Exclusive| Pathaan dialogue writer Abbas Tyrewala decodes Shah Rukh Khan-Salman Khan scene, his concern about ‘Ek soldier ye nahi poochta’ line

Edited excerpts:

How does the Pathaan success feel like and how were you the night before the film released?

I was at my niece’s wedding in Goa! I was dancing away. It has been so long, because I finished the dialogues two years ago, my work was done even before the first lockdown. By the time Pathaan came out, at a real emotional level, I was waiting for it like any other viewer, I knew it would be a fun watch. The fact that there was some unnecessary controversy that was created, something was misunderstood, perhaps unwittingly, perhaps willingly, but that didn’t deter people from enjoying, stepping out in huge numbers and loving the film. That was the biggest relief and kick. It seemed like a rejection of pettiness and a celebration of a slightly old-world joy of being together as Indians and enjoying the cinema experience. That felt very nice.

How did the writing for Pathaan begin for you?

Siddharth Anand and Shridhar Raghavan (screenplay writer) have an excellent dynamic. Between them, all the structure is sorted out and a complete fleshed out flow is written, with indicated dialogues too often contained in that. For me, all I need to do is to not mess it up. If possible, make it ever better, make it shine even more, but at the very least, not make it less than what is given to me. There is no other consideration to bog me down, that what will Shah Rukh think of this, what will my mom think of it… You don’t get caught up in that.

What’s your favourite dialogue from the film?

There is a line in the entry scene, where Shah Rukh realises that he has broken the nails, so he drops them on the floor and says, ‘Ghungroo toot gaye’, which is obviously a throwback to War! That had the maximum grin value for me, and I loved the way Shah Rukh has delivered it. It then kickstarts everything.

 

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How many drafts were there?

This is the third film I have done with Adi and Siddharth and each time it has been a consistent process. They tend to mostly like my first draft. But lets’ put it this way: 60 % of the film they will like it in the first draft, then about 25% will be something where either I won’t be convinced with what they are trying to communicate and will say let me try some other option or they will say let’s go back to the thought we had. In some instances, all of us will agree that a line isn’t working in Hindi as much as it did in English, so we do it a totally different way. Then 10-15% will be the heartache, where you are fundamentally looking at it differently from each other, struggling to convince each other, to avoid or retain something. It is a pretty solid and healthy process.

Dialogues of Pathaan truly use Shah Rukh’s charm, aura, self-deprecating humour  wonderfully. It also constantly blurs the line between the character and the star we love. Like a dialogue where a character describes Pathaan and says, ‘We thought his chapter is over, but he was writing a whole new book.’ 

That was the fun part. It was not incidental, it was very, very intentional. It was part of the brief and the conception of the movie. I had interacted with Shah Rukh in Asoka and Main Hoon Na, I had a sense of his persona. But his movie persona is so larger-than-life that even if somebody who doesn’t know him at all in person can recreate that. Aditya Chopra has worked extensively with him, and so many of the Shah Rukh Khan movies we love are of Yash Raj. So who better to know his stardom than Adi. Sid has also known Shah Rukh for so many years, so these guys really know him and know how to celebrate Shah Rukh. Shridhar and I didn’t have that much personal interaction, but we still have his larger-than-life public persona. As far as you can celebrate that, have fun with that, it’s really what Siddharth wanted to do.

Unlike in War, where the idea was to create characters like Kabir and Khalid and get stars like Hrithik and Tiger to totally get into those characters, live and breathe. I am not sure if Shah Rukh was making Pathaan live and breathe or Pathaan was making Shah Rukh live and breathe. They totally fed off each other, they were so interchangeable, it was great fun.

The line in the climax, ‘A soldier doesn’t ask what a country can do for him…’ is from John F Kennedy speech. Can you talk about how it made its way into Pathaan?

That is an example of a line that you spend fighting, you lose and then everyone praises it and you feel like a bit silly. My entire contention to Siddharth was that why on earth are we quoting JFK! In the whole film we have not done anything like that, and it will seem unimaginative, that we took such a cliched line from history. But Adi and Sid were very, very clear that nothing else would have the power of JFK’s line over there. We are not pretending that it is an original line. It is very clearly a throwback to that. As a dialogue writer, I tried very hard to convince them that it was a terrible idea and now when people compliment me for it, they don’t know that I am smiling but gently kicking myself for it.

Was there a particular dialogue or scene that you had to brainstorm a lot to write?

The climax exchange between Jim and Pathaan. I was very worried, not just about the soldier bit, but the entire exchange. I felt I could have played with it more; it could have been more ‘mine’ for lack of a better word. I was very worried that it might end up feeling dry, because it (the soldier line) is familiar and not as innovative as some of the other portions. But it has very clearly gone down very well with people. Whether it would have been more effective, less effective if we had tried something else will always be up for conjecture.

What was it like to write dialogues for the big train sequence featuring Shah Rukh and Salman?

It was purely finding the funniest words. The entire conception was there well before even my job started. Siddharth and Adi knew exactly what they were doing. Shridhar had captured it perfectly in the screenplay, they knew how meta it was, they knew that besides the fact that it is Tiger and Pathaan coming together and starting off this spy multiverse, it was also Shah Rukh and Salman on-screen together, it was also Karan-Arjun on-screen together. They were aware and cognizant of that. The way they milked that scene for the fun of it, that was all them. My job was, ‘Ok that’s what you want to do, let me try writing the best possible lines for it.’

 

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It is a wonderful scene because there is a throwback to Karan Arjun, or the painkiller line…

There was this huge sense of joy in the writing of it. Often writing is lonely and difficult but once in a while you get to work with someone who is so clear with their version, to work with a screenplay writer who speaks your language, it becomes a joyful process. Pathaan was that movie where the writing was already a reward. It was a huge kick to write it and we were grinning even while writing this sequence because we knew that this would be so much fun.

The film is peppered with crackling lines which aren’t necessarily ‘dialogues.’ Like Dimple Kapadia saying, ‘I hate guns’ or Shah Rukh saying ‘women’ when Deepika is fighting and later saying, ‘Can’t keep a woman waiting.’

It really was fun, This time Siddharth wanted every dialogue to be a bit larger than life, filmy. In War we were trying hard not to draw attention to the dialogues, we wanted it to be as effortless as possible, let the characters shine. Over here, he was clear that he wanted the dialogues to be a lot more noticeable, quotable and in your face. Once that’s the brief, you can really party.

The post credit scene in the film is hilarious, where Shah Rukh and Salman are discussing who can be the next successor, before Shah Rukh says, ‘Hume he karna padega, bachcho pe nahi chhod sakte.’ It was such a pop culture moment. 

It was very unnerving for me to write that sequence. They are at the end of the fight in Russia, they are dressed the same, it is not like they are catching up later over coffee in Morocco. When we were writing it, at the point the scene was supposed to occur right after the Tiger-Pathaan fight sequence, when they are waiting for the chopper to come and pick them up after the action piece. I was extremely nervous, because we were dangerously verging on throwing people out of the illusion of Tiger and Pathaan by being so blatantly Shah Rukh and Salman. I knew it would be great fun, but breaking the fourth wall isn’t always a clever idea. I was very nervous that this comes in the middle of a story where people would laugh at Shah Rukh and Salman and their antics rather than remembering it is Tiger and Pathaan.

I don’t know who came up with this–Adi, Siddharth, the editor–idea of turning it into a mid-credit scene and not where it was originally occurring. That is a stroke of genius, because there you can be as meta as you like. There is no danger of throwing you out of the story because you are already out of it. It is like the ceremony is over and now the after party has started with that scene. There you can celebrate it– as people already are doing it.