National Award winning lyricist and writer Varun Grover has written films like ‘Masaan’, ‘Sandeep Aur Pinky Faraar’ and ‘All India Rank’. He has also written amazing songs in films like ‘Dum Laga Ke Haisha’, ‘Udta Punjab’ and ‘RRR’. Now Varun has expressed his displeasure over the condition of Bollywood writers and lyricists in a new interview.
Varun has said that writers are not respected in the industry. He also said that this is not the case only with new writers, but the industry treats iconic writers of Bollywood like Gulzar and Javed Akhtar in the same way.
Varun’s writer friend was exploited
In an interview, Varun also told JIST the story of one of his friends, who was made to work by a big Bollywood director for a very low fee. Avoiding naming this director, Varun said, ‘One of my friends has recently worked with a very big filmmaker. This filmmaker does not make very commercial films, but makes middle-of-the-road cinema. He has been working for more than 30 years and his fans consider him a ‘messiah’. An entire generation of filmmakers is inspired by this person. My friend had to write dialogues. But he was told that he would have to write both the dialogues and the screenplay.’
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Varun said that his friend, who is also a popular comedian, was paid Rs 50,000 for this work. He insisted that this is against the rules of the Screenwriters Association, which say that a writer cannot be paid less than 12 lakhs for dialogues and 20 lakhs for both dialogue and screenplay. Varun, without naming anyone, said that this director is very popular and brings out one film in 3 years.
Lyricist Irshad Kamil’s name was missing from the CD of ‘Rockstar’
‘This is how writers are exploited. These people don’t mention writers’ names on film posters. They have space for accountants, and that’s fine, but they should also mention the names of those people without whom the film couldn’t be made… Irshad Kamil’s best album is ‘Rockstar’. When its CD was released, his name wasn’t even mentioned,’ Varun said.
He also complained that popular YouTube music channels do not even mention Gulzar’s name in the songs. He said, ‘This is still happening and it is happening with people like Gulzar, Javed Akhtar, Irshad Kamil.’ Varun is not shocked by this, but he hopes that this situation will change soon.
Source (PTI) (NDTV) (HINDUSTANTIMES)