Style Check: Priyanka Chopra, Rani Mukherjee and Prachi Desai among the best-dressed of the week | ||||||
| Don't miss Rani Mukherjee in a sari at Esha Deol's wedding, Priyanka Chopra in a short dress and Prachi Desai in a red maxi skirt | ||||||
| By Usha Lakra | ||||||
| Date: Sat, Jun 30, 2012 12:10:42 GMT | ||||||
| ||||||
|
|
Rajiv Vijayakar speaks to the cast of Rohit Shetty's latest project, 'Bol Bachchan'. This energetic entertainer, which releases on July 6, promises to be quite a laugh riot.
A pehelwan and his sister; an unfortunate soul and his sister; circumstances and human kinks, along with encounters of the romantic kind. That's the premise of Rohit Shetty's latest fun-a-thon Bol Bachchan, loosely inspired by Hrishikesh Mukherjee's Golmaal. The mood, therefore, is also light at the interview session with the lead actors, Ajay Devgn and Abhishek Bachchan, who were making wisecracks about each other.
Prachi Desai is happy that her role in Bol Bachchan is closer to her real age and declares that she would never have dreamt of turning down such a film. "It's a comedy circus on the sets with Rohit," she smiles broadly. "He is strict, yet fun, calm, yet obviously someone who enjoys his work. I was the outsider, so I became the biggest victim of his as well as Ajay sir's pranks!"
Her first day, she states, almost made her doubt whether she had landed up in the wrong place. "Rohit's team of technicians and writers has not changed. They are like a close-knit family that is always on the same page.
They instinctively know what they want from each other. I had done serious films till now and in the first week, I felt out of place. My first shot was a sequence with Abhishek, with a long dialogue. It needed 27 retakes as Abhishek would always burst out laughing when I was saying my lines. But, a few days back, he revealed to me that Rohit had instructed him to do so! It was like I was the new student being ragged on her first day in college."
Comic experience
Bol Bachchan is Prachi's first comedy, her first with Abhishek and Rohit, and her second film with Ajay. "But Ajay sir has never been my hero," she mock-grumbles about her reel brother, as she adds, "I play his younger sister and the only girl in his company of pehelwans. I am educated, modern, spunky and pampered, but scared of him. Even in real life, whenever he enters a set, there is an instant hush because there is an aura about him that comes only with real stars."
Abhishek, on the other hand, spreads energy on the sets with his bubbly presence. "But they are both pranksters. Once, they made a unit hand put on a wig and dark glasses and pretend to be a hairstylist. He was pulling my hair while combing it. I realised that something was fishy, but chose not to react," Prachi recounts.
Asin seconds her co-star's opinion. "Abhishek is a livewire and there is a perceptible drop in the energy level when he's not around. But since my antennae are always up, I cannot be made a bakra anymore," she smiles. "I have worked with Ajay earlier in London Dreams, with Salman Khan in the same film and Ready, and with Aamir Khan in Ghajini. They have all been incorrigible pranksters, so I am kind of prepared now," Asin adds.
Having worked in the romantic comedy Ready and the laugh riot Housefull 2, Asin is an old hand at Hindi comedy films, unlike Prachi, who found comedy to be the most difficult aspect of acting. "And yet, this comedy was different.
Rohit's team would have completely rehearsed everything before the actors walked in. His kind of comedy is different from that of Anees Bazmee or Sajid Khan." Comparing her three ace comic directors, she says that Sajid keeps spontaneously modifying the written word; Anees welcomes inputs but keeps to the script, while Rohit prefers to stick to what is decided.
Asin is the only heroine besides Kareena Kapoor to have three releases in the 100 crore club — Ghajini (the first to touch that landmark), Ready and Housefull 2. The trade is optimistic about this film entering that league too. Does this have to do only with luck or a great script as well? "I am lucky to have such back-to-back hits," Asin replies. "I tend to go for the complete package and have a soft spot for universally appealing films. Good stories and creative satisfaction are important, but they must be entertaining too."
Crowd puller
Agrees Ajay Devgn, actor and co-producer of the film, "You cannot wrong the audience or think that they are fools. Prakash Jha makes realistic, issue-based films, but they are always entertaining. If you cannot make films with the right connect, then make them ghar ke liye. When a viewer spends Rs 250-300 per ticket, it's not to get educated on class cinema, but to be entertained."
Ajay's character in the film, inspired by the martinet, which Utpal Dutt played in the original, is a wrestler who is practically a zamindar. "He insists on speaking English, and no one corrects his wrong language because no one else knows the language anyway," smiles the actor.
Despite major changes in the script vis--vis the Mukherjee original, Ajay has still seen it fit to officially take the remake rights. "If we ourselves do not set such ethical examples, how can we complain when others do improper things?" he asks.
Working with both the Bachchans in the title song was Rohit's idea, he reveals. "I have worked earlier with both of them, separately. Amit-ji was so involved despite his health problems at the time." About Abhishek, he says, "He took a day or two to get into our zone of comedy. But he was zooming after that."
Comfort zone
But Abhishek differs and says, "It took me almost a week to unlearn my style and adapt to a very different style. For me, this was a difficult and demanding zone of comedy.
I was used to the deadpan, straight-faced kind of humour that you can see in a Dhoom or a Dostana. But Rohit had confidence in me and also worked with me. We would rehearse at night till I came into a comfort zone and opened up. Every film has a pitch, a particular sur, and if you don't match up to it, you can stick out like a sore thumb." Raving about how Rohit is as grounded as he was when they worked last on the director's debut film Zameen a decade ago, Abhishek says that the only change in him is that he has obviously become much more confident.
"Bol Bachchan has been the most difficult film of my career and the most exhausting one," Abhishek declares. "I have told Rohit Shetty that he has to send me on a holiday after the film is released."
Terming Ajay and Asin as dream co-workers with a team spirit, he has a special compliment for Prachi, "The lady has a discomforting trait of memorising pages and pages of dialogues fast, probably because of her television background. While we were groaning, 'My god! Five pages of dialogues,' she used to say, 'Only five pages of lines!' "
On the fact that he sings once again, with his father and Ajay, in the title track, Abhishek quips, "Yes, they never learn. My filmmakers keep making me sing!"
The Rock On!! babe was pretty thrilled to team up with the successful pair of Ajay Devgn and Rohit Shetty, who have made some of the biggest blockbusters in recent times. But when Prachi Desai arrived for the first day of the film's shoot in Jaipur, she started having doubts about doing the project. In an interview the young actor said, "The kind of roles and films I had done earlier were rather serious, so working on Bol Bachchan was like being thrown into a madhouse. It took me a week to adjust. For the first few days I thought I was in the wrong place."
When we asked her why she felt she wasn't meant to be there, this is what she had to say: "On my first day I had a scene that was three or four pages long. Abhishek and I had a dialogue. I was supposed to be angry in the scene. We did 27 retakes for a simple scene. And it was just because Abhishek would start laughing in every shot."
Initially Prachi thought she was doing something wrong, but later discovered that her stern-looking director had ordered her onscreen lover to make her first day at work miserable. The television star turned film actor recalls, "Rohit had instructed Abhishek to make me nervous and start laughing in every shot. So for the first few days I didn't know what was happening. But the next time they tried to play a prank on me, I caught them." After that, she says, working on Bol Bachchan was a fun-filled ride. Let's hope the journey ends on a happy note.
comment:
p_commentcount