Why Its Wrong To Cast PC as MK - Page 9

As audience we also try to think on the perspective of producer with ultimate goal of box office. When there is a good concept , script, strong acting , direction a movie can be also be successful may not achieve a 100 crore. Just like few recent movies like udaan , peepli live, gang of wassyput etc. which have totally unknown actors or say lesser known stars still are successful. This story contain all the ingredient of a successful movie which normally people like just like bhag mika which contains story of unknown to achieve excellent success in sports. Its ok as producer if they are vying for 100 crore in this process we just miss out that a movie can be made without star , when we see even israel movie like The band,s visit or iran movies somewhere we can see something is missing in bollywood , their target is more on movie making rather than how much more they can make from a movie. Even when rocky was made i think sylvester stallone was newcomer and i will prefer to watch rockey series even without knowing who he is. May be Bollywood should start from somewhere without giving so much importance to stars.

Marry kom.. sounds like one of those zillions shadi-byah desi websites on net!

Originally posted by: return_to_hades

QSQT,MPK, KNPH are biggest examples of smash hits delivered by debutantes. Although one might argue they had star kids.

Rajesh Khanna's career was lesser known until Aaradhna. Both Anil Kapoor and Jackie Shroff delivered early hits with Woh Saat Din and Hero. In fact Hero was the lead pairs second film.

For completely fresh faces Khiladi and Tere Mere Sapne were big hits for a fresh cast. Aashiqui with two debutantes was a phenomenal hit in the nineties.

None are per se regional stars, but there is always a first - it depends on who takes the chance. People of all races are gaining bankability in the west - it is about time India allowed their regional stars to shine.

I think the makers could have easily cast a more authentic Mary Kom and given secondary roles to well-known stars for that commercial draw. If it was done right it could have become commercially successful. I'm not going to scream and say that the makers were horribly wrong. But I think we all can accept that the makers were too risk averse and compromised authenticity in the process.

You are comparing romantic commercial ventures with a women centric sports related movie 🤔? They are entirely different genre. Romantic movies with decent production cost and songs stand a very high chance of succeeding. It's futile to compare those 2 genre.

Has there been any successful women centric movie with a debutante?

The fact that Mary Kom has proudly invested so much of her time and effort in making of her biopic and has been associated with it all throughout... it just negates the debate over the casting!

Originally posted by: charminggenie

For that to happen the audience has to accept regional actors in their skin . Unlike west , we are dealing with a country which brands all south Indians as madrasis.

So would you say we just accept it as that is the way it is? Nothing we can and should do about it?

Originally posted by: charminggenie

You mean , let other commercial actors play the role of her husband and coach - will the whole argument of them not looking like Manipuri's won't stand? Won;t that be hypocrisy .

Ideally the entire cast should be authentic. Especially if you claim it is a biopic. I think keeping the other cast commercial while keeping the lead authentic is a fair compromise.

Originally posted by: charminggenie

I doubt anyone is denying the risk attached to this project and the compromises made by the makers, but should we expect a small budget women centric film based on a little known sport to forego popularity and BO success in the name of text-book authenticity?

Depends on what you value? Marginalization of minorities is a serious issue and some people value it very highly. I empathize why people are critical of the casting.

I don't think people have to accept that as right. But I feel a few people are being too dismissive of that viewpoint. I think there is a point that we need to see and realize that it is sad that we believe that it is absolutely impossible to cast a female minority in a successful movie.

Mary Kom: She's got the look

SummaryFrom Manipur, stories of the women actors who didn't get to play Mary Kom

Lin Laishram lounges on the verandah of her four-storied home in Imphal, dressed in a T-shirt and track pants. At 5'9", she is tall for a Manipuri woman. An actor and a model, she has spent more time trying to crack the Mumbai circuit than she has in her hometown. Among a handful of actors from the northeastern region in the Hindi film industry, Laishram had auditioned for the lead role in Mary Kom, a biopic based on Manipuri boxer and world champion MC Mary Kom. While Priyanka Chopra ended up playing Kom, Laishram bagged a role of the boxer's friend and sparring partner. "Two years ago, when I spoke to the director, I think they were looking for someone from the Northeast. Only much later did they decide on PC, and I completely get that " to be able to make a movie saleable and a hit, you have to cast big stars,'' says the actor, who is in her twenties. There are other actors from the region in the film, like Rajni Basumatry from Assam who plays Mary's mother. "They are key members of the cast, and they made Priyanka Chopra's character seem real and rooted," says Omung Kumar, who has directed Mary Kom (the film releases in September) .

Like Chopra, Laishram had to train for the movie, though she did not need the prosthetic make-up that the Bollywood actor required for the part. "I had to think and behave like a boxer, I had to change my body language," she says. A junior national champion in archery, her sporting background helped considerably. Laishram's struggle in Bollywood began after she graduated from Sophia College, Mumbai. She has been a model with Elite, worked in Naseeruddin Shah's theatre group Rangbaaz and studied at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting, New York. She has walked the ramp for Tarun Tahiliani and Shantanu-Nikhil, among others, and was featured on the Kingfisher calendar. Her first brush with Bollywood was a small role in Om Shanti Om. "I was studying at the time but went for it despite my exams because I absolutely love Shah Rukh Khan,'' she says.

But she has very few illusions about how the system works. When she enters an agency to audition for an ad film, she ticks the box which says "foreign" because she knows she won't be considered for the Indian roles. "I do face discrimination in every audition. They categorise me as foreign' or Asian' . Whether it's in movies or in ad films, they want someone with fairer skin and bigger eyes,'' she says. Many of the ads Laishram has featured in are made for Malaysian and Indonesian markets. She has been cast in a sequel to Chalo Dilli called Chalo China, produced by Lara Dutta's production house: "Where I, of course, play a Chinese girl,'' she says. In another movie, she plays Prateek Babbar's Nepali wife. "Only in one film, Ticket to Bollywood, I play someone from the northeastern region," she says.

That much of Omung Kumar's film was shot in Mumbai and Manali " two places which look nothing like the rolling hills and the green pastures of Manipur " does not surprise her. She takes the pragmatic view about a north Indian Punjabi playing Kom too. "Ideally, a Manipuri actor or someone from the Northeast should have been cast. But this is neither the fault of the production house nor the director. It is India. It is simply not prepared to accept someone like us on the big screen - so very racially different from them,'' says Laishram.

Actor Geetanjali Thapa, who won this year's National Award for Liar's Dice, and is from Sikkim, echoes Laishram's experience. "Since I have done mostly indie films till now, where the stories are more important than looks, my physical features haven't been a disadvantage. I did face difficulties in the beginning. When I went for auditions, some people would tell me that I am not a quintessential Indian beauty, I don't have big, beautiful eyes, and that I don't look Indian enough. But I really don't blame anyone. That's how big, commercial movies are made, spelling things out and having broad representations of race, ethnicity. It happens even in Hollywood," she says.

***

The Manipuri film industry is a vibrant one, with as many as 80-100 movies being made a year, despite constraints of infrastructure and the issues arising out of conflict. Cinemas opened in Imphal after the Second World War and the first full-length Manipuri movie was made in 1972. But the boom happened in 2002, the height of the secessionist movement from India. That was when the Meitei valley insurgent groups from Manipur banned Hindi movies. (The film on Mary Kom is unlikely to reach theatres here. For a while, a lobby pushed for the movie to be dubbed in Manipuri so that it could be released in the state. But a few weeks ago, a cluster of banned insurgent groups in the state declared that they would not permit the release.)

As more and more movies were made, Manipuri films switched from celluloid to the cheaper digital format. Anybody and everybody is a movie producer in Manipur.

"Most are contractors or rich businessmen. A Manipuri movie takes as little as Rs 5-10 lakh to make, including the cost of post-production and actor fees," says Romi Meitei, one of Manipur's most successful directors. A female actor can earn up to Rs 60,000 for a movie.

Actors who wish to work elsewhere for more money or better roles face a double bind: while opportunities to act in Mumbai are scarce, when they come their way, militant groups based in Manipur raise the red flag. Bala Hijam is the ruling queen of the Manipur film industry. She started working five years ago, when she was a Class VIII student, and has already starred in 40 films. Two years ago, Hijam was approached to star in Zindagi on the Rocks, a movie about a gang of friends and their visit to Manali. "The producer and director had seen my profile on Facebook and some stuff on YouTube. They came to my house in Imphal and I signed the contract,'' she says.

Hijam went to Mumbai to shoot for two months and stayed in Andheri East. She spent a month in Manali on the sets. Before the shoot was over, she got a call from a militant group. "I can't tell you who they were. But they told me to come back immediately. I tried negotiating with them. I assured them that the role I was doing would neither harm me nor Manipuri culture. But they just wouldn't understand. So I came back without finishing the shoot. The producer and director were very cooperative, they understood,''she says.

After Hijam came back, she received another call. The militants wanted to meet her. So, along with her mother, Hijam crossed the international border which separates Manipur from Myanmar into the Burmese border town of Tamu, where the banned insurgent groups hold meetings. "There were around eight of them. I was warned never to go back to Mumbai or to work in any Indian film. If I did, they wouldn't let me return to Manipur,''says Hijam, who has since been approached for a Hindi serial but has had to turn it down. After that meeting, Hijam also found herself at the receiving end of a temporary ban. "I wasn't allowed to work for several months. I would just sit at home, eat, sleep and read,'' she says.

Tonthoi Leishangthem, who won the National Award for the Manipuri movie Phigigee Mani (My Only Gem) in 2011, says the militants seem to object to Hindi movies in particular. She has acted in Assamese movies, without ruffling any feathers. "But it's so restrictive. Artists can't think or work within boundaries like this,'' says Leishangthem. Like Hijam, she received an offer for a Hindi movie a few years ago. "I informed the groups but they said a flat no. I explained to them that it was an international project, but the director (Leena Yadav) was Indian, so they wouldn't budge. Another time, they insisted that we change the title of one of my movies because it had the word dera in it " it's a word in both Hindi as well as Meitei Lon (Manipuri). We put our foot down and said we wouldn't,''she says.

Despite these contestations of language and identity, actors find ways to work around the restrictions. Last year, when Hijam was approached for a Malayalam movie, she quietly went to Kerala and shot for two months. "This time I made sure no word got out. Funnily enough, although it is now common knowledge that I have acted in a Malayalam movie, the militants don't seem to have a problem with it,'' she says.

In Mumbai, mainstream representations of people from the Northeast are rare, and roles written for them even fewer. Chak De! India was perhaps the last memorable film to feature one, with Masochon Zimik playing the feisty Molly Zimik. When Mani Ratnam made a film about militancy in the region, Dil Se, he cast Manisha Koirala. In that context, Mary Kom might seem like an opportunity lost. But Laishram would rather believe that the walls are breaking down. "Things are opening up, but very slowly. Filmmakers and scriptwriters now at least consider characters from the region. Maybe Mary Kom will be a trend-setter, and we'll finally get more opportunities to act,'' she says.

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/mary-kom-she-s-got-the-look/1279971/0

I think PC is perfect for the role. Her talent and star power means more people will watch the movie. If an unknown face played the role, the film would bomb at BO. It wouldn't attract the masses. Its difficult for a women centric film to become a hit as it is, let alone having one with an unknown actress.

In the trailers PC looks fab as MK. Stop hating..! PC is the best actress we have (alongside Vidya Balan) who can pull off unconventional roles effortlessly.