Caution: 'Dookudu' may hurt your knees badly

Hyderabad: Publicity blitz and tall talk can sometimes ruin the party and the Dookudu (hastiness) in claims that our film has surpassed all collection records has spelt to doom to the producer Anil Sunkara with tax men taking the talk rather seriously.

What is the yard stick of success for a film? In Tollywood it is collections and not the packaging of the film or the good talk. This has become order of the day in Tollywood.

In the show of one-up-man-ship, Dookudu team claimed to be a super hit in the industry as it has grossed over 100 crore and media went agog with as the unit went on harping on the collection figures setting aside the acting skills, storyline or the direction and technical values.

The only target was surpassing the previous best, in this case Ram Charan starrer Magadheera, and the collections were well ahead and a record was created erasing the previous one, the publicity went on these lines.

There was someone who was curiously noting the details, other than the fans and rivals and IT officials swooped on the residence of Dookudu producer Anil Sunkara. The raids come close on the heels of the 50 day celebrations of the film held at Vijayawada.

The angle of probe is about what was the price and on what terms the producer sold the rights to exhibitor and what was the figure shown in IT returns and who gets how much share of the much talked about Rs 100 crore collections.

The sad part of Tollywood is people bother only about collections (say openings) to measure the success of any film and not other elements of the film.

The hero centric films or the ones coming from big production houses have become a pure mercantile proposition, not that film industry should turn into a charity house, but creativity is killed by all means to promote a person, say hero, and commercials are the only thing talked about.

'When I am paying you this much why you don't do this?' is often questioned by the financiers and creativity has succumbed to such pressures and the result is wide in the open.

There is no need to crib that Tollywood does not get quality films while neighbouring states are producing quality films. Creativity should be honoured and it should not revolve round the commercial web.

When deadlines are to be met and creativity is given a go by, you get what you deserve, the industry discovers directors, writers, technicians and others who are willing to blow the trumpet of the hero or the production house and quality suffers.

Back to the promos, Sri Rama Rajyam has got a good talk, but the collections are on the lower side so industry wags say we cannot call it a hit. Other commercial films had good openings so it is a hit, irrespective of the elements the picture has.

In the race for collections, whether or not publicity mongers resort to inflate the figures, Big Brother is always watching and they gets what they deserve.