Bollywood's Most Powerful Man
He embodies everything that Bollywood stands for. And recent events suggest that he might even be outgrowing it.
Just as a crew assembles lights and cameras at a sundrenched studio in Bandra, Mumbai, the plot of 2019's biggest (for now) desi controversy approaches its small screen parenthesis on news channels across the country. In the lead roles are two young Indian cricketers one of whom has paraded his fuccboi persona on air in a pantomime attempt to appropriate the 'Black side' and a TV show host, who has barely sparked the fire. The former might earn suspensions from their governing body, but the latter walks out unscathed, in fact with even more takers for his next antic.
Back in Bandra a few hours later, this awareness of commercial leverage is unmistakable. Karan Johar looks accustomed to the dealings of the set as he arrives (more or less) on schedule. He masquerades behind his larger than life outfits and pouts perfectly staring into the camera through his oversized glasses. In that moment, he's neither the nerd who palled up with Shah Rukh Khan in 'Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge' nor that affable friend you frivolously end up bullying under his own roof. When he is not conversing, his goofy on-screen persona assumes an intimidating, almost Thanos-like form.
To call Johar the most powerful man in Bollywood is not far-fetched anymore. "Of late, maybe since late 2018, he's become one of the most powerful people in Bollywood, if not the most," agrees senior Bollywood journalist Rajiv Vijayakar. "It's because he is so many things, as we all know. He is directing big films; he is making big films both with Dharma and under collaborations. He's everything else also right from his show to his social media."
A superstar director, producer and show-host, Johar holds the reins at one of India's most influential production houses, Dharma Productions; his net worth ($200 million) is comparable to Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis combined; and at 46, he's only getting started. An extension of his company is Dharma 2.0. Headed by Punit Malhotra and Garima Vohra, it has produced and directed advertisements through storytellers and directors like Ayan Mukerji, Abhishek Varman, Sonam Nair, Karan Malhotra, Shakun Batra, Shashank Khaitan, and Tarun Mansukhani. In Reliance Jio, D'dcor etc, the client list is short yet influential. Over and above is his social media presence he's the most followed filmmaker on Twitter globally and not being "managed by a digital team" has earned his Instagram sizeable attention, too. #Toodles
Johar's next pet project is Dharmatic, which he launched in November last year. "It's not an OTT (over the top) platform," he tells me once he's gone through the paces of the shoot like a breeze, and adds, "it's a content providing platform." It will churn out content for both fiction and non-fiction genres internally headed by Somen Mishra and Aneesha Baig respectively, which can "go to Netflix or Amazon or Hotstar or Zee5 basically any platform."
"I'm a big fan of all the web series that I watch, internationally and now nationally," he says and adds, "I love that you can binge watch them and can live with those characters; breathe with those characters; and how you get into that zone entirely. Taking a leaf out of that viewing, we decided to create Dharmatic a beautiful subsidiary of Dharma Productions."
In that moment, I noticed the many sides of Karan Johar one, a cognizant, no-nonsense superstar, and two, a larger-than-life, camera-friendly artist, who can switch on at the drop of a hat. Cricketers, as Johar admitted on that controversial episode, require a slightly different set of skills. Maybe that's why his talents are better suited to him, and not many others.
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KJo's reputation precedes him. Industry aspirants would do anything (yes, anything) to seek his attention. "He can make or break careers," a young actress told one of my former colleagues in Mumbai, on the condition of anonymity. "If Karan likes you, it's going to open doors. If he doesn't, trust me, you should find another career."
So, how difficult is it to make an impression on Karan Johar in real life?
"The factors that play a role are their intrinsic screen presence, their talent all of it," he quips. "It's like all the tests that I did (with the likes of Alia Bhatt, Varun Dhawan, Sidharth Malhotra, Ishaan Khattar, Janhvi Kapoor etc), they all had an X-factor that I knew would connect with audiences." He has a sixth sense to identify an inherent stardom in their demeanour or recognise acting prowess. But the key prerequisite for him is the latter because "it's the age of the actor and not the age of the star anymore."
And before I can drop the N-bomb, he lets the elephant out in the room himself. "We've (at Dharma Productions) launched over 15 debut directors, most of them who are not from the industry. This has to be mentioned in this sea of nepotism that surrounds us," he smirks.
Johar has been ostracised as the flag bearer of nepotism in the country, ever since Kangana Ranaut opened the can of worms on his own show. So, I tallied some facts from his Wikipedia filmography to corroborate these claims. Of the 34 films that Dharma has produced/co-produced under Karan Johar (between 1998 and 2018), a total of 40 insiders (individuals from industry families) have been cast in leading roles as compared to a 34 outsiders (both stats include multiple appearances). No less than 23 directors have been part of these 34 projects while he has donned the director's hat six times. Be the judge.
"The endeavour is to enhance the number of energies that we can contribute to from our end," he says, and adds, "There are two ways one you bring in new talent and two you leverage talent. Of course, you have a responsibility as a filmmaker to introduce new talent but there's also the commercial leverage. So I don't want to say that I'm doing it only for 'cinema;' of course I'm doing it for myself as well, so that it can be mutually beneficial for both the talent and us."
Another disparagement that has followed Johar's brand of cinema is the peddling of phony content. An article on The Wire pointed out a section of cinegoers, those who believe that to enjoy his films is to succumb to the undesirable seductions of big money, expensive stars, extravagant locations, high fashion, big brands and generally all things shallow.
"I don't think there are many chinks in his armour," argues Vijayakar in favour of KJo's credibility as a producer. "He's doing films across spectrum from 'Bahubali' and '2.0' on one hand, to 'Student of the Year 2' on the other. And then there are his indie projects as well," he adds. My filmmaker friend Zain Anwar, who directs films for MensXP and is a filmmaking graduate from Jamia Milia Islamia University in Delhi, also vouches for Johar's directorial prowess. "Creating Chandni Chowk on a set was almost unimaginable until it happened for 'Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham'. The sheer opulence of that project leaves me speechless at times," he says.
Veteran film critic and Bollywood journalist Ajay Brahmatmaj is of a more balanced viewpoint. "I'm not a big fan of his work. But despite its limitations, 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai' is the only Karan Johar movie I like, apart from 'My Name Is Khan' of course."
Like KKHH, Johar's last big screen undertaking as a director, 'Ae Dil Hai Mushkil' has also attracted internet trolling first for off-screen grounds and eventually for its on-screen fragility. He went on to later admit on his talk show that the film was a manifestation of his love for childhood friend Twinkle Khanna. Call it incendiary provocation, call it a glossy bauble, the film at least didn't yield to the classic 'boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy regains girl' patriarchal Bollywood narrative, especially much before #MeToo arrived in India.
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"There's always a pressure in making sure you make the right decision and living up to that decision," there's also a human side to Karan Johar that is often either overlooked or too closely scrutinised.
In the build up to the launch of his book 'The Unsuitable Boy', a land's end hotel in Mumbai was chock-a-block with careless whispers. By the end of the event though, no stone was left unturned by the author himself. He talked about coming of age and 'coming out,' and of the struggles of a plump and 'effeminate' boy, who secretly attends voice-training classes where he is taught to develop a baritone and speak without feminine gesticulations. For non-normative people, as Shohini Ghosh wrote in her review of the book, embodying the 'normal' and 'natural' is the hardest precisely because it does not come naturally. To quote a character from Rituparno Ghosh's 'Chitrangada', "Whatever comes naturally to someone is what is natural."
Brahmatmaj thinks his here-and-there jokes about the effeminacy in his personality are a form of defence mechanism. "Many years back when 'Dostana' came out, I had said that it was a metaphor for his own life in many ways. I had also written in my review that the movie might have been set outside India, but for the audiences it was a reflection of their own country (which hadn't decriminalised homosexuality yet)," he adds.
But how did things turnaround for this shy, fresh-out-of-college guy who was about to take off for France for an internship linked to his father's export business? A few days before takeoff, his close friend Aditya Chopra had a life-changing conversation with him. Chopra told him: "Why the hell don't you realise that you were born to be in the movies? You're overdramatic, you're melodramatic, you're funny. The only thing you don't have is an interval because you have this non-stop mad energy. You're meant for the movies... You'll be a filmmaker one day." Karan stayed and the duo would go on to define the contours of the Bollywood moment in the 1990s.
"We all know he's somebody who's supposed to come from the Yash Raj Films (YRF) school as Adi's friend," argues Vijayakar, and adds, "But now he seems to have gone a little bit ahead." Brahmatmaj though thinks there's more work to be done. "Yashraj Films is more multifaceted via their marketing outlets, a bigger distribution channel, and even their own music label. No other filmmaker in the current crop, apart from Adi, owns a studio of their own. It might take Karan another half a decade to build that sort of an empire," he says.
But, what actually is next for KJo?
"For Dharma it is two big things big-event films and high-concept films," Johar tells me as we discuss 'New Year, new beginnings.' "Big-event will show scale, opulence and technology of cinema while high concept will put bums on seats just because they have something new, something unusual. I'm trying to stay away from generic and stick to these two concepts. 2019 is an exciting year. Major motion pictures releasing, Dharmatic, Dharma 2.0, I have my babies (twins Yash and Roohi), I have my plate full I'm really excited," he adds.
According to Brahmatmaj, there is also a personal mountain that Johar is keen on summiting in the coming times, "Karan has made it known that he wants to create more meaningful and indie-like cinema. He's agonised by the fact that he isn't yet in the league of serious filmmakers like Anurag Kashyap and Vishal Bhardwaj."
The most talk-about upcoming KJo project is the multi-starrer 'Takht', which he tells me, will go on floor very soon. It's largely a fictional adaptation of the power battle between Mughal heirs Aurangzeb and Dara Shikoh. The fate of that duel is in public knowledge, but so is the legacy that was left behind by each brother.
Aurangzeb remains modern India's most disliked Mughal emperor while the lesser-known Dara Shikoh is regarded as an enlightened paragon of harmonious coexistence and heterodox tradition; scholarly and artistic. Devoted towards finding a common mystical language between India's religious practices and Islam, he was also responsible for translating fifty Upanishads from Sanskrit to Persian and in a way, opened the doors for the western world to the Indian subcontinent.
The world is obsessed with legacy, and Karan Johar - Bollywood's beloved filmmaker, a bigger internet star than all his counterparts, and arguably the industry's most powerful - is too wise to not know.
Anupamaa
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