Aamir Khan: If you want to measure actor's stardom, see how well his flop does

midday Exclusive Aamir Khan kicks off middays unique conversation series where Mumbais most popular and sharp creative minds dig deep and decode their art and craft before a select live audienceAamir Khan came over rather underslept stressing over the release of his latest film Secret Superstar He spoke indepth on the economics and craft of filmmaking And only two days later he conquered the boxoffice yet again with Secret Superstar maintaining an unrivalled cent per cent hitrate as a Bollywood producerSuperstar filmmaker Aamir Khan kicked off the first edition of Sit with Hitlist a conversation series with Indias top creative minds before a select audience We intended to host this freewheeling chat in an auditorium Date and technical issues did not permit it this time This was a budget version of Sit with Hitlist held at the midday office But as goes with lowbudget ventures with Aamir in it we knew the wordofmouth would ensure middays brandnew property would be a huge hit It wasAamir Khan PicsNimesh DaveExcerpts from the conversationThe big news of 2017 was of course Dangal and China Producer Siddharth Roy Kapurs reason for the films unprecedented success is the Chinese audiences sensed a common Eastern sensibility in the films fatherdaughter relationship Do you agreeWhen I visited China and Turkey recently I realised that their emotional key is very similar to ours I carefully noticed the reaction that Dangal got in theatres in China It was the same as for an Indian audience they were laughing crying and clapping at the same points There was no difference at allIs that true for Indians watching Chinese films I am not sure I get that sensibility the same wayWell I saw Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon 2000 and loved it I was clapping and whistling throughout I didnt come with any preconceived notions I love Jackie Chan movies I was in college when I first saw Police Story 1985 the action was unbelievable And its so humorous I have connected with these filmsAamir Khan in conversation with Mayank Shekhar at the first edition of Sit with HITLIST before a live audience at the midday officeAnother theory is that the way the kids get treated in Dangal and how the father is determined to turn them into champions is similar to China except the father is the communist state attempting to turn them into Olympic goldmedalists from a young age Do you see a connectionI never thought of it like that Ive read reactions from Chinese audiences They apparently watched the film and desperately wanted to talk to their parents right after It is a personal human connectYour personal global reach as an actor really began thanks to the Internet Is that rightMy assumption is that it happened with 3 Idiots 2009 which became a huge hit on the Internet Raju Hirani and Vinod Chopra got to know about it Someone from China contacted us and we released the film there a year later by when most people had already watched it They started looking for my other films and now many of them have watched Taare Zameen Par 2007 Lagaan 2001 and Rang De Basanti 2006Aamir KhanConsidering the strong role of Internet it was a surprise when I read somewhere that you are such a big screen guy Would you bypass something like NetflixI was talking about myself as a consumer and not the creator of content As an audience cinema is more important to me huge screen Atmos sound a richer larger experience than a laptop This doesnt mean I wouldnt want to do a Netflix or TV series when the quality is equally cinemalike I have been asked by them Netflix to create something Content for every platform is different For Netflix the content cannot be delivered in one session The narrative needs to be episodic I would be keen if something like that comes my way I have watched Breaking Bad Its my favourite I like Game Of Thrones and House of CardsOne of the central themes of your latest release Secret Superstar is how Internet can turn you into an overnight star How do you compare that kind of stardom with yours at a time when anything can go viralSome of the videos which go viral are oneoffs like a cat doing something funny But then there are talents that people discover on the Internet it offers great opportunities The smalltown girl in Secret Superstar has no access but she is full of passion She doesnt have to break into the limited distribution network anymoreAamir KhanBack in the 90s when there wasnt so much talk about boxoffice numbers how could you tell someone is finally a starFrom the time I was seven I remember reading Trade Guide and other boxoffice journals We would check out the figures of dads films and there would be a circuitwise break up Within the industry the boxoffice knowledge was always there since cinema has always been around as a business Today mainstream media is picking up boxoffice figures and thats a choice youre makingIn small towns for instance when people didnt know boxoffice numbers one way to gauge stardom was if people had begun copying an actors haircut TrueThere are many yardsticks for measuring how popular a star is Copying style is one of them I remember when Mr Bachchan became a huge star I wanted to get bellbottoms made like his For me it is essentially about how many seats one fills It means that people love you and your work and now they want to go and experience it Thats important We often measure stardom by how big an actors commercial successes have been That is a faulty method PKs or Dangals business has to do with how great those films and their scripts were Its incorrect to attribute that to my stardom My stardom comes into play when I make a bad film that people dont want to watch They still come because of my name So if you want to measure an actors stardom you should check out how well his flop doesAamir Khan signs on a memorabilia the original poster of his 1994 release Andaz Apna ApnaIn that sense the Khans have dominated Bollywood for over 25 years My question to you is Do you remember the first time you met Salman and Shah RukhThe first time I met Salman was at Bablas director Aditya Bhattacharyas house who made Raakh 1989 Incidentally Salman and I were in the same class for a year in the second standard at St Annes in Pali Hill And we didnt know each other then I was at Bablas house to discuss a short film called Paranoia where I was the actor spotboy production head first AD all rolled into one We shot that film for a month I was 15 and this is the first time I ever acted Salman was cycling around in Carter Road He knew Babla too We stood in the balcony and talked He told me about how he also wanted to become an actor I thought of him as a sweet chap Shah Rukh I remember meeting briefly when I was shooting with Juhi Chawla somewhere on the road He had begun shooting a film with her Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman Deewana his debut 1992hadnt released yet He was sweet and it was a warm meetingClearly nothing momentous Now one of the reasons 2017 has been considered a subpar year in Bollywood is because the two top stars films didnt do well let alone break records Do you think the film industry has been relying on the Khans for too long to bail them out every yearThere are other hugely successful stars Akshay Kumar Hrithik Roshan Ajay Devgnhellip The three of us Khans have been successful for quite a while its natural for the trade to bank on us Sometimes films work sometimes they dont At one time Mr Bachchan was huge None of us will ever see the stardom he has He once had eight films simultaneously doing really well in theatres Trade would bank on him for seats and popcorns Ideally there should be more stars But its a natural process Becoming a star is an intangible thing What is it that people connect with me so strongly over I have absolutely no ideaAamir Khan walks in to the midday office for the chatOver a conversation in 2011 youd told us about a bubble in the film industry referring to studios that paid money assuming the highest possible returns Effectively in 2016 most studios went bust Did you predict thisWho am I to predict But its bad business Say Dangal has done R385 crore business and I come with the next film that gets sold at R400 crore because a studio is willing to pay that much They assume that my next will be as big or bigger than Dangal which was huge to begin with Thats not sound business A studio cant pay on hope You have to invest on surety If the lifetime of the last film is R380 crore then you know that the next will definitely make R200 crore The upside is then there for everyone to share This is why I dont load my film with my fee My model is that I dont charge any money All the money goes into filmmaking and fees of everyone else And then the first money coming in goes towards recovering the PampA cost of print and advertising Eventually if the film tanks I get zero Thats a risk I am willing to take Id rather loseAnd then if the film Dangal does R1300 crore in China means you get a good bulkSure and I bring that value to the table Investors are completely secure I take a sizeable chunk When the film does R1300 crore first the government takes a certain tax amount and a major chunk goes to theatre chains and the exhibition sector Its the same with India except in China there are also rules on how much people from outside the country can take as share revenues from a film It finally boils down to 125 per cent which is still goodDid you pick up a mansion from 125 per cent of Chinese boxofficeI am not good with money I dont do investments and I have very few properties Basically my mind doesnt work in that direction I am not a business savvy personYoure certainly good at film business with a 100 per cent track record as producerCreatively I dont want to mess with what I want to do So say I want to do a Dhobi Ghat 2011 Ill make sure its made in R5 crore For the investor I know this amount will come back and well make a little profit Films will be profitable if you make them economically viable and this gives me the freedom to make what I wantHeres how you get it right each time budgeting great scriptsense making sure casting locations are spoton The new thing Ive learnt is how much emphasis you give to the audience testing the firstcut of your film Unknown people repeatedly watch it in focus groups whose responses eventually determine the final cutedit Isnt that losing creative control almost like filmmaking by public consensus Odd noNo Its not by public consensus Im not going around asking people what I should do with my film and they say cut this or that and I make the changes The whole basis of testing a film is that we have a story in mind that were trying to narrate to you I just want to make sure that what Im narrating to you is coming through Or are you receiving something else We become so close to our material that while making a film were not able to be objective enough to understand how its being receivedCan you give concrete examples from your films where there was disconnect between what you were saying and what was being receivedLet me give you two examples Take Sarfarosh 1999 first which was a cop film about policing At the test screenings the consistent response was Wheres the policing We dont see any He the cop is constantly listening to ghazals We were like Hows that possible theres the Khera Naka scene with the entire action his leg gets broken hes in the hospital where he dives despite the injury all those scenes were there While we were befuddled we knew this was a problem So we added three scenes to the film One in the beginning we raid a corrupt cop in the tribal belt of Maharashtra where ACP Rathore his character goes through the phonebook to get whereabouts of Sultan which he gets after delivering a tight slap to the corrupt cop Again while searching for Sultan we reach his mothers house where I stop my colleagues from being rough with her The third scene was about a raid where we caught two guys who we interrogated but we were getting nothing out of them This is when I fire at one of the guys just so the bullet misses him He spills the beansWasnt that guy Nawazuddin Siddiqui in a split second role much before he became popularThat was Nawaz which I didnt know When I was working on Talaash 2012 with Nawaz is when he told me Sir Ive already worked with you Kab Sarfarosh mein Mein wahi tha laughs So after inserting those scenes the problem over showing policing in the picture that we were constantly facing disappeared overnight Suddenly the film changedAnother exampleNow the whole thought behind Taare Zameen Par was that one has to be inclusive Every child has a problem and you cant segregate them from other kids What we were arguing for is that special schools should actually not be necessary All kids should study in the same school The reaction we would get is So youre saying Ishan is a special child so he should study in a special school And we were clearly saying the opposite As were all our lines We realised theres some miscommunication here and for the life of me I couldnt understand why Now if you remember the films title track is shot in a school for special children where I teach The schools annual day is going on The kids are dancing in slowmotion parents are hugging their kids Ive got tears in my eyes This is when the song begins From my face the screen dissolves to Ishans face sitting all alone lonely and low in a regular boarding school His parents cant come to meet him because his brother has a tennis match We then cut to the brother playing tennis while his father is upset etc A friend of mine Amin Hajee who played the mute in Lagaan told me he thinks the problem is in the song Youre looking at children getting so much love in the special school and the image dissolves to Ishan alone It seems youre saying he should be here and not in a regular school First I didnt agree with him because thats not what I was trying to communicate But heck let me try So instead of dissolving from my face to Ishans we cut to the brother whos not playing tennis well and then brought in Ishan We literally changed one thing over 30 seconds That problem got solved Nobody made the same point about the films intention anymore Now with dissolving my face with Ishans I wanted to communicate subconsciously that he Nikumbh the teacher actually sees himself in Ishan he went through the same problems as a kid dealing with Dyslexia But I was failing in communicating that anyway And Ive been doing test screenings right since QSQT Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak 1989Showing the first cut to regular junta from your first major film onwardsYes Some of the reactions make sense some dont Many of which I already have answers to since the film still has to go through postproduction Again Ill give you a broad example Often people say that from a particular point a film becomes very boring The moment the song comes in second half the film dips Now most people will feel that they should cut the song But that wont be the solution Youre feeling the weight over here in the films timeline but the reason for that is somewhere earlier in the film Theres something wrong in your structure You need to figure that out Its like going to a doctor and telling him your symptoms Can he treat that No He can treat your problem Likewise there is a dip in the second half but the problem is somewhere in the first half you need to treat that either you havent built up the plot properly or the subplot is too weak You need to understand where the correction lies So its not filmmaking by consensus With Raja Hindustani 1996 we had a very bad reaction from test audiences Dharmesh Darshan was like Oh God were finished I told him according to me you shouldnt change a single thing about the film So its a science you have to know what to take or correctBut who did you show Raja Hindustani to Cant be a Malabar Hill audience theyll reject it anyway its too massy and hardcoreWell we showed it to a hardcore Hindi heartland audience There was a wedding happening in Dharmeshs family so people had come in from Punjab Allahabad and other placesAnother thing I learnt about you from my childhood guitarist friend who spent over 10 days in your Panchgani house scoring music with Amit Trivedi is that youre seriously handson How important is it for a Hindi filmmaker to know his musicI am not formally trained in music and I am not involved in the music of every film unless the producerdirector invites me to be part of the process When I was working with Mansoor Khan on Jo Jeeta Wahi Sikander or QSQT I was very closely involved As I am with the films I produceWhat do you mean by involved do you make suggestionsI react to the piece and convey to the composer what I feel I might act out something to tell him what I want Sometimes I do get technical I have basic knowledge to make a few suggestions In Secret Superstar for instance the song Main Kaun Hoon sings it was at one point going on falsetto It wasnt sounding right I requested Amit to change it He obliged We already had another track Main Nachdi Phira going into falsetto We couldnt do it for two important songsYouve spoken at length here about the science of filmmaking How do you merge that with art Mohar Basu in the audience asksLet me finetune your question Its not the science of filmmaking but mass communication because filmmaking may choose not to be mass communication and then it wont follow these laws that youre talking about You are trying to communicate to a whole mass so you try and reach the common point among all these peopleBut thats not how I begin While listening to a script I become the audience Its like you watching a film And at that time Im just reacting emotionally to it For example when I heard the script of Delhi Belly I was on the floor laughing At that time Im not thinking of the science That happens when I start work on the script with the director and writer and say I check Have we locked our goal early enough What is the premise of Delhi Belly Shit happensYou keep a oneliner alwaysYes The premise and what the film is trying to say are important A film may not be socially relevant but it has to say something So yes do we have a clear enough premise Do we want to sharpen it Is my goal locked well in advance There are times when the film is going on and on and you dont know where it is going so you start losing interestLets look at Lagaan The premise is Rains arent happening You cant pay taxlagaan Gora says Lagaan maaf kar denge if you beat us in cricket My character says Sharat manjoor hai The moment he says that my goal is locked Now as an audience I know that cricket main harane wale hain Now that journey from goallocking to the goal has to be exciting difficult with a lot of obstacles which makes it even more exciting At times the main plot becomes too boring Are the subplots getting over before the main plot Because if thats not the case Im not interested having reached the goal The end fizzles out So these are the basic rules of mass communication in entertainmentYou emphasise strongly on emotional connect is that something you seek in all your films Sonil Dedhia in the audience asksAll When I say emotional connect I dont mean crying because thats what people often associate with that word Oh matlab rona dhona hai What I mean is some emotion is being tapped into its making you feel thrilled giving you lots of stress because suspense is an emotion being tapped into in a thriller Or it could be fear because its a horror film So the film connecting at an emotional level is important to meA distinction between arthouse and mainstream according to a filmmaking wit I once interviewed is that with the latter the audience knows exactly whats going to happen they like that while with the former they dont In fact they dont even know if anything will happen in an arthouse film at allI feel that in mainstream cinema you should have a sense of where the film is headed But at each stage if you know what is going to happen then the film becomes too predictable and doesnt engage you enough So its important to surprise the audienceFinal question Honestly decode your character Shakti Kumarr in Secret Superstar Hes a sleazoid called Shakti clearly named after Shakti Kapoor He talks a lot like Anu Malik and Anil Kapoor both of whom I saw at your films private screeningIve taken a lot from various people and built this personality Ive used Anils style of talking a few timeslike in the awards night scene where I say Awards lete lete thak gaya hoon main When Anil says bye to you on the phone for instance he never says one bye He goes Okay bye bye bye bye bye byehellip There are some things that stay with me Jeetuji Jeetendra once came to meet my uncle Nasir Hussain I used to be his assistant at the time And Jeetuji is a fab guy with a great sense of humour He told my uncle Nasir saab mujhe double role offer hua hai Mujhse ek role theek se hota nahin mujhe do role de rahe hain But he used a phrase then Dekhte hain Buck up India Now whenever I meet Jeetuji he says Buck up India Hed ask me when is your movie releasing Id say December Haan buck up India I used that in the film laughsTheres no Anu Malik in it come onNow dont ask me who all are in it Okay theres a little bit of Anu Malik But Im not mimicking anybody because I cant do that