When I first saw Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap, I thought (director) Puri Jagannadh had made a fantastic film. One of the really fun films... I have not laughed as hard in a long time. I really loved it.

I was so excited I went out on my own and shot a couple of teasers for the film. I did it almost as a fan. See, this whole concept is an Amitabh Bachchan fan’s argument... “How dare you call him buddah?”

That whole rage... that whole fan warfare... is what the film is about. When someone says, “Arey abhi toh woh buddah ho gaya hai... he can’t do this, he can’t do that...” the fan will say: “Who says so?”

I personally feel that way. Puri Jagannadh, of course, also feels that and that’s why he’s made the film. I did the promos just for fun... and Puri liked them. I think it’s the first time in movie marketing history that we treated the film as a product and did an ad for the film, rather than use shots from the film.

I keep telling Mr Bachchan that he is like a heritage monument. People like him and Sachin (Tendulkar)... you won’t get guys like them for the next 100 years. There’s nobody like them. We must cherish people like them, who happen to us in our lifetime.

Balki

Forget that he’s an actor. Forget that he’s a star. Forget that he is in competition with a lot of other people. Just the fact that he has provided such entertainment for so many years (40 years)!

If you look at some of his films in the ’70s and ’80s, they have not got dated. He looks more modern in those films than many of the stars today. More contemporary, more nuanced... you enjoy his performances as much as you did so many years back.

Amitabh Bachchan should be celebrated. Because he is original, iconic and almost everlasting. You won’t find many everlasting commodities in the entertainment business. Mr Bachchan’s is a god-given talent plus the way he has carried himself to keep that aura intact for so long. I think it’s phenomenal.

Pink, yellow and green shades and scarves... who else but Mr Bachchan would have the panache to pull it off? And that’s what we did with the promos. Someone says, “You buddah you should behave like a buddah...” and he goes wham! “Buddah hoga tera baap!” Today he is cooler than any of the so-called cool guys.

The whole “angry young man” thing is a film studies theory... you know, why it worked at the time of Emergency, etc. We just loved him in whatever he did. He was not the angry young man in Namak Halal. He was not the angry young man in Amar Akbar Anthony. Those were smash hits.

I have always found him to be someone who has a very wry sense of humour, very sarcastic, he is like always mocking you rather than being mocked at. He’s got this unique vibe which he is able to bring out.

My favourite Amitabh Bachchan films besides the usual ones like Amar Akbar Anthony and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar and Deewaar, are Naseeb and Dostana.

I liked him tremendously in Dostana. There’s this one scene where Mr Bachchan is sitting with Zeenat Aman at one of these small aircraft take-off places and he is just sitting there and pulling her leg. You know, just ragging her. That pitch, nobody gets that pitch.

Naseeb is again one of the classics. John Jaani Janardan and Chal mere bhai were just out of the world.

I don’t like the Hum-Agneepath phase that much.

Of his later films, I liked parts of Sarkar Raj. Towards the end when he takes control of things again. I am not a big fan of Black. But I liked him in that bit part in Veer-Zaara. It was small but he was so good.

When I direct Amitabh Bachchan, I am not the director. Only the fanboy comes into play. The director never comes in the way.

Like in Cheeni Kum, I constructed the whole film around what I wanted to see Amitabh Bachchan do. Of course, I had the idea of a man whose age is more than his father-in-law but thereafter I wrote scenes which me the fan wanted him to do.

Okay, I want Amitabh Bachchan to run. So we had that Qutb Minar sequence. I want him to be sarcastic. And we wrote scenes where he could be sarcastic. I want that slow motion shot of him walking... I want that thundering dialogue delivery scene. So, I treated Cheeni Kum as a total Bachchan fan and nothing else.

I am planning my next with him again. Too early to share the idea of the film.

Besides that I want to do a film with him where he plays a cricket commentator. With that voice and speech I think he will be very good.

Amitabh Bachchan is my hero. Always will be.

As told to Pratim D. Gupta

I am happy that Amitabh Bachchan has done a film like Bbuddah Hoga Terra Baap. It’s like reliving some of his old films, films that we all love. There are many people who want to see him like that even now and such a film should always work. But I don’t want to lose Mr Bachchan to that kind of cinema. I would like him to be available for the kind of films we believe in.

Mr Bachchan is the only actor of that calibre who can be part of both the worlds of cinema — meaningful cinema and commercial cinema. If Satyajit Ray would have been alive, he would have surely used Amitabh Bachchan the actor. (Ray had only used AB’s voice for the narration of Shatranj Ke Khiladi.)

It’s very important that he doesn’t give up doing films where he is just an actor. I am not saying that he shouldn’t play lead roles. He should do solo hero films where he plays his age.

Amitabh Bachchan is one of the most instinctive actors around. He can listen to scripts and know exactly what’s the scope of the script and what he can bring on board. He can quote not only a certain scene or shot, he can quote the page number!

And once he is convinced about the script, he leaves everything to the director. If the director says that your performance is loud, please tone it down, he will tone it down.

Shoojit Sircar

The biggest example of this mature quality as an actor is Ramu’s [Ram Gopal Varma] film Sarkar. There is hardly any dialogue. He just sits and listens.

In my film Johnny Mastana aka Shoebite, too, he hardly has any dialogue. It’s a completely

out-of-the-box character and I cannot imagine anybody else apart from Mr Bachchan pulling off a part like that. Here is a man who is silently walking from Manali to Kanyakumari. The way he has performed, I am sure it will be one of the landmark acts of his career.

We have all grown up watching his classics like Deewaar and Zanjeer, but he is so good in the films which are not necessarily about him. If you look at his performance in Anand, it maybe of one note but it’s done in such a real and subtle manner. Even in his debut film Saat Hindustani he was very good.

I also think sometimes we misconstrue great acting performances as starry performances. Agneepath was completely an actor in the act. Nobody else could have played Vijay Dinanath Chauhan.

Even if you look at Balki’s film Paa, I think Bachchan is brilliant. He has done something which is so unconventional; only a very good actor can do something like that. He won a National Award and everybody from kids to adults loved him and the film.

Let’s not forget that most of the films that Mr Bachchan has done since his comeback are character-driven roles. One Bbuddah is okay. It’s a feat in itself that he is doing action and all at this age and doing it well. But one film is enough. I don’t think he himself would like to go on doing this film after film. To sustain in this industry, the way the industry is shaping up with films like Band Baaja Baaraat and Do Dooni Chaar, he will have to continuously evolve as an actor. And he is a master in that.

There’s no point in Mr Bachchan fighting with a Salman Khan. Even a Salman Khan can’t fight with an Aamir Khan. Or an Aamir Khan with a Shah Rukh Khan. They all have their own space and so does Mr Bachchan.

I look at him as the Clint Eastwood of India. I would love to do a The Bridges of Madison County with him. I would love to remake the Anthony Hopkins-starrer The World’s Fastest Indian with him, which is based on a true story about a man who rides a bike. Maybe even remake an Agantuk with Bachchan playing Utpal Dutt’s role!

In one of the films that I am planning with him next, he is slated to look like Binayak Sen. That real, that’s how I look at him. When he will be coming out of the local train at Mahim station, he will look like just another guy on the platform.

In Shoebite, he has this beard which is unshaven... he hasn’t touched it for more than a month. Jot dhore gechhe, nongra... (tangled and dirty) he is walking on the dirty streets, picking up something on the road to eat. It’s as real as it gets.

In all the films I plan to do with him — once you work with him, you have to work with him again — I want to keep his characters real and have him play his age. They are all solo hero films and his character is the main protagonist. Like in Shoebite, he is there in every scene.

I hope Bbuddah does well but I also hope that the success of Bbuddah doesn’t make Mr Bachchan ignore the real films that he is so good at.

(As told to PDG)
How do you want to see Amitabh Bachchan — as the superstar or as the actor? Tell t2@abp.in

best 10 in 10 years