Four decades after its release, Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro continues to remain one of Indian cinema’s most noteworthy satirical black comedies. Made on a shoestring budget with a cast that reads like the who’s who of Hindi cinema’s finest talents — read Naseeruddin Shah, Om Puri, Pankaj Kapur, Bhakti Barve, Ravi Baswani, Satish Shah, Satish Kaushik and Neena Gupta, among others — the 1983 cult classic directed by the late Kundan Shah is a satirical take on the rampant corruption in Indian politics, bureaucracy, Indian media and business. All these years later, its relevance seems to have only grown manifold.
Filmmaker Sudhir Mishra who is credited for story and screenplay along with Shah looks back on their "mad days" as the film turns 40 this year. Edited excerpts from a conversation:
On Kundan Shah’s guidance
"Kundan was a mad genius. I get a lot of credit for Jaane.. but I keep saying that it was Kundan’s doing. I was young and a little mad. I was the ‘padha likha’ person in the group and I had also done theatre. Kundan had the grace to invite me in and work with him. There were some common references and I worked according to his guidance. I must have done something right because the credits mention my name along with his for the story and screenplay. But we were mad at that time. We didn’t know what we were doing. The idea that this will become a cult comedy after all these years was unbelievable. Most of the actors in the film thought it was crap."
On the conviction of the actors
"They were all quite new. Nobody had done anything like this ever. How were they to know if it would work? To be honest, we (Kundan and I) didn’t know if it would work. But these actors were special. Despite their misgivings about a lot of things, when they did a scene, they did it with full conviction. The film works because of them; because they make the script and situations believable. I mean, Naseer didn’t believe in the telephone exchange scene at all, but when he does it, you don’t know that he doesn’t believe in it. He does it with so much conviction."
On the brilliance of Ravi Baswani
"There were two people who believed in the film. One was Ravi (whose character in the film is named Sudhir, after Mishra) and the other was Satish Shah. They had both done comedy. Comedy supposes that realism is not the only way of looking at life. It presupposes stylisation and an irreverent way of life. In fact, Kundan used to say that Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro is Ravi Baswani. He was thinking of a sequel but lost interest in it once Ravi passed away (in 2010). I didn’t work on the sequel but I remember they were kind of working on it. I just thought it should not touch the idea of what we had already done because we were all different at that time. Everyone was starting out and the times were different. You cannot recreate that time in your life."
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