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Written by DON
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Monday, 18 January 2010 18:24 |
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Karan Johar talks about not wasting time, making more films, joys, disappointments, loves and life!
The day's a different one than it usually is. And the KJo I meet with ahead of his upcoming film, My Name is Khan is also a decidedly different bloke. We chat nineteen to the dozen about quite a few things: making SRK  play imperfect men in his films, his views on the Farah-Shah Rukh Khan dosti going kaput, his love for retail therapy and several grouses. Read on...
In KANK, you gave SRK a limp, and in MNIK you've given him a birth disorder. What's next?
(Laughs) I enjoyed making him play the scarred and cynical Dev in KANK because he has always played the perfect man, husband, son etc. But MNIK is different, because his disorder is very critical to the narrative. Rizwan Khan (SRK's character) could not be neuro-typical to do what he does in the film. There is something very clouded about what you and I are all about. We are far too cluttered and clouded and tuned in to too many things to be really, really honest at heart. We are all living in shades of grey. Rizwan needed to be an endearing, honest man. I guess it took a disorder to reach that level.
It's a sad world we live in...
Ya, but what Rizwan does despite his disorder is aspirational. Because in terms of goodness and humanity, you won't find people like him today.
In Hindi films, heroes are expected to be perfect. Yours is autistic.
Rizwan isn't a perfect hero... but what is the perfect hero anymore? I think SRK is playing a superhero in my film. He has more power -- humanity -- a forgotten force. He cannot see through your head, cannot fly, or jump from one building to another but he has that rare indelible quality, which is more powerful. It comes from an organic place in his heart. I'm hoping people buy into that.
You must feel proud to have 20th Century Fox as your distributor.
Jim Gianopulos, the main man in Fox, has a passion for doing something in India. I told him at the very beginning that I am not delusional about where we (Hindi cinema) are in the world. Filmmakers in India feel that if you have an international distributor, you can release in 2000 screens. No, they don't really give a rat's a**e about us. We are just a small part of the world to them, so let's not kid ourselves. We are not Slumdog Millionaire, an English language film by celebrated international director Danny Boyle. You have to know that what you do, you do for India, for Asia, and your loyal diaspora. First, cater to them. Don't even pretend to go anywhere else. So my idea of Fox was that they will give me a one per cent bigger platform. Maybe ten new territories will open up because of them. But beyond that, I am not expecting anything. Being at the Oscars' is wonderful but I'm happier winning awards here.
You haven't won any major awards after your debut, right?
After KKHH, my films have been nominated but I have never won any major award. There was always another film better than mine. Every film from Dharma has made me a slightly larger entity but has left me disappointed. In the year of K3G, I had to battle with Dil Chahta Hai and Lagaan. When Kal Ho Naa Ho released, there was Koi Mil Gaya. And during KANK, I was combating Rang De... and Munnabhai. There has always been a sinking feeling with every film. I am kind of used to that now. I don't know when I last celebrated a success like a hundred per cent. Like, 'oh shit. I want to throw a party, look what happened. Everyone has loved my film â the classes, the masses, the critics, the trade'. I feel I don't get that all-round acceptance because I am not an underdog. I look like I am having a great time at a party, people think I am a picture of affluence in front rows, and when I host there is a certain aplomb, so people think, 'He is looking too happy in a black suit, so sc**w him.' I think stubble, messy hair, shabby dressing and thirty kilos more and I will be fine. That will be my marketing gimmick post-Khan.
MNIK is your most expensive film. Are you ever going to learn budgeting?
(sighs) No. I am ashamed of myself. I am appalled my sense of spending vis-a-vis budgeting. I am really disgusting. And I apologise to all concerned. It's a good thing I make movies for my banner... No one should ever hire me as a director. My own company should stop hiring me. I think we should just encourage younger talents to make films for my banner.
And who will control them?
My CEO and me... I pretty much try. I try to pretend to be savvy with them.
Despite the money spent (89 crores) opulence in Khan is missing. In terms of special effects, sets, songs, and costumes etc, right?
Yes. The spending won't show. We tend to associate money spent with opulence. But here, there is a lot of subtle but large expenditure. We had two very large schedules. One in LA and the other in San Francisco. It's a journey film, so we had marathon (250) location shifts. We had a large American cast and a lot of crowd scenes. We had to adhere to rules and regulations that actually do impact the budget in a large way.
The decision to bring SRK's Red Chillies and your Dharma together: an emotional decision or a financial one?
Entirely emotional to start off with. And then financial. I told Shah Rukh, 'The budget is so high, I have no money to pay you.' But more than anything else, I wanted Aryan and Suhana (SRK's children) to own this film. We are very proud of the fact that we made this film which has a very powerful message that we are trying to give very subliminally. It is a quintessential Shah Rukh Khan film, in terms of the character he plays, and what he is trying to say. And I felt very strongly that the kids must have this property with them.
It is largely believed that MNIK is about terrorism..but that's a misconception, right?
Totally. I have become fed up of answering this question. So all I can say is that it has nothing to do with terrorism.
Will you ever make a film without SRK? Two years ago, Farah Khan said she never would but now she is...
Right now, I am obsessed with MNIK. I have no idea what I will do next. And I think what Farah and Shah Rukh are still very close. And I don't want to comment on what is happening today between them. But I know in my head and heart that he and I are beyond our work. Films are not the reason why we are close, not anymore. And I think it has a lot to do with his wife, Gauri. I can go into his house when he is not there, and spend the whole day feeling like I am home. And when I am not in town, he checks in on my mother. That defines us. And makes us stronger. And I think that is a great barrier to have crossed because at one time, we were all about work. And vis-a-vis Farah and him, I think a lot of what is being said, is not true. A lot is just being said and perceived and I feel sometimes people around make relationships much worse. I think there is a lot of love and history between them, and as is the line of the month, let me just say that, 'Aal izz well.'
Will you ever make a comedy -- the only genre that seems to be raking in the big bucks?
I'd love to. But I have a problem with a certain kind of comedy -- which asks me to leave my brains behind at home. That is not an option. I feel even comedy can have a brain. It's my brain and I take it wherever I go.
But that's changed now...
Yes, I think that 3 Idiots is perfect example of taking your brains with you, and having a great time.
Yes, and given your sense of humour... it will be a riot... so when?
I don't know what I want to make next, but I do know is that I will make a film immediately. This time, I have decided that my film releases on February 12 and by Feb 20, my thinking cap comes on. I am going to write. And I want to start a film by this year-end. By December, I want to be on the floor. And then, I'll begin working on my next film.
Why the rush?
The more time I waste, the less cinema I make. I don't have a domestic existence, I don't have kids. My life is my mother and my cinema. I cannot not satisfy both instincts within me. I cannot waste a year. I feel whether I make a good film, bad film, hit film or flop film, I have to put out work. Because that is all I am. I am all about my movies. There are three things that drive me: my emotional requirement, my filmmaking and shopping.
That is soooooooooooo cute!
(Smiles) This will sound ridiculous coming from a supposedly serious filmmaker but let me tell you: Retail therapy does it for me. It gives me a high. People ask me what turns me on. There is nothing more satisfying that taking your credit card and buying something new. And then wearing it. I would love to portray a far more intellectual self but this is what you get.
You are perennially happy. So why did you keep welling up on stage during the MNIK music release?
I think I'm growing old and I am getting more emotional with passing year. Or maybe I have always been emotional and now I have started showing it a lot more. That night when Shah Rukh and Kajol talking about me, just took me back to the fact that they are both so much the reason why I became a filmmaker. My father loved Shah Rukh and Kajol and he used to tell me, 'make a film with them." But in his lifetime we only did Kuch Kuch... and Kabhi Khushi and that night, I kept remembering that. On that stage, when I looked on my left -- I don't know if this makes sense to you --- I felt like my dad was there and that moment just got to me. I swear that if I really hadn't gathered my composure, I would have broken down. I was reaching a point that where nerves were mixed with emotion and that equals a meltdown. Some-where I stopped because I told myself, 'I am in a suit, I can't breakdown. It just won't go'. I had a silent cry that night. Just to myself when I came home that night. It felt really good and I felt it was my way of getting blessings from my father. The next day, I was fine.
You've had two controversies with your last two films. Does that make you feel controlled in terms of what you can do as a filmmaker?
It makes me worry. I mean there are so many stories I want to tell. There is so much I want to say. I want to feel as democratic as the country. But I don't. I feel like my hands are tied. I go over my dialogues again and again because I am thinking about who will get upset and react. Is this democracy? We have created a dictatorship. Largely, I feel that we are a very vulnerable industry and we should be protected much, much more. We are creative people who provide entertainment to millions. How come we are not given the kind of credibility that we deserve and need. The high powers, the authorities must look at us and protect us.
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Written by Aks
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Thursday, 14 January 2010 21:05 |
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He quit studies after Class XII at Mumbai’s N.M. College much to his parents’ horror, choosing to work as an assistant director for four years. After his pin-up worthy debut in 1988, he wept every day coming home from work, convinced that the nine films he had signed in a rush would crash his career. Then in 2002, after he separated from Reena, his wife of 16 years, he drank a bottle of Bacardi every day for a year-and-a-half, except for the six hours a week and every alternative weekend he would see his children. Not what you would call the perfect ingredients for success. But Aamir Hussain Khan, all 44 years and 5 ft 7 inches of him, his wife’s diamond studs twinkling in ears pierced for Lagaan, has always swum against the tide.
Aamir
Aamir Khan: The man with many talents
Only now the tide seems to be swimming with him. He’s just starred in 3 Idiots, a film that has been breaking box office records at home and abroad, making Rs 240 crore in 10 days and still counting. His last four films, released over three successive years, Rang De Basanti, Fanaa, Taare Zameen Par and Ghajini, made a collective box office revenue of over Rs 590 crore. He makes an average of Rs 10 crore a year from each of the six brands he endorses. The way he marketed Ghajini will now be taught as part of a course in film marketing at IIM-Ahmedabad. The profit he is contemplating from 3 Idiots, as a result of a wise decision to forego his fees and split the profit three ways between producer Vidhu Vinod Chopra, director Raju Hirani and himself, will be over Rs 20 crore. But more than that, his films have consistently hit a nerve with audiences, either getting them to participate in candlelight vigils inspired by Rang De Basanti, treat children with greater sensitivity as in Taare Zameen Par or even cause them to bulk up their bodies as in Ghajini.
In an industry ripped apart by camps, he is his own institution, working with untested new directors (Farhan Akhtar in Dil Chahta Hai) and even failed filmmakers (Ashutosh Gowariker, who had two flops behind him, in Lagaan). He’s been a producer for the smash hit Jaane Tu… Ya Jaane Na which starred his nephew and made Rs 115 crore at the box office, a director for Taare Zameen Par and even the unofficial CEO of Ghajini Inc. He shuns the awards circus and has never been seen in public performing song and dance routines. Yet his decision to act in one movie at a time is now a mass mantra and a sure career cure. His help was sought in resolving the two-month stand-off with multiplexes last year. And equally, his move to not charge a fee for 3 Idiots could set off a trend of stars putting their talent where their mouth is in these leaner, meaner times.
Yet as he sits folded up in his favourite chair in the projection room of his home, two floors below his mother’s home where he was born and brought up, it is hard to think of the word superstar. He exudes an aura, but the room is more suited to that of a messy student, with books such as Katherine Frank’s Indira to Abraham Verghese’s The Tennis Partner sharing shelf space with PC games and Bob Dylan and Sufi qawwali CDs. The make-up room is stacked with the tools of his trade, from spare costumes to a wigmaker’s dummy. And the terminal above his computer has chronologically labelled scripts. The actor himself is on his fourth coffee, talking about how he lost weight for his role of Rancho in 3 Idiots, which director Rajkumar Hirani rewrote for Khan. He speaks of how he modelled the 17-year-old on the boyish director of Ghajini, A.R. Murugadoss, and his 14-year-old nephew Pablo, who can never sit still. He jumps up to demonstrate, as he often does in his exuberance, contorting his body like an over-active teenager. “But Rancho was also dangerous because he is without a flaw. The audience’s heart doesn’t go out to such a guy. So I made him curious rather than cocky,” he says.
Straight from the heart
“I feel I’m a special person and if someone does something to me, I just remove myself from that person’s life.”
“My brain is like a computer in its memory for scripts. It just soaks everything in and then it’s in my head at all times. I’m often thinking of the part and it starts coming to me. Then I start collecting the information. Often it’s not thought out.”
“The two mistakes I made early on was signing nine films within six months of my debut and giving too much importance to scripts, not directors.”
“A star’s dependability is measured by his unsuccessful films. Whatever business it does is because of him.”
“I was 16 when I realised I wanted to be an actor. My school friend Aditya Bhattacharya decided to cast me in a 40-minute silent film called Paranoia, financed with Rs 8,000 from actor Shriram Lagoo. Making that film convinced me that this is where I belonged. Shabana Azmi saw it and told my parents. All hell broke loose.”
“Seeing my father go bankrupt when his film Locket was stuck for eight years taught me to be responsible to the market.”
“My first instinct when I go home is to pick up a book, not the remote. I’ve been reading since I was six.”
Thinking deeply about his character is something Khan has done increasingly, whether it is Bhuvan’s stance in Lagaan, with his weight evenly distributed on his legs to suggest inner strength, or Aakash’s darting eyes in Dil Chahta Hai indicating what a shallow layabout he is. Khan thinks in close-up, wide shot and mid-shot, in total physicality, says film scholar Nasreen Munni Kabir. He borrows a lot of his technique from observation–for one scene where Mona Singh slaps him while he is helping her deliver in 3 Idiots, he cheerfully admits to copying from his ex-wife Reena’s difficult labour for their first born. And even more cheerfully says he loves talking to interesting new people. “Sometimes I feel like sucking their brains out.”
Aamir
Khan with Hirani (right) at a promotional tour of Nagpur for 3 Idiots.
Khan is a star who doesn’t play himself in every film, as Amitabh Bachchan did at the height of his fame or Shah Rukh Khan tends to do. He plays the character, which may be why he tends to work with new directors, who help in creating a fresh persona every time. “Audiences now expect an element of surprise from him,” points out Kabir. “Like a magician, they want him to conjure up a new character.”
Once he has identified the perfect script, a director whose vision he shares, and a producer who will back it, Khan surrenders himself to the moment. There’s no spillover, no hangover. Everything apart from the movie goes into soft focus. “When I read a script, it just goes straight to my brain,” he says. “It’s like a computer in its memory. It just soaks everything in and then it’s in my head at all times,” he adds, even as he acts out the first part he got in a play in Class XII. It was a line as a painter in a Gujarati play, a role he couldn’t actually perform because he was sacked for missing a day of rehearsals. The line remains etched in his hard drive. He repeats it now: “Bloody hell, no one marries me. I wish his mother gets married to a dog.”
Aamir
Aamir with nephew Imran
On the sets, Khan is a trooper. He will hang out even when he doesn’t have lines, or just play Scrabble with the assistants. He will promote the film across the country on every media he can find. And he will just not want to go home. Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra, who directed him in Rang De Basanti, and has been a friend since, says, “He makes himself completely accessible to the filmmaker.” Kunal Kohli, who directed him in Fanaa, recalls how Khan was apologetic even asking him for four days off in the middle of the shoot in Mumbai in 2005 because he wanted to get married to Kiran Rao, a highly rated assistant director whose debut feature Dhobi Ghat will release this year. “He’s there whether it is for readings or costume trials,” adds Kohli. “And he’s just incredibly intelligent. How many people do you know who can solve the Rubik’s cube with one hand?”
Khan calls this quality “obsessive” and regrets that he cannot spend more time with his children, Junaid, 16, and Ira, 11, when he is acting in a film. His cousin, Nuzhat Hussain, a psychoanalyst, who lives in the building next door, has been close to him since he was 10 and she 15. She says the level of professionalism in his work where each person is given due respect is reflected in his personal life as well, where he is fastidious about his honesty. He simply cannot tell a lie. “But he is not superhuman. He does make mistakes. He hurts himself. But he is totally open to learning and feeling new things, which I think is an act of courage,” says Hussain. Khan does have self-doubts. Personally, yes, and also professionally. But he refuses to compromise on his films. He says he learnt that lesson early on when he signed a spate of films in a hurry on the basis of their scripts and then realised the director’s vision was completely different from his. He recalls that when he was at his lowest point, having been dismissed as a one film wonder, it was Mahesh Bhatt who offered him a hand, discussing a script with him, which as luck would have it, he didn’t like it.
Kiran
Aamir’s wife Kiran
“He was at the peak of his talent, having just done Saaransh, Arth and Naam and I didn’t know how I could tell him I didn’t like his script. So I bought time, came home and asked Reena. She told me to follow my heart. I did, telling Bhattsaab that I wanted to do instead was a remake of one of my favourite films, Roman Holiday, with Sridevi. He listened but then took out a screenplay of Frank Capra’s 1934 film It Happened One Night. Six months later, we would do the film together as Dil Hai Ki Manta Nahin.” That’s a lesson of following his happiness that he hasn’t forgotten since then. It’s taught him to do things his way, to go with his gut instinct even when every practical sense is screaming no, as it did when Mehra narrated Rang De Basanti to him, which was coming on the heels of four Bhagat Singh flops. And if he still needs advice, he turns to Hussain, who is producer Nasir Hussain’s daughter, and actor Imran Khan’s mother. “She’s one person I go to when I need to talk about anything,” he says warmly. “She’s a great thinker.”
Stardom sits simply on him. Yes, there are the six bodyguards who travel everywhere with him. His man Friday Sachin, his girl Friday Sarita, and his manager Binki seem to stay awake all night. There is also the flashy Toyota Landcruiser and the Rs 10-crore sprawling house in Panchgani. But Khan is essentially a middle-class man, who thinks nothing of upturning the Body Shop shower gel to catch the last drop or blindly trusting his accountant of 20 years to invest his money well. It’s ingrained in him because his most formative years, eight to 14, were spent in the shadow of his father, producer Tahir Hussain’s imminent bankruptcy.
Coming soon
This year Khan intends to focus onhis three home productions
DHOBI GHAT
It’s his wife Kiran Rao’s first feature film, based on her script, with multiple concurrent stories, all set in Mumbai. Khan plays a divorced painter while Prateik Babbar is the protagonist.
PEEPLI LIVE
A comic view of a farmer’s life directed by former journalist Anusha Rizvi, based on her own script. It’s one of the first films from India to be selected in the competitive section of the Sundance Film Festival. Khan has high hopes from it.
DELHI BELLY
An urban comedy about three strugglers, starring Imran Khan, stand up comics Vir Das and Kunal Roy Kapoor. Is directed by ad filmmaker Abhinay Deo. Khan will be sitting in on its post-production and will then plan the marketing.
“My father spent eight years making a film called Locket which was stalled because actors wouldn’t give him dates,” he says now. “For five years, I remember him getting calls from creditors every day asking him when he would return their money. And my father would always say I’m trying my best. One night, he woke up in the middle of the night, looking for his graduation certificate so he could get a job and feed us. Our fees would always be late and our names would be called out in school,” he says of himself and his three siblings, sisters Nikhat and Farhat, and brother Faisal. They survived only because a film their father did in between, Dulha Bikta Hai on dowry, became a surprise hit. That was also the time Khan was devoted to tennis, playing five hours a day at the Khar Gymkhana, travelling all over from Kolhapur to Pune, sharing rooms in lodges with seven other children, becoming Maharashtra No. 1 in boys. But then one day when he was 14, his father, something of a tyrant, announced to his mother that Khan should give up tennis because his marks were falling. “My marks stayed where they were but my tennis stopped,” recalls Khan.
He learnt two valuable life lessons from his childhood. One was how to tell a story, as he would sit in a corner of his drawing room listening fascinatedly to writers and directors pitching their narrations to his father. “My father would say things like ‘tell me the story in one line please’, ‘what is your premise’ or ‘but where’s the conflict?’,” remembers Khan, things he now knows are taught in film schools. He also learnt the importance of making money for the producers and distributors of his films.
“As an actor it is my responsibility to ensure the producer makes his money back and the audience gets its money worth,” he says. It’s one reason the cerebral actor, who gets excited by Rajmohan Gandhi’s biography of Gandhi, also proudly admits to reading Bollywood trade papers. After all, as a child, his father would make him write down box office collections of his films on the phone from places such as Amravati and Aurangabad.
As much as he is an individualist, Khan needs his family around him. He’s close to his mother, Zeenat, now 74, who lives in Pune and whom he is now persuading to return and live with him. There are things she taught him he will never forget. “I remember I would come back from my tennis matches and tell her I’d won, and she would congratulate me while making tea for me. And then ask, but what of the boy who lost? His ammi must be very upset. That would be enough to depress me.” It taught him empathy and he started regarding his rival as a human being, whom he would share a cold drink with or an after-match vada pav. There are other things she taught him well–he’s probably the only star who knocks before entering a room in his own home and who remembers to show visitors the washroom while they wait for him to freshen up.
Aamir
Aamir with ex-wife Reena
He also seems to be looking better than ever. Khan attributes it to his dietician Vinod Dhurandhar who brought his weight down to 68 kg while making 3 Idiots. He slept eight hours a day at least and also started playing badminton, sometimes two hours a day, with students at IIM-Bangalore where they shot for 3 Idiots for over a month. He drinks four litres of water a day. And while friends say he is not above binge drinking, being able to put away several Bacardis for four days in a row, he has stopped smoking for over a year now.
“I just went cold turkey,” he says. “I realised this with the three-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week training I did for Ghajini for over a year. The human mind is a very powerful tool. If it wants something badly, the body will give it. It’s like what yogis say.” Yet for such a sober individual, Khan can be a fun person, who enjoys learning skiing with his children in Canada as much as he takes pleasure in the piano lessons his wife Kiran gives him. He adores Calvin & Hobbes and as is obvious from his well aimed barbs at Shah Rukh, he revels in a little light mischief. The best part about him, says long-time friend, ad man Prasoon Joshi who’s worked with him on several campaigns and written songs for some of his films, he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
Amit Khanna, chairman of Reliance Entertainment which distributed 3 Idiots, believes Khan is a throwback to the Dilip Kumar-Raj Kapoor-Dev Anand era when filmmakers lived for cinema and believed it had a higher social purpose beyond making money. “Yet he’s as savvy as the new kids on the block, up to speed with Facebook and blogging.” Khan doesn’t quite put it so grandly. “Money doesn’t excite me. It gives me comfort but it’s not what makes me tick. Neither does throwing my weight around, or making a noisy entry or making a scene. Give me a great book or a great script any day.” Given his anointment as the new box office guru of gyaan, there should be no shortage of the latter.
The Bold and the beautiful
Aamir says he has always marched to the tune of his own drummer. “My choices were unusual. But when I started out, I didn’t have the power I have now. I had to fight against market forces who were foxed by my so-called bizarre moves.”
QAYAMAT SE QAYAMAT TAK, 1988
Director: Mansoor Khan
Made at the height of the disco era, it was a breath of fresh air, heralding Sooraj Barjatya’s Maine Pyar Kiya and Aditya Chopra’s Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. “When we shot it, I was 21 and when it released, I was 23. We would wonder who will watch the film in the theatres.”
RANGEELA, 1995
Director: Ram Gopal Varma
“Ramu had four flops before this. Urmila (Matondkar) had eight. The film had no story,” he says. But his loveable tapori Munna became the template for Sanjay Dutt’s Munnabhai.
GHULAM, 1998
Director: Vikram Bhatt
“It was one of the first films at that time about disenchanted youth. This supposed hero had such sham bravado. He was a macho guy who became almost cerebral.” Khan says it took a little time for the market to understand that it would not lose money on his films.
SARFAROSH, 1999
Director: John Mathew Mathan
Mathan was unknown when he came to Khan with Sarfarosh but the movie, with its tough guy police officer, ACP Rathore, and anti terrorist theme “really shocked people as it came out of the blue”. He says it marked the turning point for the trade’s belief in his bankability.
LAGAAN, 2001
Director: Ashutosh Gowariker
Khan says, “When I told the late Jhamu Sughand, who was a very hardcore businessman, that I’m doing this film with Gowariker and it will cost a lot of money, he didn’t blink. He never asked me are you sure? 1893 and cricket? Sports films haven’t worked in India. But he didn’t question me.”
RANG DE BASANTI, 2006
Director: Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra
“I told my sister, who is in New York, that I was making the fifth remake of Bhagat Singh. The first four had flopped. She told me you’ve got to be kidding.” The film’s nihilism set off debates and its emotional activism sparked candlelight marches but Khan’s flashy DJ was memorable. To use his words, “so nice”.
TAARE ZAMEEN PAR, 2007
Director: Aamir Khan
It was written by Amole Gupte who directed it for a week, until Khan, the producer, took over from him. He made a simple story of a dyslexic child into a timely movie questioning the education system, which turned out to be a surprise hit.
3 IDIOTS, 2009
Director: Rajkumar Hirani
“My character Rancho was written in a dangerous way. He had no flaws. Your heart doesn’t go out to him. It’s the flaws that make you loveable. When I realised that very early on, I told Hirani I don’t want to play it in a heroic manner as he will get on people’s nerves. I didn’t want to play it smart but naturally curious.” The role required him to lose 10 kg, act like a 17-year-old, terrorise a principal, deliver a baby, and break off an engagement.
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Written by DON
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Thursday, 14 January 2010 18:36 |
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Discovery Travel & Living trailed Shah Rukh Khan for over a year to put together a special ten-part series on the superstar.
Much as I love Mumbai and Delhi and India, I think London would be my next favourite place on earth. I like the weather, the greenness, the cold. Normally I come here for work and holidays but I love coming here. There were two places in the world which my mom wanted me to see, one was Madame Tussauds in London and the other was the Louvre in Paris. So it’s the greatest moment and achievement of my life that I am in Madame Tussauds. She would have been very proud.
When I’m in London, I go to Hyde Park to play soccer with my kids and their friends. I don’t play unfair. Aryan will cheat a bit but he should not. Since he’s playing against the girls, maybe he wants to win but I think he does that in school also which is not good. I think this is his one bad habit that I need to change. You don’t cheat and win. You don’t lie and win.
You can tell the difference between boys and girls when they are playing. You can spend 20 minutes with the boys and 20 minutes with the girls. You may have fun with the boys but you realise life is best with the women and so I like to be with girls. And I want them to be really tough. At least the girls whom I know, they should be tough and should kick all these idiots around. Guys are a little dumb. I am sorry, I may lose some male fans but the girls rock!
I beat my children, fair and square, when we’re playing. I love them the most. I am the gentlest father. I could never ever hurt them in my life. I don’t think I love anything in this world more than my children. But I am ready to beat them fair and square – and I am very very thrilled if they beat me. Like I said, I am not talking about competition in films, I am talking about my own children. But it will take them a long long time to beat me.
I like kids; I like the company of kids more than adults. I don’t do baby talk with kids. I think they need to be treated like, you know, how you would treat a normal guy and that turns out best.
In a strange sense, as wrong and politically incorrect as it may sound, I like kids how Michael Jackson liked kids. I really understand it. I mean, for years I have understood. Obviously we are from different cultures. We think differently, we behave differently but I fully understand it and appreciate it because I am like that. I can spend the whole day, a whole month in a room full of kids. As a matter of fact, I remember when my own children were small, when Aryan was just five or six, I shared my biggest depression with them. I don’t like to talk to people about my sadness and I think the only people I have spoken to and that too when they did not understand anything were Aryan and Suhana. I sat them down and told them I am really sad while they rolled all over me.
SRK with son AryanOne of the fears all big stars have is what happens when all this ends. I think the cutest thing that my kids have made me feel is this: I don’t have that fear anymore. I have this fantastic plan when all this ends. I have the hugest thing to look forward – which is just being with my kids. Maybe they won’t have time for me though. Well, I will bring them up in such a way that they will bring me to Hyde Park when I am 65 and play football with me.
I can see myself at 72 when my son is giving me the cycle or a wheelchair. And I am convinced that my daughter will take me to Hamleys and say, let’s go and buy you a book. Or she’ll say, listen, I have got an interview at 5:30 and after that you come and meet me at Waterstone’s. She might be 35 that time but I know she will take out time for me. I think it’s one of the nicest things that will happen to me.
“Nobody in my house treats me like a star”
SRK was on a year-end vacation to Dubai with his family when we requested a short interview. Though he was on holiday, he agreed and we did this quick Q&A over the phone. Even as he spoke, one could hear kids shouting and yelling in the background – clearly having a great time. Shah Rukh told us that his wife and in-laws had gone out, but he’d preferred to stay back with the kids and their friends.
Excerpts from the interview:
What’s it been like, doing this show for Discovery Travel & Living?
Actually I don’t understand why people want to see my personal life. But it hasn’t been too difficult. If I found the crew intrusive, I’d just tell them and they wouldn’t shoot. Like I don’t like to be shot while I’m eating, so they didn’t do that.
You come across as such a devoted father. But is it really possible for Shah Rukh Khan the star to be a normal dad?
When my kids were much younger, they used to get scared when people would rush up to me. They also found it odd that their classmates referred to me by my name. Today of course they know. But they don’t think of me as anyone special. That has to do with my wife actually, nobody at home treats me like a star. My kids wouldn’t even see KBC (Kaun Banega Crorepati) regularly on TV when I was hosting it.
I’m a little reclusive. I hate going out. I’d rather not go to a party. Even now, seven-eight of them (kids) are around. Everyone else has gone out but I’ve stayed back with them.
Even my meetings… I did a meeting with Lalit (Modi) at an amusement park in Austria. We were there for three hours with all the kids in that park. Tomorrow I have a couple of meetings in the Water World park here.
This year I’ve mostly been home because of my injury so I’ve been able to spend a lot of time with my kids. It keeps me young. The other day I was with Yashji and he suddenly hugged me and said, ‘You’re 44 years old but you’re just like a kid!’
I know your kids are, well, just kids right now, but is it a foregone conclusion that they will also get into films?
I don’t know yaar. They’re really into sports. They’re playing all the time and look dirty and unkempt. That’s the way I like them. It’s their choice. They have to be passionate about acting if they want to take it up. Actually we don’t even say it as a joke ki bade hoke hero banega.
SRK with familyMy son is becoming kinder to me now because he knows how important movies are for me. They like me to do action. I try and select films which will appeal to my children. When I did Chak De! India, I got 30 kids to see the film. They laughed, they clapped – and I knew the film would do well. When people come to me and say, my child sings your song, I know that that particular song will turn out to be a big hit.
You’re hardly doing any films these days. There’s just My Name Is Khan…
I got injured, and so had a lay off for a year. I’m feeling better now. In February I’m starting Ra.1, which will finish by June-July. Then in July, I might do a small film. In September I start shooting for Don II.
My Name Is Khan is so different. I think audiences outgrow similar kind of filmmaking. Om Shanti Om was an in-your-face commercial movie. Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi was about a regular guy. My Name Is Khan is about an underdog who triumphs. Ra.1 is about a superhero who can fly around. It’s a film very close to my heart. It’s being done by Anubhav Sinha. I’m also having meetings with Vishal (Bhardwaj) and Anurag Basu. Inshallah, something will come out of these meetings.
'Everybody has a cool van. so my wife said to me, why don’t you get yourself a nice van?’
Time starts when I come to a place. I am not bound by time, otherwise I would never manage. I am never on time for meetings and I am very proud of it or at least I am not ashamed of it. I am disorganised about time but I know I manage to meet 85,000 people in a year. Genuinely, I am able to talk to 45 filmmakers in a year. I am able to do three films in a year. I am able to spend great quality time with my children. I am able to give full attention to my wife and my sister. I am able to do everything that I wish to do. So I have actually in a certain sense, conquered time which makes me feel sometimes that I may have conquered death, but that’s not going to happen. But I have conquered time.
SRK in his vanity vanMy wife and kids actually started making me do this (waving to fans outside his house, Mannat). They said these people keep waiting, you should wave out to them when you are at home. So I did. I feel humble, I don’t feel any iconic status because of this.
It’s not a feeling which you can really express. I show a lot of graciousness and gratitude and say that it makes me feel really good, and it does. It makes me feel wanted, it does. It makes me love, it does. But I don’t know how to express it.
This is the closest anyone who does not know me, gets to see me really. And I want them to know that there is nothing special about this. I don’t dress up for this occasion and give a speech. If it continues for another ten years, maybe I will start out speaking to people through a megaphone. If I had a choice, I would start dancing out there and let them have a great entertaining evening. I am actually planning to make a little place there so that they can see me better. Put on a little music and do a little dance for them. So that they go back home with some experience.
A van has become a big thing for stars lately. Everybody has a cool van. So my wife said, why don’t you get yourself a van? You deserve it. You work very hard. So you must have a nice looking van.
So I had these people, like Dilip Chabbria, they were really sweet and they said that we’ve always liked you and we have always been wondering what we can do for you. We’re gonna design a very cool van for you. So it’s very cool, it stretches out. It’s really long. I still don’t know what to do with the second half of the van. I have a gym. I have a bathroom now which is clean and nice. I can keep my Ralph Lauren towels there, so it is nice. Feels like a star. I have a watch, which I can’t read without my glasses. I have my family’s picture which is very nice.
I have a computer and the seat moves. So whenever I sit on it and press the button, I feel like I am Don. I can hear the Don music, and if I wear dark glasses, I may have to shoot you if you enter. I have a bed which comes out, but I haven’t used that. None of the actresses have agreed to utilise it with me. I have come to the conclusion that it’s not the van that makes the man. It’s the man who makes the van.
Sometimes, a scene comes in me, goes within. I know I have lost a little bit of myself that day. In every film that I do, there are one or two shots I am very passionate about. Sorry, I may sound silly but I live a part of me in every film. I wake up every morning with this fear that, will there be a day when I’ll wake up and find I have nothing more to give? I have done 65 films, so even if I go by one per cent, then I have already given 65 per cent. So I am like, will there be a day when there will be nothing more to give? Will there be a day when I’ll be completely hollow and empty? Will there be a day when I will be really attempting to cry and I will cry but nobody will feel it and cry with me? Will there be a day when I will not have a third dimension left?
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Written by DON
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Wednesday, 13 January 2010 20:29 |
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MUMBAI (Reuters) - In many ways, Karan Johar epitomises Bollywood. His films have everything the world's largest film industry is known for -- lavish song-and-dance sequences, melodrama and large doses of tradition.
But the 37-year-old is moving away from his comfort zone with his latest offering "My Name is Khan", a sweeping saga that deals with issues like race and prejudice.
Johar spoke to Reuters about "My Name is Khan", why love is missing from films these days and wooing the diaspora audience.
Q: This film is unlike any you have directed. Do you have any apprehensions about audience reactions?
A: "Well, as a director all you can do is go by your own instincts. A lot of people may tell you a lot of things, but if I listen to all of them, all I will get is a 'khichdi'. I feel that I have made what I wanted to make, but I cannot predict audience reactions for any film of mine, let alone this one.
"I can only hope that it has met with everyone's expectations. But one thing I can say -- if you see the film in isolation, you won't say that I have made it. It is unlike any of my earlier work. That is one thing I am really proud of -- that I broke my own mould."
Q: Love has been a constant theme in your films. Is it the same in 'My Name is Khan'?
A: "Yes, very much. Shah Rukh plays a man with Asperger's Syndrome who undertakes a journey, only for the sake of love. These days, there is so much happening in our world that there are no great love stories left. Nobody does that much for love. If love isn't working out there is always an option -- divorce is around the corner. But a man like Rizwan Khan thinks nothing of making that kind of journey for love. That is why we felt that the character in the film had to be different, perhaps medically."
Q: How has the notion of love changed since the time of 'DDLJ' or 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai'?
A: "You know there was an innocence in that love, but if you notice, which was the last pure love story that was made? The country that only made love stories has stopped making them. See, in every year the biggest film will be one that isn't a love story.
"The biggest hit of this year is '3 Idiots', and last year it was 'Ghajini'. Whereas in the 90s the hits were films like 'DDLJ' and 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai'. The decade has lost love, and that has happened because love is not in people's thoughts any more.
"The intense romantic love has been cluttered by too many things that surround you. Now if you make a love story, people call it mushy. Too much communication has killed romance. You know everything about other person, so where's the romance?"
Q: Does that disappoint you?
A: "Love has changed. Love just has a different interpretation. It is the order of the day. It doesn't disappoint, because you just have to roll with the changes. Even today if you make a love story, it has to be slightly more contemporary. Love is something that you have to address in a way that is today. Today I cannot make a 'Kuch Kuch Hota Hai'. When I see it on TV, I cringe and I wonder where these scenes came from. But they came from me only."
Q: Your film is releasing at a time when Bollywood is recovering from quite a bad year. How do you see this year panning out?
A: "2009 has been a wake-up call for the industry. For two years we have lived in a bubble where everyone started thinking that we have struck oil. But that was an artificial rise. Everyone believed there was a lot of money. Money was being thrown at actors, actors were asking for more money, technicians were going mad, and budgets were escalating. We made many mistakes in those years. 2006 was a good year, 2007 and 2008 were delusional years, 2009 was a wake-up year and 2010 will be the year that it will all settle down."
Q: There is a resonance in 'My Name is Khan' about prejudices and America after 9/11. What kind of a statement does the film make?
A: "The film addresses a perception about a certain religion and that comes largely from unawareness. The film touches on the fact that the perception doesn't apply to everyone.
"You cannot generalise about any one but the fact is that the same perception has permeated into the heartlands of our own country. So it is something to address. Shah Rukh Khan has a line in the film where he says 'My name is Khan and I am not a terrorist' and it is a very loaded line even though it is said very endearingly."
Q: You worked with a Hollywood studio on this film. How did that change the way you made the film?
A: "They had some suggestions about the film that came from an organic and creative place and we have incorporated a lot of those suggestions. Dealing with them has been great. It has been an eye-opener because there are lots of rules to follow, lots of deadlines to meet and lots of deliverables.
"The experience has been great because it comes from a great passion for cinema. They have taught us a lot. They brought a lot of discipline to the project. The fact that we had to follow rules was an impediment, but it has taught us to stay within the rules."
Q: What do you think you have taught them?
A: "That the film industry is beyond legalities and modalities in India. It is a lot of emotion that we run by that cannot be contracted and cannot have lawyers."
Q: This film is being targeted as a non-diaspora film by Fox, but you have been often accused of making films only for the Indian diaspora.
A: "Yes I know and I am tired of that tag. I don't think anyone understands the NRI audience. I make a film because I feel it will connect with some one sitting in Bihar and someone in New York."
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Called Nero’s Guests: The Age of Inequality, the film tracks the crisis through the unstinting work of Magsaysay award-winning journalist P Sainath, as he holds up the mirror to an India irrelevant to many of us.
