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| Edited By: Nayandeep Rakshit |Source: DNA |Updated: Jun 21, 2016, 07:25 AM IST
Salman Khan doesn’t always open up in the presence of a journalist. The length of his answers and the tone of his interaction usually depends on his mood. However, whenever I have met him, he’s been candid and easy-going. This time too, it’s no different. He ribs me about gaining weight. I tell him it’s thanks to maa ke haath ka khaana — I have just returned from my janmabhoomi (Kolkata) to my karmabhoomi (Mumbai). I comment on his new haircut, and he asks, “Is it looking good?” Pleasantries done, we settle for a chat. He begins our half-hour long conversation by calling for protein bars and biscuits. “Ask me anything,” he says, and I start to shoot my questions. He talks about everything from Raees being postponed to box-office figures to the lack of screens in the country and the lack of passion with makers in the industry. Read on...
Yes, that’s true. I didn’t have the dates back then! They tried to convince me, that at 50, doing a wrestling film where you have to wear a langot (loin cloth) won’t be easy. They made jokes about the whole thing. I knew that they were trying to con me into coming on board sooner. I liked the plot and the subject, but I didn’t have dates, so we planned it for later.
Physically, I was already there. Haven’t you noticed that, bodywise, I have only gone worse in Sultan? So physically, it wasn’t a problem. Working in the film was, because this man (pointing to Ali) has obviously never been to a gym ever in his life and he expected a different body type every 15 days, which is not possible. Tell him that. Have you ever tried to change your body type every 15 days? Can you? How did he expect me to do something like that? It’s extremely difficult. You have training and then you have a particular type of diet. Then, you go on a different diet again. Training to put on weight and then cut down — both these transformations, One heavyweight and the other, lightweight, takes a lot of hard work. It was a difficult film because there was fighting, six to eight hours every day.
(Cuts in) Do you watch other sports? Once you start watching all the sports, everything will be as big as cricket.
Wrestling is anyway huge. We don’t see wrestling in the cities, but in villages, it’s a huge sport. Recently, wrestlers who worked in the film went for a championship somewhere in Punjab or Haryana. The prize money was Rs1 crore. Where do you get a prize money like that? But then again, for that much money, hundreds of people are wrestling each other and only one will get it. All those other people competing there, tearing muscles, breaking bones, what happens to them? No one cares. That’s the basic problem here.
I think two minutes. We were shooting in Mohana and Ali read it out and I repeated it in a car. Dileep (Subramaniam) sir, our sound engineer recorded it and that’s how it sounded. You know, in the first teaser, that Haryana Kesri Sultan voiceover was actually Ali’s voice!
No! (Laughs) As long as my dues are cleared, koi pressure nahi hai. But seriously, we need to transfer that pressure, that attention. Jab tak apne pe baat aaye, refract karo usko! But then again, if something’s not worked, then you take care of them. If your films are doing well, you need to work harder. If they are not doing well, you need to work much harder. Dono surton ke andar dimaag kharab ho jaata hai, if you aren’t sorted. If you think time is doing well and you don’t give a sh*t, one will come and destroy you. If you think what you are doing is the correct thing and then, one film which goes off despite you thinking it was a great film, will set you on the wrong track. Then the thinking goes wrong. I think the intuitiveness of films is the best thing. You should always do films thinking about the script.
Talking about initial numbers is stupid. Ticket prices go up, footfalls reduce, and you are happy that you have an opening of Rs20 crore, Rs30 crore? What matters is the last- day numbers. It’s the end result of the film that is important. Even if you have an opening of Rs2 crore, but the film works, it means people are coming, not for you, but for the movie. When we all started off, the audiences didn’t come for us, they came only to see the film we were a part of. Now, we have a plus point that they come for us as well as the movie. Our ticket prices are so high now that our numbers have increased but our footfalls have reduced. This perhaps will destroy the film industry very quickly. And because of this, regional industries are benefitting. All the Marathi, Punjabi, Bhojpuri films are doing Rs50 crore on Rs70-80 rupees tickets. We are not even able to pull off a Rs200, Rs300 or even a Rs100 at times, on a Rs250 or a Rs950 ticket. I think these industries are today much bigger than Bollywood.
I think they weren’t ready with Raees, that’s why they pushed the film. They needed a little more time to get their product ready. A major problem is that India is still 25,000-30,000 screens behind to be able to encourage a clash of this stature. We don’t have that many theatres and screens. Maybe with time, it will open up. Humare paas abhi kuch 5,000 screens hai, that also gets divided with regional films. So, we don’t have that bandwidth to accommodate two big films. Panvel ke bahar chale jao, theatres hi nahi milenge. So such big films can never be able to come together. It’s not me or Shah Rukh, our distributors would want as many prints of both the films. The ratio of theatres divided would have been 30-70, 40-60, 50-50. It will be different in different places, so business will get divided. Till the time we don’t have the 20,000-plus theatres, the film industry isn’t going to grow. But right now, even two small films cannot clash because of that. The lack of screens has a huge impact on every film in the industry. Even the younger heroes would need screens. Tomorrow, Tiger Shroff’s films will come in the same number of screens as us because everyone would like to see him. He’s a mass hero now.
Yes, I have sung all the songs of Sultan, but they don’t feature in the film. That’s because Ali didn’t like my voice. They said, you just service the song but you are not doing a good job, that’s why. I thought this will be the best peg that for Sultan, Salman Khan has sung all the songs. It’s good for YRF, good for everyone, so I went ahead. They were not convinced by my voice, so it’s not in the film. Fair enough. What do you think? Was it a right choice or wrong choice? You heard Jag Ghoomeya in my voice? I hope you like that.
Who’s that? In every movie, there are a lot of singers who come and sing. The producer and the director decide who will be the best choice for the film. One was my voice, and even that was also rejected. One should not get upset, this is life. There should be a day when a singer can say that ‘No, this actor, I don’t want to sing for.’ When someone posts smart comments, posts — the intention becomes very clear. You get to know why it’s being written.
I think we should not make the niche kind of cinema anymore. Filmmakers should not make movies because they have actors’ dates. They should only make a movie when they are 100 per cent sure that this is the right one. We should stick to our culture, our sensibilities. I think we also lack writers. We lack the passion for making movies now. We lack technology, we race against time and we are impatient. We are just thoku-masters. We are not concentrating on quality, writing and emotions and the films which we do considering all these things, they do really well. But no matter how well they do, it will be very difficult in the next few years to cross these numbers because we don’t have that many theatres. Numbers mean theatres or repeat value.
I will have to do it now! I was wondering for the longest time that when we used to get Rs30,000 or Rs2 lakhs then Rs20 lakhs, we used to do three shifts a day. Today, we are getting crores and we are coming out with only one movie a year. How stupid is that? That’s really stupid. I think every five-six months, an actor should have a release. Publicity has got a huge role to play in that. I think all of us should do about two-and-a-half films a year. So when Sultan releases, my next will be Kabir’s film for Eid next year and then Santoshi’s film. It’s three in two years, but there should be more. You take two months to shoot a film and then you have to publicise the film for two months. Yeh jo publicity ka aata hai na abhi, that wasn’t the case earlier. We are spending too much time on publicity, which is not required at all. I feel everyone who wants to watch a film will watch it, regardless of the number of stories that you guys do. They are movie-goers. They open the newspaper, they just read it and shut it. All this publicity thing is just helping the media, not actors. One day, I’ll prove this. If I like a promo on TV, I’ll go and watch the film. If the audience wants to know something about you, they can come on to your account on Twitter and Facebook and find out. Earlier, there used to be just three-four magazines but now, kitno ko interview dena padta hai, yaar! And if you don’t give, they bajaao us! Not fair.
