|
|
 |
![]() |
 |
![]() |
 |
 |
 |
|
 |
|
![]() |
![]() |
![]() |
|
 25 years of a classic - Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro
It may be a cult film today. Back then, it was insanity. NASEERUDDIN SHAH looks back on the gritty elation of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro
SATISH SHAH clad in a burqa being wheeled along on roller skates by Ravi Baswani and myself on the crisscrossed pavement of Napean Sea Road and remarking that all his fillings seemed to have turned loose. The entire unit asleep in their positions awaiting the arrival of Bhakti Barve at 3 am, returning to shoot in Alibagh after a stage performance in Bombay. Organising a coffin to come barreling down Malabar Hill, then moving back uphill from the direction it came. The costume person being dispatched to Goregaon from Marine Drive at three in the morning to collect the laundered white suits which were needed but hadn't been delivered. Discovering, after boarding a local train which wouldn't stop till the next station, that my camera had been filched on the platform. Spoofing the Mahabharata on practically empty stomachs, arguing about logic in the telephone scene — just a few of the myriad memories of the making of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro that shall never fail to turn me moist-eyed and nostalgic.
In those days, the titles of films were not identified by abbreviations, we just called it "this f—-ing film we're shooting now". It was the pre-monsoon summer, the locations were the streets of Bombay and, above all, these were the pre 'air-conditioned trailers for actors' days. Unlike in these slick times, no wall-to-wall video coverage of the shoot occurred either; barely a photograph exists. I had become a bit of a villain even before the cameras rolled, having taken the unit further into the heat by causing a two-week delay in starting the film because my (then would-be) wife and I had decided that getting married on April 1 would be amusing. So, having bullied Kundan Shah into agreeing to the postponement, I arrived on April 15, straight from honeymooning in Goa to the most nightmarish shoot of my life. Nothing compares with it still!
When someone who has just caught the film on late-night cable delightedly asks, "shooting must have been such fun, no?" the simple answer should be an abrupt, unequivocal "No!" but I think all of us, without exception, smugly concur that it was (and in hindsight it sometimes even seems like it was), though the word 'fun' applied to a budget roughly equivalent to the cost of a day's shoot on a Shahrukh Khan extravaganza is stretching the facts. The cast had some wonderfully talented and highly respected but hardly marketable, and in some cases unrecognisable, actors. The shooting took place in some of the roughest locations imaginable and, often watched by hordes of jeering onlookers, these wonderful troupers had to try and be funny, all the while attempting to keep the sweat from pouring into their eyes. There were scenes demanding stuff which could rightly only be performed in cartoon animation — being asked to stand still on roller blades was the least of the excesses. The 12-hour shifts always got extended, sometimes by as much as 24 hours! We were all being paid peanuts, bringing our food from home and cribbing like hell, but to a man standing by the director and the film.
The script of Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro seemed to have been revealed to Kundan Shah in an inspired moment of transcendental, if not downright hallucinogenic, lunacy. I had never read or seen anything like it at the time, and while I was not absolutely sure that it was even coherent, I itched to have a crack at it. The cloak of 'serious' actor weighed too heavy on my shoulders and I just had to fling the accursed thing off. Little did I realise how utterly serious and strenuous this job would turn out to be and how many flaming, friendship-endangering rows would erupt while making this "little funny film."
Source : indiafm.com
Date : 26/06/08 |
|
![]() |
|
![]() |
 |
|
 |
|
![]() |
![]() |
|
|
|
![]() |
 |
![]() |
 |
|
![]() |
