into Sanjay Gupta, Mohit Suri, Anurag Kashyap, Vivek Oberoi or Aditya Roy Kapur poring over the glass shelves, searching for their day’s fix. Other (starrier) patrons like Saif Ali Khan, John Abraham and Sanjay Dutt would tend to call ahead, block their preferred title and send a minion to pick up the disc. Bakul Chandaria, who owned and ran the place with his brother Manish, enjoyed the reflected glory of rubbing shoulders with the stars. With a sly grin, he’d tell you which director had rented out the latest American thriller three days in a row… which could only mean that a rip-off was on the cards.
I remember running into filmmaker Nikhil Advani at Sarvodaya the Sunday after I’d panned his ambitious but flawed multi-starrer Salaam-e-Ishq, describing it as a bloated mess. It was, to say the least, an awkward encounter. Nikhil, still raw from the critical and box-office beating the film had taken, mumbled something about being dealt an unfair hand. I don’t remember what I said in response, but I will never forget grabbing whatever title was in front of me and vamoosing from there, avoiding a full-blown post-mortem of the film.
That was the thing about DVD libraries. Sure, one could spend a good 40 minutes rummaging through the racks to find a darling indie that one had recently read about in the new issue of Premiere magazine. But it was as much about gushing over a smart documentary with a fellow movie buff that one had just run into. Or, observing a dad try convince his kid to rent The Goonies, because it meant so much to him growing up and they could enjoy it together.
Goodbye to all that
The phasing out of DVDs and the disappearance of libraries is a result of the advancement in tech, of course. But it’s also a teary goodbye to a way of life for movie buffs. Streaming is the present, and quite likely the future, too. But until one can find literally any movie you’re looking for online, give me an uncomfortable run-in with a filmmaker whose movie I’ve slagged off over a cheap torrent download any day.
Formerly a film journalist, Rajeev Masand currently heads a talent management agency in Mumbai
Spoilers Ahead is a new fortnightly column for, by and of lovers of films and film stars. Catch the next column on July 8, 2022.
From HT Brunch, June 25, 2022
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