Elvis D'Silva: Arrogant Mumbai film crews need to learn when to call 'cut' on their behavior

On Monday, April 18, the Mumbai Mirror splashed with, "We don't want Bollywood in our backyard" as residents of a section of Bandra disrupted film shoots in their neighborhood.

The reason for the unrest?

A “serious civic hazard” caused by “haphazardly parked vehicles, noise from the generator vans and commotion created by the units.”

Bit much? Not really.

I am a strong advocate of taking one’s craft seriously -- very seriously. I also believe that taking one’s job seriously means doing it well, and not behaving badly with the people who cross my path while I am working.

Indian film crews behave very badly, but no worse than any other group of individuals that over-estimates its own importance.

It all comes down to what I call bedside manner, and in India, bedside manner is atrocious, across services and occupations.

I recently experienced doctors and caregivers handle a patient at three or four medical facilities of varying scale in Mumbai, and each and every one of those experiences has scarred my soul in ways that their fellow professionals (the psychotherapists) can never fully repair.

I suppose, given the realities, the average Indian has no choice but to hold his or her tongue in the face of doctor brutality, or the disregard for an individual’s feelings by any person in a position of greater power.

The same cannot be said for the callousness of assorted film crew personnel in Mumbai, home turf of the Hindi film industry.

The violent verbal abuse I have witnessed on a film set makes me wonder about the mental health of the profession as a whole.

Civility is the first quality to slink away, followed by a blatant disregard for the feelings, not to mention well-being, of other human beings working on a film set.

Bad food, unsanitary conditions, fluid pecking orders, cronyism -- it is all on display on a Hindi film set. And before too long this spills out of the workplace and into the street.

It becomes glaringly obvious to me with each passing day, that in life nobody gives a damn about your pain. For example, you do not get a free pass for bad behavior just because something is wrong in your personal life.

Expecting empathy from the guy who cannot drive his car out of its parking spot, because a coil of film crew cable is blocking his path, is not just naïve it is downright stupid. He doesn’t care that a summons from the director prevented the person responsible from moving that cable out of harm’s way.

The constant shouting by assistant directors, the never-ending feuding between departments, the self-importance of the stars’ personal crews and sound guys yelling for everyone other than the actors to shut up really does the business no favors either.

People who aren’t employed by the production do not care. They will talk as loud, or honk as often, or let their cellphones ring as obnoxiously as they like. It is a free country.

And now because someone from production did not do them the simple courtesy of letting them know that a film would be shooting in their neighbourhood, because nobody made a promise (and tried to adhere to it) that the crew would make every effort to stay within its allocated spaces, they, the residents have every right to hate and then disrupt a film crew’s presence in their hood.

In his excellent book on low-budget digital filmmaking, director Mike Figgis writes at length about the arrogance of film crews. He highlights how crew members with zero ownership or accountability will carelessly leave equipment lying around where it can be damaged or stolen. He also has several pointers on how film crews can get what they need by being lean, efficient and polite.

At last count, India was trying to accommodate over 1.2 billion people. Depending upon whom you ask, between 14 and 20 million of those are crammed into our island city of Mumbai.

Right now it is too hot, everything is too expensive and most movies are too awful for the average Mumbaikar to brook any inconvenience from the walkie-talkie wearing busybodies who still communicate by yelling across wide-open spaces.

If we don’t learn to show some courtesy, we have to expect that someday someone is going to react violently to our intrusion into their personal spaces. If the outcome of that violence leads to a hospital visit followed by a protracted law suit, that is when the value of politeness and consideration will be truly be appreciated.