Aladin posters over The Wall Project

The Wall 24 hours later

It’s really depressing that 24 hours after Mumbaikars put their hearts and souls into wall art for the wall project, some insensitive morons went ahead and plastered those very same walls with movie posters. Now, on the whole, I don’t really mind movie posters (they sort of make up our kitschy landscape) but really this was just gutting, so I would say if this is the only way then please sign the petition against the illegal movie wall posters.

On the Facebook Group for The Wall Project Aditya Nandwana wrote about resorting his wall, “Got the posters off our wall yesterday. Warm-hot water with some sort of mild detergent dissolved in it works best. Keep in mind that the top layer of the posters is plasticized, so it will take some time for the water to seep through. Don’t rip the posters right off, it’ll pull the paint off too. Useful stuff …would be a firm, blunt spatula of some sort, blades and a few scotch-brite sponges. I think it would be effective if you scour the top layer to take off the plasticized layer, perhaps with the aforementioned scotch brite or one of those metallized pan scrubbers. that will allow the water to reach the backing much faster. It is time consuming; we needed a good two hours yesterday to get somewhat satisfactory results. the more tools (take LOTS of water – 4 bottles per wall minimum) you have, the easier the job and the better the conservation of the paint underneath.”

On Twitter, members tweeted at Aladin’s director Sujoy Ghosh and actor Riteish Deshmukh, after which they immediately apologized.

In their defense I doubt very much that they sanctioned the poster-ing and I’m guessing any movie up for release would have ended up under the scanner. Guessing it’s standard operating procedure for mass movie promotion right? The good thing is the producers seem genuinely apologetic and music director Vishal Dadlani has committed to help repaint the walls. Even Amitabh Bachchan’s blog got grief (I wonder if he responded?) A commentator wrote, “Many people are boycotting the film until the damage has been acknowledged and fixed. Hard to support the hard work of filmmakers when the hard work of the artists/painters has been completely disrespected in order to promote the film.’’

Nice, I like the power of the free press. Now let’s get those walls cleaned up pronto!