When Javed Akhtar spoke about his early brush with reality of film industry

Mumbai, June 23 (IANS) The social media often advises to never skip a video which has veteran screenwriter Javed Akhtar talking about anything under the sun. One such video of the screenwriting legend has resurfaced on the Internet, and it shows him recollecting his experience of narrating a fresh story to a producer.

The clip is from ‘Movers & Shakers’, and shows Javed Akhtar intensely explaining his early years in the industry.

He said, “I will tell you an interesting story. When I came to India for the first time, I did not know about this. So I started writing stories. And I wrote a story which I felt was a new story. So with great difficulty I got an appointment with a producer. Otherwise, it was difficult to enter the office at that time. So I started narrating the story. I saw that the producer was listening very attentively. So I thought that it was interesting”.

He further mentioned, “When the story ended, there was silence in the room. I did not understand what was going to happen. I asked him what he thought. The producer said something which I understood. He said, ‘The story is good, but there is a risk. The risk is that I do not recollect watching this story on screen as yet. Till now, this story has not come in any movie’. So I understood that he wants the same story which has come in the movie. The producer’s demand is very interesting for a movie story. He wants a brand new story which has come before”.

The story points out how the industry has largely remained unchanged in terms of its risk appetite to make a safe film, which can set the cash registers ringing at the box-office but won’t fetch something bigger and meaningful.

–IANS

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