At the recently held Critics Choice Film Awards (CCFA) in Mumbai, Shah Rukh Khan gave a speech addressing the star system in the industry and how actors and filmmakers need to change. He joked about how people expected him to dance and perform at an event like this but instead he chose to speak about filmmaking and film criticism.
“I hope that these awards become more than just another opportunity for people like me who really don’t do as much as far as art and cinema is concerned. More importantly, stars like me or filmmakers like me have to change myself as an actor and as a filmmaker. I have to promise myself to push the envelope as far as I can.Shah Rukh Khan
“I like to be superhero, a midget, a fan with a prosthetic face. To become an actor you need to deconstruct yourselves, you need to discard the self,” he added.
Shah Rukh went on to say, “We filmmakers have fought along to give more credit to constructive and jaded ideas. We search for art, we search for form without searching the essence of the stories. We find logic and disregard the free-spirit of story telling. We have to remind ourselves that truth is formless, only untruths are formed. We as film fraternity have to be truer to ourselves, and hence to the stories we set out to tell.”
Finally, he had this to say to film critics.
So I request all my critics friends here, please don’t be like us Bollywood film stars, and get carried away by what Bollywood succumbed to many years ago - the star system. The star system cannot be the only way of summing up films by our critics. 3 stars, 3.5 stars, 3 and a quarter stars, 5 stars....It’s a film, not a hotel for God sake. With critics sprouting all over, film critic is becoming an endangered species. Please let it not get replaced by consumer service.”
Watch the full speech below in which SRK also roasts film critics Anupama Chopra and Rajeev Masand:
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