FEROZ Khan is in a hurry. Attired in a black shirt — unbuttoned to the chest, in trademark style — he wants to get on with the interview so that he can test run a new Mercedes. ‘‘If you’ll take time, maybe I should test drive first . Just buzz off and buzz in,’’ he grins. Cars, bikes, horses: this man likes all things fast. ‘‘Speed is a part of my life,’’ declares filmdom’s most stylish Khan. The passion was reflected in Apradh, Khan’s first film as producer-director. This 1972 hit is still Hindi cinema’s only racing flick, shot on Formula 1 location. The two-bit race track scenes in Baazigar and Kyun! Ho Gaya Na don’t even merit a mention. Khan agrees, ‘‘Nobody has done it and nobody can do it, because it’s a helluva task to film a race on our limited budgets.’’ Warming up to the topic of Apradh — Mumtaz was the pit babe . er co-star — Khan says, ‘‘It was quite ambitious. In those days, foreign exchange was almost tabboo. One had to give eight times the bank guarantee for the currency. But I was adamant I wanted to make a film on F-1.’’ Khan managed a coup when he got permission to shoot a real race in Nurburgring, 150 km from Frankfurt, Germany. He engineered a six-camera set up to shoot the 45 lap race (it’s now 60 laps): ‘‘Normally, a race is shown with straight shots, but I wanted to depict the side shots from every angle, so the speed and thrill could come across.’’ KHAN got lucky for Apradh. A German journalist had come to Mumbai to interview him. ‘‘I mentioned in passing that I wanted to make a film on racing and he invited me to Germany, which has the best tracks in the world,’’ Khan remembers. Khan and his crew landed up in Germany only to realise their planned outlay was way too low. ‘‘This was the first film of my banner, FK International. And I wanted to pull out all stops. But I just didn’t have that kind of money.’’ he says. Fate intervened. ‘‘My journalist friend and I were in a hotel in Munich, taking a sauna. We got talking to a blond guy, started sharing stories about shikar and racing. He turned out to be race driver Prince Leopold of Munich, who actually did F-1,’’ Khan chuckles. Leopold was taking part in the race and he invited Khan to use him. ‘‘I shot the race in his red Maserati. I basically shot him and then, the next day, shot my own close-ups.’’ The most memorable scene was the beginning of the race — Mumtaz comes out from the crowd to hug Khan. There were 60,000 spectators and Mumtaz had to duck the security. Khan had just three minutes, the maximum time allotted to drivers to rev up their engines. ‘‘I could never have staged this shot. With 40 cars lined up, spectators, press and security, there was no way I could manage the shot,’’ Khan says, ‘‘if this was Hollywood, they would have spent $ 10 million for the one scene. We could only do it because we were shooting the real race.’’ BUT the ride was not all smooth. On the 10th lap, Leopold’s car broke down. Khan had to talk his way to another driver who had a similar car. ‘‘His was a lighter red and, of course, the number plates were different. I did a bit of cheating and shot the scene in such a manner that I could maintain continuity when editing,’’ he laughs. Khan still has the yellow helmet in his Bangalore house though the beige racing gear has long vanished. Apradh was made on a budget of Rs 45 lakh, ‘‘which is almost Rs 15 crore now’’. Extremely proud to be the only Indian to shoot an F-1 race, Khan is more than happy to yield place to Narain Karthikeyan. ‘‘He’s a fabulous driver and I hope he becomes Schumi soon.’’ Michael Schumacher is the actor’s absolute favourite. And yes, he’ll be watching the race today.
