Skip to main content

Mere Paas Baap Hain!


  By Jaideep Sen

Mere Pass Baap Hain! ....Now that’s  something Salman Khan can say with pride in real life because of amongst multiple reasons the one great talent that he’s inherited from his father, Salim Khan Saab, is the Eye to spot special talent like father and son themselves are.

Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Salman Khan
 

As I watched Gangubai Kathiwadi which personally I feel is Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Best Film to date, and was swept by its brilliance I instinctively thought of doffing my hat to Salman Khan, through this piece, for giving us this gem of a filmmaker.

Salim Khan and Amitabh Bachchan
Having been around in the film Industry for three decades I know what a fight it is to convince an A Lister to do your first film and when unfortunately it fails commercially--as it happened with Khamoshi-The Musical-- it’s unheard of for the star to do the same filmmaker’s second film. 

But in this case Salman did not flinch, stood by Sanjay Bhansali and how! Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam happened and the rest is history. This rock solid support has been acknowledged and thanked by Sanjay Bhansali himself in a latest on camera interview, a sign of a humble genius.

This eye for spotting special talent is a talent Salman Khan has inherited  from his father, an institution of writing, Salim Khan Saab.

 

Salim and Salman Khan
Five decades back Salim Saab along with his erstwhile partner, Javed Akhtar Saab -- with their and Hindi cinema’s most game changing script ever,  Zanjeer -- backed an actor with a string of failed films behind him to play Vijay Khanna. The actor was Amitabh Bachchan and the rest is again history.

Can you imagine this industry without special talents like Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjay Leela Bhansali? It’s Unimaginable.

So for making it happen, I from the bottom of my heart thank this special father-son duo, Salim Saab and Salman Bhai who had volunteered to back unseen, unheard and unsuccessful names and turn them into the mammoth successes. 

And just for this inheritance itself, Salman Khan can proudly say “Mere Pass Baap Hain!”



Jaideep Sen is a filmmaker and a connoisseur of the art of storytelling.  

Read his earlier posts in the Salam Salim Saab series: 

#1 Salaam, Salim Saab 

 #2 Silence that Speaks 

#3 The Invaluable Value of the Pen

 #4 The Guru of Screenwriting

 #5 The Forever Burning Flame of Sholay

 #6 The Strength of Characterisation 

 #7 Bond of Brotherhood

 #8 The Sangam of a Genius and his Admirer 

 #9 First Link in the Zanjeer 

#10 Vijay – The Eternal Winner 

 #11 Let's Celebrate Salim Khan! 

 #12 The Memorable Women Behind the Angry Young Man

 #13 The Definition of a Love Story 

#14 Relevance Etched in Stone 

 #15 Fuelled by Rejection 

#16 Dialogue - the Spoken Word 

 #17 When Salman Khan Chose to Strip Off his Stardom

 #18 The Most Memorable Line of Indian Cinema

#19 The Doomed Characters

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Basu Chatterji's "Balcony Class" Films

Basu Chatterji's Rajnigandha was like a breath of fresh air in the 1970s film universe of Bombay. At a time when the Angry Young Man was beginning to dominate celluloid screens, Amol Palekar was as un-hero-like as you could get. He was the Common Man who traveled in buses, did not have hero-like mannerisms and did not breathe fire and brimstone at his opponents. Basu Chatterji's Middle of the Road Cinema burst on to the scene and surprised the movie-going audience with its everyday situations and storylines that had an undercurrent of humour. Chatterji catered to an audience that he liked to call the "Balcony Class".  Anirudha Bhattacharjee, author of Basu Chatterji and Middle-of-the-Road Cinema writes an entertaining and heartwarming account of the life and work of Basu Chatterji, one of the most under-rated directors of Indian cinema. Recall of Chatterji's brand of feel-good, slice-of-life movies is perhaps highest for his Rajnigandha, Chotisi Baat, Baaton Baa
4 comments
Read more

'Pure Evil' has been my biggest and most complex project - Author Balaji Vittal

Love them or hate them, you simply can't ignore them. That cliche is perhaps most apt when it comes to the bad men of Bollywood. In fact, some of the most memorable lines of dialogue have been mouthed not by the heroes but by the villains of Hindi cinema. So it is only fitting that these shining stars of the dark world (after all, antagonists are the protagonists of their own stories!) deserve to be spotlighted. Balaji Vittal , the author of Pure Evil: the Bad Men of Bollywood undertakes this onerous task of highlighting the world of these evil characters and how they have come to occupy a special place in the hearts and minds of movie goers.  I spoke to Mr. Balaji Vittal, a National Award winning and MAMI Award winning author of Bollywood books, a columnist for News18, Outlook India, The New Indian Express , a Bollywood commentator and a public speaker, about his journey of venturing into the world of Pure Evil .   Here are some excerpts:   Your book "Pure Evil: the Bad Men
Post a Comment
Read more

Review of Vikram Vedha - The "Kahani" lets the film down

If there is one movie that is perhaps the Godfather of all dirty-cops-and-gangsters movies, it's gotta be The Departed by Martin Scorsese. Interestingly, it was an adaptation of the hit Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs . While the latter was itself a very popular film, it may not be wrong to say that The Departed has surpassed it by acquiring near cult status.   So, it was with this in mind I wanted to watch Vikram Vedha which is a remake of the Tamil film of the same name. The original film starring Madhavan and Vijay Sethupathi was a huge blockbuster and it was no wonder that the filmmakers were keen to remake it in Hindi with Saif Khan and Hrithik Roshan in the roles of Vikram and Vedha. However, the Hindi remake failed to recreate the magic of the original. Even though the film is supposedly an exact copy, made by the very same filmmakers who directed the original.  While there has been a bunch of theories about why the Hindi version failed, the consensus has been that "
Post a Comment
Read more