Clockwise from left: Ketan Mehta, Saeed Mirza, Pankaj Parashar, Sudhir Mishra, Amit Khanna, Govind Nihalani, Manmohan Shetty and Vinay Shukla; Kundan Shah (inset)

Sudhir Mishra who met his filmmaker pals for lunch, reveals that middle of the road cinema, FTII and their late friend who made Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro dominated the conversation
Avinash Lohana (MUMBAI MIRROR; August 23, 2019)

Filmmakers Saeed Akhtar Mirza, Sudhir Mishra, Ketan Mehta, Pankaj Parashar, Amit Khanna, Manmohan Shetty, Govind Nihalani and Vinay Shukla met for lunch at a suburban restaurant recently, and Sudhir quipped afterwards, “Hum zinda hain, hum aur filmein banaenge! Anybody have a problem with that?” Soon, Nikkhil Advani, Goldie Behl and Tigmanshu Dhulia were enquiring if they could assist Sudhir and friends. The lunch was Amit’s idea and lasted for three hours. “All of us have worked together. We spoke about films and old times,” Sudhir tells Mirror.

The topics of discussion included their days at Film and Television Institute of India (FTII). “Ketan, Pankaj, Vinay and Saeed studied at the institute and I consider myself an unofficial student as I stayed on the premises with my brother (Sudhanshu) for three years and have worked with many FTII graduates. Even today, I narrate all my scripts to Saeed, Ketan and Amit,” the filmmaker confides.

At another point, Saeed reminded Sudhir that he had fallen off the roof while working on Saeed’s Mohan Joshi Hazir Ho. “Today, you have 20 people for one job, back then, we did everything alone. On Kundan’s (Shah) Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, I was the writer, assistant, peon and even assistant editor. I am not saying that today’s filmmakers aren’t passionate, but we were mad and still are,” Sudhir exclaimes.

He points out that Govind’s Ardh Satya ran for 25 weeks in Mumbai and Om Puri was a star. And Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro ran for 56 weeks in Delhi. “So, when people say that the audience has changed and become more accepting, it is an insult to the audience of the time of Ardh Satya. Today, many middle-of-the-road films are influenced by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee and Basu Bhattacharya; that genre worked then and still does. Independent cinema didn’t begin today, it began with Guru Dutt,” Sudhir asserts.

Kundan Shah, who passed away in 2017, was a big part of the conversation. “All of us remembered him a lot that day. Saeed is writing a book which is a kind of a conversation with Kundan. We worked for three days at a stretch during Jaane... actors slept wherever they could and I’d wake them when they were needed for a shot. Those were the times,” Sudhir concludes.

Thirty years ago, the digital space would have been a godsend for Sudhir Mishra, when he was making films like Dharavi, Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, and Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi. As he makes his web debut with Hostages, he says his best is yet to come
Ekta Mohta (MID-DAY; June 9, 2019)

As film debuts go, no one got a better start than Sudhir Mishra. While an apprentice on Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Sazaye Maut in 1981, he met Kundan Shah, a production manager. Distance can determine friendships in Mumbai, and as luck would have it, Shah lived in Sion, Mishra in Sion Koliwada. Shah first become his drinking buddy, then his writing partner, and then his director. Between several bottles of rum and shared rides on BEST, they wrote Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983). "I don't know why anybody would tell a 22-year-old kid to write," Mishra says. "I had not the foggiest notion of writing a script. I had just seen a lot of cinema, vaguely assisted on one film, I knew Hindi and had a background in theatre from Delhi. So, it was just him provoking me. I must have done something because he gave me the credit."

With his silver hair combed into a neat hairstyle, his 6'4 frame stretched on an armchair, while chewing gum and constantly adjusting his crooked glasses over large eyes, Mishra looks like a mad scientist. In a commander's voice, occasionally flashing a blinding smile, he says, "From now on, I'm going to attempt to make another 10 great films. I think I still have a good 15 years left." He hasn't done too bad so far. In the last three decades, he has written and directed Dharavi, Is Raat Ki Subah Nahin, Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi, Khoya Khoya Chand and Yeh Saali Zindagi. Not one of them was a money-spinner, but all of them have a long shelf life. Mishra was making movies for the web, way before the web was born. "I wish it had appeared 20 years ago, because I would have done much more work. The web series world is not dependent on a hit or an immediate recovery. So, you are making a thing that lasts. It's there forever on some web space. It's like a novel on the shelf. Somebody may read A Hundred Years of Solitude today. Some kid will see Breaking Bad many years later, and that's great."

This month, Mishra made his web debut with Hostages, on Hotstar, a thriller with Tisca Chopra and Ronit Roy. An adaptation of an Israeli show, it isn't his best work, but a sort-of Take 1. "I liked the idea of the series and the two main protagonists. I also wanted to get into the web space and understand the grammar, telling a story over 10 episodes. My job was to rewrite and adapt it for the screen here. So, I didn't mimic a shot or how the sound is played. I tried to make it mine in shooting, edit and post. All the adaptation flaws, if any, are mine."

Mishra has fallen for the medium because, "The web series is a kind of long form cinema, with the contours of a novel. Anyway, my films have a novelistic structure. I veer naturally towards the telling of side stories, of minor characters, their beginning and ends, giving them some kind of a life." So, he's currently working on three scripts. Manu Joseph's Serious Men, which he's adapting for Netflix with Nawazuddin Siddiqui as lead, is currently in its 13th draft. For the past year, he's been writing a series called Taang Kiski Hai for Applause Entertainment. "It's a black comedy, [set] in a place that god forgot. It's about four days in the life of a village, where a cut leg is found on the tracks. The town goes a bit haywire." And, for the last three years, along with a team of five writers and a script doctor, he's been shaping a series called The Nawab, The Nautch Girl And The East India Company, a fictional look at "how India was won." He says, "The right stories, you have to allow them to find you. I think this is one that did because I'm interested in history. It's probably the best thing that I've done. After this, they'll remember me as the guy who did [this series]. Till now, they say he's the guy who made Hazaaron."

As the guy who made Hazaaron, Mishra identifies most with Geeta, Chitrangada Singh's character. "I'm not a fixer; I'm not a Naxal. Manu Joseph wrote a piece on me called 'The Collector of Frail Men'. The men in my work are little confused, little weak. They want to die because of their mistakes. I like telling stories about women, because women accept frailty much easier. The struggle inside women, of the necessity of what you have to do, when you are living in a world that doesn't allow you to express yourself. I'm not good at stories that lead you to a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. I like to leave stories somewhere in between. Like Hazaaron. At the end of it, you are left holding each other's hand and life continues."

It's a lesson he learnt in his debut film. "In its essence, Jaane Bhi was a deeply pessimistic story. Kundan couldn't give a happy end. The essential message was that innocence is always violated. When people ask, 'Where are you from?' Some people say, 'I'm from a film institute,' but I say, 'I'm from Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro,' because that's where I learned everything. It was a crash course with the best. I sometimes still think about it and say, 'How lucky can you get?'"


Ronit Roy in a scene from Hostages, currently on Hotstar

Film bans, censorship and death threats — the veteran actor says it like it is!
Rachana Dubey (BOMBAY TIMES; November 26, 2017)

Naseeruddin Shah is known to speak his mind. This actor doesn’t mince words or thoughts — a rare quality these days. While there’s plenty on his mind all the time, right now, he’s irked about Nude, a Marathi film that features him, and the ire it’s facing, owing to its title and supposed content. In a conversation with BT, the actor makes a terse point about how the definition of freedom of speech has changed over the years, and how we have lost our sense of humour with it. Excerpts:

Nude was dropped from the list of films that were screened in the Indian Panorama section at the International Film Festival of India (IFFI), which led to an outrage. What do you make of it?
It’s absurd! The reason they gave, finally, after much begging, is that it’s an incomplete film, which is absolute rubbish because several times, films are sent to festivals as work-in-progress copies. I don’t think anyone even knows what the film is all about. They’ve simply recoiled at the mention of the title. I think it’s an appropriate title and the film deserves to be seen. It’s arbitrary and scary that the government has now decided to assume the role of a censor.

What do you think has triggered all this?
Nude has not even been seen by the Censor Board, they’ve just recently passed the trailer. I feel Pahlaj Nihalani was only a mouthpiece. That his reasoning was completely idiotic is a different matter. This is an age of moral policing and prudery. Look at the rising number of young couples being harassed on the roads, or even the way Mithali Raj and Priyanka Chopra were trolled for merely wearing a skirt and a dress. Sania Mirza has been a regular target for these people. We live in scary times. Are these the things we should be getting habituated to? We can’t expect the film industry to come out in support of movies like S Durga and Nude, can we?

But during the Udta Punjab controversy, sections of the film industry did come out in support of it...
(Cuts in) Let’s see how many come out in support of Padmavati. No one has spoken yet. Just how thin-skinned have we become that we take offense against just about anything. Is our faith so small that it gets endangered by a movie? Are our beliefs that fragile that the world will start believing a movie, and not what has come down as legend? How insecure are we? Today, when thousands are rising in protest, I wonder how easily our sensibilities can be flamed.

What runs across your mind when you hear threats to maim and behead people being made on public platforms?
What is frightening is that none of these people have really bothered to see the film. They are just determined to crush anything that has a whiff of an independent sensibility. For God’s sake, it’s just a movie! That is the trouble with our country. Our audience swallows so much crap because they think that the actors and technicians were out on a holiday while making a movie. I am not a part of Padmavati, and neither have I seen it, but I’ve seen Bhansali’s work. He puts his all into the film.

Most people who’re commenting about Nude also have probably not seen the film. Do you think it’s a reactionary syndrome where people act merely on what they hear?
It’s beyond comprehension for me. Probably, it’s just the title in case of Nude. These days, it’s difficult to make a small film like Nude without facing issues like money and time crunches. We expect a more enlightened reaction from the government. People believe a film like S Durga is defaming the goddess, as if there is no other girl by that name. There are so many books that mock the Bible and aspects of Christianity. We had also banned Jesus Christ Super Star (a stage musical that faced a ban for about 25 years). We’re the protectors of every government’s faith, or so it seems, whether they care or not. Some people are convinced that what they are doing — threats of arson and all — is right. They are misguided people. I’m sure we have an equal number of people who feel alienated from this kind of philosophy.

Years ago, we could make a film like Bombay with relative ease, although it also had its share of controversies. Do you think one can attempt a film like that today?
Today, you can’t even shoot the last scene of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, let alone a film like Bombay. Why? It’s because we’ve clearly lost our sense of humour. What everyone talks about till date is Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro’s last scene. You wouldn’t be able to shoot it if it were to be made today because of self-censorship, the threat of someone damaging your set, or for that matter, the fear of your film not releasing.

Come to think of it: several interesting films have been screened at IFFI, but it was S Durga and Nude’s elimination that grabbed headlines.
The controversies around the festival have done films like S Durga and Nude some good. Everyone is at least talking about them. People were curious about Nude anyway. It’s heartening to see the way the Marathi filmmakers are rallying for the film. And it’s not surprising. Neither is the fact that not one filmmaker (from Bollywood) has come forth to speak for Padmavati. Maybe it’s difficult to do that.

Do you think all these episodes will ever let any filmmaker present an independent interpretation of literature, culture or a popular thought in our movies?
At the moment, it seems difficult, though this can’t last. These two films (S Durga and Nude) deserved to be seen internationally. Now, it’s to be seen whether they are barred completely from being sent to any film festival. I won’t be too surprised if that happens. The definition of freedom of speech has changed. Now, anything dissenting is seen as abuse of freedom of speech. The space for rational debate has shrunk. It’s not possible anymore. I posted a statement by Albert Einstein once on a social media page, which had something to do with war. The amount of abuse I got for it was astounding. I can understand what happened when I commented on Rajesh Khanna, he has a fan-following. While I don’t take back what I said, I apologised to Dimple Kapadia and her daughter (Twinkle Khanna). These days, you just can’t speak. It’s scary.

Khalid Mohamed (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 8, 2017)

Kundan Shah
(1947-2017)

The wall paint was peeling. The ceiling was cracked, the wooden desk was chipped. And the harsh noon sunlight was baking a thin, pajama-striped mattress on a rickety cot. "Imagine that's where Shah Rukh Khan would sleep aaram se during his struggling days," he had said ruefully when I met him last. Venue: his bare but utilitarian office in a bylane off Bandra's Rizvi complex.

Kundan Shah's voice wouldn't go butter-soft on rewinding to the New Wave, which hit its tidal point during the mid-1970s. The riders on the storm were led by the game-changing graduates of the Film and Television Institute of India, Pune.

Unlike some of his comrades-in-cinema — I'm talking of Mani Kaul and Kumar Shahani — Kundan wasn't contemptuous of either the masala merchants, or the middle-of-the-roadies. A man who loved the movies, he could never be drawn into a chat, without him dropping the names of Saeed and Aziz Mirza and Vidhu Vinod Chopra.

On that noon when Kundan dropped SRK's name, I went, "Do you have a thing about newbies who turn too big for their boots when they attain stardom?" "No, no, nothing like that," the filmmaker assured me. "I don't have a bug about nostalgia. Shah Rukh has moved on, so has life. Who wants to romanticise the past? We're in another millennium. We've greyed, we have to be mature about the here and now."

No two ways about it. Kundan's Kabhi Hanh Kabhi Naa (1994) remains one of Shah Rukh Khan's most spontaneously larkish acts. Yet, the writer-director is enshrined in the film lover's memory across generations with the coffee-black comedy Jaane Bhi Bo Yaaro (1983) — much like Ramesh Sippy has been tattooed with Sholay. To that, Kundan had balked, "You're embarrassing me. In fact, I was surprised by the success of my first film, the toughest critics of the time had praised Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro lavishly. Yeah, I'm always being asked about its sequel. I'm sure Naseer (Naseeruddin Shah) would never say no to me. But Ravi Baswani has gone. Still who knows, some day, it could happen."

It didn't because, perhaps, Kundan was constrained to take on projects which weren't in the same league at all.

"I've to keep myself busy," he'd retorted. "I made a film for peanuts for a TV channel. It was based on the true-life mass suicide committed by sisters of a small town. The channel just junked it."

Open to offers from the dream merchants, Kundan had helmed Kya Kehna! (2000), featuring Preity Zinta as an about-to-be single mother. It echoed the plot of My-heart-is-beating Julie and quite inadvertently was a precursor to Hollywood's Juno.

Whenever I brought up Kya Kehna!, the friend in him would scowl, "That wasn't made for the critics. And whether you like it or not, it earned big money for the producer at least."

He'd avoid any dredging up of the hopelessly cliched romcom Hum To Mohabbat Karega (2000) or the shelved Luveria. "Let's all just make movies, yaar. And to each his or her style and aesthetics," he would plead.

That noon interview — on video camera with Kundan — extended for a couple of hours. It was for a documentary I was making on Shyam Benegal. The section revolving around the parallel cinema movement, unfortunately, couldn't be included since the documentary had become too lengthy for comfort in its final edit. Kundan had agreed that the New Wave did lose its impact when the rule-breakers, including himself, had answered Doordarshan's call for TV serials. There was a drift away from big screen cinema. Unmistakably, though, Nukkad and Wagle Ki Duniya bear Kundan's early rebel-with- a-cause signature. The video interview done, Kundan with his customary courtesy saw me off to the taxi stand. A Rizvi college student stopped him for an autograph, saying that he'd seen Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro a hundred times over.

To that my friend had laughed out loud, "At least this moment wasn't caught on camera. 'Bye."

Kundan Shah, who died of a heart attack in Mumbai yesterday morning at the age of 70, made 10 films in a career spanning three decades. But his life and work was almost entirely defined by one film, the 1983 cult favourite Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, considered by many to be the greatest Hindi comedy of all time. No filmmaker has since come close to achieving the perfect mix of burlesque, camp, irony, satire, and slapstick achieved by Shah and his bunch of young and relatively inexperienced cast of actors and technicians. In this rerun of a piece published a decade ago in Man's World magazine, Jerry Pinto puts together an oral history of the making of the film that nearly never got made
Jerry Pinto (MUMBAI MIRROR; October 8, 2017)

In 1983, a film was made by a young director, straight out of the Film and Television Institute of India (hereinafter the Institute). It was not a funny film in the ordinary sense of the word. We had had many funny films. Some of them were pure slapstick, some started as comic and then went on to become tragic, some were physical comedy, some were lifts. But there had been nothing like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro before this.

Come to think of it, there's been nothing like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro after it.

The story? It begins with two photographers, and get a load off those two names, Vinod Chopra (Naseeruddin Shah) and Sudhir Mishra (Ravi Baswani) who set up a photo studio. They don't have any clients but they have faith in themselves and in their anthem, 'Hum honge kaamyaab ek din'. Then one day, Shobha Singh (Bhakti Barve) the editor of Khabardaar, an investigative magazine, walks into their shop-front with an assignment. She wants to uncover the corruption of a builder Tarneja (Pankaj Kapur) who has been bribing Commissioner D'Mello (Satish Shah) to get his tenders passed. Tarneja is the kind of builder who does not mind mixing concrete with sand. He does not mind if people die. He only minds if they smell.

In the course of pursuing Tarneja for photographic evidence, they happen on a murder in progress. This is a bow to Michelangelo Antonioni's Blow Up (1966), so the park in which they discover the body is called Antonioni Park. It's about as clever a way of acknowledging a reference as any. The script seems to have been like a huge vacuum-cleaner scooping up everything that came along, from the borrowed suits in which the two photographers inaugurate their store to contemporary references such as the bridge collapse that starts off the climax, which acknowledged the collapse of a bridge at Byculla in central Mumbai, a bridge that fell before it had been completed. And when it is almost done, you can see the film's socialist heart in the moment when at a press conference with Tarneja, a reporter asks a question that is almost a speech. There are lines in the film that acquired cult status, as did the film. When D'Mello comes back from a study tour of America, he notes how advanced that country is. "Wahaan peene ka paani alagh, gutter ka paani alagh," (There drinking water flows separately from sewage) he says and everyone nods, suitably impressed. And there is a demented sequence in which he is told that Americans get half their thrills from eating and half from throwing away some food. The 'thoda khao, thoda pheko' sequence is a comment on the waste-makers of America and a nice piece of slapstick since Sudhir is hanging around outside the window and wants some of the cake that Vinod is guzzling— how I am enjoying writing this — with Commissioner D'Mello. But the set piece — and what everyone remembers most vividly — is the chase with D'Mello's body and the ensuing commotion in the disruption of a mythological play.

AN IDEA IS BORN

Kundan Shah, Director, Story writer

I have never been close to comedy in my life. At my Gujarati school in Aden, we were shown some Chaplin films but if I had to spend my money and buy a film ticket it would have been for an action film or a drama. But I read indiscriminately, anything I could lay my hands on. I read what might be called pulp and when I came to college in Mumbai and met a senior who was well-known for his reading, I began to borrow the classics from him. But I read those as pulp as well. I read Dostoyevsky and Balzac like they were novels by James Hadley Chase. I did not see any difference. They were all telling stories, gripping human stories. Those were the influences with which I went into the Institute.

I wrote my first dialogue, which was supposed to be a very important moment, a seminal moment, something that would decide, they say, what kind of filmmaker you would make and it failed miserably. So I sat down to analyse why I had failed. And the day I failed that dialogue test, I began preparing for my diploma film. For one and a half year, I worked on it until I was ready to look at what I had done. And I discovered that what I had written was a comedy. Bonga, my diploma film, helped me find myself. I believe every director makes a single film, makes it again and again. Guru Dutt made a film about a tortured poet in Pyaasa, a tortured film director in Kaagaz ke Phool, a tortured woman in Saahib Bibi aur Ghulam. And I think I made Bonga again and again. Bonga was not about corruption; it was about life. The story is irrelevant. I believe the less the story, the better the film. As part of the course, we were also supposed to write the script of a feature film. It was not compulsory but I decided to do it anyway. All these play an important part in the making of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.

At that time, I was writing a film based on One Wonderful Sunday by Akira Kurosawa. I hadn't seen the film but I had heard about it. It was supposed to be about a Sunday that a young couple who are also broke spend together. So I thought I'd do my own spin on it. My wife was out of town and I was visited by a friend who had come from Hyderabad. He was part of a collective of Institute students who had gone there, determined to make films cheap, make the right kind of films as a collective effort. They did make some films but the community was collapsing and two of them, an editor and a director, were left behind. They had gone into business as industrial photographers and the editor was better at photography so he was ordering the director around, making him hold the reflector. He told me all these stories in the night he was here, and we laughed endlessly. He told me how they used their studio to try and patao girls...

The next morning I woke up and I began writing the script with this basic idea in mind. I threw out most of his stories. I just kept the basic outline. At that time, the Film Finance Corporation announced a script competition so I put in the script that I had written at the Institute because it was ready. That won the third prize, after Massey Sahib and Godaam and part of the deal was that prize winning scripts would be financed by NFDC. Now I had no intention of making that film so I told them I would need to make it in 35mm. They said I couldn't have that kind of money, only enough for 16mm. So I said I would give them another script and I began to write Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro furiously. They said that it would have to go through the committee again but I was willing to take my chances rather than make a film I didn't want to. And the script committee approved the script and I had the money and I was ready to go.

Sudhir Mishra, screenplay writer, also played an uncredited reporter

The film would never have been made if NFDC had not produced it. It was a time of independence for NFDC. There were people like Shyam Benegal and Aravindan on the board and they passed a whole bunch of projects that would have frightened the babus. In the early 1980s, no Indian producer would have touched the project. They would not have been able to conceive of it, they would not have been able to translate that script in their heads into a film.

KS: I wrote the film with a certain kind of anger. I had been the secretary of my building and the water pipe and the sewage pipe ran side by side. There was a leak in the sewage pipe which was gushing out in a stream. I tried to get the cement necessary for the repairs but that was the time cement was controlled.

"We are drinking sewage water," I told the man in charge of cement. "So is everyone in Bombay," he said. And that was how the 'gutter ka paani alagh' lines got written.

THE CASTING

KS: Casting took some time. Naseer was fixed. He knew me and he had agreed to do my film. He was shooting in Pune when he called me to meet him. I thought he wanted to back out but instead he said, "I will give you 45 days. I'm willing to play whatever role you want me to." I had seen Ravi Baswani in Sai Paranjpe's Chashme Buddoor and I knew I wanted him. Vijay Tendulkar told me when he saw the film, "He's the key. He's holding it together."

SM: Casting the role of Shobha Singh gave Kundan nightmares. Most of the women in parallel cinema refused it. Even Bhakti Barwe who eventually did the role, refused to dub for it. So Anita Kanwar dubbed her voice eventually.

KS: Casting Shobha was the difficult part. Deepti agreed but she was busy. I went to see Bhakti Barve in Hands Up, a Marathi play. There was a moment in it where she's taking vengeance on someone, and she has to turn to the villain and laugh, turn away from him and cry, turn back and laugh...and I knew I had my actor. I knew she didn't have comic potential. I knew she had problems. She was asthmatic and how many times could I tell these guys to stop smoking? And then she didn't want to dub, I think because she was a stage performer and was afraid of messing up. But Anita Kanwar was a godsend.

PREPARATION

Pankaj Kapur, played Tarneja

I remember going for story sessions with Kundan, to try and get a hold on my character. Inevitably, he would end up doing accounts, so that wasn't much help. But then he was working on a budget that would make a shoestring look sumptuous and I understood, we all understood, that he was committed to making the film and to getting it finished. But that meant we didn't get much of a chance to discuss my character in great depth. For instance, I was 27 at the time and was supposed to play a 45 year old. On the morning of the shoot, it was discovered that I did not have a costume so Renu and I rushed to a store nearby and bought me a silk kurta and a pair of spectacles to age me.

Ravi Baswani, played Vinod Chopra

There are any number of little details that go into the making of comedy. In Chashme Buddoor, for instance, I suggested to Sai that my character should have a lighter that never lights. "Who will notice?" she said. "I don't care if no one notices," I said. "I will know my character better. He's the kind of guy whose lighter never lights." Later, it became useful because there was a moment when he looks for a match and finds the insecticide and jumps to the conclusion that Farooque's character is going to commit suicide. In Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro too, there were little things like that. In the last sequence, I run in chased by Dushasan. Then Dushasan chases me back. Then I run in wearing his costume. Then he runs in wearing a kachcha. Then I run in carrying my sword with Dushasan's kachcha on its tip. In the madness of that scene, you might not even see it, but for me, it's an additional little moment. Before working with any director, at that time, I tried to do my homework. I knew that Sai Paranjpe for instance needs her handbag if she needs to think. I knew that Prahlad Kakkar screams a lot. I went to story sessions just to see what Kundan would be like. And I went and saw his diploma film, Bonga to get into his mind. I discovered that he was a director who would need actors who could translate his ideas for him. I also found that he shouted a lot. Not that he meant anything by it but he shouted. Our sound engineer told me that the maximum wastage of footage was on Kundan saying, "Cut-cut-cut-cut-cut-cut-cut." So where does one cut?

Vanraj Bhatia, music director

I was the default music director for the whole of the parallel cinema industry. It was a mistake I made and I regret it. I suppose I got typecast. They were all supposed to take me along with them once they hit the big time but none of them did. And the ones who did, like Vinod Chopra, forgot. I believed in them, these Institute guys who would come over, tell me their stories and drink my bar dry. I believed in their dreams and I did everything I could to help them along. I remember when they shot the scenes in the lift outside the building under construction, it was somewhere in the vicinity. So they all trooped over and asked for tea. I told them I could not give them all tea and that I had had my lunch and drove them out again.

Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro was a comedy, I was told. That was fine. Music for comedy can be dreadful if it is used in the way it is used in cartoon films. But Kundan told me that he did not expect me to do any Mickey Mousing for the film. But then there were these endless scenes like the coffin scene where I was expected to compose an endless melody to go with it. He did not want any songs, he said. They all said that in those days. If they had songs, they were in the background. They were very foolish. They were wannabes who were full of half-digested Bresson and Goddard and since their New Wave gods did not use songs, how could they?

RB: Naseer and I had worked together. We sat down to talk about what we were going to do. I told him, "All these guys are going to do something because this is their big shot. Let's not do anything. Let's play it straight." He agreed. That didn't mean we didn't think things through or respond to the moment, but we played it straight and I think it worked.

THE SHOOT

Naseeruddin Shah, played Vinod Chopra

The shoot was the worst I have ever had, the worst. There was no money for anything. It was April and May when we were shooting and it was hot as hell. And throughout there was always the feeling that this film was not going to get made, but also the feeling that we had to do something to get it done.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Production Controller, also plays Dushasan

I ended up playing Dushasan in the Mahabharat scene at the end because it was that kind of film. I wanted to pay the actor Rs 500. He wanted Rs 1000. I couldn't afford him, so I did the role myself. Being production controller was a mad job. Once, I remember asking Kundan Shah what time I should ask the buses to come to take the crew from the Madh Island shoot where we were doing the 'kuch khao, kuch pheko' scene. He said he was starting at seven am and would be done by five. I decided to give him a buffer and add five hours. I called the buses by ten. Do you know when we knocked off?10 am the next morning. At one point, I remember seeing Kundan with his eye fixed on the viewfinder in the camera. He stayed there a very long time. So I went up and shook him and found he had fallen asleep on the camera!

NS: I had just got married around that time. I remember telling Ratna [his wife] that I would be late. I wasn't late that night, oh no, I came home the next night. And that was only because Ratna got really worried and called NFDC. They told her we were shooting at their guest house and she turned up there with food. I think she had a picture of the entire cast and crew as sleeping beauties. Something had gone wrong with the magazine and it had been taken out to repair and everyone fell asleep almost where they were standing.

SM: I think most of the actors didn't have faith in the film. They had all been trained in Mr Benegal's kind of cinema. But they were also helping Kundan whom they knew in different ways, and whom they liked despite the fact that he carried a briefcase and an umbrella instead of wearing the kurta and carrying the jhola of a radical. All the actors were sceptical of the film at some level but there wasn't much else they could do. In 1982, what was there?

NS: I didn't believe the film would work. I thought we were making the stupidest film ever. I remember once I told Kundan, 'You're thinking in animation!'

SM: I think the film might have been much much better if the actors had been willing to trust in comedy. The film is the worse for the actors not understanding the grace of nonsense. Comedy of this kind is a gentle lament. Their idea of comedy was Moliere as performed in the National School of Drama in Delhi. This lack of understanding meant that they kept trying to get out of the nonsense and return to their realist framework. In a comedy, you should never step out of the mode in which you are. I think if the actors had allowed it, Kundan would have made a much better film. Though I think Satish Shah understood it.

RB: I went on the sets and Kundan was banging his head on the wall. He didn't want to shoot the telephone sequence. "How will anyone accept that two people are talking to each other on two extensions of the same telephone in the same room?" he asked. I said, "Don't worry, this is comedy. They will accept it."

SM: The shoot was chaotic. I remember the sequence at Madh Island which was shot at a stretch for four days without a break. Naseer would go away and fall asleep and come back for his shot. And the food was ghastly. There was roti daal and aalu baingan for breakfast and there was roti, daal and baingan aalu for lunch. And since Kundan was Gujarati, there was sugar in the daal!

RB: When we were executing the sequence with Satish Shah as the corpse, I gave him my personal guarantee that we would not let him fall so he could go limp. In that sequence, the in-joke was that the expression on the corpse changed from one moment to the other. He was looking down when we're up among the lights, he's looking up when we enter the auditorium, he's coy as Draupadi and so on. You don't get it the first time but you may on the second viewing and that will add to the pleasure of it. And even if you don't know you're making a legend—and we didn't know it—you have to assume that any film you do should make people want to come back the second time.

PK: On another location visit, Renu (Saluja) and he and I went off to see a building under construction. There was a lift, a small one, about four feet by two feet. No, it wasn't a lift, it was a glorified bucket. Up we went in it and since it had one side open to the air and the sea and the sky, I froze. But not Kundan. "We will shoot in this," he announced. Now, I knew the scene was one which had Neena Gupta, Satish Shah, me, my assistant and it would have to have the cameraman and the focus puller and perhaps Kundan himself all in it. Luckily when we returned to terra firma, I noticed a much larger lift and pointed it out.

On the day of the shoot, we all got into the lift, almost everyone on the set seemed eager for a ride. I kept saying, "No, maybe there are too many people" but the owner had assured Kundan that he took building material up by the tonne so we all got in. And we began to rise...until we came to about the sixth floor. Then we stopped. Kundan leant out and kept shouting to the lift operator. "Take us up," he would shout and the lift operator would look left. "Or take us down," he would shout and the lift operator would look right. Finally, he shouted, "Take us close to the building." The lift operator did so and then I tried to tell everyone to get off slowly, not to panic, but there was a stampede. That meant as people jumped off, the rest of us who were inside the lift would swing out into the air. It was the grace of all the gods that no one got hurt. Later, the lift operator told us that the chain had begun to fray and moving us up or down would have caused it to break. But no one seemed to be bothered about this. When scary things happened on this shoot, people just ignored them. I have never worked with a team so hell-bent on getting the job done.

POST PRODUCTION

NS: Do you know that Anupam Kher acted in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro? He was playing a character called Disco Killer. He was supposed to be a gunman who had been hired to bump us off but a gunman who kept on missing. His entire track was eliminated. I don't know how Renu Saluja did it, but she did it. There was enough to make another hour or so of film.

SM: Renu Saluja's role in making the film what it is cannot be underestimated. First of all, she took a three and a half hour film and cut it down. Kundan and Renu practically rescripted the film in the editing room. I know this for a fact, it was one of her favourite films. I sat through the editing and I enjoyed it immensely. It was like going to some kind of master class. If you look at the last sequence, that famous Mahabharata sequence, that's her work, it's a rhythm that she gives to the whole of it, the way in which she keeps the whole thing moving while never calling attention to the editing. It was a magnificent feat because it meant that for the first time an editor was achieving that rare and mystical thing: comic timing. It was only when we saw the first cut, that the actors realised what they had done. They had worked on a legend. They absolutely loved the film from then on.

THE RELEASE

SM: It was very badly released. I remember going to Baadal cinema in Mahim, and finding that there wasn't even a hoarding outside the cinema to announce that it was playing inside.

KS: It was very badly released. That's NFDC. But without them the film would never have been made. No one would have understood the script. No one would have taken the chance. But it has found its audience. It finds them still.

AFTERWARDS

RB: What a let-down Bhakti was. Speak no evil of the dead and all that but she was terrible. And what a boon it was that she didn't want to do the dubbing or wasn't interested enough or whatever. I don't care. Anita Kanwar reinvented the character entirely with her voice. That's the only thing that works for me in Bhakti's performance.

PK: Frankly speaking, I wasn't very satisfied with that performance. I know it worked but it was a little too stylised. I was supposed to be playing the role Om (Puri) eventually played. But I don't regret it because it was a wonderful time. There was such passion and such purity, such commitment to the cause of cinema, such a wonderful feeling. I thought I would not experience that again until I did Maqbool with Vishal Bhardwaj and once again, I felt I was back making cinema.

NS: For someone who spent the entire shooting schedule despairing of the kind of film we were making, I was proved wrong. I would never have guessed that generations of young people would still be watching it 20 years later...

KS: I believe that every director has a curtain in front of him, between his thoughts and the film he thinks he is going to make and the film he does make. The film he does make is a shadow play. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is a shadow of the film I wanted to make. And all the rest have been shadows of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.

SM: There are people who ask me 'When are you going to make another Hazaaron Khwaahishein Aisi?' and I feel like saying, 'Never'. Because I made Hazaaron Khwaahishein Aisi. There isn't another one hiding in me. If Kundan never made another Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, it was because there wasn't another one in him.

RB: I should have died after that film. I might have become the James Dean of India, a legend. Kya actor tha, they would have said, just two films and then he died.... But that didn't happen. Anyway, jaane bhi do, yaaron

(By arrangement with Man's World)

Avijit Ghosh (THE TIMES OF INDIA; October 8, 2017)

A deliciously wicked Naseeruddin Shah on what gets his creative juices flowing, what Hindi cinema lacks today and why he’s not signing more films these days
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; September 21, 2017)

From Macbeth to Titus Andronicus it’s been a long journey with the Bard. Has the interpretation of Shakespeare’s plays changed for you as an actor?
Everybody feels that Shakespeare has only recently been discovered by the Hindi film industry. That’s not true. Even before Vishal Bhardwaj’s Maqbool (an adaptation of Macbeth), Omkara (Othello) and Haider (Hamlet) there were versions of Hamlet by Sohrab Modi and Kishore Sahu. Then, there are all the clichés we’ve borrowed. Shakespeare in Hindi cinema is not new, adaptations per se are, for which Vishal can take the credit.

Shakespeare’s plays lend themselves wonderfully to popular Hindi cinema because like our film writers, he too was writing for particular actors and companies with the intention to entertain. I don’t think he dreamt that 400 years after his death, his plays would still be performed in languages across the world. It is testimony to his powerful story-telling. Commercial Hindi cinema is also about stories. It’s immaterial how well or how badly the film is made, if the story is good, it will grab the audience’s interest.

What was it about Titus Andronicus that made you agree to do an adaptation?
Let me start by saying that the film, The Hungry, is far less gory than the play. Titus Andronicus was Shakespeare’s first play and you can see him trying to find his feet as a playwright in this blood-drenched story. In the film, the violence is implied and that works for it in a powerful way. I thoroughly enjoyed playing this despicable, hateful person. It is so boring to play the good guy. Luckily, I haven’t had to play too many. I’d rather play the deliciously wicked subedar in Mirch Masala or the don in Bombay Boys, one of my favourite performances. Tathagat Ahuja in The Hungry is, on the surface, refined and cultured but has this blood lust that can’t be satisfied. Fortunately, my mum is no more. She’d have hated to see me in these roles.

What makes you accept a film today? Is money the incentive?
If it states something I believe in, I’d happily be a part of it irrespective of the length of the role or the money. I accepted The Hungry not because it’s Shakespeare but because the script had the same kind of chilling effect on me as when I heard about the Chadda brothers shooting each other or Indrani Mukherjea strangling her daughter (Sheena Bora). I spent the first 30 years of my life in small towns like Aligarh, Meerut, Ajmer and Nainital. I’ve seen such landlords who live like kings and for whom there’s a different set of rules. This script evoked that world.

What excites me about acting is that you can live so many imaginary lives. But I’m getting bored with movies now. Apart from The Hungry, I’ve done one-scene appearances in Neeraj Pandey’s Aiyaary and Ravi Jadhav’s Marathi film Nude. There’s also a Gujarati film, Dha (Idiot), in which I play a small part of a jaadugar.

In a recent interview you said a Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (JBDY) remake is no longer relevant. Is there a film that would lend itself to a remake or a sequel?
JBDY could lend itself to a sequel but it’d have to be a completely different film. A sequel wouldn’t be possible as Ravi (Baswani), Om (Puri) and Bhakti (Barve) are dead and the others have turned fat, lazy and prosperous, including director Kundan Shah. Also, the scale of corruption has magnified since the bridge collapsed and a cop accepted a bribe of an atthani. Today, you’ll have to take away a few lakhs to make Kundan worried. After the film released, some income tax officers I met asked me to urge Kundan to make a film on the IT department. I suggested it, he didn’t act on it. But the times are crying out for films that reflect the truth of what’s happening.

You could direct it yourself?
I’m not technically equipped to direct and don’t have the inclination to learn new techniques at this stage. I’d rather direct on stage where I’m more at home, open to re-examining my work, changing, adding and subtracting from it.

Today with the audience spoilt for choice, what will bring them to the theatres?
Well, any old film with 10 stars will no longer work. They never did but the industry persisted with them as they brought in big bucks. Now we have to strive towards “special occasion films” which are entertaining and made with conviction. Films like Masaan, Dum Laga Ke Haisha, Kaun Kitne Paani Mein, Nil Battey Sannata and Lipstick Under My Burkha. These filmmakers are not sitting in an air-conditioned room and posing as bleeding heart liberals, they are making films on subjects that concern them and touch their lives. This ‘movement’ beats that of the ’70s, which had a lot of pretentious filmmakers who turned out to be hypocrites. The success of films like Toilet - Ek Prem Katha and Lipstick... over the monstrous Mubarakans is a sign that content is working.

Your daughter, Heeba, is working with Majid Majidi while son Vivaan is inclined towards commercial cinema. You discuss films with them?
Yeah, we talk cinema, theatre and literature, but they don’t ask and I don’t advise them on their choices. They may make some mistakes, but I’ve had my share too. Heeba got Mango Souffle, Poorna and even Majidi’s film on her own steam. I’m proud of it. Vivaan doesn’t have much of a choice, he does whatever comes to him. He’d be happy to do a serious film too but so far he’s only got the intended blockbusters like 7 Khoon Maaf and Happy New Year which didn’t quite bust the box office. He’s happy working.

From the current crop, has any actor caught your eye?
Rajkummar Rao and Nawazuddin (Siddiqui) are getting their due. Then, there’s Kalki (Koechlin) and Konkona (Sen Sharma) who are not new but are among our finest actors. This generation of actors is leagues ahead of mine. At Rajkummar’s age, I couldn’t have delivered the kind of performances he has done in films like Trapped. We have directors, investors and a skillful bunch of actors. What we lack are writers and stories.

Should films like The Hungry and Waiting that have a story to tell get a wider release than the monstrous Mubarakans?
With a film like Mubarakan the audience knows exactly what they are in for while with a Waiting they are taking a chance, so I don’t forsee big releases for niche films. As it is, the film industry is pretty resentful of a Lipstick’s success. We should just be content that these movies are getting made and will survive to be seen a 100 years later along with the Mubarakans. Then, people can judge.

Deepali Singh (DNA; September 7, 2017)

It’s been 34 years since Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron released, but the cult classic remains one of Bollywood’s most-loved films of all times. Some of the most talented actors to grace the big screen, including Naseeruddin Shah, Ravi Baswani, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur, Satish Shah, Bhakti Barve, Satish Kaushik and Neena Gupta, were part of the cast. In fact, a lot of people, when asked which film they would like to see a remake or sequel of, mention the satirical drama.

‘Corruption level is higher’
Naseer, who played the photographer Vinod in the film, wishes that nobody remakes it. “It won’t be relevant today,” he reasons, “The corruption level is much higher. Now losing an athhani to a policeman is not a big deal, now you have to give him 100 bucks.”

So much has changed
The actor reveals that director Kundan (Shah) did try writing a script, but it didn’t work and then Ravi (Baswani) passed away, so that was the end of the story. “That script (of the original film) came straight from Kundan’s heart, out of his guts. Now, he is an ageing, complacent producer. I don’t think he feels that urge. That hunger at that time was something else. And in all of us. Now we’re all old and fat. Half of us are dead. Bharti, Om, Ravi...” he says.

A tough act to follow
What if another filmmaker attempts it? “Sure, I would encourage him, but it’s a tough act to follow. Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron just happened,” he avers.

Role call
Though it would be tough to see anyone reprising those iconic roles, Naseer says that there are some actors, who can attempt them. “Like this young man, Rajkummar Rao is fantastic. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vijay Raaz and Manoj Bajpayee, who has not got his due. There are some superb actors, but you need a great script,” he signs off.

As told to Subhash K Jha (DNA; January 8, 2017)

I was numbed on hearing about my dear friend Om Puri’s death. I was shooting away from Mumbai. Om and I had parallel careers in parallel cinema, so to speak. But I never felt any envy or resentment towards his achievements. He got a lot of roles like East Is East, which I thought would come to me. But I felt nothing but joy for him.

Real and rooted

His success in the West and when he spoke to me about working with Tom Hanks or Steven Spielberg, filled me only with happiness. Om was the salt of the earth. There’s no other way to describe him. He remained real and rooted all his life. Success or failure didn’t change him. There was not a pretentious or pompous bone in his body.

In a shambles

But his personal problems — in which I did not intervene at all — had left his mental and physical health in a shambles. I know for a fact that Om was really suffering during the last few years. And there was no way out of it. Though his death was sudden, I can’t say it was totally unexpected. In a way, death has relieved him of all the stress, and that includes the bad films he took on, I presume for financial reasons. Om took all the criticism on his chin.

Keeping the faith

As I think back on my rapport with him, I cannot recall one unlikeable incident. We were very close and most relaxed with one another. And we happily played walk-on parts or supporting parts in one another’s films. Om would often do cameos for my films, like that one scene in Sai Paranjpye’s Sparsh. I’d ask him if he didn’t feel embarrassed to be cast in such small roles. He would give gaalis and say, ‘Arrey yaar. I’m not doing it for you. I am doing it because I believe in the film.’ His faith in meaningful cinema was unshakeable.

What’s in a name

No role was too small or too big. He did walk-on parts in some of my films and I happily reciprocated his gesture by doing supporting roles in Govind Nihalani’s Aghaat, Ardh Satya and Droh Kaal where Om was the main character. In Godhuli, one of my earliest films in a leading role, Om had a small role and he was billed as Azdak Puri. There is a reason for that. When Om entered the film industry, his name was often confused with that of Om Shivpuri, who was doing a lot of work at that time. Om was dismayed. And he was seriously tempted to change his name to ‘Vilom Puri’ or ‘Azdak Puri’. I told him to stick to his name. ‘One day, Om Shivpuri will be mistaken for you,’ I told him. And that did happen.

The Puri voice

Om was not only mistaken for Om Shivpuri, but also for Amrish Puri’s brother, as they looked similar. One of Om’s specialties was mimicking Amrishji’s baritone. He would call me up pretending to be Amrish Puri and speak in Amrish’s voice. I’d be completely taken in. He would then say, ‘Arrey b**c**d, main hoon’.

I think the way Om used his voice was exemplary. In Ardh Satya, there is a scene where he speaks to Smita Patil on the phone supposedly in a drunken state. We don’t see Om at all in the sequence. But we know exactly what his character is going through. I later asked Om if he had downed some pegs before doing the scene. He hadn’t.

A shattering loss

More than me, Govind Nihalani must be shattered. It was Govind who spotted the talent in Om and harnessed it in film after film since Aakrosh. I remember after Aakrosh when Om attempted comedy in Kundan Shah’s Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, everyone said he would be wrong for the role. But I had seen how funny Om was on stage in an adaptation of Molliere. I think Om in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro was a laugh riot.

Will miss Om

Today, I remember Om’s hearty laughter and his generosity of spirit. I am sorry I couldn’t be there for his funeral. I was shooting out of town. But my wife and sons were there. Hell, I am going to miss Om!”

Mohar Basu (BOMBAY TIMES; May 24, 2016)

Ankur Pathak (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 23, 2015)

Kundan Shah's Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro, is still remembered for Satish Shah's portrayal of municipal commissioner D'Mello whose corpse is an important player in this comedy of terrors. Twenty-two years later, the filmmaker returns with another political satire, P Se PM Tak, which also revolves around a 'dead man' played by veteran theatre actor, Bharat Jadhav.

"Kundan Shah is a filmmaker I've always admired and wanted to work with," Jadhav told Mirror, adding that his corpse is different. "I play a politician who's dead but his party workers are made to believe that he's alive and talking through a voiceover in the background. I've had a lot of fun with this hilarous role. You rarely get to play a dead man!"

Bharati Dubey (MID-DAY; September 22, 2014)

Last week saw the release of Khoobsurat, an official remake of Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Rekha-starrer that was made in 1980. Shaukeen, rechristened as The Shaukeens, is all set to hit screens on November 7. Now there’s word that filmmaker Mahesh Bhatt’s 1985 autobiographical telefilm, Janam, will soon be remade. Stage actor Imran Zahid, who incidentally has played the lead role in all play remakes of Bhatt’s films, including Arth and Daddy, will be playing the lead role in this film as well.

“Kumar Gaurav, who was the lead actor in Janam, faded into oblivion, and as a result, the film didn’t get noticed either. Zahid, meanwhile, is on a high after tasting success with Daddy, the play. That said, Janam has a tricky screenplay but Imran has the resolve to hit the bull’s eye,” says Bhatt, who adds that Janam had actually won a lot of appreciation, including a berth in the panorama section of the 1986 International Film Festival of India (IFFI).

The film tells the story of an illegitimate son (Kumar Gaurav) who wants to be acknowledged by his father (Anupam Kher) and goes on to become a filmmaker. Confirming the news about the remake, Imran Zahid says, “I was probably destined to kickstart my Bollywood journey as a lead actor with Janam. The film deals with the protagonist’s turbulent relationship with his father and draws from the life of my mentor. It’s not just a challenge but my responsibility to recreate that magic.”

It’s not just Khoobsurat, Shaukeen and Janam that are getting remade; there are number of ’80s films whose remakes are now being announced. Bhatt says, “Sometimes, we have to go back in order to go forward. I call this recipe, Past Future. Our films have become bigger but they are also emptier. There is a general dumbing down of our narratives. The eighties had some films which were poor in scale but were big in content.’’

Remakes: a safe bet?
Just a month ago, Karan Johar announced that he will co-produce the remake of Ram Lakhan with Subhash Ghai and that Rohit Shetty will direct the film. Since then speculation is rife about who will play the lead roles in the film; names of actors such as Arjun Kapoor and Ranbir Kapoor have been doing the rounds.

Ghai, who has two of his 1980s films - Ram Lakhan and Hero — being remade, says, “Any film that entertains will earn good money. Make, remake or steal — today, watching films is more of an event. At that the same time, there’s nothing wrong with a remake since it is a democratic art and we ought to take it as fun.’’

Film writer Dilip Thakur does not see it as something new. He says, “Mehboob Khan remade Aurat as Mother India which became a superhit. In the ’70s, we saw many Hindi filmmakers get inspired by Hollywood films. Manoranjan, that starred Zeenat Aman and Sanjeev Kumar, took inspiration from Irma la Douce. Khatta Meetha, that was made in 1970, was inspired from Yours Mine and Ours.’’ Thakur adds that Sulakshana Pandit-starrer Sankoch was a remake of Parineeta and it was based on a novel, while Rajshri Productions’ Nadiya Ke Paar was later made into Hum Aapke Hain Kaun.

So is investing in a remake cheaper than paying a writer to come up with a new plot? Trade analyst Amod Mehra says that, “remakes are in fact the costlier option. There are times when one has to pay crores of rupees just to buy the remake rights.”

Like Thakur and Bhatt, Mehra feels theirs is a dearth of good stories and that remakes help. He says, “They are a tried and tested formula; here the audiences is able to relate to such stories and the film boasts of a high recall value. It is invokes nostalgia among older audiences and curiosity among the younger generation, so it works well.”

Script writer Jalees Sherwani says that today, business is of utmost importance to all filmmakers and remakes are a safe bet. “Since the film has worked once already, the producer tends to have more confidence that it will work again. It is not really about a dearth of stories; besides, it is fashionable to helm a remake these days.”

hitlist takes a look at some other ’80s films that will soon be remade…


Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983)
Kundan Shah has reportedly penned not the remake but a sequel of this cult film. Shah has apparently written it as a political drama with a dash of comedy. But there has been no official announcement as yet. It may be pointed out that Jaan Bhi Do Yaaro was rereleased in select cinemas in 2012.

Hero (1983)
Subhash Ghai’s musical hit, Hero, is being remade by filmmaker Nikhil Advani. The film stars Aditya Panscholi’s son, Suraj Panscholi, and Suniel Shetty’s daughter, Athiya Shetty. In fact, it will be the debut film for both. The film is being co- produced by Salman Khan. The film is set to release on December 14 this year.

Ram Lakhan (1989)
Subhash Ghai’s film (pic on top) had an ensemble cast that included Rakhee, Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit and Dimple Kapadia. It is now going to being remade by Rohit Shetty. The casting is yet to take place. The film is being co- produced by Karan Johar and Subhash Ghai.

Satte Pe Satta (1982)
There have been reports about Raj N Sippy’s film being remade with Sanjay Dutt in the lead. The film is being produced by Rajesh Vasani and it will be directed by Soham Shah. Writer duo, Sajid-Farhan, has penned the script. The casting of the film is in progress.

Do Aur Do Paanch (1980)
There have been reports about the film being remade by debutant director, Akshay Puri, but there has been no official announcement so far. It is also being said that Abhishek Bachchan and Bobby Deol have been approached for the film. The original had Amitabh Bachchan and Shashi Kapoor in it and it was directed by Rakesh Kumar.