It was 20 years ago on 15 June 15 that Aamir Khan’s Lagaan hit the screens. The film swept the nation, and even made it to the Oscars shortlist in the Foreign Language category. An exquisite blend of the only two truly pan-Indian phenomena — films and cricket, Lagaan was referred to as a moving commentary on compassion and the triumph of human spirit. Both Khan and the film won several awards and accolades.
Twenty years later, the memories are still as vivid in his mind as the actor, who turned producer with Lagaan, opens up about taking several challenges while shooting the film. He also recalls defying some of the top filmmakers and going by his own beliefs while working on Lagaan, that completely transformed his life and career. Below are excerpts from a chat with one of the most accomplished, insightful actor-filmmakers known for his consistent performances and intelligent choice of scripts.
Lagaan became such a phenomenon. But it was an underdog just like your character in the film. What were you thinking when you said yes to director Ashutosh Gowariker to go ahead with the script?
When we were making the film, both Ashutosh and I had no idea that it would become such a phenomenon that we would be talking about it even after 20 years. We were emotionally invested in the story that Ashutosh wrote, and we were just struggling to make a story that we believed in. My uncle (and filmmaker) Nasir Hussain used to say, "You don’t make great films, it just happens. And if someone tells you to make it again, you won’t be able to make it the same way." I can tell you with all honesty and confidence that everyone involved with the film... every actor, every technician, crew... was emotionally invested into the work that we were doing. Sometimes, that emotion springs up. But, of course, the big credit and the way the film turned out goes to Ashutosh. He was the lead writer, he wrote and directed, and he did a wonderful job.
What is that one thing that has stayed with you from the Lagaan days?
Actually, it is not just one thing. Almost everything has stayed with me. There are so many memories. But one thing that remains with me is the way Reena (Khan’s ex-wife) handled the film. She was the producer on the film but she’s somebody who had no understanding of cinema until then. Though she was married to me for a number of years, she was not interested in films. When I requested her that I would need her help, and wanted someone who I can trust completely, she agreed. She went and met Subhash Ghai and Manmohan Shetty, who used run a film lab. She asked them to show her what is processing, printing, what is a lab process. She went and met producers, directors, technicians. She cracked it as if she was a veteran. It was remarkable the way she controlled everything.
Till the time Lagaan released, it was your and Ashutosh’s film. But beyond a point, it became India's film on the international scale. Do you have any regrets that you came so close to winning an Oscar but unfortunately lost to Bosnia's No Man's Land?
A lot of people have asked me how disappointed I was when Lagaan didn’t win the Oscar. Of course, I was disappointed. We would have liked it to win. A lot of people also asked me what you could have done differently in Lagaan so that it could have won the Academy Award. Was it because of the songs, or was it because it was too long, etc. I have been trying to tell people over the years which I don’t think they have got yet. Even to get nominated for the Oscars is a difficult process. Getting nominated itself means that a huge percentage, almost over 90 percent of the foreign-language committee have loved your film out of 70 to 80 films that have come in a year, so much so that you are in the top five. In Los Angeles, they consider when you are a nominee, you are all coming and standing on the finish line, so all are equally good. Then one person is told to go ahead by one step so that one becomes the winner, but the remaining four are just one step behind.
So there was nothing wrong in the film... the length, songs, music aspect, cricket aspect of the film... everything was loved, and only then you got nominated. It was a big thing to reach the top five.
Secondly, winning awards for films is a very subjective thing, unlike sports. Also, everybody knows my opinion on awards. But I do give some value to Oscars because of the process they follow, and it also gives you a window of opportunity to marketing. Now, because Lagaan was nominated, a whole lot of people in the world suddenly wondered, "Which is this film that got nominated? We want to watch it." It gives the opportunity in increasing your audience, and that is how I looked at it. Finally, winning an award is not that important for me. For me, the audience is important for whom we made the film. And if they like it, no award is bigger than that. For me, the audience is number one, not Oscars or any other award.
If you had to make Lagaan now, 20 years later, do you think it would be easier? Secondly, if you had to change anything, what would that be?
Technology has improved a lot so when you want to show 10,000 villagers watching a cricket match, you can do multiplication much more easily today. But at that time, you had to actually get 10,000 people. But in its essence, I have realised that no matter when you make any film, you will be facing challenges. How you respond to those challenges will decide how the film will turn out. There is a new crisis every day. I remember I was in my make-up room, and early morning, both Ashutosh and Reena came to me. The villagers were practising, and the villagers from the areas around had come to watch. Ashutosh had given a requirement of about 500 people but later, he realised 500 people were not enough. He told Reena, and she said it was difficult to get more people at the last minute. Reena was worried about the shoot getting cancelled. I went to the location and I too felt there were less people, and I suggested we cancel the shoot. We decided to get 1,500 people, and shoot it properly. We lost one day of shoot and money but the scene turned out well. That was the decision I took in the spur of the moment. So if all the decisions you take are correct then the film turns out well. It is a big process.
But if I had to make it today, I won’t make any changes because the script was great and we wanted to achieve that. Today, 20 years later, if he had written a slightly different script, maybe I would like it. But Lagaan would be more or less the same irrespective of when you made it, and the challenges would be similar or maybe slightly different.
Lagaan was your first production. How do you feel it changed your career?
When I decided to make Lagaan, I knew I was taking up a huge challenge because it is such an unusual and demanding film. Just a few weeks before I left for shooting, I met with Aditya Chopra and Karan Johar at Anil Thadani’s (film distributor) party. Both Karan and Aditya are my very good friends, and they were genuinely concerned. They said "You are making such a huge film as your first production. We don’t know what film you are making"’ We had kept the cricket part under wraps so they didn’t know about that. But they knew that I was going for a single schedule film with sync sound. They felt I would get into a mess if I did that. They suggested that I shoot for 30 days, edit, come back, and take a call. They felt we would have no time to correct our mistakes. They also felt I shouldn’t be doing sync sound as no one has done it for the longest time Forty years have passed and sync sound has not happened in the mainstream, and that I should do dubbing later. They were worried that my shoot would get delayed and before I realised, things would go out of our hands.
But the fact is that I wanted to do sync sound and single schedule at least five years before Lagaan happened. Sometime in 1995, I remember telling Dharmesh Darshan and Ram Gopal Varma that let’s make the film in a single schedule, and do sync sound because the emotion that is coming out when I am performing live was getting wasted when you are telling me to create those emotions in dubbing. These are the things I always wanted to try as an actor, and producers wouldn’t listen to me. They were not confident enough of doing it. So when I became the producer, I wanted to do it. Single schedule, sync sound, and I also brought the first-AD (Assistant Director) system. I had gone to New York, and I locked Apoorva Lakhia as the first AD. He also knew Gujarati, and he could communicate with the villagers. That experiment was so successful for me. It has now been 20 years, and I have only done sync sound since then. All my films are single-schedule and all my films have the first-AD system.
This process dramatically changed my life as an actor, as a filmmaker. I realised I was thinking right and I was able to build on it. Now, I am able to work on my character for three to four months. Bringing these processes into place has made a huge difference to my career. As a comic aside, after advising me not to do all these things, Aditya and Karan have been following exactly this. They do one-schedule films, they all do sync-sound, and they all have a first-AD system.
There were people who told you to not go for one schedule, not to sync sound but for you personally, when you went into the process of making Lagaan, were there days when you thought that this is too much I have taken on, considering it was such a mammoth project?
Everyday I would have doubts. There is a scene in the film in which the Indian players are demoralised. We are standing in a temple and my character Bhuvan's mother comes, and for the first time, she sees Bhuvan with self-doubt on his face. The mother says, 'What I am noticing is doubt on Bhuvan’s face." And he says, "Maa yeh beeda utha ke humne kauno galti toh nahin ki?" (Was it a mistake to take so much on?)
Everyday we would have some issue on sets. The cricket scene was endless. It was continuing forever. Same thing was happening everyday but we were not able to move forward. It was like that movie Groundhog Day, where the same thing was repeating. You feel a lot of stuff was happening but you are not going ahead. Actors’ dates were getting over. We didn’t have dates of the British actors, and the film was over budget. One day, I repeated that dialogue, and told Ashutosh, "By taking so much on my shoulders, I haven’t made any mistakes na?' Then that became our joke line. In times of stress, we would have some humour.
How do you look at your journey as a producer so far, and ahead?
I come from a film family, and I have seen my father and my uncle make movies. My father was a very enthusiastic and good produce. But he didn’t know how to do business so he never ended up making money. He faced many problems. He made a film called Locket, which took eight years to complete. Then another film Khoon Ki Pukaar took three years. Those days, it used to take very long to make movies. I have seen him go through a lot of financial crisis. He was almost bankrupt, and there was a time we were almost on the road. We were very young then. We used to often get calls with people saying we have given money and when are you returning it. He would say I have invested money in the film but my actors are not giving me dates, and the money is stuck. This conversation went on for three to four years. My dad was in his 40s then, and one night, my mother found my dad searching for his graduation certificate to take up a job. Hence, I had decided that I will never be a producer. I was happy being an actor.
But when Ashutosh came to me with a script that I loved, I wondered who will produce this film, and which producer will give the resources correctly to make Lagaan. I couldn’t think of any name. Also Ashu, unfortunately at that time, had not given successful films though I felt he was a good director. So any producer wouldn’t have agreed that he made such a big film. They wouldn’t have agreed to have 10,000 people on set. They would have probably insisted on getting British people travelling to India instead of getting good British actors from there. I felt if this film has to be made, I will produce it.
I became a producer by accident, and I had no intentions of becoming one. I thought I would make this one film but no further.
But when I produced Lagaan, it made me realise that now, l can do things the way I want. It gave me a lot of potential creatively when I was in control. Normally, a production house churns out three to four films in a year. Yash Raj Films or Karan Johar (Dharma Productions) would have made around 80 films in 20 years but you won’t find even 10 films from Aamir Khan Productions in 20 years. We are not the production house that believes in quantity. We are actually a boutique house. At present, I am making Laal Singh Chaddha, and only once I am done with this film that I will go to the next. I am like a handloom worker, and my production house is like a small cottage industry. It is only when you love a story, don’t think of the box office, that is our principle in AKP. We liked the story of Peepli Live, chalo let’s make it. Now how it will fare at the box office, we don’t know. Touchwood! We have a 100 percent record till today. We didn’t lose money even on the documentary film that Swathy Chakravarthy directed for me, called Rubaru Roshni. It has been a great journey, and a great learning experience.
Besides the set challenges and your industry friends having those apprehensions, Lagaan was released with Gadar. Did people tell you it was a wrong move to clash with such a big film? How do you always manage to go by your gut and gumption, especially when there is so much at stake?
There was Anil Sharma, who is a successful director, and Sunny Deol, a huge star, so one does get concerned. However, I always believed, and I still hold to that, and we have examples to prove that when two good films are released on the same day, they both do well. Sunny and I have coincidentally come together many times. Dil and Ghayal also came on the same day. Even during Raja Hindustani, we had clashed but fortunately, both our films always did well. I knew Gadar’s story, and I told Ashu that the story was brilliant, its emotion is so good that it cannot go wrong, and let’s be prepared for a very good film.
But what I was not prepared for was a monster of a film that it turned out. People from villages would come sitting on trucks, tractors, buses to watch it. It was not a joke, and Gadar was at least three to four times bigger than Lagaan. It was a massive, monster hit. Today, I think about how we lasted in front of Gadar. Gadar was like a tsunami. But the kind of business Gadar was doing, if Lagaan was even one percent less than it was, we wouldn’t have survived. Gadar was much loved, and a bigger hit than Lagaan. Lagaan may not have done as much business as Gadar but it also received a lot of love. Both are tentpole films. If someone had told me that Gadar will be this big a film then I would have thought twice of releasing Lagaan with it. I don’t think even Sunny or Anil Sharma knew that it would be such a monster hit because these kinds of successes are very rare. But I don’t remember anyone specifically telling me not to release it on the same day as Gadar.
Would you be oaky someone wants to remake Lagaan today?
Why not? Ashutosh and I have already done it, and it will be boring for us to do it again. But if another filmmaker wants to make Lagaan, we will be happy to give them the rights. They will have their own nazariya to make it. I don’t believe in being possessive about my film. I would like to see who would play Bhuvan better than me (laughs heartily).
Can you recollect the first screening of Lagaan?
When we were making the film, many villagers, who would be sitting and chatting with me, wondered if they would get to see the film considering there were no theatres there. There were a lot of women and girls in ghunghat. I had promised them that the first public screening of Lagaan would happen in Kutch, and only after we had watched the film together would the others get to watch. They didn’t believe me. Two or three weeks before the release of the film on 15 June, many of us went to Bhuj with the print, and booked a theatre there. The entire Kutch crowd turned up, and that was the first screening of Lagaan. Even the British actors flew down for the screening. So the first screening happened in Bhuj, and then we returned to Mumbai and had our screenings here.
Lagaan made you a pan-India star. What did the success do to you as a star, as an actor? Did it change the way you looked at stories?
That has always been my attempt, no matter what film I am doing. I always aimed to entertain and connect with the audience irrespective of the language. For me, selecting stories always depended upon personal excitement. I have never tried to calculate how it will fare at the box office, which is a very difficult thing to do. I loved the story of Taare Zameen Par, and I wanted to make it. If someone had to ask what business it will do, what am I supposed to answer? I loved the story of Peepli Live but if I had to think about the box office and then produce, then I won’t produce it. When I did Delhi Belly in English language, how could I predict how many people in India would watch it?
I go with my gut about what I like, and then try to see what is the potential so that we spend only so much looking at the budget and rough estimate. Nobody knew that Taare Zameen Par would eventually earn Rs 80 crore at that time. It was the second highest grosser that year. Before the release, if someone had asked, I would have said it might earn Rs 15 to 20 crore, and let’s at least cover the cost. But I don’t go around looking for issue-based stories because my job is to entertain people. Nobody comes to watch social messages or a lecture on sociology when he goes to the theatre, or watches films on Netflix, Amazon. My primary responsibility as a filmmaker is to entertain, and within that if I get the opportunity to say something very important then I jump at it. For example, Lagaan or 3 Idiots. I also like mad humour so that was one of the reasons to do Delhi Belly, and there was no message in it.
Why do you think Lagaan is still relevant?
It has lasted for 20 years and stays relevant even today, and that it connected so deeply with people, I am happy about that. Many times you may like a film today but 10 years later, you may wonder how I could have liked this film. There are many such examples but a few films like Mughal -E -Azam, Mother India, Ganga Jamuna, Sholay.. .these are some of the classics. Why? Because they stand the test of time. But you can’t plan such films, they just happen. K Asif wouldn’t have known that people would watch his film Mughal-E-Azam 70 years later. Now we know that Lagaan stood the test of time for 20 years, and whether it will still be relevant for another 20 years, that we will see. I always say that Lagaan is a journey film. It started as a journey, and remains a journey. In this journey, some joined in the early stage and some joined later on. It began with Ashutosh, then I joined him, A R Rahman, then the other actors, technicians came in, and the last ones to join was the audience. The journey of Lagaan is ongoing, I am still enjoying this journey, and hope it never ends.
source https://www.firstpost.com/entertainment/bollywood/the-aamir-khan-interview-lagaan-gave-me-the-confidence-i-could-do-things-my-way-9719051.html
