Showing posts with label Hare Rama Hare Krishna. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hare Rama Hare Krishna. Show all posts
I was very close to Dev Anand saab and he would call me Mumzee-Mumtaz
8:07 AM
Onkar Kulkarni (BOMBAY TIMES; October 13, 2023)
“Dev saab introduced a style, which nobody could and can match up to,” says veteran actress Mumtaz, who worked with him in two renowned films Tere Mere Sapne (1971) and Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971).
Last month, on the birth centenary of the evergreen actor (September 26), reminiscing fond memories of him, she shared, “Jis tarah se woh bhaagte the, apna sar hilate the… I don’t even think people of this generation can carry off his style and gestures along with their acting. He had his individuality and people accepted that and showered him with love.”
The actress’ first film featured them as husband and wife, but when Dev Anand approached her for his second venture, she had some reservations. She recounts, “He had come home to meet me for Hare Rama Hare Krishna and narrated the story. He wanted me to play his sister in that film. I thought after playing a married couple, if we play brother-sister in our second film, won’t it look odd? So, I refused to play his sister and offered to play his heroine instead. He insisted that the sister had a bigger role, and that I can’t miss it. I was hell bent because Tere Mere Sapne mein logon ne hamari jodi ko, hamare scenes aur songs ko kaafi pasand kiya tha. He got my point and was very grateful to let me choose the part that I wanted to play in the film.”
About her personal equation with the legendary actor, Mumtaz shares, “Dev saab was very fond of me. I was very close to Dev saab and he would call me Mumzee. On set, he used to always call me to select his scarf. He would say, ‘Mumzee, come here.’ I would go to his make-up room where there would be six-seven scarves laid out and he would ask me to pick one for the scene. I would feel a sense of pride seeing Dev saab give importance to my choice.”
Mumtaz has stayed away from the limelight for decades now, but she looks beautiful and fit and, and gives Dev Anand credit for inspiring her. “He would always say, age is just a number and that one should look after themselves… apna khayal rakho aur achche lago, yeh mujhe Dev saab ne sikhaya hai,” she says.
When Dev Anand passed away in London on December 3, 2011, Mumtaz (who lives there) refused to see him one last time. “Afsos ki baat yeh hai ki main jahan rehti hoon – Mayfair, London mein – wahi kuch doori pe unka hotel tha jahan unki death hui thi. I remember people coming home and asking me to see him one last time, but I refused. I loved him too much to see him that way. I wanted him in my heart and mind as the evergreen Dev saab. Unhe waisa dekhna mujhse nahi bardasht hota.”
My grey roles blurred the line between heroine and vamp-Zeenat Aman
8:10 AM
Niharika Lal (BOMBAY TIMES; October 8, 2023)
Zeenat Aman recently spoke at an event titled ‘Zeenat Aman Rewind To Don’ and recalled how she had put a lot of herself into the role of Roma, and how Dev Anand supported her career. She collaborated with the Film Heritage Foundation for the event, which was attended by hundreds of cinegoers. During an in-conversation session with FHF director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur before the screening, she discussed her journey.
‘I WAS VERY EXCITED FOR DON’
Recalling how she got the role in Don, Zeenat said, “We were shooting for a film called Roti Kapada Aur Makaan. Nariman A Irani was the camera person. Chandra Barot was the chief assistant director. Of course, Amit (Amitabh Bachchan) ji and I were in that. And at some point, I didn’t know what all was happening behind the scenes and what their financial situation was, I was just not aware. They approached me, and they said that they were planning a project called Don and there was a role (for me). I just said, ‘Chandra, I want to do something. I don’t want to be – gaana gaaye, chale gaye.’ He said, ‘Don’t worry. We will involve you in all the action, drama, and everything.’ So I was very excited.”
“The costume and that attitude (in Don) – I discussed it with my director and just wore it. There was a lot of me in that. Roma is a legend... Junglee Billi”
‘PRODUCERS STARTED TO CAST ME IN GREY ROLES’
Shivendra asked, “You had a definite impact on the characterisation of the heroine in Hindi cinema, and you formed a new form of sexual politics. How would you look at that?” Zeenat interrupted and said, “A new form of what?”
Shivendra continued, “A new form of feminism, let me put it that way.”
Zeenat laughed and said, “See, it was not my intent. It was not my design. In my first film (Hare Rama Hare Krishna), I had been accepted as a bad girl with a heart of gold. She had a reason to be who she was. So producers started casting me in films like that, with a lot of grey shades. The line between heroine and vamp was blurred a little bit, otherwise, it was very clearcut. Either you were good or you were bad.”
‘ON SOCIAL MEDIA, YOU CAN PUT FORTH YOUR REALITY THE WAY IT IS’
“I find that when you have a platform where you can speak your own truth and people can hear your voice directly from you and not from people’s perception of you and your reality, and you can put forth your reality the way it is. I have been overwhelmed with the love that I have received.”
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“Dum Maro Dum is a song that has stood the test of time. I recently learned that there was a survey, and Dum Maro Dum is the number one song in the history of Indian cinema. Dev saheb is my mentor. Because of Hare Rama Hare Krishna I became accepted in Hindi cinema. If it were not for Dev saheb, I would never have had a meteoric rise in the cinema business”
"I never had a ‘relationship’ with Raj Kapoor": Zeenat Aman hits out at claims in Dev Anand’s autobiography
8:23 AM
HINDUSTAN TIMES (February 26, 2023)
Actor Zeenat Aman has clarified that she “never had an interpersonal relationship” with late actor-filmmaker Raj Kapoor. The 71-year-old was speaking at an event in Mumbai when she was asked to comment on an incident from a Raj Kapoor party that late actor Dev Anand had described in his autobiography, Romancing With Life.
Recalling the party, Aman said this was her chance to make it all clear at her end. “Raj had signed me for Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978) and I went there as his about-to-be heroine. I never had an interpersonal relationship (with him), not before that and never after that. It was always a director-actor relation. He was passionate about his work and I was passionate about his work but never did he ask me why I did not wear white. In fact, I have never worn white on his sets or parties (referencing the filmmaker’s fascination with women wearing white). With all due respect, ek kahani banane me, hindsight se kuch interesting banane ke liye kuch jumle daal dete hain,” Aman said.
Aman and Anand starred in the 1971 film Hare Rama Hare Krishna, during which the latter fell in love with his co-star, the actor wrote in the book. In the autobiography, Anand recalls fixing a meeting with Aman to profess his feelings for her. But “a drunken Raj Kapoor... threw his arms around her exuberantly. This suddenly struck me as a little too familiar. And the way she reciprocated his embrace seemed much more than just polite and courteous,” he wrote.
Speaking at the event, Aman added, “Now, I am not sure about the perspective of Dev sahab. Lekin main haq se kehti hoon, bilkul galat tha, main apni kitaab me zarur likhungi. I admire Dev Sahab, but this was not correct.”
No one wanted to play Dev Anand’s sister in Hare Rama Hare Krishna-Zeenat Aman
8:26 AM
Niharika Lal (BOMBAY TIMES; July 2, 2022)
Veteran actress Zeenat Aman, who was recently in Delhi, spoke about her films and directors and how in the era where roles for actresses were either sari-clad heroine or vamps in western clothes,
she played characters which had shades of grey. At a session titled, ‘Stories that matter with
Zeenat Aman’, organised by FICCI FLO, the actress told the audience that be it her character Sheetal in Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, who chooses a rich man over her poor lover, or her character Janice in Hare Rama Hare Krishna blowing smoke rings, she played characters with grey shades.
‘IN THE BEGINNING MY HINDI WAS ATROCIOUS, SO FOR HARE RAMA HARE KRISHNA I GAVE MY SCREEN TEST IN ENGLISH’
Aman said that the toughest films of her career were Hare Rama Hare Krishna (1971) and Satyam Shivam Sundaram (1978). The former, in fact, brought her instant stardom and she won the Filmfare Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Dev Anand’s sister. When Dev Anand was searching for an actress, nobody wanted to play his sister as they wanted to play the lead opposite him. And then he met the then newly-crowned Miss Asia Pacific Zeenat Aman. She further narrated that when Dev Anand saw her at a party, he thought that he had found his Janice for Hare Rama Hare Krishna as he was looking for someone who had “Indian looks but western upbringing and with a carefree attitude”.
The actress recalls, “The film’s director O P Ralhan knew that Dev Anand was looking for a girl to play the role of his sister. A lot of actresses had turned down the role because they wanted to play the romantic lead. Nobody wanted to play the sister. So the director set up a meeting. Truth be told, at that time we were planning to leave the country and move away, so I think he was just impressed with my attitude. I was wearing a mini skirt, boots and smoking, and he thought to himself that I would be perfect for the role. He asked me to do a screen test, but of course, since I had studied abroad, my Hindi was atrocious, and I told him that I can’t do the screen test in Hindi, and then he said, ‘Fine, then do it in English.’ And once the camera and lights were on me, I was on.”
‘FOR SHALIMAR, DHARMENDRA WOULD BE WITH HIS ENGLISH TUTOR AND I WOULD BE WITH MY HINDI TUTOR’
Talking about how she worked on her Hindi, she added, “When you know that there are certain areas of your life that are not up to the mark, then you have to work doubly hard. I remember an incident from Shalimar, where Dharmendra was in the leading role. It was the first major international production and we were shooting in Bangalore. We were shooting two versions together in Hindi and English at the same time for every scene from start to finish. It was so funny that every day after we would wrap up, Dharmendra would be in his room with his English tutor and I would be in my room with a Hindi tutor.”
‘PAY PARITY WAS WISHFUL THINKING DURING MY TIME’
The actress said any talk of pay parity among male and female stars during her time was ‘wishful thinking’. She said, “It was wishful thinking to hope for any equality. There was none at all. But I
think things are much better now. I think our girls are doing wonderful projects. They’re doing women-oriented films and they are asking for fair pay.”
When asked was there any sisterhood among actresses at that time, she said, “I see a lot of friendliness among actresses now (current generation), but back then everybody was busy doing their thing.”
IT NEVER MATTERED TO ME WHO MY LEADING CO-STAR WAS: ZEENAT AMAN
Talking about doing unconventional roles in the era when only two kinds of roles were written for actresses, she said, “I was accepted by the audience at that time as an actress with grey shades – characters who were drug addicts, or characters who died of an overdose. Subsequently, writers wrote roles for me – good bad-girl or bad good-girl like in Roti Kapada Aur Makaan in which she leaves a poor man for a rich man, and then she gives her life for a poor man. Ultimately, nothing succeeds like success, so a lot of writers were writing these parts for me and some of the films did well.”
When asked about her favourite co-star, the actress said, “It never mattered to me who my leading co-star was, it always mattered to me who my director and my writer were. I could do scenes with anybody but I needed a good director behind the camera. I had the good fortune of working with a lot of directors who were actors like Dev Anand, Raj Kapoor, Shammi Kapoor, Manoj Kumar, Amjad Khan, Feroz Khan and Sanjay Khan. All these filmmakers were actors themselves. So they brought that extra bit of creativity to the table.”
Nargis Fakhri has had a tough life herself-Namrata Singh Gujral
7:59 AM
Namrata Singh Gujral, who will direct Fakhri in a Hollywood film, discusses her connect with the actress and promises made to Yash Chopra and Dev Anand
Kasmin Fernandes (MID-DAY; August 9, 2016)
Nargis Fakhri, who just returned to Mumbai after a few months at home in New York, will soon fly back to the US to join Golden Globe nominee and supermodel Bo Derek, and Oscar nominee Candy Clark (American Graffiti and The Man Who Fell To Earth). She is part shoot for a slice-of-life comedy, 5 Weddings, helmed by filmmaker and cancer advocate Namrata Singh Gujral. The story follows an American journalist, who travels to India for what she thinks will be an easy magazine feature on Bollywood weddings. As the coverage unfolds, so does a colourful mosaic of lost loves, transgender tangles and culture clashes.
Herself an Indian-American actress, Gujral has appeared in Denzel Washington-starrer Training Day (2001). However, you may remember her as Renu Mathur in Sanjay Dutt-starrer Kaante (2002), as Shelley in Beau Bridges-starrer Americanizing Shelley, as Nurse Kathy from American TV show Passions, as Saira Ahmed from Family Show, and Anna Kraus in 1979 action film, The Shark Hunter.
For Gujral, also a co-producer, the film is a multitude of promises made right. “The first was to Yash Chopra, who ran a fantastic panel called FICCI in Mumbai, where I was an invited guest speaker on global co-productions in 2008 with fellow panelist Cameron Bailey from TIFF. One night, Cameron and I were returning to the hotel after a party in Juhu, and Mr Chopra was in the lobby. He congratulated Cameron on TIFF and then congratulated me on Americanizing Shelley. I was shocked that he knew about it. He said he was a fan of romantic movies, so I said I’d love to produce one with him. He smiled and asked “Promise?” No telling if he was kidding! But I never got to find out…”
On the same trip, Dev Anand requested a meeting with Gujral. “It lasted three hours and explored various angles to make a contemporary version of Hare Rama Hare Krishna. His love for East-meets-West [movies] was eerily similar to mine. But, within three months of returning stateside, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Life took a major detour,” recounts Gujral.
After chemotherapy and going into remission, Gujral decided to pursue the cancer-inspired film 1 A Minute with Olivia Newton-John, Deepak Chopra while putting other projects on hold. “Sadly, by the time we got done with its global release, both Mr Anand and Mr Chopra had passed away within a year of each other.” Singh Gujral
Then, there was another brush with death, as Gujral was diagnosed with an aggressive blood cancer in 2013. Given three weeks to live, she was sent to a medical centre in California, for six months. “Lying in bed after intrathecal chemo to my spine, where you can’t move for hours, I promised myself that if I ever made it out, I would honour the two filmmakers. Shania in 5 Weddings is a little bit Jennifer from Hare Rama Hare Krishna, a little bit Simran from Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge and of course a whole lotta Nargis.”
Gujral’s film also upholds a promise made to a member of India’s hijra community during a meeting in 2014 outside Tata Memorial Hospital, where she launched Finding Match: The Cancer MoonShot Story featuring US Vice Prez Joe Biden and Congresswoman Priya Dutt. The film is being shot in nine parts of the world, and focuses on the challenges that these communities face in finding bone marrow and organ matches. Excerpts from an exclusive interview with the US- based filmmaker:
On life before turning director
It was an innocent life, because that was before breast cancer and blood cancer. I was an actress in Hollywood, doing pretty well and spending my days thinking about how not to age when I wasn’t on set. After my journey with cancer, which started almost 10 years ago, I am shelled out of innocence into an abyss of wisdom, truth and oddly a strange tranquility.
On similarities with Four Weddings And A Funeral
Both have similar pacing and tone; the similarity ends there.
On casting Nargis Fakhri
We considered some fabulous Hollywood actresses for this role. Then, a casting assistant brought up Nargis. I knew I had found Shania right away when I saw her work. She is sweet and funny. She has also had a tough life herself. So, we connect on many levels.
On expectations from her film
Anyone in the world who has lost a loved one to death, especially a parent, will find the film almost healing. Apart from death, there is birth, life, weddings and, of course, love and acceptance as part of the narrative.
On being a woman filmmaker
Three years ago, I was given three years to live. ‘Deh Shiva Bar Mohe Eha’ from the Guru Granth Sahib became my mantra. So, when you beat two aggressive cancers, it’s hard to say anything else is a challenge. But yes, I find it fascinating that even in Hollywood, the supposed Mecca of progressive thought, women directors are a definite minority. There is a line in 5 Weddings which says that for things to change, you can change laws, but it’s ultimately the people who have to change. I think that holds true for anything.
Zeenat Aman's eyes lit up when lighting the cigarette & Dev Anand found his Jasbir
7:45 AM
Roshmilla Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 23, 2014)
Hare Rama Hare Krishna was born during a trip to Nepal for the wedding of the crown prince. In Kathmandu, Dev Anand came across a group of hippies smoking marijuana. The flower children lost in a haze of drugs and delusions, intrigued him, in particular a young runaway. And an idea germinated.
A close associate of the late actor, Mohan Churiwala, picks up the thread of the story: "Dev saab told the king he wanted to go someplace quiet to write his story. He was flown to Pokhara where he penned the rough draft. On his way back, in Kathmandu he realised that he'd left the draft behind. By then the chopper was gone."
Back in Mumbai, Anand approached SD Burman to score the music for Hare Rama Hare Krishna. The composer thought it was a mythological but when he heard what the actor-filmmaker had in mind, he was horrified.
"In the early draft, Devsaab's character Prashant falls in love with the hippie girl Janice, only to realise that she's his long-lost sister, Jasbir. The hint of incest shocked Dada. He wasn't pleased even when Dev saab assured him that he'd introduce a local girl, Shanti, and the hero will romance her," says Churiwala.
Reportedly, he tried to convince Anand to drop the "dirty" subject and then told him to take it to his son Pancham who was better suited to give music for a film about hippies, drugs and estranged siblings.
RD Burman came up with hummable tracks like Phoolon ka taron ka, Kaanchi re and Ram ka naam badnaam na karo. Anand loved them, but asked for another song that would precede Ram ka naam badnaam na karo and justify the lyrics. Anand Bakshi and RD came up with Dum maro dum, mit jaye gam, bolo subah shaam Hare Krishna Hare Ram.
"When Dev saab first heard the song he was skeptical and according to Pancham didn't want it, apprehensive that it would stir off a controversy," says Churiwala. The song eventually got Asha Bhosle the Filmfare best playback singer award and became a cult classic. Years later, Anand would fondly remember sitting on the studio floor with Asha, S D and RD Burman while working on the song. He was seriously upset when Pritam remixed it with reworked lyrics as the title track of Rohan Sippy's Dum Maaro Dum. Outraged, he sent an open letter to the producers and raged that no one could take away his song on the basis of some clause in the contract.
The filmmaker at the time was gearing up for the release of Hum Dono Rangeen and simultaneously working on half-a-dozen scripts, one of them was Hare Rama Hare Krishna Aaj. He was planning to return to Nepal to shoot the sequel and scouting for a new girl to take Jasbir's story forward. But death took him away.
The casting of Jasbir in the earlier film is a story in itself. Anand had approached Mumtaz who broke the CINTAA film ceiling to work with him despite threats from the producers' body. Fortunately, K Asif, who was heading the association, stood by them and facilitated her departure to Kathmandu for the shoot. But she insisted on playing Anand's wife and not his sister.
The filmmaker then approached Zaheeda, his Prem Pujari co-star who pointed out that having played his girlfriend, she'd never be accepted as his sibling. "Zaheeda was also doing her brother-in-law Amarjeet's Gambler opposite Dev saab and that was another reason for turning down the role," adds Churiwala.
That is when Anand was introduced to Zeenat Aman, Miss Asia Pacific 1970, at a party. She offered him a cigarette. As she lit it, her eyes lit up. He knew he'd found his Jasbir.
The film which released on December 9, 1971, won Zeenat the Filmfare Award for best supporting actress and the actress who after the forgettable Hungama and Hulchul had been planning to reurn to Germany with her mother stayed on to reign as Bollywood's glamour queen.
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