Karan Johar’s lie-o-meter — the one the filmmaker uses on his television show to beep out actors who lie with a straight face — is a terrific invention. Today, it is something all scribes must carry. Why? ‘Coz stars lie and they do so without blinking an eyelid.
Take the latest lie, for example. Ranbir Kapoor was offered a film with Shah Rukh Khan by Karan. Says who? Ranbir’s dad — Rishi Kapoor. Who confirms this story? Many people from the same group. Will any of them go on record? No. But does that mean that the story is incorrect? Certainly not.
What Ranbir said to Karan went something like this, “Listen Karan, I’m still a newbie. SRK is a huge star. I admire him. He is a phenomenon. But I don’t wish to do a two-hero movie with SRK as yet. As it is, I’m not doing two-hero films currently. Later, perhaps, not now... I don’t want to play a Laxman to SRK’s Ram, blah.. blah...’’
This story appears in a nice dignified way. The source is kept confidential. All parties’ interests are protected. And then what happens? Ranbir denies it. He talks of wanting to work with SRK (who he admires). Of course, he does. But can we bring that lie-o-meter on? Someone is telling a lie. Which Kapoor is it? Junior or senior? Why would a paper dream up a story on just Ranbir and SRK? And not Ranbir and ex? Or Ranbir and y? Not all journalists have the time or the inclination to cook up reports.
The edifice of stardom is built on a web of lies. But... somewhere, a little truth will not hurt. Very often a journalist wants to protect their source and hence you see reports which say “according to an insider”, “a source said’’, etc. But that doesn’t mean the report is false. The source, the insider, is often the stars/their family/friends or their staff.
Like when this 25-year-old actress started working with a young hero, she was constantly saying, “Now I’m working with stars closer to my age.” However, when this was pointed out to her in front of her earlier co-stars who are 40-plus, she promptly said, “Scribes have a way of putting words in your mouth. I never said something like that.” Stars and their PR machinery thrive on circulating falsehood in one paper and denying it in 12 others to gets “additional mileage”.
If you’ve read that Priyanka Chopra/Katrina fainted one dozen times in the last year-and-a-half, they fainted just about twice. The remaining ten times their fainting spells were reportedly “cooked up’’ for media excitement and public sympathy. As for star affairs, all stars would like you to believe that what appears in print is false. When often it is the hero who has sowed his wild oats and excitedly come back and confessed to his filmmaker friends that “x and he did have a little fling on a foreign outdoor”. Or “y and he did develop a yen for each other when shooting a political thriller”.
And, of course the reliable sources start working overtime immediately...
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