- You’re ready to start?- Yeah.
Ashok!
Could you make me a soup?
[Interviewer] I’ll show you a photograph...
Whoa! That’s my mom.
So that was the shoot we did with this
great photographer Vilas Bhende. My mom’s cousin’s husband.
I and my dad looked identical at the age
that you saw.
- We have some pictures... - 5 or 6 years old.
Then Salman at a much younger year
started looking like him in his early 20s.
So we’ve all started looking like him
at different stages in our lives.
But never wrote as well as he did at any stage of our lives.
I’m enjoying the fruits of my sweat.
You earn with your sweat, we earn with our beauty!
I enjoy the fruits of my sweat and blood.
Since I moved to Bombay,
I’ve heard 50 different reasons for making a film.
“My actress is planning to get pregnant. My financer will disappear. ”
“I have recorded four songs. ” Different reasons.
Nobody says I have a cracking script on which I can bet my last shirt.
That should be the only reason to make a film.
[Shabana Azmi] Anybody wants a pad to write anything?
What’s there to write? It’s a flawless piece.
How many times will you keep writing “wow, great”?
Okay, let's start.
“The film starts with a dense jungle, sound of different birds,
“as the camera pans, at one place we see the bush...
“is moving.
“And through the foliage we see... ”
You must’ve noticed - if you take the same story or joke,
some people narrate it well, others don’t.
How do some people narrate well?
They stress on the right words.
They stretch it at the right places to pique your curiosity and interest.
So the understanding of this rhythm -
where to pause, where to speed up,
where to underline, where not to.
Where to take a narrative jump. “And a few days later... ”
This method of narrating a story,
in an audio-visual format,
is what a screenplay is.
- Thakur saab? - Welcome, Jailer saab.
I need two men.
This is Veeru,
and this is Jaidev.
Total rogues, the pair of them!
I know.
But they're just the kind of men I need for this job.
This is the story of awards and award-winners.
In 1975, two big films competed head-on.
Sholay and Deewaar.
Today I have buildings, property, bank balance, bungalow, cars...
- What do you have? - I have mother.
Don’t dance for these dogs, Basanti!
Both stories and screenplays were written by Salim-Javed.
The amazing thing was
Salim-Javed won all the awards for Deewaar:
Best Story, Best Dialogue, Best Screenplay.
I remember when I interviewed Javed saab,
he was saying how they didn’t get any awards for Sholay
because they got it for Deewaar.
And he said:
“You should never do too much good work in a year!”
But imagine -
writers who produce Sholay and Deewaar in the same year.
I mean...
Before starting a screenplay,
I do watch Deewaar and Sholay,
parts of it, I skip the songs, but I see them.
Really view them.
So I think it’s the genius of
the films that changed the game.
And you know, these were kids.
Now I'm twice their age when they were writing this.
So I still think, how did these kids do this?
All the films they wrote together,
they always gave me bound scripts.
So that makes our job easier and better. Good films get made.
To me, Deewaar is the best script of their career.
And this film is among the most important films of my career.
I can say one of the best films of mine is Deewaar.
For many years at the Film & Television Institute of India,
the Deewaar screenplay was taught as a perfect screenplay
because it didn't have anything extraneous,
except for probably the songs.
But everything else was connected.
I would go as far as saying,
if they had not written any other film,
and had only written Deewaar,
they would still be in history.
People say that Deewaar has a perfect screenplay.
We wrote it in eighteen days from a small storyline.
We completed the entire screenplay in eighteen days.
Then I wrote the dialogue in about twenty days.
Once the script was completed,
we knew we hadn’t cracked the climax.
So Javed and I completed it, sitting on the parapet nearby.
Then we went straight to Yash Chopra’s house
and narrated it.
For almost five minutes there was complete silence.
As they started narrating the scene where
“My father is a thief” is tattooed on Vijay’s arm...
Vijay, say something.
I said this scene alone will guarantee a 15-week run.
If this is what’s on the hero’s arm, imagine what a character he’ll become!
Keep this key in your pocket, Peter.
I’ll unlock this door,
after I’ve taken the key out of your pocket.
Get the signature of the man who tattooed this on my arm.
And then...
- Ma? - Hey, brother!
- When did he get here, Ma? - Just now.
Ma was complaining...
If you narrate the story of Deewaar to someone,
so...
there’s a 90% chance they’ll kick you out of their office.
There was a mother who had two sons.
One is educated, the other not.
One becomes a cop, the other a gangster.
In India alone,
at least 25 or 30 films have been made on this subject.
Ganga Jumna and Mother India had the same story.
But a story alone isn’t enough.
How are we going to narrate this on the screen.
Which scene follows another.
Which scene we leave halfway and start another.
That is a screenplay -
how you present scenes on the screen.
Because anybody who doesn’t visualise it happening
cannot be a screenplay writer.
Sir!
I polish shoes, I’m not a beggar.
Pick up the money and hand it to me.
Let's go.
Salim-Javed will plant things throughout the script
that will flower within the story
And that shows a continuity of thinking and character.
So the story about the coin:
“I do not pick up coins that are thrown at me. ”
You see that come back.
Even today I don’t accept money thrown at me.
My understanding is that
it is not the wordiness of the dialogue.
It is to do with the content -
that Vijay says something which everyone felt.
And he said it in a way...
which had a flair and a style
and a dignity which made you feel
he might be a coolie, but that is just his job,
that's not who he is.
I wasn't aggressive.
So I found...
I found some peace with the reticent, brooding hero.
It became my coping mechanism in my growing years.
I still felt like a hero.
When you see somebody who’s being himself on screen,
who’s a no-nonsense guy who’s not taking shit,
if somebody is trying to put him down,
it’s tagged as angry young man.
But I feel it’s not being angry, it’s being who you are.
It’s being very genuine,
and giving it back, you know.
Rahim uncle,
what hasn’t happened in 25 years - will happen now.
Next week another coolie
will refuse to pay protection money.
It was the 70s and it was a very strange time.
It took 6 years to get a gas connection.
There were long lines to get a ration card.
So people of that time identified with this character.
The anger and fire that burned inside this hero
was the same fire
that raged within every young man in India back then.
People were not content in those days.
Salim-Javed tapped into
the conscience of a nation
that was also at the cusp of change -
and had spent enough time after independence
to now start making demands and say that, you know,
“We just don’t want to take everything lying down. ”
We were unaware of all this while writing.
Nor did we think our stories had socio-political relevance -
And it’s good. I’m very happy that we were innocent about it.
Because we were the part of that same society, the same world,
and we were breathing the same air.
Without knowing, we were in sync with the rest of the people.
We were innocent about it.
But is it really a coincidence that in 1973, we created a vigilante
and in 1975, India faced the Emergency?
Are they linked or not?
On 25th June 1975, everything changed overnight.
President Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed
received a request from Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
to declare a state of Emergency under Section 352.
Many leaders were taken into custody.
The national poet Ramdhari Singh Dinkar then said:
“Vacate the throne, the people are coming. ”
These two writers
were marked by their personal histories,
but they also carried a social history with them.
And this ability to connect the personal with the social
gave their writing a certain kind of edge.
Tell the man to sign who forced my father to confess.
Tell the man to sign who insulted my mother and fired her.
Tell the man to sign who tattooed this on my arm.
Then...
Then, my brother, I will sign anything you want.
Proving the crimes of others won’t change the fact you’re a criminal too.
And this truth -
is a wall between us, brother.
And till this wall stands, we cannot live under the same roof.
I’m leaving this house. This instant.
Come, Ma.
Go, if you want to, but Ma won’t leave.
- Ma, come with me. - I said Ma will not go.
Ma will go.
No, Ma. You can’t leave me and go.
You love me, Ma. I know you can’t leave me.
- I’m going, Vijay. - No, Ma. Don’t go.
The man who forced your father to confess - who was he to you?
Nobody!
The man who insulted and fired me - who was he to you?
Nobody!
The man who tattooed “My father is a thief” on your arm -
who was he to you?
Nobody!
But you...
you are my own son.
My own blood.
But you’ve stamped on my brow that “My son is a thief”.
He felt deeply for his mother’s suffering.
So he wanted to give her every happiness.
In fact his mother loved him the most.
The dialogue was so good and my character too.
If you think about it, the film’s real heroine is the mother.
Vijay who has...
no belief in God
finding himself climbing up the steps of the temple
to pray for his ailing mother.
And his opening line is...
Today... You must be very happy.
And I do remember the premiere of Deewaar
and there was this...
actually a snigger and a gentle laughter in the audience.
And that conveyed...
That it was so unexpected
and they thought it was some kind of a joke.
But within a couple of seconds after that,
they just froze.
Is it her crime that she is my mother?
Is it her crime that she gave birth to me?
Is it her crime that I love her?
It had so much to do with the lost mother.
That comes up over and over again
in their stories.
And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that
Javed saab lost his mother when he was very, very young
and Salim saab also lost his mother,
and that anxiety about being in a different city
without family, without a mother figure
weaving that into the story where the hero is so obsessed.
I mean they're almost like Oedipal in their obsession with the mother figure.
Deewaar
Trishul
Shakti
The mother factor... huge!
Shanti died at your hands ages ago.
She was only cremated 25 years later.
And the flames of that funeral pyre still burn in my heart,
because I’m that unfortunate Shanti’s son, Mr. R. K. Gupta.
And you’re my illegitimate father.
Sudhakar,
take him away.
No. Don’t say that.
He will not go. I will not let him go.
Ma. Enough!
I don’t care if I go to jail or I am hanged,
I won’t let you be humiliated for my sake.
In Papa’s films, which they wrote,
the main hero always...
always had a father issue.
Yes.
And the mother was always the...
like the anchor or the emotional tug.
And the issue was always with the father.
They obviously saw life in a way that everybody else didn’t.
That’s why they could write what they did.
I couldn’t be with my mother from the age of five to nine,
because I couldn’t go near her.
My mother had tuberculosis.
There was no cure for TB at that time.
So she’d look at me from a distance.
One day she saw me playing.
And asked: “Who is this boy? Whose child is he?”
So the maid told her: “He’s your son. ”
She called for me.
I was playing with some other kids.
She called for me and then asked me to stop at a distance.
I stood there, she looked at me and broke down into tears.
And she was taken inside the house.
Even today when I recollect that scene,
when I’m having a drink in the evening,
without provocation, tears start rolling down my face.
Just thinking about those days.
It’s not that I feel bad for myself. I wonder what she was going through.
I was the youngest of seven brothers and sisters.
Everyone had gone their own way.
My sisters got married. I was the only one left.
So my mother was always worried about me.
And your father?
I was very scared of my father.
He was famous for being strict and disciplined.
The moment we heard his footsteps,
we’d quickly run and sit down with our books.
Our trouble began when he started wearing crepe shoes,
because they made no sound.
A few days after my mother died,
my father became very close to me.
He took me to watch cricket matches, shopping, all that.
And then he died.
That loneliness...
was scary.
On 17th of January, I was 8 years old in 1953.
She died on the 18th.
And the last time I saw her was in that white shroud.
For months I used to see the shroud in my dreams and...
even in bright daylight,
I would be slightly scared of entering a room
if there was nobody there in the house.
And I would open the door and look around...
I had the feeling that shroud would be somewhere here.
But this is something I never shared with anybody.
Children are very secretive and very complicated creatures.
They have their own personal world
and they don't share that world with anybody.
Now I am on the wrong side of seventies,
and I miss my mother sometimes. And it is funny.
My mother died when she was perhaps 36.
So am I missing, at the age of 76,
I'm missing...
a woman who was 36.
It’s a bit...
bizarre.
I mean life was not devoid of love or attention.
But yes, I mean,
we’d fantasise a father,
and whenever we’d meet him, we’d be very happy.
But I'm afraid that was a rare event.
So why was your father absent?
Well, he was in Bombay
and I don't think financially he was in a position -
he himself was living in one room.
He was trying to find some foothold in the film industry
and our mother had injected some kind of
hero worship of our father in both of us.
Me and my younger brother.
But there were many moments of disappointment I remember
that I felt he’ll come to meet us
and then last moment we came to know that he’s cancelled his programme,
or... so on. So, yes...
As a kid, what do you long for?
You long for - maybe the people who ignored you earlier to say:
“I wish I had paid more attention. ”
So I think their childhood and their need for acceptance,
I think played a huge role
in shaping them,
to be not just the writers that they are -
but even if you see what they did like “Go, paint my name on the poster”.
They could not be taken lightly,
they could not be treated as just a person working on a film.
They were like the stars of that movie.
And they wanted to be the stars of that movie.
I mean that’s how they worked.
Let's eat.
A line by Faiz Ahmad Faiz comes to mind.
“What befalls everyone, befell on me too. ”
This was our life.
This was our share of bruises and blows.
These bruises and blows did not go to waste. They came in handy.
We wrote many scripts thanks to their force.
Had these trials not happened,
many highlights of our lives would not have happened either.
So this is the package. Accept it!
A film like Sholay,
it’s like a piece of art that you just want it untouched.
You just want it to be there
and go back to revisit that film again and again,
Whenever it comes on TV.
I think it just stands alone, you know.
It’s just one solid vertical and there’s nothing else around it.
You were just talking about the one-liners. I think the coolest one-liner -
the coolest of all-time in Hindi cinema has been in Sholay:
‘What’s your name, Basanti?’
Gabbar’s line: “How many men were there?”
Everything is great in Sholay. All the characters are great.
Friendship.
Love. Emotions.
Sholay has everything. That one picture has all of life in it!
G. P. Sippy Saab - after the success of Seeta aur Geeta,
he wanted to make a big film.
We narrated the story of Majboor to him.
But he insisted he wanted to make a big film.
G. P. Sippy saab... He was always a super risk taker.
He didn’t know how to do anything without taking a risk
because that’s how his life was.
He wanted to make something exceptional.
Greatest star cast ever assembled.
Greatest story ever told.
I think he wanted to...
bring to India, what the rest of the world was seeing
and not this limited sort of...
perspective of entertainment
that they had in the country at that time.
It was... it was beautiful,
but it was still on a small scale.
And I think he just felt that...
“Why should we not have that?”
Sholay’s location had turned into a township.
A factory that made various gadgets was set up nearby.
Say, a scene was to be shot where Dharam-ji is singing on a cycle...
they would make the equipment
so that it could move on one wheel.
So, the very scale of this picture was unprecedented.
That was the passion...
It has to be just this way.
On Friday, the movie released
and sank after the matinee show.
Even the black marketeers lost money!
After Monday,
the screening at 9 a. m. had an audience of 4 or 5.
Ramesh-ji who was already nervous, got even more nervous.
He started with a budget of 10 million rupees,
sanctioned by his father. 10 million rupees!
By the time he completed the film, 30 million were spent.
Three times the budget.
The reviews came out. Flop.
G. P. Sippy’s biggest flop.
Magnum opus flop.
And they went on... Indian Express went on to write about
how terrible the film was, how it would never take-off.
Trade guide went on calling it “Cholay“ (chickpeas) and:
“This film is a flop”
They brought out a supplement to analyse why Sholay flopped.
We were worried in the beginning that why are the trade papers
totally slashing the film?
It was very different.
It had action, it had a villain who was never seen before.
People said: “Why did they cast a new villain?”
He was not very well-built, he was short.
It was almost like - how will this villain appeal?
They also said: “Women won’t like this film. It’s too gruesome. ”
“Your story was all wrong,
“the characterisation was wrong, the scenes were bad. ”
So everybody said:
“Amitabh Bachchan shouldn’t have died at the end.
“There shouldn’t have been talk of widow re-marriage. ”
When people were laughing at the film - that it’s a flop,
Javed Akhtar and Salim Khan issued ads in
Screen, Trade Guide and Film Information,
saying that “Our film will do ten million per territory”.
We had to show we were confident. We knew the film would do well.
We had an emergency meeting. Amitabh Bachchan was there,
Ramesh Sippy, Salim saab and I was there too.
And so...
Ramesh-ji said: “You know, I think we should think of
“changing the ending that you don’t die, but
“you should live. ”
I should live in the film.
We told him not to worry. Let them say what they want to.
This is going to be a super hit! It’s all nonsense.
So Ramesh-ji just turned back and said:
“Let’s wait till Monday.
“Let’s see what happens on Monday.
“Let’s wait till Monday. ”
And... we waited
and didn’t go to re-shoot that scene.
Thank God!
Because...
after Monday it became history, didn’t it?
O Sambha!
How many men were there?
A scared man is a dead man.
Dying today is cancelled!
Suddenly, we started getting feedback from our sales team.
That they are hearing the dialogue on the streets.
So we brought out this LP, and you wouldn't believe it,
the moment we released it in the market,
it was an extraordinary success. It just flew.
Then you saw the film getting a little lift-up
and you saw the film getting, you know, acknowledged.
Before the box-office could open on Monday morning,
there was a long queue from Sunday night.
All the black marketeers bought cars
and homes, thanks to Sholay.
They still hold onto the cinema ticket,
to show their kids how they managed to buy their property.
I used to live next to a cinema hall
which ran Sholay for about 3 years.
Last count, I’ve seen it about 26 times on screen.
The ad we released...
the film surpassed it manifold.
Our predictions turned out wrong.
Many people in the film industry were demoralised by this.
They said: “Who are these guys?”
They even predict their film will be a hit, and it is!
They say their film will earn this much and it does!
They know something!
Originally the storyline came from Salim saab.
The two main characters were recruits in the army.
They were so useless, they were thrown out.
There was a Major who later became a police officer - Thakur saab.
But I remember G. P. Sippy Saab said not to show them as army men.
It’d mean certain limitations. You can’t take too many liberties, and so on.
There was a room in our office called the “Thinking Room”.
It had mattresses laid out and bolsters.
As we got into the script of Sholay and if I feel…
I’m talking about canvas, about vision and they’re trying to fill me in -
“Yes, then let’s do it like this instead!”
It just went on. It was a continuous process.
Ramesh-ji used to say: “There are two-page-long dialogue.
“You have to say it all in one shot. ”
I was very worried and scared.
How do I do it? You know.
So Javed-ji enacted it all and showed me.
I think what he did, it just got in...
that impression was there in my mind.
Fully - I just did it!
This is a village, sir!
No cars here to - grrr- speedily take you to your destination.
Only Basanti’s horsecart runs here.
If you’re writing a Sholay
about a village, about a dacoit, about so many people,
then you have to have a world where
other characters have to be interesting.
And when you write a small character, it’s not just to-
okay, so he should say this line, so that a hero can say this line.
No, that person should have a role, should have a part, should have a...
visibility, should become interesting.
I’m a jailer from the British era!
A tunnel in my jail? Haha!
I grabbed them by their collars and said...
Why is it so quiet here?
Chief, I’ve eaten your salt.
Now...
Eat my bullet!
My father was a high-ranking police officer.
We heard stories of a dacoit called Gabbar Singh.
Yes.
He used to kill people and chop off their noses too.
The accused Gabbar Singh, son of Hari Singh...
Anything inspired from real life has a distinct impact.
I will not forget. I will never forget you.
Did you see a lot of them in their films?
They have taken a lot of characters...
Definitely saw Gabbar. In Javed!
Just joking.
But I know one thing about Javed,
he loves to write dialogue for negative roles. The villain.
He loves it!
The thing is - we all have anger within us.
Deep down we all want to do as we wish.
But morality, circumstances, pressures, fears keep us in check.
You see when kids go to the zoo, they first run to see the tiger.
And if you tell them there’s a cheetah too,
and a black panther. They’ll want to see them.
They go to see the birds much later.
Why do kids admire them? Why did kids like Gabbar Singh?
Even adults loved him.
A ruthless man who had no emotional or moral justification
for his cruelty.
He’s totally free from morality,
which is tightly wrapped around us with a rope.
On some subconscious level, we admire that
this person is free.
Without the villain, a film is no fun.
The hero has his charm
but it’s the villain who gives life to the movie.
The villain starts the drama, the hero ends it.
That’s the usual movie climax.
When the family’s been killed and there’s one small child left
and Gabbar Singh picks up his gun.
You don’t see the child getting hit. And as he fires...
There’s all that smoke coming out. Like this!
So for us at that time it was like, you know,
how people reacted to Tarantino later on.
Even though Sholay did not show much bloodshed.
But its level of violence, it kind of took your breath away.
Even when Thakur’s arms were severed,
anybody would’ve shown the arms lying around,
blood spattered about.
“Thakur, give these arms to me. ”
And he’s saying, “No, no!”
There is not a single shot of blood splashing,
or severed arms... nothing.
And this is written in the screenplay.
This was the masterstroke of the premise of Sholay.
This proud man has been subjected to such indignity, but –
he doesn’t want them to torture Gabbar to death
and drag his corpse to him.
No.
The uniqueness was: “I want Gabbar - alive. ”
Gabbar Singh? That famous dacoit?
Yes, him.
You have to catch that dacoit for me -
Alive!
Ramlal.
Here’s five thousand rupees.
You'll get five more when you come to Ramgarh.
And the rest after the job’s done.
Partner?
Heads, we go.
- Tails. - No.
About this coin...
there was a Western called Garden of Evil.
We got the idea from there.
- High card stays? - It’s good enough.
Originality is the art of concealing the source.
When you don’t know the source, it’s original.
Some people may eventually figure out the source.
So it’s better to admit where ideas come from.
We never hid the truth. We talked about our inspiration.
No one is stopping you from doing the same.
In those days there was no moral dilemma as such,
because English movies
were released in only a few cities in India.
They were from another planet.
They weren’t going to be seen here.
So if they inspired us, it wasn’t the end of the world.
Today if I’m writing a script and if someone says
this scene is similar to some other scene, I’ll change it.
The power of Salim-Javed was really to kind of take little bits,
you know, here, there and then re-fashion them
completely to be something
original.
It wasn’t, it never felt
you know that: “We’ve seen this before. ”
Soldier no. 2!
Are you coming out or should I shoot your partner?
Stop!
Come!
I mean what they did with Gabbar is pretty much
what you saw in Joker many, many, many decades later.
When you see Kareena Kapoor Khan in Jab We Met,
that's Basanti.
When you see an intense action hero even today, that's Bachchan.
They created all those characters and Sholay is the mothership film
where we are all still deriving and driving from.
O Sambha!
How much reward has the government put on my head?
Chief, a full fifty thousand times I have told you!
I’ll watch an ad
and it’ll still have
a character or a dialogue
from that film 50 years later!
I don’t know what to make of it.
I find it incredible.
Why is it today people talk about those dialogue?
It’s because it’s not just dialogue, it's philosophy.
It's a consolidated knowledge.
One line - you can communicate a hundred things. I think that’s what they’ve done.
Hey soldier!
- Sing us a song. - What song?
The song that makes that dazzling woman dance.
- That one? - Yes.
Let me show you something to impress you.
This is Faiz’s autograph.
“For Jadoo miyaan. With love, Faiz.
“March 84. ”
What do you know!
We’re among the very rare species still alive!
The Last of the Mohicans.
These two boys came out of nowhere and they were game changers.
No one imagined they’d change the status of film writers.
Or these kinds of films would be made.
That’s why there’s never been anyone like them in all these years.
Now when I look back, like a third person
who can see Salim and Javed there...
I realise theirs was an unbelievable combination!
Two kinds of people should never work together.
Those who don’t agree on anything.
And those who agree about everything.
If you agree about everything, then you don’t need two people,
one is enough.
And if you don’t agree about anything, how will you work together?
On one level perhaps we had so much in common.
And on another level, we were very different people.
Sometimes I would say,
or Javed would say: “This isn’t good enough.
“People expect a lot from us. ”
What you see in a film is what we finalised.
You haven’t seen the fifty discarded scenes.
We used to work like office hours.
I would go to him from 11 a. m. and come home at 8 p. m.
Salim saab was always very much on time,
not Javed.
He had to either call first and say:
“I’m coming, wake him up. ”
Or he’d have to come and wake him up. Or something like that, but...
I just remember my father telling me that they gave the best narrations
because they told me a story.
It was like an orchestra, he said they were so in sync.
Whatever weakness one may have, I think the other one kind of
stepped in and balanced that out.
It was amazing.
The synchronicity between the two of them.
They had a very good relationship.
I have never seen them
ever discussing: “Let’s try this or that. ”
They were both on the same page.
The way they spoke, the way they said things...
I mean it was like...
one body, one mind, one mouth, one voice!
One plus one is not two, it’s eleven.
It was the hottest writing duo,
then suddenly one day they say: “We are not together”.
Of course, it shook the industry.
Producers’ lives were being made because of them.
Directors’ lives, stars’ lives.
Cinema-owners used to wait for Salim-Javed films.
Now if that team is no longer a team,
of course, it’s not going to be the same.