‘Actors don’t do movies TO BREAK RECORDS’ They just want to make sincere films, says Salman Khan in a chat with Bombay Times At a suburban Mumbai studio, between takes, Salman Khan sits outside his vanity van, surrounded by his in-house doctor, some members of the cine artists association and his own team. Bhai, as he is fondly referred to by most people, is organizing an eye-camp for the less privileged in Bollywood. Once he has wrapped that up, he takes a short break to talk to BT...
Salman, how is your health now?
I’m fit. Thank you for asking.
The box office expectation for your new film is humongous and the buzz is that no other filmmaker wishes to release his film around that time!
Well, it should be. It’s the coming together of two big brands — Salman Khan and Yash Chopra. Naturally, expectations are bound to be high. But that is not something I orchestrated. It is something that the trade is expecting. I only set out to make a good film. On second thoughts, our industry needs more money, yaar. Now the government has decided to burden us with a 12.5% service tax. It’s crazy the way this business functions.
Will the Bodyguard figures be toppled this August?
Actors don’t do movies to break records. Records get made and broken because of statistics. The number of theatres that play Bollywood movies globally has increased. I want all films to start crossing the 200 cr mark. I was sitting with some members of the junior artists association, and was saddened to hear that many of them still don’t have money to pay for their medical needs and basic amenities. I hope all our movies make enough money to at least provide these guys with a decent livelihood.
Your onscreen chemistry with Katrina now is far better than it was in Yuvvraaj, your last film together.
Oh, is that so? Katrina is a big star now. She seeks perfection in everything she does. She practises her dance numbers for 2-3 days, relentlessly. For someone who could not speak a sentence in Hindi, she now delivers her Hindi dialogues almost as well as any of us.
In the movie, she has a dialogue, in which she says, ‘Aap ki shaadi ki umar ho gayi hai.’ Do you have a befitting reply?
Well that’s a dialogue and it is not to be taken seriously. Honestly, I don’t think even Katrina meant it seriously.
Two decades in the business, and the Khan trio still rules..
It’s destiny. I’m grateful to Sooraj Barjatya for Maine Pyar Kiya and so many others who believed in me. I guess all three of us (Aamir, Shah Rukh and I) lucked out. Sometimes we got good scripts that became even better films. And at other times, our very ordinary films have done wonders at the box office. But above all, we have God’s blessings and have managed a faithful fan following.
The biggest Khan? Aamir, Shah Rukh or you?
Next. This question doesn’t interest me.
Are you doing Sooraj Barjatya’s film next?
He has narrated a script to me. But I’m starting my brother Sohail’s film next. Actually, when I heard Sohail’s script, my immediate reaction was, ‘Wow.’ If a script doesn’t do that to me, I’m not even going to attempt a film anymore.
How does ‘wow’ happen?
Bante bante ban jata hai. A script may be just adequate in the first draft. It becomes extraordinary with a few good dialogues; some good emotions; a great music track; some fantastic action. Having said that, I’m the first one to admit that despite everything we do, sometimes we actors go horribly wrong with our choice of movies. After all, we are just human.
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