Why does it feel so good, but hurt so bad?"... So true for love. And for money. Most true for love of money.
Money can buy many things. But it can't buy Everything.
So, why do we make everything centre around it? The fundamental reason for all of us aspiring for money is its intrinsic power to buy anything that symbolises the good life. Money makes life easy. That's its animal charm.
Money is good. Very good, actually. Even the most hard-nosed believer of austerity can't deny that it has magic powers to translate good intent into great action. As a creative soul, I am constantly in pursuit of ideas, stories and narratives. Early on, I realised that to translate this process from thought to paper, money has no role to play. As long as my mind was free to wander without disruption, ideas would follow. Action, however, is a needy counterpart. To take an idea to the next level, it needs seed capital. At this point, the artist has to make a (superficially easy) choice: for craft or for moolah? Both present very strong cases for themselves. The correct answer lies at the point where both these trajectories merge and complement each other.
The filmmaker must craft his ideas to their finest potential, and in doing so, must ensure that the project is rewarding to the believers who have backed him up - creatively and financially. The real question then is how much should this fair return be? The decider is greed, the appetite for returns. Tame the beast to feed on what it needs (as compared to what it wants). Therein, the answer is ready and waiting.
For my latest film Kai Po Che, I have maintained an integrity of vision and purpose that was sacrosanct. My producers were cognisant of this and were willing to walk the mile for this cause — for honest love of good cinema, for cinema of the mettle that shines and earns it's keep. It would suffice to say that if I were to quantify my reward in terms of my remuneration — plus the creative satisfaction generated — it would far outweigh any potentially-fatter paycheck that could have come my way, if I had made the film in any other way, and compromised my own vision. For me, the icing on the cake are the legacy benefits of a film: the platform created for the cinematic talent pool, of both the cast and the crew; to showcase their wares and to enrich our cinema-going experiences for years to come.
Conventional wisdom originates from the school of hard knocks. My understanding of — and equation with — money has been a dichotomous one for most of my adult life. We've become good friends of the variety you don't meet every day. But whenever we connect, it's like we were never apart.
What it has taught me is to never get too close for comfort. All bonding is on a need-to basis only. Money's got the trappings of a demanding mistress, so it's best viewed as a fleeting muse of the eye candy variety. Feast on, enjoy for the moment - then release and let go. I guarantee you, once you do so, it'll keep coming back to seduce you some more. Stripped down to the basics, an objective understanding of money frees one from being its subject. So why court slavery in any form, especially a self-imposed one?
(The writer is an actor, writer and director)
(The opinions expressed in this column are the personal views of the writer)
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