‘I am still hungry for great scripts’

From Ardh Satya to Mukhbir—the policeman seems to be a favourite character. What’s your view of the real-life police force?
I am sympathetic to them. It’s a tough job. I feel bad when I see them on duty during festivals. They also have families who want them to be home for celebrations. We tackled that aspect of their lives in Ardh Satya, where the sub-inspector lived in a chawl and cooked his food, unlike commercial cinema where police officers are shown to reside in palaces.  

Tell us about the item number you are doing in Mere Baap Pehle Aap.
It’s not an item number per se as I am not just doing a song in the film. I have a full-length role of a middle-aged man desperate to get married. It’s a cute character and the song is a dream sequence in which I dance with foreign girls to pop beats. Now that’s a first. 

What are your plans as chairman of National Film Development Corporation?
NFDC’s purpose is to make socially relevant films. But such films should be done the way Bimal Roy, Guru Dutt or Raj Kapoor would have done them. They were not only meaningful, but also successful. That’s not to say they must include songs and dances. But if there’s scope, there shouldn’t be hesitation either to include them. I also intend to set up a panel of “script doctors”—experienced script writers—to turn a newcomer’s script into a viable option.  

You also intend to take film production the ‘cooperative’ way. Explain.
There are many talented and popular leading and character actors like Paresh Rawal, Anupam Kher or Rahul Bose who are typecast in mainstream cinema. But we don’t have big budgets to afford their market prices. So we will form a cooperative with them where they get a chance to co-produce the NFDC film. Then, their price becomes an investment, which they will get back from the film’s earnings. Through ‘cooperatives’, NFDC intends to entice popular actors into its projects to make them commercially viable. 

What homework did you do to play Pakistan’s former president Zia-ul-Haq in your last Hollywood release Charlie Wilson’s War? How was it working with Tom Hanks?
I didn’t do any research because I don’t believe in caricaturing a person. For instance, a muscular Ben Kingsley played a frail-looking Mahatma Gandhi in Gandhi. Ben worked on Gandhi’s spirit and made us forget his body. Similarly, I had to get into Zia-ul-Haq’s spirit though I did try to take on his physical appearance too. In the film, I appear in plain clothes, not army outfits. I suggested wearing a gold tooth, which I knew Zia did. It wasn’t there in the film to begin with and was later incorporated. All my scenes in the film were with Tom Hanks. He is a great actor and human being, and contrary to perception, quite relaxed.  

West is West, the sequel to your cult English film East Is East, is being made a decade after the original’s release.
The film’s producers and writer were toying with the idea of a sequel for some time. Finally, they have sent me the script, according to which my character, George Khan, returns to Pakistan with his British wife and two sons. While one son agrees with his father’s orthodox views and wants to get married in Pakistan, the other is made to study in a local school so that he imbibes his native culture. The film will be shot in India.

If Amitabh Bachchan was commercial cinema’s angry young man, Ardh Satya made you the parallel cinema’s angry young man. Is your taking to comedies of late a mellowing of that anger?
If you give me those parts today, the anger will still be there. How can you mellow when problems of the society haven’t yet faded? But anger should be righteous. I don’t believe in anger for the sake of an image. It must have a reason or cause like the anger of the fundamentalist mullah I play in Jagmohan Mundhra’s Shoot on Sight. He is angry about atrocities against Muslims the world over and articulates it in a volatile manner. 

The film has you teaming up with Naseeruddin Shah after aeons. As the leading men of parallel cinema, was there any rivalry between the two of you, the way it was between the leading women Shabana Azmi and Smita Patil?
We did many films together. In some, Naseer was the lead actor and I played the smaller role and vice-versa. In Ardh Satya, I was the protagonist and he had a small role. In Sparsh, it was the opposite. If Naseer had done Ardh Satya, he would have done a great job just as I would have done in Sparsh. There wasn’t any rivalry because we were confident actors. We are each other’s best critics and have been friends for over 37 years ever since we first met at drama school in the Seventies. When I came to Bombay in 1976, I stayed with him for my first 15 days in the city, as he was the only one I knew here.  

Describe your journey since Ardh Satya.
I think I did a great job in the film, which was also a commercial success. But had my father been a Kapoor or a Chopra or a Sippy, imagine where would I have been. I would have been a different kind of actor today. I would have got more meaty films as that had proved me an intense actor. I have always had a hunger for great scripts. As a trained, professional actor, the kind of work I am doing is not of my taste. There is an element of frustration somewhere in me. I am capable of doing much better, serious and complex work, but am not getting the opportunity.