Launching coups and launching catastrophes in Bollywood

The recent announcement of a film starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Neetu Singh and Boney Kapoor would have been hailed as a casting stunt a few years ago, making headlines in print and electronic media. As such, the ad doesn’t excite one. If it works and is justified in the movie, then it will make a splash in the media.

There are coups and catastrophes. It’s strange, but the casting shot often goes unnoticed while a bad casting never does. Moreover, it also means disaster for the film and there are plenty of examples to prove it.

I don’t remember a few coups as such. Yes, there were a lot of movies with a perfect cast and, more often than not, these were possible when you considered the casting of an entire movie. I would cite BR Chopra’s movie “Waqt” (1965) as one example and “Trishul” directed by Yash Chopra for another. Shashi Kapoor’s “Kalyug”, directed by Shyam Benegal, was another.

In such films, the casting is important as they have a lot of characters playing key roles and make the film captivating. Films that can be added to the list are “Kohinoor”, “Humjoli”, “Sholay”, “Silsila”, “Tridev”, “Tezaab”, “Mother India”, “Padosan”, “Angoor”, “Deewana” , and “Darr”.

One banner that took the risk and succeeded most of the time was Rajshri Productions. My memory of the films of this banner begins with “Dosti”. Two newcomers to the cast and a new pair of music composers. The production house continued this trend of successfully launching new faces in numerous films. Many films followed, one of which to keep in mind being “Ankhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se”, “Maine Pyar Kiya” and “Hum Aapke Hain Koun …!”

Manmohan Desai’s “Amar Akbar Anthony” made the grade of a great cast because every character did the job. Amitabh Bachchan continued his image despite playing a light comic book role instead of the angry young man, Vinod Khanna played the tough cop while Rishi Kapoor played the loverboy.

The rest of Pran’s cast Jeevan, along with Parveen Babi, Neetu Singh, and Shabana Azmi, have completed the film’s appropriate casting.

Subsequently, Manmohan Desai started to take his audience for granted and relied only on his ace, Amitabh Bachchan, as he filled the rest of the cast which didn’t quite make a perfect foil for Bachchan. After watching him with Zeenat Aman, Parveen Babi, Rekha and Rakhi, actors like Amrita Singh, Rati Agnihotri and Meenakshi Seshadri as his love interests, and Goga Kapoor or Puneet Issar as the villain, weren’t quite close to what the audience preferred.

Not included “Zanjeer”, which established Amitabh Bachchan strongly because he was not the first choice for the role he played. Many stars have been approached for the film, without a taker.

Other directors have followed the same line as Manmohan Desai and almost caused the downfall of Bachchan, without the famous accident on the sets of “Coolie”, the film that helped support his acting career.

The only director who excelled in the casting of his films was Hrishikesh Mukerji. Who would think of the reigning romantic superstar, Rajesh Khanna, as a cook’s helper in “Bawarchi”, or a poor factory worker in “Namak Haraam”! Or, for that matter, Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan in his subtle comedy, “Chupke Chupke,” which has become an evergreen hit. He has more films of this genre to his credit.

Manoj Kumar was yet another filmmaker who would even go against a still image of an actor to cast it. The best example was the casting of actor Pran in “Shaheed”, based on the life and sacrifice of the freedom fighter, Bhagat Singh.

Pran carried such a negative image that no one could imagine him playing a positive role and subscribing to patriotism. It was a cameo but Manoj Kumar reportedly insisted that he wouldn’t do “Shaheed” if Pran didn’t accept the role designed for him.

It is a master stroke that Manoj Kumar repeats in his domestic production, “Upkar” (1967). It worked wonderfully in both cases. Later, for his film “Kranti”, Manoj Kumar starred in Dilip Kumar to portray a role loosely based on the life of Maratha’s naval chief Kanhoji Angre.

The casting shot is evident after a movie hits theaters. A designer does his best when he decides to pit himself against still-image actors and takes a risk. Therefore, few manufacturers go against the grain. Like, Pran, Jeevan, KN Singh, Prem Nath, Kanhaiyalal, Ajit, Prem Chopra, Danny, Amrish Puri, Ranjeet, Shakti Kapoor, Gulshan Grover and others kept playing the villain until someone thought throw them against their image.

But it was rare, and in most cases, they had aged and had taken on character roles.

Policymakers who did not want to take risks and stuck to the norm were responsible for actors like Iftekhar, Jeevan, Jagdish Raj, Keshto Mukherjee, Manek Davar, Deven Verma, Asrani, Mohan Choti and many others.

Iftekhar, who was a versatile actor with an impressive screen presence, played a top cop several times, but the one who set a cop playing record was Jagdish Raj, who reportedly played a cop 144 times, a record! As for Jeevan, when it came to mythological films, it was Narad Muni. And who else but Dara Singh as Lord Hanuman.

This is because most of the filmmakers preferred to play it safe and play the stars according to their image, thinking that this was the best way to accept them by the public, it was also the reason why some actors have been marked. Dilip Kumar as King of Tragedy and Meena Kumari as Queen of Tragedy, for example.

Amitabh Bachchan was called an angry young man because it was the time of anti-establishment feelings among the people and he was seen as the crusader fighting their cause.

But, those feelings have changed. Some creators tried to confuse his image of an angry young man with an action hero and he was cast in films like “Kaalia”, “Heera” and “Kasauti” but, luckily for him, he had also been appreciated. in “Anand”, “Abhimaan”, “Dost”, “Majboor”, which helped him easily move on to other roles, while Yash Chopra and Hrishikesh Mukherjee had him starred in films like “Kabhi Kabhie “,” Chupke Chupke “and” Mili “. He has proven that he has the scope of not being chained to an image.

Dharmendra was named He Man after discovering his bust very early in his career with “Phool Aur Patthar”. Yet almost all of his success has come from not being screened like He Man!

Previously, the star’s casting for a film was decided based on the script. But then a time came when the funders, and even the companies that had emerged, first went for the salable stars. They funded proposals, not content. No wonder we have few screenwriters who can be approached before the star.

The list of successful writers was full of names like Gulshan Nanda, Sachin Bhowmick, Javed Siddqui, Basu Chatterjee, Robin Bhatt, KA Abbas, Mahesh Bhatt, Prayag Raj, KK Shukla, Kader Khan, Akash Khurana, Rahioom Mas Reza, Salim-Javed , and KA Narayan.

What are the films that can be called casting coup examples lately? Not a lot. But those who appear on the list are mostly actors not yet established. Probably, that’s why they did it. “Kai Po Che! for a.

It started the trend of launching newcomers with off-the-beaten-path themes, especially as established stars had turned to producing their own films and were not available to budding filmmakers.

Other recent casting hits that come to mind are “Ready”, “Dangal”, “War”, “Ek Tha Tiger”, the “Housefull” series, “Uri: The Surgical Strike”, “Fukrey”, the “Golmaal” series, “Kahaani”, “The Dirty Picture”, “Bajrangi Bhaijaan”, “Hindi Medium”, “MS Dhoni: The Untold Story” and “Piku”.

In fact, the OTT series seem to have better scores on this front if you look at ones like “Special Ops”, “Aarya” and the recent hit “Scam 1992: The Harshad Mehta Story”. There are no face value hassles here that a feature film needs to attract the initial audience.