Pakistani dramas are far more superior to Bollywood: Paresh Rawal

Veteran actor Paresh Rawal is not pleased with the content generated by Indian cinema today. The movies may be minting money and making it to the 100 crore club but, according to him, the quality of content has tremendously deteriorated. For him, comparison with Hollywood is just a longshot, Bollywood isn’t even in a position to compare itself to Pakistani dramas when it comes to content. Rawal spoke toAhmedabad Times in a candid interview, while promoting his upcoming film Raja Natwalal, starring Emraan Hashmi and Humaima Malik in lead roles, reported theTimes of India.

Rawal calmly sat in his hotel room, as he opened up about the one thing he is the most passionate about — films. The versatile actor holds a strong opinion on where the Indian cinema is headed and feels great disdain towards how a film is judged and the various aspects of films and filmmaking today.

So do you think the audiences are taken for granted, unlike Hollywood, as we get to see a lot of logic-defying movies?

Forget Hollywood, we cannot even compare our films to Pakistani shows. They are far more superior to what we produce here. We need to work on our content here. We need to make some more smart films where we don’t take our audience for granted and think that they will not understand what we want to convey. And this is what attracted me to Raja Natwarlal. Con films genre is one genre that hasn’t been explored much and there is a lot of scope in this genre.

You have done a variety of roles. Is there a time when you feel that you have done everything?

As long as I am getting good work, I’ll never feel that I have done everything. The script is always bigger than the actor, and till I am getting good scripts, interesting stories and powerful characters, I will continue doing films. It is only when there is a dearth of good stories that an actor’s career comes to a standstill, and it’s not that it doesn’t happen, it happens a lot.

Most people make fun of the 100 crore pot-boilers, but they all go watch them. On the other hand, performance-oriented films hardly get any audience. Why?

The producers/exhibitors of these 100 crore films must be taking into the account the sale of popcorn-cola in the theatres. Crossing 100 crore is no benchmark of how the film is. Mein 100 crore ke bare mein nahi sochta. Acting is a very organic process for me and as an actor, you need to keep evolving and learning throughout your career. There is no certain point where you are complete as an actor. I also try to learn something from every actor I work with. The process should never come to an end