Shashi Kapoor wasn't in it to be a hero, but a filmmaker

"You have to remember, Dad did not ever say, 'I want to be a film star,'" Kunal Kapoor tells me while we're talking about Shashi Kapoor. "There are actors, people in the business, who are doing very well, and whose agenda it is to become stars. That wasn't Dad's plan."

If we look past Shashi the "star", we see a man who is enthused not just by the craft of acting, but by the nuts and bolts of post-production work. In this respect, he is like his eldest brother, Raj Kapoor, who saw himself not just as a "hero" but as a filmmaker.

In the 1970s, Shashi launched a company, Vidushak Arts, which would rent out equipment and cameras. Shashi's venture provided a lifeline to several filmmakers - for, as things stood, they had to import most tools from overseas, but could do so only if they could show they were earning foreign exchange.

"One forgets how extraordinarily difficult it was to make films back then," filmmaker Dev Benegal says. "It's almost as though the state did not want you to make movies. There was a licence on importing negative film, sound editing equipment, cameras and lights. It was an impoverished state of affairs."

Pursuing dreams

Shashi - never a man to pursue just one dream - also hoped to bring the films he made directly to the audience, without having to depend on a nexus of distributors - who, in his view, were businesspeople first, with little appreciation for cinema as an art form.

"What do diamond merchants know about films?" Shashi asks. "(If I take over), instead of making a film and waiting for a distributor, I could do both at the same time."

The idea took root, and in the late 1960s, when he had to bail Ismail Merchant out of a cash crunch, he did it in exchange for the right to distribute Bombay Talkie in India. Unfortunately, the Merchant-Ivory film did not do any remarkable business at the box office, and Shashi failed to make money.

Soon after, in the early 1970s, Shashi acquired the Indian distribution rights for an odd adults-only Japanese anime film, A Thousand and One Nights (Sen'ya Ichiya Monogatari), directed by Eiichi Yamamoto and released as an X-rated movie in the US.

Harking back to an age-old story, the film chronicles its hero, Aladdin's journey from rags to riches to rags, even as he dallies with a number of women - Miriam, a beautiful slave; the lusty Amazons; and Yahiz, who, it turns out, is his daughter. The psychedelic, erotically-charged movie, while a success in Japan, did poor business in India.

After two failures, Shashi's next big step as a film distributor was when he bought rights, within the territories of Delhi and Uttar Pradesh for Raj Kapoor's Bobby (and later, Satyam Shivam Sundaram). For Raj, his brother's intervention was a welcome relief.

After the box office failure of Mera Naam Joker, he had a tough time convincing distributors to buy the rights for Bobby - a film that seemed to have nothing going for it, with two newcomers as protagonists - 21-year-old Rishi Kapoor (in his first lead role after a cameo in Mera Naam Joker) and 16-year-old Dimple Kapadia.

For Shashi, the move to distribute this film was part-strategic, part-instinctive. "He wanted to make money," Rishi says. "Shashi uncle was confident that Bobby would be a big hit. He restored confidence in his brother by saying, 'I know this picture will be a blockbuster!'"

Huge hit

Shashi's predictions proved to be spot on. Bobby was a huge hit. Overnight, the film made stars of Rishi and Dimple. Unfortunately, Bobby's box office success and the young stars' popularity did not translate into big returns for Shashi.

Rishi says: "As with all the Kapoors, Shashi uncle didn't get much. He should have made a lot more. But the money got siphoned off here and there." Kunal agrees. "My father was basically conned. You can hide and fudge the accounts if a film is semi-successful, but with a super-hit, how much can you hide?"

Shashi's failure to make money on Bobby was also linked to the era he did business in - pre-dating the internet and video piracy. Big-budget Hindi films were sometimes released in stages across India, with distributors screening them, region-wise, over a period of time - somewhat akin to platform releases of art-house films in the US.

But Shashi was not one to give up after a few setbacks. The real businessman in him came to the fore, once more, with Junoon. Soon after, in 1976, Shashi formed his company, Film-Valas - inspired by the title of the Merchant-Ivory film he acted in, Shakespeare Wallah.

Film-Valas would go on to produce some of the best-known art-house films of the late 1970s and 1980s. "Dad was getting a bit frustrated with the kind of cinema he was working for," Kunal says, while acknowledging that Shashi was making good money as a Hindi movie actor. Film-Valas and its productions satisfied Shashi's creative hunger.

(Reprinted with publisher's permission. Courtesy of Mail Today.)