48 years of Sholay
If there’s any movie no one would dare to touch, or even think of remaking even in their wildest dreams, has to be Sholay. Today, on the 77th Independence year of India, Sholay also ages along. From 1975 to now, it’s close to a half century and yet, we mimic the scenes or use their characters for school skits like it was yesterday. Great movies never age and Sholay stands true to the fact.
What’s a better opportunity than Sholay’s 48th anniversary to know some surprising trivia, some memories that were created behind the scenes?
Sholay’s first scene was the one in which Amitabh Bachchan hands keys over to Jaya Bachchan. Jaya was three months pregnant and alarmed by the rough roads that led to the shooting location, Amitabh drove her to the location himself.
Writer Javed Akhtar had to enact the part of Basanti for Hema Malini at her hotel because she just wasn’t getting it. We’ll give you a moment to imagine Akhtar pretending to be the chatty, flirty and thoroughly feminine Basanti, while Malini stares at him dazed and confused. Malini’s big obstacle was that she had long dialogues that she was struggling to memorise. This is why director Ramesh Sippy shot Malini’s small scenes in the first part of the schedule.
Originally, there had been talk about Shatrughan Sinha playing the character of Jai. Amitabh Bachchan at the time was a struggling actor and the popular opinion was that Bachchan would be too saturnine for the role. Thank heavens director Ramesh Sippy went with his instinct and not popularity charts.
The movie was also known for having the longest runtime ever. While other movies struggled to touch even 2.5 hours, Sholay was a full 204 minutes long. The censored version squared down to 198 minutes, which is still way ahead than other films in the market. News also says that when the shoot was wrapped, the movie was 4 hours. Then, the filmmakers decided to cut it short.
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