Greasy Bollywood Singer

This guy is very scary. He’s from a 1965 Bollywood movie called Gumnaam. The actual image of him is from a music video included with the DVD of the movie “Ghost World.” He looks like someone made a clone from the greasiest parts of Steve Buscemi and Elvis.

I haven’t watched the movie yet, but I have watched the music video. A group of masked dancers boogie down to the music of Ted Lyons (pictured above), lead singer of Ted Lyons & His Cubs. The choreography seems to indicate that the female lead is being courted by two men who are old friends… I think. It’s tough to say, and the music doesn’t help since the lyrics aren’t in English.

Gumnaam, the movie that this video was originally part of, was probably shot in less than a week with a budget smaller than an American film’s catering bill. This dance sequence probably took them a few hours, counting rehersal time.

A work associate of ours brought the disc into the office to show us, and all of us seemed to fix instantly on different parts of the production… My boss used to be in a dance troupe, so the choreography caught his attention. Our hourly has an architecture degree, so he focussed on the set design. I was paying attention to the editing and camera work, up until that guy’s face showed up on the screen.

Then I became fascinated by his teeth.

They’re bad.

I mean REALLY bad.

They look a bit sharp and pointy in this still image, but that doesn’t do them justice. They’re yellowed. They’re crooked. In some shots it looks like some of his lower teeth are missing. No American film would showcase a singer with such poor dentition.

But then I started wondering if is was a matter of cause or effect… I mean, I’m sure there are some people out there who are great singers who used to have awful teeth. Did they get them fixed in the hope that it would help advance their career, or was it part of the makeover that many stars seem to undergo after their career has actually started to take off?

And either way, why didn’t it happen to this guy?