Before there was the internet and trolls, gossip and innuendo and quite frankly libel.. there was Stardust!
The best-selling film rag of all-time, during its peak, there was no other film magazine that was as powerful, influential and quite frankly, a terror to stars of all strips.
It was also a highly somewhat unreliable entity.
Shocking headlines, unverified reports, questionable sources, fake news, petty gossip, scandals, pure fiction, rabid fallacies, all the way down to typos, misspelt names, allegations, bad writing and amateur hour reporting.
But dammit it was fun. Taking down powerful, rich, spoilt Bollywood brats was key. No one escaped Neeta's Natter...
The magazine ignited protests, bans, marches... and what not. Back then there was no social media, so stars had no recourse either.
On the other hand, a star could never get away with murder either. If you behaved badly, if you treated people like crap, if you were having torrid affairs and breaking hearts and home - Stardust reported it unabashedly without fear or censure. There was a time when leading newspapers never featured Hindi film industry stars, if you needed publicity for a film or awareness for a project, you needed to pose and give a stirring interview to the scribes. It was selling at such a pace, they had to publish another film magazine -- Showtime--from the same publishing house to keep up.
Now... oh my, how the mighty have fallen. With the internet providing free pics, gossip instantaeously, the magazine cannot keep up. Sales have dwindled, advertising is circling the drain... its nothing like what it used to be. The latest covers have been so badly shot and the layout... its like a highschool project. What are these fonts, colours... there was never any fact-checking in the first place, but how about a quick grammar check?! Tsk tsk.
Nothing lasts forever. Ashes, to ashes, Stardust to dust... we all end up in the grave.
