Ram Gopal Varma wants to expose the media

New Delhi, Aug 18(IANS) Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is exasperated with the media – so much so that he is now working on a script to reveal the tactics of the industry. “I am just on the verge of finishing a script I am working on; about the functioning and psychology of media. So far you have seen the media exposing things and now I want to expose the media in all its naked glory,” Varma posted on his blog http://rgvarma.spaces.live.com/

In what was a nearly 2000-word blog entry by the director, he dealt with how “the media has transformed from a truth telling machinery to a power-mongering and money-making enterprise”. Ever since his remake of blockbuster “Sholay”, “Ram Gopal Varma Ki Aag” was declared to be a box-office dud, the filmmaker seems to be miffed with the media. Even his two recent projects “Sarkar Raj” followed by “Contract” did not garner much appeal.

In his blog, he has not only mocked the media for supplying the audience with the pleasure of “watching with glee someone else fall down and to be ripped to shreds”, he has even lashed out at individual journalists for making headlines out of nothing. After naming prominent film journalists, Varma said: “They tend to fall in love more with the way they rip the film apart much more than they hate the film.”

He added: “When they (journalists) get a certain whiff of an interesting story on someone, their greatest fear would be that it will be denied by the person”. He explained that even if the concerned person might deny a piece of news, the necessity of having to feed the media monster will drive a journalist to still cook up something.

Varma has observed a difference between the media in Mumbai and elsewhere. He said: “It is primarily because most of the Mumbai media hobnobs and rubs shoulders with the film people.” “The film people out of their fear and greed and in order to use the media people open their doors to them and almost become informants to the media about the rest of their colleagues in the industry.”

Varma feels that this way, the “media looses its primary objective and tends to get embroiled in the camp culture of the industry”. While he was in the capital city Monday to promote his horror film “Phoonk”, Varma was asked about his fear for Karan Johar‘s movies that he had recently mentioned in his blog as part of a list of 11 things that scare him the most.

To that, he told IANS: “I don’t believe that the media is so dumb. It was unintentional and when I wrote the 11 things, it was all in good humour. I even made fun of myself in the blog. Why is it being taken further?” Varma’s “Phoonk”, releasing Friday, is a psychological thriller about black magic, superstitions and beliefs.