Professional Report - Smoke Free Movies

But Lagan was different…it had a rural setting. One would naturally associate it with bidis, khaini or stuff like
that. I don’t think any of that came through. Was that because of the pace of the film as you said? You needed
to focus on the storyline and you couldn’t waste any screen time on peripheral things?
I’m saying that such planting is not viable, interesting or worth it. We don’t do it because it’s not going to help.
So why waste time doing it? If you’re worried about what your hands should be doing, I’ll tell you things that you
should do. When the director’s that clear and knows precisely what he’s doing, you won’t have this sudden
urge to add on, what people call spontaneity but what I think is last minute hold-ups. “Kuch to harte hai” types.
(Let’s do something). Lakha did ask us ‘does this guy smoke?’ I said we don’t know that but he would be
smoking. If smoking was one of the things to do then, he would be one of the people who would smoke.
Because in those days, all the more reason people wouldn’t be smoking around their elders. A village being a
small set up the moment somebody lights up, you know somebody’s lighting a cigarette there. The moment he
heard that he could be smoking, and in a specific scene, he felt that he could use that. There is a sequence
when the Gokulashtami song is happening. There is a point when Aamir is trying to lure everybody to the
cricket thing. Lakha comes and stands next to Ismail’s house. He needed to do something arrogant, or rather
something detestful of Bhuvan. We thought of a bidi for that particular thing. He is a thoughtful actor and he
thought that this would work for him, rather than thinking of smoking as a cool thing to do. In this case, when he
bounced the idea off us, I said that should not be a problem. It comes across and we said ‘fine’. All the more
reason, for us not to get into it in Lagaan, even the drinking in the cantonment was kept to a bare minimum. We
were not focusing on that aspect. We had things to say on screen, we did that and we needed to quickly get on
to the next scene.
Thank you.
Farhan Akhtar
Could you give us your views on the subject of impact of cinema on youngsters.
I definitely do believe that films are an influential medium. Nobody can deny that. But there is a fine line as to
how influential it is. Does, for instance, seeing an actor that you are a huge fan of, make you want to go out and
smoke. I really don’t know whether that’s applicable. Because if you see an actor treating his wife well, or his
younger brother or sister well, not many people go out and do that either. I don’t know how influential it is but
definitely it has some bearing on shaping of the psyche of a very ardent viewer. What is also happening is that
as popular as film may be, I think that there definitely is a kind of de-idolising that is currently going on. Of the
stars and of the celebrities who were at one time almost perceived as gods.
What do you mean by de-idolising?
I would think that if Mr. Bachchan cut his hair in a certain way, tied his shirt in a certain way, all the youngsters
who ever saw his film, did it. But now, there’s a lot more influence coming in through TV, and through many
other sources of information that has de-saturated the influence of just film on the young psyche. The influence
that it did have, maybe 10 or 15 years ago, it’s not as strong today. But for the ardent viewer – there is an entire
section of the Indian populace, that follows films and at times certain actors’ movies, certain director’s movies
or actress’ movies. And those people are the ones who tend to get most influenced by films.
For instance Rajnikant in the South has a huge fan following.
Yes you would see kids trying to chuck cigarettes… or pencils if not cigarettes in their mouth. Which besides
being bad for your lungs would also be bad for your eyes if you missed! You have that – the general aping that
goes on. It depends on how society treats that person and what kind of status they raise him to. I am more in
tune with the Bombay scenario…I know that in the South actors are treated even today like demi-gods.
There are other sources of influences coming in…For instance there is advertising. With film stars endorsing
brands and products…there was the case of the kid in Lucknow who decided to fly like Salman in the Thums
Up ad and fell off the roof….
Those are stray incidents. One person in thousands decides to do it, is not really a trend. But that will happen.
In the US, when Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles released, kids started crawling into sewers to look for them and
a couple of them died. But you can’t really help. You can as a parent tell your child that this is make believe.
Obviously smoking is not makebelieve. You see somebody else doing it. So you say why can’t I because I
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