Showing posts with label Omar Sharif. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Omar Sharif. Show all posts
Subhash Ghai gears up for Khalnayak sequel, Kalicharan remake
8:09 AM
Filmmaker to take forward Ballu’s story with a younger villain joining in, has also scripted a new version of his directorial debut
Roshmila Bhattacharya (MUMBAI MIRROR; April 27, 2020)
The 1993 action thriller revolved around a gangster, Balaram Prasad aka Ballu, who escapes from jail and falls in love with an undercover cop, while continuing to elude the force, kills his mentor, then, has a sudden change of heart and appears in the court to absolve his Ganga, the cop. The film ends with him behind the bars again. “Part 2, which took us two years to script, starts with Ballu coming out of prison. It will also feature a younger villain,” reveals Ghai, pointing out that Sanjay Dutt, who played Ballu, was the one who urged him to write a sequel.
He promises a blockbuster cast, like the original, which also featured Jackie Shroff, Madhuri Dixit, Raakhee, Ramya Krishnan, Anupam Kher, Pramod Moutho and Neena Gupta in a special appearance in the chartbuster “Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai”. Interestingly, the controversial song did not feature in the original script. “Khal Nayak was planned as a Hollywood film, with Omar Sharif and Ashok Amritraj as the producer. But I opted out because I didn’t want to make a film in a language I wasn’t too familiar with,” says Ghai, who then decided to make it as a small art house movie with Jackie Shroff and Nana Patekar as cop and criminal. “It eventually rolled out as a mainstream masala movie, with a heroine, love story, a mother track and half-a-dozen songs woven in, as dictated by the formula, and Sanju as the khalnayak,” shares Ghai.
He promises to upgrade his craft so the new Khal Nayak finds a connect with the new generation. Point out that the pandemic has created a fear psychosis and it may be a while before the audience goes back to the theatres, and he retorts, “In that case, we can turn it into a six-hour digital series by developing the characters. A thriller can engage people across mediums.”He’s equally charged up about the remake of the 1973 action drama, Kalicharan, which was a breakthrough film for Shatrughan Sinha, who had a double role, of a fearless cop and a fearful criminal. Ghai discloses that the actor, who was a busy villain then, had thumbed it down when he’d first narrated the script to him, dismissing it as another cop film. “When N N Sippy decided to produce it, names like Sanjeev Kumar and Rajesh Khanna cropped up. But I pointed out that I’d written the subject with my friend in mind. This time Shatru loved the subject,” he reminisces, admitting that back then, he was just a storyteller and relied on his technical crew to take him to the finish. The film was a huge hit and remade in Tamil (Sangili), Telugu (Kaidi Kalidasu), Kannada (Kaalinga) and Malayalam (Pathamudayam). “Two-three young stars had showed interest in a remake over the last couple of years, given the contrasting characters. It’s a gripping screenplay, the plot will be the same, but the treatment will be very newage,” Ghai concludes, all geared up to get back into action.
How Omar Sharif owed his Hollywood career to Dilip Kumar
8:23 AM
Anvar Alikhan (THE TIMES OF INDIA; July 19, 2015)
The late Omar Sharif
burned his way into Hollywood with Lawrence Of
Arabia, and went on to become one of its hottest sex symbols. But what
most people don't know is that the actor who was originally supposed to
play Omar Sharif 's role in the film was Dilip Kumar.
Director David Lean was an Indophile thanks, partly, to the fact that his fourth wife was Leela Welingkar, a legendary Hyderabadi beauty. Lean had recently made The Bridge on the River Kwai, which had won seven Oscars, and he was now looking to make his next great blockbuster.
To play Lawrence, Lean had originally wanted Marlon Brando, but Brando turned him down because the money wasn't good enough. Lean then selected the then unknown Peter O'Toole, with his brilliant blue-eyes. The next question was who to cast as Sherif Ali, a character based on various tribal chieftains who had fought alongside Lawrence. Lean did not want to use a European star; he wanted a more authentic actor. That's when he got in touch with Dilip Kumar, whose work he knew because of his personal experience of India.
A meeting was arranged with Dilip Kumar, where the charming and persuasive Lean pitched the role to him. But Dilip Kumar turned him down, and the role went to Omar Sharif who had originally been cast to play Tafas, Lawrence's desert guide who, ironically, is shot dead by Sherif Ali in his iconic introductory sequence. Thus, what was intended as Omar Sharif 's end in the film, turned out, instead, to be the beginning of a famous Hollywood career. He won an Oscar nomination for his role, and never looked back. Lawrence of Arabia itself, meanwhile, went on to be ranked as one of the greatest films in cinema history.
Sharif was in the right place at the right time: Hollywood, in the 1960s, needed an exotic multipurpose foreigner. Sadly, his playboy lifestyle eventually made him take up any mediocre role that would finance his lavish habits - leading him to ruefully comment in later years that he had squandered his career.
But the big mystery, of course, is: why did Dilip Kumar turn down a part that any actor would kill for? It seems an inexplicable career decision, especially given the fact that David Lean was at his prime as a director, having won seven Oscars with his last film.
Strangely, Dilip Kumar's autobiography, The Shadow And The Substance, doesn't shed much light on the matter, so one can only speculate. Was it was because he was then busy with his ambitious Ganga Jamuna project? Or be cause he believed his loyalty was to his Indian audiences? Or simply because he found David Lean too domineering a personality and was worried that the chemistry wouldn't work? All that Dilip Kumar has said on the subject is that he thought Omar Sharif had played the role far better than he himself could have.
Whatever the reason, it may well rank as one of the worst career moves in cinema history. Dilip Kumar lost the opportunity to take his talent onto a whole new, international level, right at the prime of his career. A big loss, especially for an actor noted for his ability to take risks, to learn, and evolve with every new role. One cannot help wonder: What if Dilip Kumar had, indeed, played the part? He was, unquestionably, a better actor than Omar Sharif (although, he might not have quite had Sharif 's homme fatale quality). He would have done a great job of Sherif Ali's role, quite likely even better than Omar Sharif did. He might have thus become one of Lean's pool of chosen talent, like Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins and Omar Sharif himself, whom the great director called upon to act in his subsequent productions.And then who knows what might have happened? Maybe, for one thing, Lean might have decided to make his critically acclaimed A Passage to India a couple of decades earlier, with Dilip Kumar playing a brilliant Dr Aziz.
But, that apart, Lawrence of Arabia would have opened other Hollywood doors for Dilip Kumar. And those experiences would have, in turn, helped enrich his future Hindi movie roles. He would have thus surely avoided the bad patch he went through in the 1970s, starting with Gopi and Sagina Mahato, which wiped out ten of the best years of his life. But one thing is for sure: Dilip Kumar would not, unlike Omar Sharif, have left Indian cinema and moved to Hollywood; he was too rooted, and modest, a person for that.
Nor, for that, matter is he likely to have romanced the likes of Ava Gardner, Catherine Deneuve, Julie Christie and Barbara Streisand. There would probably always have been a Saira Bano waiting for him back home. That is as much as one can say without breaking the rules of counterfactual history.
While Dilip Kumar did not act in Lawrence of Arabia, there was another Indian actor who did. And that was I S Johar, who played the minor role of Gasim, a Bedouin tribesman who Lawrence finally executes. The role got I S Johar his hour of glory back home in India, and many Indian fans went to see the film to watch his two minutes on screen. Just imagine the reception a Dilip Kumar would have got, locking his dark oriental eyes with Peter O'Toole's arctic blue eyes through the film's nearly four hours of epic running time.
The writer is an advertising professional and cinema buff
Director David Lean was an Indophile thanks, partly, to the fact that his fourth wife was Leela Welingkar, a legendary Hyderabadi beauty. Lean had recently made The Bridge on the River Kwai, which had won seven Oscars, and he was now looking to make his next great blockbuster.
To play Lawrence, Lean had originally wanted Marlon Brando, but Brando turned him down because the money wasn't good enough. Lean then selected the then unknown Peter O'Toole, with his brilliant blue-eyes. The next question was who to cast as Sherif Ali, a character based on various tribal chieftains who had fought alongside Lawrence. Lean did not want to use a European star; he wanted a more authentic actor. That's when he got in touch with Dilip Kumar, whose work he knew because of his personal experience of India.
A meeting was arranged with Dilip Kumar, where the charming and persuasive Lean pitched the role to him. But Dilip Kumar turned him down, and the role went to Omar Sharif who had originally been cast to play Tafas, Lawrence's desert guide who, ironically, is shot dead by Sherif Ali in his iconic introductory sequence. Thus, what was intended as Omar Sharif 's end in the film, turned out, instead, to be the beginning of a famous Hollywood career. He won an Oscar nomination for his role, and never looked back. Lawrence of Arabia itself, meanwhile, went on to be ranked as one of the greatest films in cinema history.
Sharif was in the right place at the right time: Hollywood, in the 1960s, needed an exotic multipurpose foreigner. Sadly, his playboy lifestyle eventually made him take up any mediocre role that would finance his lavish habits - leading him to ruefully comment in later years that he had squandered his career.
But the big mystery, of course, is: why did Dilip Kumar turn down a part that any actor would kill for? It seems an inexplicable career decision, especially given the fact that David Lean was at his prime as a director, having won seven Oscars with his last film.
Strangely, Dilip Kumar's autobiography, The Shadow And The Substance, doesn't shed much light on the matter, so one can only speculate. Was it was because he was then busy with his ambitious Ganga Jamuna project? Or be cause he believed his loyalty was to his Indian audiences? Or simply because he found David Lean too domineering a personality and was worried that the chemistry wouldn't work? All that Dilip Kumar has said on the subject is that he thought Omar Sharif had played the role far better than he himself could have.
Whatever the reason, it may well rank as one of the worst career moves in cinema history. Dilip Kumar lost the opportunity to take his talent onto a whole new, international level, right at the prime of his career. A big loss, especially for an actor noted for his ability to take risks, to learn, and evolve with every new role. One cannot help wonder: What if Dilip Kumar had, indeed, played the part? He was, unquestionably, a better actor than Omar Sharif (although, he might not have quite had Sharif 's homme fatale quality). He would have done a great job of Sherif Ali's role, quite likely even better than Omar Sharif did. He might have thus become one of Lean's pool of chosen talent, like Alec Guinness, Jack Hawkins and Omar Sharif himself, whom the great director called upon to act in his subsequent productions.And then who knows what might have happened? Maybe, for one thing, Lean might have decided to make his critically acclaimed A Passage to India a couple of decades earlier, with Dilip Kumar playing a brilliant Dr Aziz.
But, that apart, Lawrence of Arabia would have opened other Hollywood doors for Dilip Kumar. And those experiences would have, in turn, helped enrich his future Hindi movie roles. He would have thus surely avoided the bad patch he went through in the 1970s, starting with Gopi and Sagina Mahato, which wiped out ten of the best years of his life. But one thing is for sure: Dilip Kumar would not, unlike Omar Sharif, have left Indian cinema and moved to Hollywood; he was too rooted, and modest, a person for that.
Nor, for that, matter is he likely to have romanced the likes of Ava Gardner, Catherine Deneuve, Julie Christie and Barbara Streisand. There would probably always have been a Saira Bano waiting for him back home. That is as much as one can say without breaking the rules of counterfactual history.
While Dilip Kumar did not act in Lawrence of Arabia, there was another Indian actor who did. And that was I S Johar, who played the minor role of Gasim, a Bedouin tribesman who Lawrence finally executes. The role got I S Johar his hour of glory back home in India, and many Indian fans went to see the film to watch his two minutes on screen. Just imagine the reception a Dilip Kumar would have got, locking his dark oriental eyes with Peter O'Toole's arctic blue eyes through the film's nearly four hours of epic running time.
The writer is an advertising professional and cinema buff
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