Ye dosti…
Ye dosti hum nahi chhodenge… the happy-senti song from Sholay, that is ingrained deep in the psyche of Indian cine-lovers, also has great significance as far as film-makers, their kast & krew are koncerned. This post is about filmi dosti / kollaborations & how they have added or sometimes taken away from Indian cinema. A post also provoked by my own potent filmi dosti which was called off, a few days ago.
Research (don’t ask me who’s) has it that one of the few best / most produktive (recent) filmi-dosti to happen was Farhan-Ritesh, which led to the formation of Excel Entertainment. Another one sitting proudly on the list is the Vishal Bharadwaj-Kumar Mangat kollaboration. These 2 instances have given Indian cinema much to brag about & I think ‘Ye dosti’ lyrix should be a part of their professional kontracts! One notable instance from the past being Salim-Javed. (Feel free to add your own.)
Have been reading “Talking Films with Javed Akhtar” and there are so many instances where ‘ye dosti’ has influenced many a films. Amitabh almost lost his role in Sholay to Shatrughan Sinha. That was then, even today, many new talents are being diskovered due to yaari / dosti. There are many legends floating around and Sanju Baba is one filmi dost who has stood by, rock solid, till he got walked all over by many & finally one day got wiser.
Then there is the ‘dosti’ of Rajat Kapoor, Vinay Pathak & Ranvir Sheory which has been a huge plus for indie-cinema. The filmi dosti koncept is an oxymoron in itself, going by so many examples that prove otherwise. Still, there are many that can be very inspiring and film-making being a team game, its good to understand its importance, before the damage is done.
Many aspiring filmis would have diskovered their partners / dost / kollaborators in the process of making their PFCOne entries. I diskovered a few, but the point where there is a ‘lethal difference in opinion’ it skares the crap outta me. I had been lucky that for my PFCOne entry, I found a dost, who shared a similar vision & more importantly wasn’t hellbent on proving that he was right, just for thrills.
Its equally good & bad to work in a ‘yaari dosti’ type environ. The pro being that communication will easily understood & the the con being that communication will be easily misunderstood. But the pro usually outweighs the con, no matter how much they seem at par. It’s important, according to me, to have atleast a handfull of people in your filmi team, on your ’speed dial’ list.
The best thing about such kollaborations is that there is an honesty in the opinion & the agreements are much more than the minor disagreements. Finding people on the same wave-length is very important while making films, otherwise we have unfortunate examples like Taare Zameen Par. I really feel sad for Amol Gupte. Almost a lifetime of his toil sits like a halo on someone else’s head. And lets not get into the merits of AK direkting TZP, that’s beyond the point.
A personal experience that I would like to share is where I worked on a Corporate Film / Musik Video. I wrote the skript, lyrix, dialogues… everything. I also lent my nikotine-blasted voice to the oh-so-called ‘anthem’ that was komposed for it. I had developed this strongly bizarre obsessively possessive feeling about the whole damn projekt.
Then began the shooting. My filmi buddy was direkting & koreographing it. Slowly I realized that the projekt wasn’t mine alone. So many people klaiming ownership and I was left sulking. I tried to re-klaim my baby, but it was too late & I spent the rest of the time doing some value-additions, which I thought was very very necessary.
I am sure, had it not been for my filmi buddy, I would have acted uppity, created a mess & made a kolossal fool outta myself & the projekt. That’s when I realized that the presence of a ‘dost’ is essential so that the perspektive is not lost & sanity prevails. Sometimes when you watch such a kollaboration, although few & far in between, the kemistry komes right through.
A recent example here is Vasanbala’s AutoMakhod. My personal PFCOne fav, so far. The komfort level between the direktor & the aktor is so evident, it can kause serious envy! Even RDB has become the film it is, becuase of the warm & mutual relations that were on board the kredit roll. Of kourse the list of examples will run into pages, but I would rekommend very strongly – Either make films with friends or make friends with them before you make your film. It works! And hey, do stay filmi!
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
‘Dosti’ has become sort of an ugly word after ‘Dostana’. :P
Tejas , Sahi Bola!!!
Magik bhai- nice write up yaar.
In music especially dosti has been of a huge help be it earlier in the Shankar Jaikishan- L.P days to the present Shankar-Ehsan-Loy, Vishal -Shekhar etc.While I dont have to talk about SRK’s dosti with people like Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra, Farah Khan etc, I must definitely say that his dosti with Aziz Mirza and Juhi Chawla was what made him get into production with Dreamz Unlimited.And RGV, Mani Rathnam & Shekhar Kapur started India Talkies similar to Mani Rathnam’s own Madras Talkies.Sadly they didnt make anything together after Dil Se.
Magik, a very good artiKle on filmi people’s dosti. How about our resident PFC writer Onir and Sanjay Suri? I think they have their own prod house. Do we have any such dostis in South?
@ Tejas / SS: dats y i didnt mention KJo-SRK in the artikle. wink.
@ Sethu: Even i was lookin fwd to some klassix from Madras Talkies. I guess it had something to do with the moolah. kreative ppl r very bad wid it.
@ Vick: yes they do… hey there r plenty of filmi dostis in the idli-dosa region, but i m not klued-in abt it…
Hey Dude..by god ki Kkasam i just loved your post. Infact this was a question which was in mind from quite a long time.
Does Friendship really exists in Bollywood…is a debatable topic. May be, May not be…gawd knows or the FRIENDS knows. Recent SRK-Sallu friendship is one of the best example…they were the best of friends few months back.
But there are gud friends too..like farhan- ritesh, SRK-Farha, SRK- Saif, SRK-Juhi (Hum sirf ache dost hain)..SRK-Arjun Rampal (Wow SRK tops here as well), AR Rehman – H. Sridhar, Priety-Rani, Sanju – Suniel Shetty, Sallu – Govinda, Jackie – Anil etc etc.
Infact it was SRKs friendship which helped him puling 30 stars in Deewangi (OSO). Even in Billu Barbar, Bipasha and Piggy din charged a rupee from him.
In some of the cases, friends have proven they are true to the best.
Sallu is one example who has always stood up for friends (Govinda in partner), Chetan Bhagat for Hello etc.
SRK (Ohhh no…..not again) for Juhi, Vivek Vasvani, Saif..infact very few people know tht Priyanka and Shahid Kapur stayed at Mannat after the Mumbai Attack close to their sets of Kaminey (they were not able to go back to their versova house cos of NakaBandi everywhere).
As far as i believe..when its bollywood, Friendship holds very less or no value. Its prominent when it comes to Music Directors (we have ample examples)…Vishal Shekhar, Nadim Shravan, Shiv Hari, Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy etc etc.
Another true friendship which i know (the friends have still to make a debut in bollywood) Ashu Bhai n Key. Lets pray tht after few years, people write a post on our friendship as well.
Amen
~ Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale
Vick- the dosti’s in the South that I know of are mentioned below-
1. Manirathnam & Ilayaraja earlier , now Manirathnam & ARR
2. Rajnikant & Mohan Babu
3. ARR & late H.Sridhar
4. Priyadarshan, Mohanlal & M.G.Sreekumar- from their college days till date ( they’ve done mumerous movies together)
5. Selvaragahvan & Yuvan Shankar Raja – were very close till recently
6. Gautam Menon & Harris Jayaraj- split after Vaaran Aayiram released
7. Venkat Prabhu & SPB Charan
8. Mukesh & Sreenivasan ( malayalam)
There are many more too, these are the ones in the top of my mind for now.
@ Sethu: do know abt this telugu hero – mahesh babu. uska kaun dost hai? he is quiet enigmatik… i heard he worx at a wierdly slow pace… i liked the song ‘gala gala’ from one of his movies… though i dont un’stand a word of it…
Magik- Yeah I do like Mahesh Babu myself.He’s quite good.The song ‘gala gala’ is from his super hit movie Pokiri which was a big hit in tamil also & is now getting ready in hindi with Sallu & Ayesha Takia called Wanted- Dead or Alive.
Yes the man works on a leisurely pace.He had no release in 2008.He signed a movie with Trivikram- a leading writer-director in telugu some months ago & only today I’ve heard that finally the shooting starts after Pongal.Not sure about his friends but I know his father is superstar Krishna & his wife is Namrata Shirodkar
@ Ashu: tere mooh mein ghee shakkar, vodka shodka daal ke!
@ Sethu: Namrata Shirodkar ka husbands. No doubt ghar se nahi nikalta saala! LOL. No offense.
gud one magik
some jodies that comes to my mind salim-javed, ARR-Gulzaar, sanju baba – sunil anna (they have business interests too), jackie – subhash ghai…
aree actresses main aisi jodi hai kya koi???…mana rare case hai…par hoga ek-do..
Magik- agar teri shaadi Namrata Shirodkar jaise kisi se hogi, to tu ghar se niklega kya ?
@ Prashant: one that i keep hearing often is kareena kapoor & amrita arora, but i m yet to ‘figure’ out how it affekted bawlywood. wink!
@ Sethu: mere filmi bhai, AGAR se start hone waali sentence ka koi happy endings nahi hota. mat kar ye zulm mere masoom dil par!
Hindi fillum ki chamiya-o mein Koena Mitra aur Tanushree Dutta ki dosti ki misaal di jaati hai…
aur breaking news…Saif aur Shahrukh ki ‘dosti’ mein aayee….daraar…daraar…daraar..
@ Tejas: oh no, not one more Khan war! keh do ki ye jhooth hai!
*/Violins blaring as loud as possible in total filmy sad tune/*
http://www.zeenews.com/Entertainment/Movies-Theatre/2009-01-06/496566news.html
*/Magik breaks his bangles on the walls, and tejas and others try to get hold of him. Imagine rest of ‘breaking bad news’ after-effects scene here../* :D
@Tejas: I agree abt Koena Mitra – Tanushree. Infact Tanu has given a surprise party to Koena on her B’day recently. She has also given a gift to her…dunno wut. Waiting for the media guys to peep in her house and get the details out.
SRK is undoubtedly a “BESTEST Frnd” in bollywood (Leave SRK-Sallu n SRK-Saif), but he is the one who is always there for frnds. I have even heard tht he has gifted expensive watches to all the stars of Deewangi(OSO). Even Aamir was suppose to be a part of the song, but he cudnt as he was busy promoting one of his movie.
And i am still laughing imagining Magik breaking his bangles on the walls and screaming “Nahiiiiiin..keh do ke yeh jhoot hai” – Filmy. Very Filmy.
~Ashu Bhai MAPRM Wale.
LOL. ashu, tejas: but meri kyon li? LOL
Kyon ki tum mere bachpan mein film ke interval mein bathroom ki line se bichhade hue filmy bhai ho..:D
@tejas and magik…
yaar tum log kamaal nahi dhamaal ho.
filmi chamiyaaa…..hus huske ke jaan nikal gayi…
ek “jaane bhi do yarron part 2″ kyon nahi banaate PFC waale sub milke…..
priyadarshan aur david dhawan ki le lo tum log…
seriously give it ons of thot guys….lumbi race ke ghode lagte ho aap log …….
@ Tejas: Bhaiyyyyaaaaaaaaaaaaaa. wink!
@ DnD: Shukriya meherbaani kaaram!
Oye dusky, dusky oye..!!! Thanks..