The film Sholay is a turning point in the history of Indian cinema. It has been instrumental in turning over a new leaf for the kind of films made in the 70s and thereafter.
An industry that survived only on melodrama, romances and emotions to lure the audiences for the first time were presented with an action-packed revenge saga packed with the punches – physical and emotional.
The film is also responsible for bringing a lot of talent in the limelight and giving a chance to most of them to showcase their creativity for the years to come.
Be it a Salim-Javed (the writer duo) who approached the Sippys (Ramesh, director and GP Sippy, producer) with a 4-line narration of the film.
Amitabh Bachchan (whose Zanjeer had not yet released when he signed on this film) who shot to fame with this film.
Amjad Khan (whose first major break came with this film) who changed the way the villains in Hindi cinema were.
People still remember the lines that Amjad mouthed in the film that were also written by the writer duo, but little know that Amjad was not the first choice for the role of Gabbar that he went to immortalize.
It was Danny Dengzongpa. Danny’s dates were clashing with Sholay and Feroz
Khan’s Dharmatma and he opted for the latter because of prior commitments.
Danny’s loss was Amjad’sgain. But this was not all. He couldn’t get into the skin of the character even though he had been rehearsing for it for weeks. Once on the sets his nervousness got the better of him. After mastering the character of Gabbar, post-shooting there were even talks of someone else dubbing instead of him.
These and lots of other stories are an interesting read in Anupama Chopra’s The Making of a Classic. A journalist and wife of noted director Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Anupama not just interviewed the cast and principal crew who made the film but has even taken the efforts to interview every person involved with the film she could get hold of.
Like I have written in an earlier review, classics just don’t happen, Sholay too just didn’t happen. It took two and a half years of shooting alone during which the film was shot over 270 shifts or so.
The book beautifully talks about the making of the film starting from the writers to the casting to the pre-production to the actual shooting and also goes on to talk about the aftermath of the film after its release.
For those of you who are not aware, the film was declared a flop when it first released. And then a few weeks later it went on to be the biggest hit Indian cinema had ever had. And Sholay held on to this record till 1994 the year Hum Aapke Hain Koun released.
This book is a must for all Hindi film lovers quintessentially for the text and also for the pictures and oil paintings reproduced in it.