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Filmmaker Sanjay Gupta’s working relationship with actor John Abraham goes back many years. They’ve worked on films such as Zinda and Shootout at Wadala; they reunited for Sanjay’s last film, Mumbai Saga. But the director was taken aback by the size of John’s team when they first worked together, on Shootout at Wadala. In an interview with Cyrus Broacha, the director said that he was coming off of a four-year break. He recalled the first day of shoot, and proceeded to spill the beans on Bollywood’s escalating entourage costs issue.
He said, “We were shooting in a chawl in Thane, inside this little house. In the morning, at 7 am, I was with my DOP (finalising shots and angles). Then I said, ‘Call John, call Kangana’.” Sanjay then mimed an assistant on their walkie talkie, saying, “Sir, talent is on the way.” He continued, “I said, ‘Who the f**k is talent?’ He said, ‘Sir, John is on the way’. I said, ‘That’s an oxymoron’.” Cyrus feigned outrage, and said, “John is my friend.” Sanjay said with a laugh, “John, I didn’t say anything. I didn’t mean him…”
But Sanjay was serious about the number of people that came along with John to their cramped set. “Then John walks onto set. He’s the nicest guy, because he didn’t have 18 (members in his entourage), he had nine. I was like, ‘Who the f**k are these people. It was such a small room, and suddenly it was full. The one thing I hate is a crowded set. They said, ‘Nahi, nahi, sir, woh John ka staff hai (Sir, that’s John’s staff). I said, ‘John ka staff’? All my life, I’ve known Sanjay Dutt, whose staff used to be one boy and one makeup man, wherever he was.”
Sanjay said that certain stars, such as Amitabh Bachchan, Hrithik Roshan, and Ajay Devgn, continue to work with small teams. But he revealed that he knows actors who demand as many as six vanity vans, and expect the producers to pay for their 30-member staff. In the same interview, he said that the only actor who doesn’t demand that producers pay for his staff is Amitabh Bachchan. “Mr Bachchan never, ever lets you pay his staff. There is nothing. No per-day, no conveyance. He says, ‘It’s my staff; it’s not the producer’s lookout’,” he said.
In an earlier interview with The Hollywood Reporter India, John said that certain stars are ‘bleeding the system dry’ by charging heaps of money even though their films aren’t working. “First thing to make amends is by cutting your personal cost. When a director tells you that you aren’t worth that much, you need to take that in cognizance. We don’t have that thought yet. We compare ourselves to other actors, and we want to broadcast our fees, and that’s the worst thing to do,” he said, adding that he finds it ‘ridiculous’ that stars continue to demand large sums of money for themselves and their entourages.
Recently, filmmaker Vivek Agnihotri took potshots at John while promoting his new film, The Bengal Files. They’d worked together on the sports drama Dhan Dhana Dhan Goal. “Everyone was like, ‘Let’s take John, he is a footballer. That’s how he became a part of the film,” he told Dainik Bhaskar, adding, “If someone tells me ‘reduce my dialogues’ Why? Because you can’t say them at once? You can’t say five lines of dialogues in rhythm at once. This is your problem. Then why are you taking so much money?”
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