Hemanth’s note on Killing Michael Bay, pushed me to watch the film on iFilm. And a big WOW, I let out after I finished watching this shortish fiction movie with classy motifs. An upset digital filmmaker, alongwith his friend, plans to kill the famous commercial movie maker, Michael Bay. Bay known for his famous masala movies like Bruce Willis’ Armageddon, Sean Connery’s The Rock and ofcourse the movie in context, Pearl Harbour. These two dudes upset by Bay’s bad(read commercial) films which kills the ‘good’ movies’ business, abduct him to a faroff place in Los Angeles. What happens when Michael Bay escapes forms the rest of this short film. It’s certainly a must watch provided you have a broadband connection and fifteen minutes to spare. It might tell you what a shoe-string budgeted short film can do.
The theme here is that commercial movies kill the good films with their sheer box-office money, studio power and ofcourse the intoxicating elements that gives people a real doppy feeling. They don’t allow people to look beyond the commercial stuff and there-by kill their intellect to appreciate worthy films. A brain dead scenario. But these guys who made the movie don’t tell such stuff directly. Rather they symbolically represent the current scenario as in Hollywood and how finally the commercial crop win over the spirited independent filmmakers. More than the inspiring theme, the movie itself is a nail-bitting satire on hollywood flicks which have Matrix style stunts, Bond style car chases and Arnold style WWF fist fights. The only thing missing was a bikini clad vamp. That would have completed a full circle.
I immediately thought about the comparison to Michael Bay in Tamil cinema. While we have a thousand such directors in kollywood, naming just one wouldn’t do justice(!!) to the entire group. But if someone were to even make a movie with a similar name, ‘ Killing XYZ’ in kollywood, even as a joke, they would be contested by the mushromming political parties with venom and anger. The kodambakkam heroes/heroines would walk, with their coolers(on a rainy day!!) from liberty theatre to beach as a token of showing opposition to the movie. One group would fire the theatres which features the movie. Thousands of cases will be filled in a zillion courts. If those film makers don’t appear even in one of the courts, it would become a contempt of court like what’s happening with Kushboo. I don’t suggest its all freedom here. But atleast this short film was released in 2002 and still lives on the internet.
Anyway, coming back to the title, I truly feel the class of independent film-makers are nearly non-existent in Tamil. It doesn’t need to be software engineers, running back from US, who should make independent movies. It could be anyone from a journalist to a cinema-loving Gumasta of a govt office. Such a wave of good cinema is yet to rock kollywood. I am sure that war will be staged soon. No matter who wins, 5 years from now if mainstream commercial movies( despite an awful storyline), be picturised without songs, I think its the victory for everyone collectively. What say ?
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