A few months back, I compiled a few stories
around Hindi film scripts for a very popular magazine. The material got used in
bits and pieces for the cover story that they were doing. The cores of the stories
were picked up from books, old issues of magazines, video interviews, memoirs
of film personalities etc. Putting those stories here.
Pyaasa
Writer Abrar Alvi was visited in Bombay by
some of his rich friends from Hyderabad. With them, he ended up visiting
prostitutes and met a woman called Gulabo. He never had a physical relationship
with her but became very close friends, visiting her several times in the
red-light district and having long conversations about her life. Later on, Alvi
became very busy as a writer and could not remain in touch with Gulabo, who
succumbed to tuberculosis. In fact, Alvi was passing by her locality when he
decided to stop and meet her – only to see her funeral pass by. He recounted
this story to Guru Dutt, who asked him to write a script out of it. That story
became Pyaasa and Waheeda Rehman
played the on-screen Gulabo.
Sholay
(Mausi)
One of Sholay’s most memorable scenes – Jai’s
‘praise’ of Viru to Basanti’s mausi – had a real-life parallel because that was
exactly how writer Salim Khan took his partner Javed Akhtar’s proposal to Honey Irani’s mother, Perin. Since Javed did not have a cordial relationship with his
father, Salim was the ‘elder’ in his family but Salim’s ‘praise’ of Javed
pretty much cooked the marriage’s goose. The proposal went something like this:
-
“Ladka kaisa hai?”
-
“We are partners and I wouldn’t work with anyone
unless I approve of him. Lekin daaru bahut peeta hai.”
-
“Kya? Daaru bahut peeta hai!”
-
“Aaj kal bahut nahi peeta, bas ek do peg. Aur
is mein aisi koi kharabi nahin hai. Lekin daaru peene ke baad red light area
bhi jaata hai.”
Sholay (Tank)
While the entire
screenplay of Sholay had been written
right at the beginning, the exact nitty-gritties of individual scenes were
discussed before the shooting schedule and modifications made to the dialogue.
Viru’s most memorable scene – the drunken monologue atop the tank – was
discussed several times and Javed Akhtar was supposed to write the final lines.
He kept postponing it till it was time for him to return to Bombay from the
shooting location near Bangalore. He started writing on his drive to the airport
but Bangalore traffic then was nothing like what it is now and he reached the
airport before he could complete the scene. An assistant went inside the
airport to check him in while Javed kept the sheets of paper on the hood of his
car and kept on writing right till boarding was announced. He just about
managed to catch his flight and the lines he wrote went on to make box-office
history.
Amar
Akbar Anthony
Writer-director Prayag Raaj was a long-time
associate of Manmohan Desai and came to Desai’s home one evening to pick up
keys for a farmhouse where he wanted to spend a few days relaxing. When he
arrived, Desai told him about a news item about a man who left his three sons
at a park and committed suicide. What if he didn’t commit suicide and returned
to find the three sons missing, he wondered. Prayag Raaj was intrigued enough
by the idea to abandon his farmhouse plans and jam with Desai. What if the
three boys were picked up by a Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian, he countered.
They threw ideas around till late night with Manmohan Desai’s wife –
Jeevanprabha – also contributing and by the end of it, the story showed enough
promise to be developed into a full-fledged film.
Don
The cast of Don – Amitabh Bachchan, Zeenat Aman, Pran – had been assembled by
the director Chandra Barot and producer Nariman Irani but they did not have a
script. Nariman Irani’s wife,
Salma was Waheeda Rehman’s hairdresser and through her, they got Waheeda Rehman
to put in a word to her neighbour, Salim Khan.
Irani and Barot went
to meet Salim-Javed and the writers did have a script to spare. But they warned
the team of newcomers that the script had been rejected by pretty much the
entire industry including stars like Dev Anand and Jeetendra. Salim Khan
honestly asked them, “Humare paas ek
breakfast script padi hai jo koi nahin le raha hai... Chalega?” And the team
said, “Chalega”.
Salim then looked at
Javed and said, “Toh phir woh Don wali
script inhe de dete hain...”
Satya
Anurag Kashyap was about twenty-five when
he met Ram Gopal Varma and RGV asked him to write a script based on a one-line
idea: “Let’s put Howard Roark of The Fountainhead in the Mumbai underworld.”
Anurag started writing the script but RGV brought in Saurabh Shukla because he
felt someone more mature should be involved. Anurag was not happy about this
but nevertheless they went to RGV’s farmhouse in Hyderabad and wrote the first
draft in about a week.
When they were discussing with RGV on how
to name the characters – who had to look and sound real – RGV told his office
boy, “Bhiku, teen coffee lana...” And
the name stuck.
(After the first three days of shooting,
Gulshan Kumar was shot dead and the underworld’s equation with Bollywood
changed. Ram Gopal Verma trashed the script written so far and started
afresh.)
Rang
De Basanti
Director Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra and writer
Kamlesh Pandey were in Gujarat for researching a documentary when they met
every evening and – with nothing to drink in the dry state – had anguished
discussions about the state of the country’s affairs. This led to the idea of
making a film on the armed freedom struggle of India and they wanted to call it
The Young Guns of India. Kamlesh
Pandey researched two years to write a first draft but when they bounced the
idea off a group of Mumbai college students, they rejected it – unable to
identify with the young revolutionaries of the 1920s. When Mehra wondered how
to make this story relevant, he remembered a NDTV story on the faulty MiG
aircrafts in the Indian Air Force and decided to rewrite the script with that
as the focal point.
Delhi
Belly
The script of Delhi Belly was written by Akshat Verma and he pitched the concept
to pretty much every big production house in Mumbai. Everyone made soft happy
noises but eventually backed out. He tried getting in touch with Aamir Khan as
well but could not reach the notoriously reclusive star. He left the script
with Aamir’s maid and went back to LA (where he is based). The script was
placed among a heap of unread scripts (yes, Aamir has one such heap at home!)
and Kiran Rao happened to pick it out at random. She laughed so hard while
reading the script that Aamir also read it and immediately called the writer on
the number given on the first page of the script. 48 hours later, Akshat and
his associate Jim Furgele were in Mumbai, narrating the script and figuring out
shooting plans.
Gangs
of Wasseypur
Zeishan Quadri had come from Dhanbad to
Mumbai to become an actor. In between auditions, he hung around with other
hopefuls and ended up watching the gangster classic City of God. He told his friends – Sachin Ladia and Akhilesh
Jaiswal – this was nothing compared to the crime saga that unfolded in his
hometown. This was met with disbelief till he came up with a flurry of stories
and they made a treatment out of the stories. They managed to corner Anurag
Kashyap inside the Prithvi Theatre complex. The director told all of them to
write their own versions of the screenplay, which they did (including Zeishan,
who had never written a script and wrote a novel instead). Anurag Kashyap took
this voluminous material and went to Madrid, where Kalki Koechlin was shooting
for Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. In four
days, he wrote the script for Part 1
and half of Part 2 (while staying in
a hotel full of transsexuals). On his way back, the airline lost the bag which
had the script. He stayed in the airport for two days till they found the bag.
(On his way back from Spain, he was
supposed to come directly to Delhi where Hindustan Times had organised a
screening of Udaan and he was
supposed to introduce it.)
Screen writers have been a big obsession for a long time now and much of the last two years was devoted towards researching some of the best. This post is an appetiser for – hopefully – bigger stories.
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