Shooting season
Mrudula Rajadhyaksha
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Sanjay Kapoor and Mamta Kulkarni in Chhupa Rustom
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If you're seeing many movies this year, don't treat yourself for cross-eye. For digital imaging has given new life to the double-role movies. There's Duplicate and Dushman off the blocks and Chhupa Rustom sauntering up to them.
And like many such movies, the story is again about the prince and the pauper. With Mamta and Manisha providing oomph and talent in varying measures.
Good thing anyway Mark Twain is currently resident a good distance away from the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, Borivli, Bombay, where the climax of the film is being shot.
As all Hindi films end, this one too brings down the curtain with the echoing crash of musketry in the denouement between good and evil.
Things begin innocuously enough, with Manisha walking onto the sets accompanied by a boy valiantly ensuring she keeps her pretty head beneath a parasol. She goes unnoticed. It is quite unlike Manisha to be in a flashy pink and orange churidar. But her hair is in great form, not one strand out of place, thanks to the anxious attentions of her hair-dresser.
Director Aziz Sejawal locates her and explains the shot to her -- she has to snatch the hero's briefcase from the hands of Navneet Nishan, the vamp here. Thereafter she has to slap Navneet and before the foundation settles back on her face, tell her a few home truths.
Manisha has no problem and so the director hollers for silence all round. After three takes -- meaning three cracks on Navneet's square but sensitive jaw -- the shot is canned.
We edge our way up to Aziz and try to push in a question. So he politely pushes us off, getting us escorted off shooting limits where a spot boy comes up with a container half full of tea. As we quaff the sweet beverage, we are informed that Sanjay will be with us soon. The hero was apparently grabbing some sleep in his make-up van while the women were slugging it out, but now after a bath, he's just about ready to meet us.
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Sanjay Kapoor
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He comes up and greets us civilly with a hello and then awaits the questions. But first he takes some good-natured ribbing about the false blood stains and brick-red gashes. Who was he fighting with to get these ghastly wounds, we inquire.
"A tiger," he says and laughs. He adjusts his close-fitting pair of dark glasses, ones he does not to remove throughout. Sanjay is clearly a little nervous for, despite his Raja being a hit, he is still not given many chances of survival, tiger or no tiger.
"I think it is due to the critics; they never gave credit for Raja. It was either the director's film or Madhuri's. But in this industry you're only as good as your last film. Even when someone like Madhuri gave two flops, the press wrote her off then. I'm just a newcomer. No wonder people don't think I'm saleable," he says. There is a sharp distinction between this double roles in other films and this one. For here, he points out pertinently, the duo aren't twins. The film also has a suspense element in it that should draw the crowds, or so Sanjay feels.
"It's a big break for a newcomer like me -- a double role at the beginning of one's career... I've tried to play the characters differently. But the audience is the final judge."
Some more chat later, we tell him we're through, whereupon he politely thanks us for coming. Just as he's leaving he tells the veteran PR, Arun Singh, that he wants to have a look at the publicity stills he's distributing. Sanjay is upset that some pics show him in the same thin moustache he wore in the forgettable Bequabu.
The press doesn't mind and this, for some reason, gets Sanjay more worked up. Arun has been through many such arguments and so wags his head in knowledgeable agreement as he walks away, listening to Sanjay in impassioned flow.
Now we try to locate publicity shy producer Madan Mohla and run him to earth. Will the film that has taken all of four years from muhurat to climax sell, we ask him.
"I'd already sold the film at the time of announcement, so on the distribution front, I've no problems. But, yes, the film has gone a little overbudget..."
Mohla tells us he's through with Bollywood, that this is his last film. It's very commercial and expensive today, he says. "I don't enjoy film-making anymore." He shakes his head. "No, no fun at all in film-making." Some problem with Manisha, we inquire solicitously.
"No, she's such a sweet girl and so co-operative." Family friends apparently. But hasn't she become far bigger than she was four years ago?
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Manisha Koirala
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"Of course she is, but that's good for my film. It will fetch me the initials," he says before remembering he's publicity shy and disappearing into the crowd.
Meanwhile, Arun, divested of Sanjay, is trying to locate Manisha for us. He comes up puffing, sweating in the heat, to tell us the Nepali girl meet us only after pack-up. We ask for another cup of tea to kill time but don't get it finally.
So when the director shouts "Pack up," the PR hurries up to Manisha to remind her that she's got an appointment. He comes back to tell us the heroine's sought ten minutes grace to change and freshen up.
Soon a fair and pretty girl, clad in white shirt and black trousers, and with her hair tied up behind, comes up. Voila, Manisha herself.
She smiles at all of us and settles carefully into an empty chair left for her. We can't help admiring that flawless skin, that fabulous face.
And, contrary to reports, she appeared down-to-earth. Of course, for ten minutes, which is how long she was with us, even Genghiz Khan could have kept his peace.
Taking our eyes off that face, we get down to asking her why she picked a film in which her character isn't important. "It's not the length I looked at but the strength. I play a glam model who has her ethics and values too. Even in her most difficult times, she sticks by them. She doesn't compromise or expose to get work. Besides, she's madly in love with a guy who's killed in the end."
So she seeks out the killer out and wreaks vengeance?
"Yes," she smiles. " But I won't tell you more than this." She needn't.
Manisha tells us that besides the character, she picked the role due to her own family ties with the producer. And she's done it for the same price that she started the film with. "Already the producer has suffered such a big loss. Why put him in more trouble," she asks, turning her a loose patch of hair just above her left ear.
A few more questions pop up and then there's an awkward silence.
"That's it," she asks. We concur. So the thank yous and goodbyes make their polite rounds before we go our separate ways.
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