Art of showbiz interviews

After an eternity-long pause, the editor enquired, “So what’s the peg for the interview?” My facetious response was, “It’s not a Patiala. Neither is it that thing to hang a hat on; I just want to do the interview. Do you mind?” “Yes, I mind,” the editor growled. “This guy...what’s his name again?...isn’t facing a boom or bust situation now. No one’s interested. Any other ideas?”

Turning darker than a monsoon sky, I growled, “No!”, the way I often had at editorial meetings to determine the menu of the newspaper’s Sunday section, light and easy stuff you know, to be soaked in by readers presumably curled up like cats on armchairs. 

The paper’s demographic spanned across generations from adolescents to nonagenarians. Ergo, the editor or the chef’s card was to serve a nourishing thali, slyly spiced with a non-veg katori or two, even while catering to a squeaky clean family readership. Contemptuously, though, the management’s out-of-sync-with-the times’ take was that even if the paper doled out yesterday’s leftovers, they would be devoured by the readers bestowed with a gourmand appetite.

Right. Journalism, and I’m talking of the fast-shrinking print medium, is indeed such a series of voluminous tomes that they haven’t been contained to date in any archive’s collection of theoretical theses. News reports, editorials, cartoons and columns, covering world, national and local politics, crime, sport and pastime, religion, and entertainment form the multi-cuisine buffet. 

In this spread, interviews have been a relatively belated entrant, kicking off perceptibly during the 1970s when journalism was re-inventing itself. The journalist was no longer the faceless royal ‘we’, the Victorian ‘one’ or the avuncular ‘this writer’. He or she could actually go with an ‘I’, a relief since this liberated the individual, yanking the journalist out from the ghetto of anonymity. In place of servility to the media owners, a newspaper writer could establish a profile. Read: attitude.

Inevitably, this attitude can be misused and abused. After all, a writer is human, the ego can bloat beyond redemption. Believe it or gasp, I’ve heard journos on the way to an appointment, crowing, “I’m going to rape so-and-so with my questions” or the more colloquial, “Uska toh aaj band bajaana hai”. As, if not more than a reporter or a desk-bound edit opinion-maker, an interviewer can get power-intoxicated. Outcome: a conversation in print can emerge either as a hatchet job or worse, as an obsequious panegyric. Both are worthless.

Chances are that an air of unfounded superiority can set in. In the event, the responsibility of drawing out the interviewee, is absolutely unilateral and embarrassing. An interlocutor must be probing but neither superior nor inferior to the subject. The relationship which has to be struck is that of an equal, facilitating pertinent disclosures and little-known aspects with a semblance of intimacy. The classic ice has to be broken, clichés avoided by extracting insights into a personality’s heart and mind. If that amounts to romanticising the procedure, so be it.

Frankly, over three decades, I haven’t succeeded in romancing that ideal. At best, there have been instances of attaining an iota of satisfaction: with the studiously reflective Amitabh Bachchan, the unwaveringly discursive Shabana Azmi, the expert at scattering meanings between the lines Rekha, the stubbornly artistic expostulations of Mani Kaul, in diametric contrast to the funky fantasist Manmohan Desai and the soul-searching Smita Patil.

And above all the edifying genius of Satyajit Ray. 

Although extravagantly articulate, Shah Rukh Khan has been disappointing, employing wisecracks and quotable quotes instead of opening windows into his acting craft and his private demons or the lack of them.

Arguably, movie celebrities are more narcissistic than other professionals. If film celebrities sense that an unflattering image may emerge, they deflect any signs of image-breaking, withdrawing as if they had been coerced into a psycho-analysis session. Therapy of any kind isn’t their scene. 

Inadvertently, global filmmakers and actors are more candid, transmitting bolts of sheer brilliance. The prime cases in point which I can cite are: Francois Truffaut who confessed to his reservations of the Nouvelle Vague and non-linear narratives; Robert De Niro’s admission that he didn’t look back with affection at some of his films which glorified violence; a nervous Brad Pitt on being quizzed about his former wife Jennifer Aniston (“You mean, people in India know about this?”) and George Clooney whose tongue-in-chic repartee was a master-class in companionable communication.

Admittedly, the fundamentals of interviewing and creative journalism, were first dramatically altered, not at home but in the West. In 1973, Tom Wolfe’s iconoclastic anthology of journalistic essays and interviews, New Journalism, emphasised that dispassionate prose had become redundant. 

A journalist’s gift for advancing literary flourishes and purely subjective takes were welcome. In this do-your-own thing ambience, Rolling Stone, Esquire, Playboy (the notorious bunny pin-up glossy’s in-depth interviews were a class apart), New Yorker and Vanity Fair, thrived besides inspiring an entire generation of journalists in India.

Those were the dazzling days, indeed, now reduced to practically nothingness, inadvertently by technological advances: quickie ‘phoners’, bland email Q&As and publicity motivated interviews doled out randomly in vanity vans, have become the way to go. Moreover, sound and visual bytes have exterminated the classic tête-à-tête, which in translation gets it right — head-to-head, connoting two individuals using their grey cells, instead of indulging in patent politesse.

To be sure, an element of the politically correct is endemic. The interviewer must go by certain basic instincts. For instance, homework on the subject is a given. So is a plan as opposed to an agenda.  

An interviewer must be ready with questions but prioritise conversation. As importantly, it’s mandatory to wade into unpleasant areas, respect the interviewee’s silence, play dumb if need be, and to keep the recorder’s mic running throughout to prevent allegations of misquotes, unless a request is made for an ‘off-the-record’ statement. If all these niceties are demolished in the course of an interview, not to worry, keep your cool, but transmit this point about being stymied in the transcription.

Transcription, did I say? A celebrity may speak ungrammatically or as a semi-literate. Now it’s up to the journalist to straighten the gobbledygook so as not to patronise the subject. Admittedly, once I transcribed an interview exactly as a filmmaker spoke. The man was enraged, complaining to the directors’ association that he had been made a laughing stock. Maybe he was right. However, the association couldn’t build up a case for legal action.

The cardinal rule of interviewing is abandon the rules, if need be. Just go with the flow. Right now, this flow has been largely stemmed in print. Television is where it’s at, crackling with fire and brimstone, political agendas and hectoring bids at downsizing, which draw TRPs. Maybe I’m in a minority of one. Television interviews and debates are not for me. That’s another story or should I say epic? 

Interviewers have become the stars. Most of their subjects of inquiry have become puppets. Another kind of new journalism is here. In retrospect, that era of discussing pegs at editorial meetings was far more intoxicating. But then all good things come to an end, don’t they?