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Rajkummar Hirani recently opened up about the reason behind making a film on Sanjay Dutt’s life. He reacted to the accusations that he “whitewashed” Sanjay Dutt’s image with the film. The actor was accused of allegedly being involved in the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts and was sentenced to five years in prison. In a new interview, Hirani shared he was not close friends with Sanjay Dutt, neither out of work to be desperate enough to make a biopic. The only reason he took it up was because he was “greedy” for the story. He also spoke about his last project Dunki and how it didn’t live up to his expectations in terms of box office numbers.
Speaking about making Sanju in detail, Rajkummar Hirani told Komal Nahta on his YouTube channel Game Changers, “I got inspiration for Sanju after hearing Sanjay Dutt’s stories from himself.” He explained, “Sanjay Dutt was out on parole. He came out and called me. He said, ‘What you upto? Please come meet me.’ I went there to meet him. This was the phase when he was very much alone and not a lot of people would visit him. Despite having done two films with him, I was not close friends with him. Before this incident, I have no memory of sitting with him and having deep conversations or spending an evening. Our relation was limited to work. But this one day, I felt like he was venting out to me. He started to share his stories, began to talk about his father. This was it and I went back home.”
After this day, Sanjay Dutt called the filmmaker again and this continued for a couple of days. “It hit me that all of his stories are extremely amazing. Maybe there is a film.” The filmmaker shared at this time there was no discussions about making Sanju. “At that time, we were writing Munna Bhai, Sanju was a ready-made material that we received out of the blue. I found the father-son equation interesting. Then I met his family, friends and it became a film.”
The filmmaker also discussed the accusations of making the film to “whitewash” the actor’s image. He recalled an incident from an interview session and said, “During an interview once, I was asked if I made Sanju to whitewash Sanjay Dutt’s image. I was like, ‘What is your problem with him?’ He said, ‘He kept the gun with him’. I was like, ‘So, we have shown him keeping the gun. We even showed how he called his friend to throw it in the water and destroy it. We also showed he was a drug addict. We even showed he slept with his best friend’s girlfriend. We also showed he was a brat. What is that you think I have not shown to whitewash his image? People developed a perception based on what they have read about him around. Nobody knows him first hand.”
Rajkumar Hirani further explained he didn’t have any reason to make a film on the actor. The only reason was that there was a story to tell.
He said, “I am not an out-of-work director to be so desperate to make a film to whitewash someone’s image. Neither was I that close friends with him. I was just greedy about the story. It wasn’t like I just heard his side of the story, but I also spoke to his friends and family. I even spoke to a police, and questioned them, “Just tell me that you had kept a gun, everyone knows about it, was there a connection? You think he ever knew that about this thing? If this is the case then I won’t make the film. He said, ‘There was no connection, he was stupid to keep the gun.'”
He also shared, “There was a whole perception that there was a truck full of RDX at his home. This too came from a news item. Many in the industry talked to me against the film. ‘Why you doing this?’ There was no truth to this. There was no record of him having a truck like that. I read entire High Court and Supreme Court judgement. Nothing was mentioned. Even Sanjay said he never had such charges against him. Because it was interesting, I made it. However, after I made this film, I received several phone calls to make films on them to clear their names.”
In the same interview, Rajkumar also spoke about making Dunki and its performance at box office. He said, “Before making any film, I always try with Abhijat (Joshi) that we try and find an unique idea, which is never seen before. Dunki happened after I learnt about this world where people without passport and visa wanting to leave India, especially in Ludhiana. These stories were both sad and funny. Funny because the so-called teachers teaching English don’t know the language. It was definitely a task to write the script of the film. But, after a point, we were convinced that the film has both entertainment and story. But, it is difficult to say how people will react to the story. Some stories resonate with people and some don’t. Till date, I can’t tell what works and what doesn’t.”
He added, “We put the same kind of effort for all of our films, but the thing is sometimes you succeed, sometimes you succeed less. I am lucky.” However, when asked, “One film that performed less at the box office than you expected,” the filmmaker quickly replied, “Dunki”.
The film starring Shah Rukh Khan, Vicky Kaushal and Taapsee Pannu earned a lifetime collection of Rs 454 crore, according to Sacnilk.
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