Before Amitabh Went Bollywood

I don't understand how grown ass brown people born and raised in canada watch bollywood movies. i understand why people in india do, it's a huge part of their culture as hollywood is ours. art in india is mostly underground and for the rich. the people who have the time and luxury to hunt down art if they wish to. the artsy music and movies and stuff stay underground and take a far back seat to the mass produced bollywood crap. they're all for the most part, musicals and the music is the pop music of india. so the movies are like a double whammy of crapola! the soundtracks often make or break the movie. in fact, you can have an awesome movie on your hands but if the soundtrack sucks, your awesome movie, will without a doubt, fail. and you can have the shittiest movie of all time but if the soundtrack's a hit so is the movie. could you imagine if that was the case with hollywood movies? haven't seen a bollywood movie? watch grease, or mama mia then cut out the kissing, there you go. imagine watching movies like grease for the rest of your life? scary, i know.

the thing is though, the indian people haven't been exposed to much of anything else because other options are far and few. also the largely poor population just wants to escape from their shitty lives. eventhough hollywood just like bollywood find a money making trend and run with it (scary movies in the 90s, superhero movies, teenage comedies and now with the fucking vampires), hollywood also has indie productions that steer from these trends and keep things fresh and new. india doesn't really have these available to anyone other than college kids, either making or hunting them down. as critically acclaimed as some of these are, they almost never make a dime. lack of funding for promotions keeps these forever in the dark. some of these are probably more popular here than there.

i even understand why some white people watch bollywood movies, every now and then. the east indian culture has been slowly seeping into our pop culture for awhile now. it started with timbo and other producers experimenting with eastern sounds in pop music and the popularization of yoga and then finally with slumdog millionaire. all these things slowly accumulated and now the south asian culture is a full blown fad in our pop culture. it's the cool thing to do or be. but mark my words, it is just that, a fad. it will fade just as it came to the forefront. so ya, i can understand why white people watch them. but they don't live them, as some of my peers do.

i don't completely hate bollywood. i have a strong sense of nostalgia tied with them. amitabh bhachan, (the actor the slumdog chases down for an autograph covered in shit, in the movie) was my first obssession. i would watch bollywood movies growing up with my parents, well it wasn't exactly "bollywood" then, they were just hindi movies. amitabh was like brando, deniro, pacino and eastwood all rolled up into one. actually, he still is. he's not only still the biggest bollywood star of all time but he's also the focal point of all the movies he's in. he hasn't really taken the supporting role even into his 60s. anyway, i was completely obssessed with him as was every other brown kid in the world, as evidenced in slumdog. during my summers in india, my cousins and i would go on amitabh binges. watching 2-3 different movies of his EVERYDAY! our goal was to watch every movie he had ever made. WE DID! eventhough that was still fairly early in his career, he had an abundance of kick ass flicks. let me see, if i can wiki up some kind of idea of how many movies that might've been... i went to imdb and it was just over 100! obssessed to say the least. he took a break for awhile and that's also when i came back here and grew up a little and have pretty much avoided bollywood ever since. i recently heard that wal mart now carries hindi movies, so i might just pick up an old school amitabh dvd or 2.