Anjan rushed into my office. Have you seen this morning?s paper? Such queries, these days, seldom refer to the front-page headline. Fortunately for me, Anjan is a childhood friend and I know his interests. In fact, I had thought about him while reading the particular news that morning.

During our teens, there was this dialectic existence in Calcutta. You were Mohun Bagan or East Bengal, Uttam or Soumitra, Hemanta or Manna and, of course, Shammi Kapoor or Dev Anand. Anjan and I agreed on three, but on the fourth, we were always at daggers drawn. He was Shammi and I was Dev Anand. He had seen Junglee 17 times and my exposure to Teen Deviyan was 20 times. I was sure that it is this rivalry that provoked Anjan to rush into my office. He must have relished the newspaper report. Only one ticket was sold for a show in one of the multiplex auditoriums. The movie on show was Mr Prime Minister, the latest Dev Anand film.

Privately I felt sorry for my hero of Guide, Jewel Thief and HRHK. He should have realised that limelight does not suit all ages. But that is something between me and my guru. There was no way I was going to divulge such critical opinion to Anjan. So I chose a professional line of defence. Anjan said: What a lousy movie from Dev Anand. And I pounced on him.

Only one man saw the movie. That was the crime. Let us say that another 9,99,999 chose not to see the movie. The question really is: did they not see it because the movie was bad? How would they know? Before that show, even that single man had not experienced it. So he could not have dissuaded the rest. The trigger clearly was what people thought about the movie and not their opinion about the movie after seeing it.

So my point was simple: about the movie, the jury is still out. All we can say is that the marketing of the movie was pathetic. Anjan was stumped. My hero?s reputation was saved for the time being. After all, he is a film-maker, not a marketing wizard.

That possibly is a function of age. Today?s film-makers have become aware of the structural change in the movie-going habits. For example, Anjan or I, even if we wanted to, cannot see Salaam Namaste or Sarkar 17 times. Unless, of course, we decide to see them on 17 consecutive days. The movies come and go often within a fortnight. And unlike the olden days, it is not a chain of three theatres that runs a movie. There are often a dozen or more auditoriums that simultaneously screen the same movie. Movie-going thus has become a trial or a single purchase product. This is quite a change really from the days of Junglee or Sholay or even KKHH. The success of a movie depended then on how many times we had seen them. Today the sole issue is how many people we can attract in the first seven or 10 days.

In this whole pre-launch game, the movie in its entirety is incidental. Parading the right elements becomes crucial. Such promos have a simple end-point: evoke a desire to spend hundred rupees, once. It is in this game that Mr Prime Minister has failed miserably. It may have paraded the wrong things. And possibly did not shout enough about the movie.

I do admit in this column that perhaps the biggest blunder was the choice of an octogenarian as the main focus of marketing. It is difficult to deny that Dev Anand is no longer the best trial generation tool in this day and age of Abraham and Abhishek... Anjan called again. He told me Dev Anand?s next movie is called Jane Kahan Gaye Woh Din!