Bollywood’s Most Boring Secret

From 4pm yesterday, Rajdeep Sardesai and Bhupendra Chaubey took to twitter to announce the CNN-IBN sting-op with Cobrapost, Bollywood’s worst-kept secret, The Really Dirty Picture.

Now, going by the many claims in the tweets by both of them, I had a lot of hope for the sting op. Not just because I thought we’d see really big names from the film industry – like Karan Johar, Ritesh Sidhwani, Sanjay Dutt, SRK – and that the laundering of underworld money would be discussed, but also because I hold Cobrapost in very high regard. The last Cobrapost-IBN sting op was on April 10, 2012. Called The Baby Bazaar, it showed government hospital staff selling newborns and infants to people. The exposé led to an FIR being filed against seven employees of a hospital, including two doctors in Amroha where the baby selling racket was shown.

Yesterday’s ticker on CNN-IBN once the exposé began stated – “Producers, director reveal how black money is laundered in Bollywood”. So while I sat waiting to be told how Dawood Ibrahim and Abu Salem’s money was being laundered through funding Bollywood blockbusters, what I got instead was far from it.

The eight “top people of the industry, stars and celebrities” turned out to be, sans one, upcoming directors and producers (who of course have blockbusters under their belt, but are far from being Bollywood royalty) – a Noida film institute owner and two C-grade starlets who are lucky if they get any role nowadays.

Bhupendra Chaubey started off calm and composed. The first head on the block was Anubhav Sinha’s – who directed Ra One – and supposedly almost got sacked by SRK. So it’s safe to say that he’s not the most influential of directors in Bollywood. A Cobrapost reporter posing as an investor who wants to launder his money met Sinha, on camera. And was told to pay Rs 15 crore, only 25% of which was to be paid by cheque. Sinha’s chartered accountant then very kindly explained how cash can be replaced by cheque and how black money will pay for production costs and the film’s profits will be shared with the investor.

Shocking? Not really. Have we heard of this before? Yes.

Then we moved onto Anees Bazmee, whose last hit was Singh is King in 2008, and scriptwriter Rajeev Kaul, whose last hit was again in 2008, the classic Akshay Kumar starrer, Welcome. They had the same kind of conversation as Sinha’s – black can be converted to white. There’s a Rs 5 crore signing amount. Of which Rs 4 crore is in cash. And they compared the film industry to the real estate business. They also narrated very clearly how an incomplete film is sold to corporate firms, which then pay the director by cheque. Which is then paid to the investor.

After which, a still calm and collected, Bhupendra Chaubey asked us, the viewer – “Is the use of black money still rampant in Bollywood?” After what I’d seen, I would have to answer, “I’m not sure”.

Bazmee and Kaul did appear on the programme to defend themselves. And after claiming that it was all a joke, and they were simply trying to get the over-persistent fake investor off their back – “Bilkul mazaak kar rahe the” – Bazmee gave Chaubey a talking to and said, “Baat aap lok ghumarahe hain”. (You guys are twisting our words.)

Which pretty much made Bhupendra Chaubey lose his cool. So from accusation to counter-accusation and yawn to counter-yawn we came to the only big name in the sting op. That of Vashu Bhagnani – whose bigger crime is to inflict his son on an unsuspecting audience. Bhagnani was candid. He said he didn’t want IT officials harassing him. And that he’d take Rs 8 crore in cash, Rs 2 crore by cheque. And give 20% of the profit to the investor and the rest of the profits could be split. The only thing I came away with was that Anubhav Sinha should hire Bhagnani as his CA and sack Dubey. Bhagnani also refused to respond or appear on the programme.

And then we had CNN-IBN’s next hypothetical question – “Does Bollywood provide more platforms for cash transactions?”

What was interesting to note was the change in Bhupendra Chaubey’s temperament as the programme progressed. While Bazmee and Kaul maintained their bravado and composure, Bhupendra was slowly morphing into the Hulk. He became more and more belligerent as CNN-IBN’s case started falling a little flat and even he realised that this was as half-baked a sting op as possible. He asked Bazmee whether he and Kaul would indeed accept cash as they’d said on camera. They obviously said no. To which Chaubey said in an angry tone – “Please be a little candid”. He reminded me of when my parents used to get frustrated by my refusal to admit the truth.

Then, there was a ray of light. Because other than Chaubey and these forgotten directors and producers of Bollywood, we had some voices from the industry who would lay credence to CNN-IBN’s claims. Or so I think the channel thought.

So, we had Rahul Dholakia, who made the lovely Parzania – and is known for his lack of Bollywood contacts. After being stymied by a bad audio connection, Dholakia put a dampener on Bhupendra’s verve by saying that the presence of black money in Bollywood isn’t that much at all. And of course there’s black money, but that’s because politicians have started investing in films and named Ram Vilas Paswan’s son.

Mahesh Jethmalani, the next guest, reiterated Dholakia’s point and said that most black money is from politicians. “The rot is politics”. And that maybe there should be demonitisation of big currency notes. But this would hit poor people. And he did say, quite sensibly, that to expect no black money to exist in the film industry is actually stupid and would be the case if it was a nice utopian world.

What would have made the sting op worthwhile would have been if they had managed to catch a politician or his family on camera promising to invest black money in films. But no such luck. Instead we got two ‘stars’, ‘actresses’ no less. Who, you ask? Madhuri Dixit? Kajol? Nahin!

It was Payal Rohatgi and her wrestler love, Sangram Singh. Followed by Aarti Chabria. Don’t know who she is? You haven’t missed much. Now, since Payal Rohatgi has not ‘acted’ (and I use the word very loosely) in any films in the last couple of years, can you really blame her for jumping at the thought of being paid Rs 30 lakh?

Payal and Aarti were followed by a Sandeep Marwah who runs Asian Academy of Film and TV in Noida. If the channel must get a film institute teacher, why not Subhash Ghai of Whistling Woods or even Kishore Namit, whose school all the stars go to? Either they have a really bad research team on board, or they simply couldn’t get any A-listers on camera. The suspect line-up of top Bollywood celebrities thankfully ended with Shailesh R Singh who’s the producer of Tanu Weds Manu. Who claimed, like all good name-droppers, that he could cast Irrfan Khan in the Cobrapost sting op-funded film and Khan would take Rs 1.5 crore in cash and Rs 25 lakh in cheque. Even Khan must be surprised that he’s going at such a high price.

Then to buoy forward a fast-sinking exposé, the channel quoted a US Consulate Cable mentioned by Wikileaks which stated that there was a nexus between gangsters, politicians, film. Once again, the perfect opening for the channel to show us how they had managed to expose this nexus. But no. Instead we got Rajeev Masand ensuring that he’s still called for Bhagnani’s film preview screenings by saying that the “extent of black money has been reduced”.

By now Bhupendra Chaubey looked tired and defeated and as bored as I did by this sad excuse for a sting. He asked his one last hypothetical question of the day – “Can use of black money be checked in films?” And then, made the cardinal mistake of asking Bazmee, “Viewers ko sorry bolenge ke, ki nahin?” (Will you say sorry to the viewers or not?) At which he was royally castigated by Bazmee. Which is ample reason to hang up your boots forever.

Then, if you hadn’t had enough of the exposé that never was, the channel showed it yet again on their programme, India at 9. And just to make you think they had a new angle they called on film producer Mukesh Bhatt, actor Kabir Bedi and a lawyer, NK Kaul. Bhatt couldn’t hear Suhasini Haider first (they really need to do something about their uplinks), and upon managing to hear her, most succinctly said that what the exposé was trying to say “is bullshit”. NK Kaul said that he had no authority to comment on Bollywood dealings. So what he was doing there was anyone’s guess. And Kabir Bedi got most upset by the frivolity of the claims and said that everyone knows that this is a silly way to launder money as most films make a loss. And why go after an industry where dealing in white money is more the exception than the rule. Why didn’t the channel go after industries where it’s more the rule than the exception, and then point out how these dealings in black money are taking place? Well – it’s always easier to hit the easy targets.

Baldly put, there was no sting in this exposé. It would have been far more impressive if they had indeed managed to get people like Karan Johar or Riteish Sidhwani/Farhan Akhtar and established actors indulging in money laundering, on camera. Or if the sting dwelt on the gangster-film nexus and spoke about how Monica Bedi was ensured film roles, or the threats Kimi Katkar faced, or why Divya Bharati died. We still have a nexus today which is reminiscent of Hollywood of the Twenties when Sam Giancana and Micky Cohen were calling the shots in the world of cinema. Or maybe CNN-IBN and Cobrapost could have focused on the politician-film nexus. Or if they had to be vacuous, they could have done an exposé on what it takes to convince seemingly intelligent producers to make films with Riteish Deshmukh and Neil Nitin Mukesh. Now that would have been interesting.