Filmmaker Vidhu Vinod Chopra, director of the recent sleeper hit ‘12th Fail,’ recently looked back on his career and collaborations with two of today’s most acclaimed filmmakers, Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Rajkumar Hirani.
While both of them are now considered among the most celebrated directors in the film industry, years ago, they worked as assistants to Chopra. In a chat at the Kellogg School of Management, the filmmaker opened up about how he met Hirani, who later went on to direct blockbuster hits ‘3 Idiots’ and ‘Munna Bhai,’ both produced by Chopra.
When asked to speak about his partnership with Hirani, the director responded, “Sanjay Bhansali was my assistant. Now he’s called Sanjay Leela Bhansali.” While the room filled with laughter, the director went on to say, “He was cutting a trailer for ‘1942: A Love Story.’ Sanjay cut a terrible trailer, and I told him it wasn’t going to work. He then cut another trailer, which was also terrible. I asked him who was responsible for this. He said that he knew he couldn’t do it, so he’d asked another person to cut it instead. A skinny boy comes in. Now, I’m illiterate, so I swear a lot. I gave the boy some really bad gaalis.”
Chopra continued, “They called me back the next day, to watch another version of the trailer. It was an amazing trailer. I said, ‘See, Sanjay? I kept telling you that you could do it’. And Sanjay said that he hadn’t cut this one either, it was the skinny boy. That was Rajkumar Hirani. I went over and gave him a hug, and that’s where the ‘jaadu ki jhappi’ comes from. I didn’t know this for many years, but Raju told me later.”
Hirani then went on to edit ‘Mission Kashmir’ for Chopra, and later pitched the basic concept of ‘Munna Bhai’ to him. Hirani expressed his preference for Om Puri in the lead role but Chopra responded, “That was the limit of his ambition. There’s an old Punjabi story: a sardar was eating out of an empty plate. Another person saw this and asked what he’s doing. The sardar said that he’s having roti and daal. But there’s nothing in your plate, the second person said. The sardar agreed, but said that he’s imagining the food. ‘If you’re going to imagine it, imagine some chicken’, the second man said.” Chopra bluntly told Hirani that if he was going to indulge in imaginative casting choices, he might as well aim for Shah Rukh Khan.
Yes, in case you were not aware, initially, SRK was considered for the lead role in ‘Munna Bhai,’ but due to illness, he had to drop out of the project. Consequently, Sanjay Dutt stepped in and portrayed the character of Munna Bhai, a role that he embodied so effectively that he became synonymous with it.
