Screenplay Lacking Local Flavour

Renowned film makers say and many experts agree that screenplay is the life for any successful film. However many doesn’t even know the meaning leave alone the importance of screenplay in film making. A popular writer in a media interview when asked about screenplay defined it as arranging scenes of a film in particular order. When even writers who have superhits to their credit are novices regarding screenplay how can one expect ordinary movie goers to know inside out of screenplay. In the olden days people used to comment that screen play is the first name of director. However after 1975 directors like Dasari Narayana Rao, K.Balachander, K.Viswanath started writing scripts for their own films. But all the three are not directors with exceptional writing skills. Prior to their directorial debut they worked as script writers for top directors.

Genex film makers without noticing this difference started using screenplay under their name for their films. One should note that even top directors like Bapu and Raghavendra Rao never used to take credit for screenplay for their films. After 1990s level of writers degraded further with not even screenplay, story and dialogues going into the credit of directors. Some directors may writer dialogues for their films but according to film nagar information most of them depend on ghost writers. If Dasari, Balachander, Bhagyaraja, Maniratnam, Vidu Vinod Chopra say they are good script writers then one can believe them as they wrote scripts to other directors even after they became successful directors.

Any regional language films are inspired by Hollywood. In the olden days film makers used to follow Hollywood techniques. Many used to depend on our stories but implemented Hollywood techniques in films. However Pingali, DV.Narasaraju, Mullapudi Venkata Ramana though inspired by Hollywood films or novels never used to leave regional roots. Even Jandhyala never copied Hollywood flicks though he had immense knowledge on world film making. He used to take rights of popular novels and made successful films. Parachuri Brothers never neglected Indian feelings though they were influenced by Hollywood.

With inflow of video cassettes of Hollywood films since 1985, Tollywood film making changed drastically. From 1990s there was an impression that a person with good story narrating skills was a good director. They never used to prepare scripts using their creativity. Most of them are tenth or inter failed and shifted to Chennai in search of film offers. One can never expect them to have knowledge of novels and good works as they couldn’t complete their class books. They used to watch film CDs ,VVDs all night and used to narrate to Hero. Once they get his dates used to be in discussions with writers. All used to mix scenes from various films and ready a script. Some intelligent directors used to copy even dialogues and instances from popular novels and Hollywood films in their films. Many writers concede in private that directors don’t appreciate any new ideas and they encourage people who rework on hit scenes. All this resulted in loss of freshness and local feel in telugu films. One can not find any films on family based back drops.

Film makers are influenced totally by hollywod since 1995 not only by taking but from subjects and screenplays. Film makers used to think only of freemaking Hollywood hits. Hollywood used to have credits for various departments. Each will have two to three people. There are very few directors in Hollywood who made films with their own story or script. Speilsberg, Tom Tweaker and others made films with help of others scripts. Hollywood doesn’t have dialogue writer. This forms the part of screenplay. Only writers get royalty in Hollywood. However our film makers who ape the industry will not imbibe Hollywood’s good qualities. Film makers are just downloading scripts and stories from DVDs and from online. Robert Mekky’s ‘Sotry’ is bible on screenplay. Next comes Sid Field. All the film makers follow Sid Field but there wont be any answers why their films are bombing at box office. This is because their techniques works out only in Hollywood and due to lack of native adaption the films flopped in telugu.

Hollywoo d films are classified on various fronts like adventure, action,. Romantic,. Comedy, family drama, crime, thriller, war, fantasy, science fiction etc. Except for musical films there wont be any songs. However our film makers try to include everything in one film and thus fail in making a good film. While Hollywood heroes enact according to roles, our heroes want their stardom in their roles. Though none of the viewers demanded sentiment, entertainment, fights, songs in one film, directors tuned viewers like that and they don’t come out to make something new.

Recently Devudu Chesina Manushulu is inspired by ‘Sliding Doors’. While the original was a beauty, the remake flopped miserably. Similar is Tom Twaekar’s ‘Run Lola Run’. This film will be exhibited in all screenplay workshops but when three years back a film came in telugu on the same concept, it failed at the box office. Even ‘If Only’ format is the same but films made in tollywood and bollywood with same concept failed to make any impression. It is advisable for film makers to follow the saying ‘Be like a Roman in Rome’ than show our heroes as Hollywood super stars.