Renowned Bollywood scriptwriter Vipul K Rawal has come up with a unique model to fight the scourge of nepotism in the Indian film industry, which has come into sharp focus following the tragic death of the talented film actor Sushant Singh Rajput.
Not one to boast of a Godfather in the industry, the 51-yearold writer, who wrote scripts, screenplays, stories and dialogues of Bollywood blockbusters and award-winning films, ‘Rustom’ and ‘Iqbal’ as well as the immensely popular Hindi short film, ‘Mumbai Varanasi Express,’ has not just come out against the rampant nepotism in the industry like others, but has devised a very simple but effective method of fighting it.
The Surendranagar-born author, who was in north Bengal last November on a recce for his film, ‘Gorkha’ in the Darjeeling hills, is all set to release his maiden venture as director and producer — ‘Tony’ — on the YouTube very soon.
He will put the film on the biggest and the most popular online video-sharing platform in the world by the end of August, with an appeal to the viewers to contribute whatever big or little they can, depending on how much they liked the film and on their financial capability.
A former Indian Navy man, Mr Rawal, who was a member of the Indian Peace Keeping Force operations in Sri Lanka and was part of Operation Cactus in Maldives, said he was planning a “surgical strike” on the current nepotism in Bollywood and the mind-set of the Bollywood bigwigs about the elements that make a film successful.
“It is a pity that while whopping sums are invested in promotion of a film and payment to the established actors, who work in it, a paltry 20 percent of the total budget is spent in its actual making. My objective in ‘Tony’ has been just the opposite. There are no songs, no commercial clap traps in the film. My only aim was to tell a good story and provide a platform to aspiring actors, artistes, cinematographers and music composers to showcase their talents. The film was the maiden venture of my actors as well as my art and music directors and the director of photography. They have all done a marvellous job,” said the writer turned filmmaker.
A daring filmaholic, who in 2019 started a production company with the intent of producing small budget content based films under Rs 1 crore, Mr Rawal said he firmly believed that his model would set a new trend in Indian film-making.
He said that his actual goal was to leave it to the viewers to decide how much they should pay for watching ‘Tony’ and rope in the funds, thus raised, in making his forthcoming projects, including his most ambitious and much-awaited movie in north Bengal- ‘Gorkha.’