Joined: Thu Jun 20, 2002 8:47 pm
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Vava Voom
Kaizad Gustad usually talks more than he delivers, but with Boom's over-the-top, bazooka style of filmmaking he seems to be on the ball
By Kaveree Bamzai
Twenty seconds of Bo Derek stepping out of the Arabian Sea in a wet gold sari.
Thirty seconds of Zeenat Aman re-enacting Dum maro dum on Amitabh Bachchan's 80-ft-long desk.
Three minutes of Padma Lakshmi, Madhu Sapre and Katrina Kaif robbing a bank to the tune of Zindabad.
Boom, which took its stars from the plush Royal Suite of the super-sniffy Burj Al Arab hotel in Dubai to a film set in Mumbai to a luxurious resort in Sri Lanka, is everything that is good about New Bollywood. It has been made with an international crew, shot in sync sound and boasts a script replete with one-liners in English and Hindi. It is also everything that is bad: the budget is overblown (from an initial Rs 4 crore to Rs 20 crore), the subject, Mumbai's underworld, is not exactly mint-fresh and the producer has had a history of financial problems.
Which is why the film is important for everybody in it: director Kaizad Gustad has to prove that he is more than a man with a quick lip and a fast wit. Padma Lakshmi, whose fourth film this is (her last memorable role was a tiny one in Mariah Carey's Glitter), has to prove that she is more than Salman Rushdie's on-off girlfriend. Zeenat Aman has to show that she can still swing like the best of them 15 years after she called it quits. And producer Ayesha Shroff, as she sits in her airy Mumbai office overlooking a bougainvillaea garden, worrying her beads and jangling her lucky charms, has to prove that she can make a film that works at the box office-her first film Grahan sank without even coming up for air, her second film Jis Desh Mein Ganga Rahta Hai made no ripples, while Sandhya which started two years ago is yet to be released.
So if everyone talks big about Boom, it is with a trace of nervousness. There are a lot of firsts in the film. It was the first film to be promoted heavily at Cannes, with trailers playing along the Croisette and advertisements blazing from international trade magazines like Variety. It will be the first Indian film to be co-promoted by fashion channel FTV in the 120 countries where it is broadcast. And most importantly, Bachchan, who has been restrained and father-like in several recent films, gets to be nasty and naughty as Bade Mian, the richest crook in the world.
Whether it was running on Jhumeira Beach towards his fantasy woman Bo Derek or sitting in a waterbed surrounded by hot Russian totty, Bachchan was a professional, says Gustad. He would turn up on time and know all his lines. Even when he grumbled, he would do so good naturedly. "He would call me Adolf Hitler on the sets," says Gustad.
The film begins with a catfight during a Tarun Tahiliani show shot at the Gateway of India in Mumbai when $16 million (Rs 76.8 crore) worth of actual De Beers diamonds fall out of model Joey Mathews' wig. The rocks belong to Bachchan and he wants his "babies" back. He puts Jackie Shroff, his youngest brother in the film and Ayesha's husband, on the job. He in turn franchises it out to Boom Shankar, played gleefully by Jaaved Jafferi.
When the action shifts from Mumbai to Dubai, several things happen. Lakshmi and Bachchan really hit it off, everyone suspects everyone else, and a shootout is staged in the Grand Ballroom of Burj Al Arab, after which the mastermind of the putsch is revealed. Gustad says he was intending to make Boom a "dirty, low-budget film but then I found a fabulous producer". That was Ayesha, who was hooked the moment she read the script. "I knew it had dum (verve) and God's hand has been on us throughout the film," she says.
Yet, until the 63-day shoot shifted to Dubai, Ayesha was still not sure Bachchan would do the film-not only had he to wear a mohawk made of yak hair, green contact lens, make-up four shades darker than normal, but also lust after women half his age. Even Aman came on board only in Dubai. Much has changed since the film was made: Gustad's assistant director Apoorva Lakhia has made his own film, Mumbai Se Aaya Mera Dost, his director of photography Himman Dhamija has moved from Australia to Mumbai, Lakshmi has split from Rushdie (or has she?), and Gulshan Grover has become a bona fide Hollywood B-movie star, with roles in Beeper with Harvey Keitel and in The Shadow of the Cobra with Sean Young.
For Grover, the film was pure fun. He plays Medium Mian, gets to wear purple suits with Pucci print shirts, and participates in a three-way shootout that most Hollywood actors would die for. He also gets to walk, Kaante-style, with Bachchan and Jackie Shroff, who plays Chhote Mian: "My only problem was I couldn't keep pace with them. I am shorter."
The audience will also have to run to keep track of the plot's twists and turns. As the 34-year-old director who also made the patchy Bombay Boys in 1997, says, "Nothing in the movie is as it seems." Bachchan runs an international crime syndicate but also takes time to shop for his 16 children (he does not know their names, so his executive assistant, played by Aman, takes notes) and steals a comic book when no one is looking. The three girls, Lakshmi, Sapre and Kaif, are supermodels but not above a little criminal enterprise. Seema Biswas is their mousy domestic help in a reprise of her Bhoot role, or is she?
Next month, boom! We will know.
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