Shekhar Kapur says he won’t make Mr India again, gets emotional as he remembers Sridevi, Amrish Puri and Satish Kaushik: ‘I will cry’

 

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Shekhar then shared how he would turn to his imaginary 11-year-old self while making Mr India, who gave him constant feedback and because of which there was a “sense of playfulness” in the film.

He said, “Constantly, for Mr India, I had an assistant, who was eleven or twelve years old, who was mini-me. So every time I took a shot I would kind of turn to him and ask my assistant, the mini-me, and ask ‘kaisa hai (how’s it)? and if he said, ‘bohot boring hai (it is very boring)”. Then I’d do the shot again. I was constantly in touch with this kid in me, and Mr India has that sense of playfulness, of innocence and nativity. Now if someone asks me to do Mr India again then that sense of playfulness and naivete won’t be there. It would be like, ‘Mongambo was like this, now he should be like that’, so it would be better for another director to come in and use what they fundamentally are and bring it to Mr India, I wouldn’t do it. I would do something else.”

Shekhar then shared that he feels Mr India is a kind of film where there was a possibility to make a ‘Mr India Universe’ like we have the Marvel Universe and every character could have a spin-off story and independent films.

He shared, “Mr India was not a superhero film, it had universal characters. What Marvel are trying to do now, we did then. How many characters (Mr India had). Satish (Kaushik) has passed away but Calendar… there is a restaurant in Bangalore called Calendar, there was Mogambo, there was Miss Hawa Hawai, there was Daaga (Sharat Saxena) and Teja (Ajit Vachani), there was Dr Fu Manchu and of course Arun. It was Javed Akhtar at his best and hence each character had a different way of speaking, I trusted him and I was like let me go ahead and define each character in a very different way.”

Discussing possibilities of the kind of films that could come out of the Mr India Universe, Shekhar said, “Today we could have made a (Mr India) universe where Calendar would have his own story, different stories with Miss Hawa Hawai, or Mogambo and his kids — Mogambo and his son, who knows what could be (possible). But Mr India was probably India’s only universal character film, I haven’t seen that in another film. People still talk about the cockroach scene, so ya, somebody else has to do it, I just want to do something where another part of me comes and does it.”

Shekhar then also shared an emotional note remembering Sridevi, Amrish Puri and Satish Kaushik, He said, “Mogambo is gone, Miss Hawa Hawaii has gone and now Calendar is gone, it’s so sad. The film is alive with three main characters gone… I’ll cry.”

Shekhar had recently disclosed that he has been in talks with Mr India’s producer Boney Kapoor, to re-release the 1987 film in 3D for a new generation of audience. Apart from the film’s evergreen characters, its story too has stood the test of time and the filmmaker think it is only because he could extend his “emotionality” and “vulnerability” in the film. Revealing that’s why he chose to kill the little girl in the film, Shekhar shared, “Great stories are not plots, great stories are emotional conflicts. I remember (how) at one point I was worried about Mr India — here’s a little secret I am revealing, I didn’t want people to think that it is a plot and they disconnect so I thought okay, what if I kill that little girl. Suddenly it roots you because it is emotional.”