Controversies sell films, books

New Delhi: It is said that the mole-in-PMO controvery may have helped Jaswant Singh's book A Call to Honour fly off the shelves.

So, book sales increase dramatically through what are called controversy sales.

But what about movies? Does every controvery bring in good results? Do films, too, do dramatically well if they deliberately court controversy before they are released?

Well, not quite. If one is go by the Bollywood experience, courting controversy is not always safe. The moral of the story: Court controversy, but at your own risk!

Take for instance, the recent Bollywood hit Fanna. The tagline of the movie augured destruction, and that it what it caused in and around Gujarat.

There was smoke and there was fire. And it stoked millions of Indians to go and catch the movie.

In turn, Yash Raj Films did not just laugh its way to the bank, they even got hysterical. The controversy did help the film keep a third week rush alive.

Only months before that, Rang De Basanti irked Menaka Gandhi no end. She claimed that the movie used innocent animals.

The Indian Air Force had its own apprehensions.

Ultimately, the Centre had to intervene. Any which way, RDB ran to packed houses, and even brought a pop rebellion in fad.

Earlier, the wild circus of controversy and success had also courted Salman Khan's Main Pyar Kyun Kiya, Mallika Sherawat's Murder and Manish Koirala's EK Choti Si Love Story.

But what really took the icing and also the cake, was Raja Bundela's Pratha.

In 2002, the filmmaker was reportedly roughed up by the Bajrang Sena, and the screening of his film stalled, creating a buzz in the media.

Investigations suggested that the entire episode was stage-managed. And that was the last time one heard of the film.

Perhaps this can be cited as an inverse case of controversy stirring.

Some other oddball cases would be the debacle that Mangal Pandey was. Mangal Pandey was born in Ballia or was he?

History is disjointed and so remained the movie. But the village of Ballia was fuming.

Things got worse when Pandey's great grand nephew went to court against the depiction of the rebellious sepoy visiting a brothel.

And matters took a new twist when two different lines of Pandeys claimed to be the rightful ancestors.

It couldn't be more controversial, really, but the movie remained a dud.

Even the DVDs did not leave the shelves.

Courting Controversy

Ira Trivedi's What Would You Do To Save the World?, published by Penguin India, has sold 7,000 copies in just a month since its launch and is going into a reprint. The book, an uncharitable fictionalised account of beauty pageants, has generated quite a cat fight on the front pages of city supplements.

Penguin earlier hit the jackpot with Khushwant Singh's Truth, Love and a Little Malice, which generated plenty of heat and 30,000 copies in sales and is now even out in paperback according to Penguin's editor-in-chief, Ravi Singh.

Girja Kumar's Brahmacharya, Gandhi & His Women Associates, which raised hackles, has already sold 1,100 copies. Interestingly, 1,000 copies of the Rs 695 apiece book, published by start-up Vitasta, are being supplied to Pakistan.

An extreme case is of How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. Little, Brown & Company has withdrawn all editions of the book by 18-year-old Harvard student Kavvya Vishwanathan after the Chennai-born girl admitted to plagiarism from several sources. However, Harper Collins, India head P M Sukumar says there is a big demand for pirated copies of the book and it continues to do brisk sales on the pavements.

According to Sukumar, a controversy ensures that the book becomes widely known, which straighaway helps in sales.

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