[This is essay #8 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for archives.]

Confessions of a film snob
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By Oz

“Lets go and watch this one”

I’m tired to my bones. It’s been 4 days and 3 more to go. The electrifying excitement hasn’t dimmed one bit. The energy though, is at an all time low. I need some rest.

So as the four of us stood in the heart of Hollywood, inside this mecca of a theater that is the hot spot for celebrities, festivals and movie events, three barring me are ready to walk in to watch “The lives of others”. I hesitate and give a tired look for a reply to the guy who’s enthusiastically walking towards the ticket window to buy the tickets. He gets the message.

“WTF… YOU ARE A FILM SNOB”

Whoa Whoa Whoa… people hear that and glance at the person just been labeled a Film-Snob, one loves movies to the core but has this hard selection process of watching only select movie. A movie has to excite the snob. So even if he shares the same passion and probably half the knowledge as the film fanatic, a snob is one who you won’t see picking up a cult movie or a European arthouse hit which only happens after much persuasion or…

Being called a film snob in the center of the prestigious Arclight theater in Hollywood, by none other than the “beat him, love him but you can’t do without him” - Anurag Kashyap.

The comic verbal duel that started between me and Anurag with the genius (yet to be fully discovered) Nishikant Kamat and t! (a Hollywood Producer and author on PFC) standing silently, watching us and trying hard to control their giggles is one that shall remain firmly etched in my memory for a long long long time.

But then it’s a story I’ll save for a tell, on another day. Like many more that I’ve come to experience with so many film professionals. Lovable, Affable, Down to earth, snooty, nosy, arrogant, humble, backstabbers, sacrifices the whole gamut of emotional human begins on both sides of the neutrality spectrum.

I’m almost bored to death of repeating the history of PFC again and again. Trust me. It ain’t an easy job. But perhaps for one last time and in the shortest possible way… It happened sometime in June of 2006 when I threw my hands up in the air on receiving another email from readers of my personal blog who wanted me to print their article on the blogsite. The whole culprit behind this trend was started with a certain, Mr. Kartik Krishnan, a software engineer working in Bombay, Tamilian descent, raised in Delhi and romancing movies while growing up. This 23 year old kid meets Sanjay Gupta’s assistant to share his story for a project Gupta was planning to shoot. The movie was Dus Kahaniyan, and poor Kartik’s story was rejected, Instead the assistant asked Kartik if he could do some touchups to one of the stories in the project. The short story was Sex on the Beach, which Kartik so outrightly hated that he came on my blogsite and spewed venom against Gupta’s project, spilling the beans on what the story of Sex on the Beach was et al.

And then there was no looking back. A month later he returns from a Screenwriters’ conference in Pune and has become my unofficial reporter for all things Bollywood. The other readers latched on and I found myself copying and pasting readers sent in articles all the time.

That’s when the idea of PFC came into being and in September of 2006 we were live.

But you would not be reading this article, or Bombay Addict would never have known who I was thereby not requesting me to write this, like the many other media outlets who in the past one year have had similar requests made - from the Times to Express to Time Out to CNN. It’s the movement that organically taken place from a simple unconnected idea of having a group discussion or blog for movies.

When did it turn into some serious business? I’ve been told everyone who surfs the internet, in Bollywood, has PFC bookmarked in their browsers? From Hrithik to Aamir to Directors to Technicians to Production house bosses to Media outlets to even Sanjay Gupta!

What happened between September to this point that started this movement? Is it oz? You’ve got to be kidding me, I find it hard to move from one job to another, leave alone moving an entire industry on it’s head.

The factors are various. Of course the driving factor being the featured authors. Anurag, Pavan, Suparn, Hansal, Ramu, Santosh Sivan, Sam Langoria… all of them. Somehow without my trying much they knew - This was it… their place, their platform, their diary. Also they were brave enough to come out and talk in the open, and be ready to take the bouquets and brickbats et. all. And then the environment that is rapidly changing in Bollywood - which of course is highly debatable cause the massive change which everyone talks about is quite minuscule in terms of Art, Creativity and Business Management in the world entertainment industry. Yet that too remains a key factor.

The moments of fun and those that I will treasure are plenty. Those instances of being abused, threatened, controlled, lambasted , twisted in private or out in the open have been a learning curve.

Too many things happened in the past one year that I fear I won’t remember all. My house turned into a weekend inn, where most of the PFC Authors living in Los Angeles would converge and just hangout, shoot a movie, or have tons of chai. The many intense sessions on Cinema we had during Anurag and Nishikant’s visit to the Indian Film Festival in Los Angeles. The sleeps lost over server breakdowns, script errors, upgrades, new designs, spam control, author fights, fanatic commenters… the whole fight between the two groups of people - one who think we are anti-Yash Raj and others who think we are not.

And all I wanted to do was just start a simple group site to enjoy discussions on cinema.

PFC has grown much beyond our wildest expectations. It no longer belongs to me or the select group of friends who joined me to start the website. Today it belongs to over 100 authors and an equal number of readers who send in their articles to get it published on PFC. Plus the now impossible to count commenters and the 5,000 plus every day silent readers.

To home page changes it’s opinion each day. So when two or three people bash “Tararumpum” on Saturday, by Sunday PFC is labelled as anti-Yashraj by the Yashraj fans who read PFC. By Monday three more reviews praising the same movie come out on the home page and this time the anti-Yashraj lobby, now slams PFC for being pro-YashRaj’s nonsensical movies. Wednesday, 10 people come and slam PFC for being so pro-Anurag, and by Friday I’m receive angry emails about why I did not prevent the one of the first time to see an intense slamming of a director on the internet - in this case Anurag for his movie No Smoking.

The opinions, the views are so diverse that for a newcomer, it is impossible to understand what PFC is in just one day, one week or even one month. This now is what I view as PFC’s next big hurdle to overcome. Because even pro bloggers and media journalists fall into this trap. Recently a sports writer called PFC, passion for Anurag - perhaps he missed the whole week long seminar of the most intense of slamming Anurag or for that matter any other Indian director may have had online. Not a single negative comment was deleted or hidden. Another media critic, known for his utter arrogance in his writing, called PFC writers pretentious. And I’m sure this means the writer hasn’t paid attention to the number of writer including the huge amount of readers’ submitted articles that come up on PFC - which would mean everyone on PFC is what he accuses the writers of. This is silly. But the problem of giving the right perception and the wide span view of what exists on PFC is what you make it out to be by way your articles and your comments - urgently needs attention.

It hasn’t been a bed of roses. Two hours before we were to start our first film festival, the servers died down on us. We got slammed on our face cause the producers of No Smoking did not declare a winner in the poster contest simply because the release dates of the film kept getting postponed and they wanted to announce the winner around the time the movie was released. A few months ago, our ex-webhost blundered, and bad, cause we lost an entire day’s data. Posts, comments vanished. TWICE… Then when you are attending the most important of meetings at your workplace or have crashed in your bed, tired to the bone, utterly exhausted, the phone starts ringing, text messages start popping up, - the website’s down. DARN!!!

To say it is all fun would be untrue. It is a thankless job, one taken up only if there are pure passion and zero expectations of any returns. A few in the recent months have asked me for advise on starting websites on things they are passionate about. And I lay bare the negatives of it before even touching on how much fun and satisfaction the passion “may” give you.

You’ll lose a lot. To begin with, your patience. You temper follows a close second. Sleep is a nail bitingly close third. And if you suffer from Sinus and Migraines, Heaven help you, for they will be like two sisters sitting on your fucking head and kicking it’s ass each time the stress levels break the sustainable limits over a server breakdown or one of your group members messes things up that has now pushed your annoucement of the contest by a couple of days…

You’ll lose some precious friends. You’ll lose a lot of trust. Respect… bah! forget about it. Money… HA!!! Empty your savings account.

So why? Why still keep doing it? “Why” is something you’ll never be explain to them… but it all is so visibly clear to you in that head of yours… clear very crystal clear… Because it’s “you”, it’s “your” passion and “you” are unique. That’s how it is. And that’s how it’s gonna be. Film Snob or not :)