'Juhi Chawla did far better than Aamir Khan in Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak,' says director Mansoon Khan

When Mansoor Khan made his fabulous directorial debut in 1988 with Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak , no one imagined he would turn his back on Bollywood in just twelve years after directing just four films, each iconic in their own right. Mansoor moved to quaint Coonoor to pursue his other dreams and never looked back at Bollywood…well, almost. In a rare interview with Subhash K Jha, Mansoor opens up about the making of all his films and why he chose to be a farmer and author, far away from the madding crowd. Hello, Mansoor. I’ve been meaning to catch up with you. Now when your Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar completes thirty years I thought it was an opportune time to connect, Thank you for doing that. Thirty years!!!! I can’t believe so much time has passed. The entire process of making that film is vividly etched in my mind. I saw Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar again recently. I think it holds up much better with time than your debut film Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak? Yes, I know what you mean. I realize that. A question that I’ve been meaning to ask you: how was your cinematic language so different from your father, the legendary Nasir Hussain? Well, I must say that though I appreciated his vision and learnt a lot from him, my vision of cinema was very different. Although if you see my first film Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (QSQT) and the second Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar there were elements of his influence in both. QSQT was his story and it had that classic boy-meets-girl theme that ran through all his films.

And the fabulous sense of music that you inherited from him? That I have inherited. I am a bit of a formal musician: I understand musical notations, etc. My father was an instinctive musician. What fabulous music your father got from Rahul Dev Burman whom you royally abandoned when you directed QSQT for your father’s production house? My father did advice me to work with Rahul Dev Burman . And I even met him. But I felt he was too senior for us to work together as colleagues. I did have a music sitting with RD. But it didn’t work out. But if you notice I didn’t work with Anand-Milind either after QSQT. After that for Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikandar (JJWS) I had sittings with them. But they did not offer me anything that startled me. But look at what you got out of Jatin-Lalit in JJWS. Pehla nasha… Yes. A friend of mine recommended them. I was opposed to the idea of not working with Anand-Milind again; you know how it is when you get into a comfort zone. But when I had sittings with Jatin-Lalit I knew this was what I wanted for JJWS. In QSQT it was Papa kehte hain. My Papa used to say, ‘That’s the sure hit, now let’s move ahead with the other songs. Similarly, it was Pehla Nasha in JJWS. The song was shot entirely in slow motion? Yes, that’s how I had visualized it. In my script, I had written that Aamir’s character Sanju is floating on Cloud 9 in the song.

JJWS went through so many casting changes. Why did you change your mind about so many of the actors? You know if ever a book is written about the behind-the-scenes activities of any of my films it would have to be JJWS. It’s a film designed by destiny. The changes in the cast just happened. I had met Ayesha Jhulka but I forgot about her as I was busy with the screenplay. I had met Deepak Tijori. But I chose to work with Milind Soman instead because of his physique. I saw Pooja Bedi on the beach one day. Pooja was your first choice? No, she was not! It was Nagma. She abandoned the project four days before shooting. I had told her right from the beginning that she is not the heroine. I don’t want to blame her, but the least she could have done was to inform me. You can’t hang up on me when I’m planning a forty-day outdoor schedule. Later of course she came to me and said it was the biggest mistake of her life. Farah Khan recently hosted a dinner for all the guys who had been sacked. There I met Milind Soman. What??!!! Yes (laughs). She said she had a surprise for me. That was the surprise. To me, the film spoke for itself. At that time they carried out a vicious smear campaign against me. We never reacted. You know, Aamir looks at QSQT today and he cringes because he knows he was way below the mark while Juhi Chawla was way above the mark. You think so? Absolutely. Aamir’s emotional quality carries him through the film. But Juhi did far better than Aamir in QSQT. Aamir said no to your Josh? I wanted him to do Chandrachur Singh’s role. But he wanted to do Shah Rukh Khan’s role. Everybody wanted to do that role including Kajol. When I offered her Aishwarya Rai’s role she said she wanted to do Shah Rukh’s role. Aishwarya didn’t look anything like SRK’s twin sister in Josh? They were not identical twins. My producer Ratan Jain asked me if a boy and a girl can be twins. In our film, it’s always either two boys or two girls as twins. What happened to Mamik who played Aamir’s elder brother in JJWS? Mamik was always a bit on his own trip. He was a good guy. It was very difficult to find a guy who was one-up on Aamir on screen as he was already a big star when he came to JJWS. I wanted an actor who could play Aamir’s charming softspoken dependable brother. Mamik was an amazingly good-looking guy. About his career not taking off after JJWS, he was laidback. I can understand that. I too am laidback. But being in the driver’s seat I had to take my responsibility very seriously. Which one of your four films do you like the best? JJWS was the only film I wanted to make. I think it has stood the test of time. Just the other day two kids who had come to vacation in my farm stay were talking about it. What about its similarities to Peter Yates’ Breaking Away? Everybody thinks I wrote JJWS after seeing Breaking Away. That’s not true. Right from 1981 I wanted to make a film about a guy who is a loser who finally gets his groove. That’s what had happened with me. I had gone to college for five years to the US, wasted my father’s money. I came back angry and defensive. The whole world was my enemy at that time (laughs). JJWS was born of my anger at that time. But if you notice there is a critical difference between JJWS and Breaking Away. The boy in that film is a champion cyclist. Breaking Away is very different. I want to make this very clear. The two films were very different. People had said QSQT and Ek Duuje Ke Liye were similar. Because of the tragic ending? Yeah, but the ending in Ek Duuje was very laboured. There was no need for the lovers to die. It was enforced. I had shot a happy ending for QSQT. But I never believed in it. My father forced me to shoot it. I never even saw the happy ending after shooting it. I was absolutely sure that I wanted a tragic ending. Your father scripted QSQT? I wrote almost fifty percent of the script. Dad wrote the rest. When he started writing QSQT he wanted to make it like Romeo & Juliet. At that time he was going to write and direct it himself. I was busy writing JJWS. But I wasn’t able to crack the script. My Dad suggested I make QSQT to launch Aamir. By then Aamir was clear he wanted to act. My father had a much better sense of the film market than I did. He knew a good love story had not happened for a long time. He offered me the script of QSQT. It didn’t sound interesting to me. But when I heard it fully, I loved the first eleven scenes, and I shot them exactly the way there were written. About the rest, we argued and fought a lot. Creative differences are normal between fathers and sons? There would be days when we wouldn’t speak to one another. Aamir and my sister would get very worried, I admit I was confused. I’d tell my Dad that I didn’t like a scene, but when he asked me to provide a substitute I was lost. Eventually, I did write the scenes. There was a healthy compromise between both of us. Anyway, for some reason, my dad started losing faith in the tragic ending. Whenever we had trial shows, the elder viewers didn’t like the sad ending. But I was totally convinced. Luckily for me the younger people loved the tragic ending. The happy ending didn’t make sense. Raj Kapoor was forced to have a happy ending in Bobby? See, in Bobby there were class differences between the boy and girl, not a family feud like QSQT where a lot of people got killed. No one got killed in Bobby. So the lovers’ togetherness could be redeemed. Personally, I wouldn’t agree with a sad ending for Bobby. That love story was redeemable. But when we shot a happy ending for QSQT the actors were laughing on the sets. It was ridiculous. Akele Hum Akele Tum…Lots of similarities to Kramer Versus Kramer? It is Kramer Versus Kramer. I am not denying it. It’s a combination of Kramer and A Star Is Born. I never shied away from admitting it. We could recognize a lot of real personalities from the film industry in Akele Hum Akele Tum? I was lucky that Nadeem-Shravan didn’t get upset. You know I must share an incident with you. We were hosting a trial show of Akele Hum Akele Tum when Nadeem-Shravan walked in uninvited. I know I had done a caricature of Nadeem in the film. I panicked I went into a corner and called my producer Ratan Jain. He told me Nadeem insisted on coming for the trial. Ratan Jain told Nadeem that we hadn’t made fun of him in the film. Now, what was I supposed to do? You know the strangest thing was, at interval Nadeem came and hugged me. Even Anu Malik who was doing the music for Akele Hum Akele Tum was there in the film. That little boy in Akele Hum Akele Tum, Adil Rizvi where did you find him? Adil was the son of the sister of Zafar Sultan who was my father’s editor…He looked like Aamir’s son. Honestly, it was easy. I think the way Aamir directed that boy Darsheel Safari in Taare Zameen Par was much more difficult. Mansoor, there is a question I’ve been meaning to ask you for years: why did you turn your back and walk away from the Mumbai film industry? I will tell you. I was never meant to be a filmmaker. (Laughs) Let us be the judge of that? No, seriously, that was always my plan. To do what I am doing with my life right now. I had planned it that way. When I was in the US studying in 1979 my plan was that when I return to India I won’t stay in Mumbai. I was always an out-of-the-city guy. But you could have made films from outside Mumbai? I know. But you have to come down here in Coonoor and see what I am doing. I have written a book The Third Curve. I am writing another book. So no one could persuade you to come back to Mumbai? My friends and relatives tried. Aamir Khan did his best to persuade me to come back. But today looking back, he says it was the right decision.It was not an impulsive decision. It wasn’t as if I was running away from Mumbai. I was not running away from anything. I was running towards my goals. Thank God, it all worked out. My wife Tina supported me through it all. And the children? Well, they are no longer children (laughs). They are working in Mumbai. My daughter Zayn is an actor. She was in Mrs Serial Killer. She got noticed in that. My son Pablo is a musician. He plays the guitar,and drums, he composes music. Right now he is working in Aamir’s production house. My daughter has found her calling but my son is still searching for his true vocation. But he recently discovered that he loved film editing when he sat with director Advait Chandan on Aamir’s Laal Singh Chaddha . Have you kept in touch with any of them or are you totally cut-off? Even when I was making films in Mumbai I was totally cut-off. At the MAMI film festival when they celebrated the 21st anniversary of JJWS I met the entire team of JJWS . It felt wonderful. But I wish the celebration was done more on our terms. But it was fun. Then Farah Khan kept that dinner where all the sacked actors of JJWS came. You must write a book on the making of JJWS? Shakun Batra was supposed to make it some years ago. He was so keen on doing a documentary on the making of JJWS. I am too shy to pursue something like this. He got busy with other things. One day I will sit with you I’ll tell you all the stories about JJWS. I had a nervous breakdown. I’d cry in the middle of the night. I was the captain of the ship and I didn’t know what was happening. I had no control over it. I had to drag myself to the set each morning. But finally, it all worked out. Why was Josh your last film? I admit it was West Side Story. But I found something missing in West Side Story. It got away with those shortcomings because of the music. Josh took too long to make. It got delayed because of a certain superstar. I will give you a hundred points for guessing who that was. I lost the plot. I rewrote many scenes. So Josh was not a pleasant experience for you? Totally not. It was nightmare. I returned the money for the two other films that I had signed. But that’s not why I quit filmmaking. Like I said that was the plan from the start. And yet you returned in 2008 to produce your nephew Imran Khan’s debut film Jaane Tu…Ya Jaane Na? Yeah, that was because Aamir was in a fix. I had already moved to Coonoor. My sister called to say Aamir was having problems with Taare Zameen Par and that Imran’s debut was being postponed. I spoke to Aamir. He said he had to give his full attention to Taare Zameen Par. After that, he was going to do Ghajini . Aamir suggested that I take over. I felt an obligation towards my sister’s son. I flew to Mumbai the next day. Lastly, would you come back to direct a film? Aamir has offered me two-three films, one of them to direct his son Junaid. Junaid has already completed one film. And he’s done a good job. I wanted to do screenplay of a book I am writing now. Aamir wants me to direct it. But I am shit-scared of direction. Why? I get nightmares about direction. I enjoyed being the guy behind the scenes in Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na . Like the Director Of Photography on a set, if someone else will call the shots. I will be helping him. Do you watch Hindi films? I enjoyed Adhadhun, Queen…I like Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Na. These are ancient? I am an ancient guy. Of late I liked Ankhon Dekhi. That was years ago? Nothing about me is recent. I also liked Shakun Batra’s Kapoor & Sons. That’s as recent as I get. Please return? Chalo, dekhte hain (okay let’s see). Subhash K Jha is a Patna-based film critic who has been writing about Bollywood for long enough to know the industry inside out. He tweets at @SubhashK_Jha. 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