When we split

AN AFFAIR suddenly blooms between the lead pair of an upcoming film. Sometimes it's a long-standing relationship which goes kaput but, again, just when the film is about to be released.

When their first film, Fida, was to be released, the new romance between Shahid Kapoor and Kareena was the USP. Now, for their upcoming release, Jab We Met, it's their "break-up" that's keeping them in the news. Whether this will do anything for the film is debatable but then Bollywood never tires of stunts.

Another real-life pair, John Abraham and Bipasha Basu's relationship too has been the subject of much media speculation. When a film starring both nears a release, there is always a twist in the relationship that gets reported in the media. The first rumours about their split came just a few weeks before the release of Basu's Corporate.

Industry insiders point out that there are instances of film producers manufacturing these stories as a promotional tool. Using the personal relationship of stars to create a buzz around a film project is an age-old practice in film industry with some of the biggest names indulging in it. In her recent memoir, Vyjayanthimala blamed Raj Kapoor for concocting a romance between him and her to create publicity for Sangam.

"It was all the manipulative doing of the RK banner's PR drive." Vyjayanthimala writes in her autobiography, Bonding...A Memoir. "Nobody from the media bothered to seek my point of view. This was absolutely baseless and made me angry." She says as far as publicity of a film was concerned, RK was "very self-centred". "He would go out of his way to hype it, which was good for the film but not for me."

A marketing source doubts whether such tricks work. "Such stories may help tabloids generate eyeballs, but people only go to see a film which they feel will be good. They won't part with the ticket money just because someone is having an affair or is going to break off," says the source.

The co-relation between the personal life of stars and the business of their films came into question recently when Amitabh Bachchan was hospitalised with a critical ailment, and the trade and media were speculating big business for Ek Ajnabee, his release during the period. But the film fared miserably at the box-office in sharp contrast to Coolie in the early '80s, which became a hit primarily due to the near-fatal injury that Bachchan suffered.

"Initially, even the engagement of Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan was seen as a publicity stunt for the film, as the announcement came at the time of the release of Guru. But it definitely helped the film pick up more business at the-box office," says an industry insider.

Nearly 30 per cent of a film's budget is reserved for marketing and publicity today. A publicist recently left a film only because he did not believe in planting stories in the media. "I lost a good project but I will never compromise on my principles," he said. While one publicist admits that his breed is forced to compromise on ethics, a senior publicist refutes this. "I have been in the film industry for over three decades, and not once has any producer asked me to hype the film by planting stories," he says.

Often, publicity stunts have gone against people like in the case of the film Criminal. Mahesh Bhatt created a furore in Bollywood but got into trouble with the law when an advertisement disguised as news on the front page of tabloids stated that the film's leading lady Manisha Koirala had been murdered. Says Bhatt, "Muke-sh Bhatt and the PRO of our film had taken a cue from a T-Series advertisement of a film Bewafa Sanam, which ran a campaign saying the film's hero Kishen Kumar had been arrested for murder. Unfortunately it got us into trouble as one of the papers didn't use the advertisement tag."

Speaking about publicity gimmicks Bhatt adds, "We are living in desperate times and indulge in desperate measures to seek attention from the public. Actor-director Raja Bundela had actually stagemanaged an attack on him during the screening of his film Pratha in Bhopal. Bundela apparently had asked a Bajrang Sena member to attack him over showing priests in a bad light in his film. In 1998, the TV promos of Ghulam screamed out that Aamir Khan had had a brush with death during the shooting of a train sequence in the film. The film got a huge opening. But the producer later admitted it was just a publicity stunt and the sequence was created with special effects."