Hard Talk

A-LIST BORES: In stark contrast to the varied, interesting characters they've played on screen, Kareena Kapoor, Salman Khan and Aamir Khan are quite predictable during interviews

Now, how is a question-answer session to be conducted? There can be no grammatical rules on this. Still, for someone who’s spent a major part of life interviewing celebrities, the current debate on this integral part of a journalist’s portfolio, set my mind buzzing.

I’m talking, of course, about the famous — or infamous, depending on your take — lengthy Q&A between TV inquisitor Arnab Goswami and Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi. The interviewer, in his trademark style, was aggressive, baiting and eager for contro-versies, establishing the tone by stating that he wanted Rahul Gandhi to be ‘specific’ in his answers. As for Gandhi, who was obviously there to be seen and heard — given the upcoming general elections — he seemed to be cornered and became repetitive about his party’s ‘fundas’. Considered from all 
its aspects, the interview did seem to illustrate the fact that it was an attempt at one-upmanship by the TV bulldozer. Both Goswami and Gandhi were an embarrassing watch.

I bring this up to point out the fact that currently in Bollywood, it’s absolutely the contrary. TV interfaces are exceedingly PR-oriented, extra-sugary and obsequious, and that makes for embarrassing viewing too, except perhaps for the unpretentiously spicy Koffee with Karan. The pleasant-natured Karan Johar can get away with the most outrageous of questions and the celebrities interviewed, with the most outrageous answers, be it Salman Khan, Sonam Kapoor, Kareena Kapoor, Deepika Padukone or Emraan Haashmi, who otherwise have constantly sounded rehearsed in their magazine and newspapers’ entertainment supplement chatfests. I have to hand it to KJo, as he is called by showbiz friends; he has himself a blast, and achieves top TRP ratings, too.

Over the last decade, the fast-fattening PR agencies have ensured that their star clients speak only to the malleable newspapers, magazines and TV channels. Websites, at present, are granted interviews grudgingly, since they don’t have the reach and influence of the more traditional media.

Today, one-on-ones as well as press conferences are timed a fortnight or a week before the premiere of the interviewee’s film. A request for any sort of conversation or byte before or after that is either rejected or taken with suspicion. To plug their films, actors who have frequently expressed their contempt for the press, suddenly become accessible, be it Salman and Aamir Khan, Abhishek Bachchan and Ajay Devgn. Publicity, believe it or not, is as if not more important than a film’s content. Hence, interviews are a necessary evil. In any case, the media has been tamed. Ask a ticklish question and be snubbed, like Katrina Kaif stomping out of a press meet to promote Dhoom 3.

Around the year, approximately 2,000 project announcements and pre-release puff interviews can be paid for in important newspaper supplements. Some do it openly, others in obtuse ways — like the text being supportive, commensurate to the advertisement revenue spent on the publication’s pages. “If you’re giving the film a 
three-star review, we can ask for more money,” I was told distinctly by the ad department of a newspaper I was working for, not so long ago.

Once such deals were restricted to film trade magazines, now they have spread to mainstream publications. The practice has been much-derided within journalistic circles, but to zero effect. A sign of the times, perhaps, since the media has become increasingly dependent on A-listers for their participation in the annual award functions and for ‘scoop’, readership-enhancing interviews. Simultaneously, the stars need as much publicity as they can gain to buoy their public images.

Result: Interactions with Bollywood personalities come with a catch. Praise or be exiled. Most demand a copy of the questions which will be addressed, and frequently, a transcript of the interview which will finally go into print. On 
TV, too, interviews follow a wide-eyed, you’re-so-awesome approach. Kangana Ranaut will not answer unpleasant questions but will purr pretty on being described as a ‘fashion diva’.

An interview, in my view — right or wrong — should neither be fawning nor a demolition exercise. Ideally, it should be questioning, probing, and yielding new information and insights. Ideally, too, it should be a conversation between professionals, with the interviewer doing their homework. The questions have to gel with every publication’s nature. Quite oddly, though, even the film magazines which have an element of gravitas rarely delve into the content of films and a star’s performance. Readers, it is believed, are essentially interested in salacious gossip. That’s a pity, because if well-presented and engrossingly written like America’s Entertainment Weekly, strictly film-centric articles also have a major following.

Occasionally, I’m asked who have been the best interviewees: the B-town celebrities, who were a pleasure to converse with and communicate their answers to readers.

Without a doubt, I would say they are Shabana Azmi, Amitabh Bachchan, Rishi Kapoor, Rekha, Karan Johar, Anil Kapoor, Malayalee actor Mammootty, AR Rahman and Ram Gopal Varma, in that order. They take interviews seriously, never reducing them to self-promotional exercises. They speak spontaneously, wittily, introspectively and without treating a journalist as a pesky intruder. It’s not necessary to trick or push them into corners. They speak when spoken to, without sprinkling answers with that much-dreaded proviso, “That’s off-the-record.”

Surprisingly, I’ve never been able to draw out the chatty Shah Rukh Khan in a dozen or more interviews. For sure, he darts out quotable quotes aplenty, but I’ve never been able to gauge the heart and mind of the man who happ-ens to be quite easily the most articulate in the business. That’s my failure entirely. In addition, I’ve never been able to extract anything but the predictable from Kareena Kapoor, Aamir and Salman Khan.

The art of interviewing, if I may call it that, requires tact, mutual respect and a certain intimacy. And above all, never surrendering. So who knows? Maybe some day, I’ll rectify my failures. Not easy in this day and age of extol-or-buzz-off interviews. But that merely heightens the challenge.