Darr, which completes 32 years today, continues to remain an iconic film. The movie is known the most for Shah Rukh Khan’s deep portrayal of an obsessed one-sided lover. But one can’t ignore the way the film was handled by the late legendary filmmaker Yash Chopra. On the film’s anniversary, its dialogue writer Javed Siddiqi looked back at his positive experience with the filmmaker in an exclusive chat with Bollywood Hungama.
32 years of Darr EXCLUSIVE: When Yash Chopra’s fax from Switzerland moved the film’s dialogue writer Javed Siddiqi: “He had such respect for writers”
Siddiqi revealed that his first project with Chopra never got made. “Yash ji was an excellent director of his time,” he said. “He was a great human being too. I met him for the first time when he called me in 1989 or 1990 to write a serial. I wrote that serial but it never got made till now. It must be still lying with them. But in between all this, he offered me films like Darr and Yeh Dillagi. He was a very sorted director. He used to respect writers enormously.”
Coming to Chopra’s respect for writers, Siddiqi revealed an incident from the shoot of Darr, which moved him. “He wanted to change a few lines in Darr when he was shooting the film in a foreign country (Switzerland),” he recalled. “In those days, we had fax. So, I got a fax from him saying that these lines need to be changed and these are the requirements, so please send the same. Some other director, who would have been shooting so far away, would have asked his assistants to carry out the task or done it himself. Kaun poochhne wala hai bhai? But he had such respect for writers. Before me, he had the same respect towards Akhtar ul Iman and Sahir (Ludhianvi) sahab.”
Siddiqi shared that he and Yash Chopra always bonded on their mutual love for the Urdu language. “Do you know, Yash ji only used to converse in Urdu and English? He used to speak and write mostly in Urdu. He used to remember the great works of Sahir. Since my background is also literary, we used to speak a lot on the topic, like sharing old stories,” he said.
Siddiqi also remembered how Yash Chopra used to narrate the script of his films even to the spot boys. “People keep mentioning ‘bound scripts’ but I haven’t seen anyone except Yash ji who used to keep a bound script,” he said. “When the bound script got ready, he used to gather everyone from the unit, right from the spot boys to production manager to artists. He used to give them a narration. After that, he used to say that our writers have written everything and if they have anything to say, now is the time because after this, he won’t change a single word or even a punctuation.”
Darr, which also starred Juhi Chawla, Sunny Deol and Anupam Kher, received critical and commercial success.
Javed Siddiqi also wrote the dialogues, along with Aditya Chopra, for the latter’s directorial debut Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge along with SRK’s other iconic films like Baazigar and Pardes.
Also Read: 30 years of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge EXCLUSIVE: Writer Javed Siddiqi recalls a senior person from YRF saying during the film’s making, “Is this a film? It’s a travelogue”; also reveals how he coined the iconic ‘Bade bade deshon mein…’ dialogue
More Pages: Darr Box Office Collection
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