Do not try this at home

After ‘no-smoking’ disclaimers flashed before and during a film, we may soon have action and high-speed sequences on roads carrying disclaimers as well. The Committee of Road Safety recently released a report, constituted by the Supreme Court of India with the Indian Film and TV Producers Council (IFTPC) and the Information & Broadcasting ministry, to educate the public on the hazards of driving at high speeds.

“It’s a mockery of a sorts because for every problem that exists, it seems the most convenient to blame films for it. I think it’s pointless to begin a film with so many disclaimers,” says Hansal Mehta, who had posted the circular on his social media platforms.

The circular mentions, “During the said meeting it was decided that all producer bodies shall request their respective members to exercise caution wherever possible while depicting rash, negligence and dangerous driving scenes in films and television shows and if such scenes need to be depicted as integral part of the story/film scenes, then the producers of those films and television shows should be informed to voluntarily put a disclaimer only in the beginning of the film or television show ‘that performing such scenes by the audience may violate traffic laws/rules hence should not be emulated.”

Understandably, filmmakers are miffed. The industry has seen many fights against disclaimers in the past. Anurag Kashyap became the talk of town when he fought a yearlong battle with the censor board over not carrying a no-smoking disclaimer for his film Ugly. Kashyap was asked to carry the message on the bottom of the screen every time a character lit up a cigarette in his film. “It is about what tone you are setting for the film — I don’t think as filmmakers we try to teach the world, and with the ever increasing list of disclaimers in the beginning and after the interval, we set the tone of the film,” Mehta says. Vinil Matthew, director of Hasee Toh Phasee, calls the practice of running disclaimers ‘nonsensical’. “It only serves to put off viewers — be it a no-smoking or ride-safely disclaimer. It is a creative nuisance as it interrupts the movie-watching experience. Considering they are of such limited use, the damage these disclaimers do is far greater,” he says. Mathew suggests that if one has to put a disclaimer, to do it in a way that it doesn’t interrupt the film. “If at all, they should either be at the beginning or in the end of the film,” he adds.

Kulmeet Makkar, CEO of the Film & Television Producers Guild of India Ltd. sees things in a different light. Explaining his stance, he says, “I totally understand where the filmmakers are coming from because we have too many such things that are being imposed and they all feel that tomorrow the film will become only a medium to carry messages. But the fact is, it is not a regulation that has been imposed as yet. The concerned department has requested us to help them out so that the audience should not get a wrong message from the film. Although I understand that films are always blamed for anything that goes wrong in the society, but this time, the government wants to have a dialogue rather than pass a law and create a regulation right away. I think that’s the good part.”

In a report submitted by the panel for road safety, in India which has over 46.89 lakh km road network (the second largest road network in the world after the US), 1.30 lakh people died in road accidents in 2010 and 20 per cent of those killed were under the age of 15. It was also found that that drivers involved in road accidents are in the age group of 20-40 years and road accidents cost one to three per cent of the country’s GDP.

However, the grave statistics still don’t make it clear why films need to carry warning messages. Filmmaker Mukesh Bhatt, who is also a member of the Producer’s Guild, says, “I don’t understand why can’t they look at the audiences more maturely.” Pointing at the redundancy of such messages, he adds, “These kind of disclaimers never affect the audience. Look at the huge ‘no smoking’ advertisements on every cigarette packets, they have not curtailed the sales of cigarette in the country. Already the no-smoking disclaimer before films are so long. More disclaimers will only eat into the screening time. These kinds of intrusions are absolutely uncalled for.”