For film Dacait, Rawail said that he met Phoolan Devi who described the environment and the places where dacoits live. In fact, Phoolan Devi suggested the character that was played by Paresh Rawal in the film. For Arjun, he said they (Javed Akhtar and him) had read a story about two warring gangs. “One night after me and Javed sahab went to our hotel rooms, he called me in the middle of the night…He wrote the entire script in just 3 hours on paper chits. That’s how the journey of Arjun started. The whole set was a set built from scratch, with buses and auto-rickshaws passing by in the frames. It looked like real locations. We even had hired a bus to pass from the frame in the middle of the shots,” he informed.
He said to Imtiaz, “I really think your best film was Socha Na Tha. All your films have travel on how to take the characters on the journey…” To this Imtiaz responded saying, “Sir, all my films have travel because I am inspired by the films that you made, J P Dutta made…The films were shot outside Mumbai. It inspired me to go there.”
When Rawail commented on how that Imtiaz got away with Saif Ali Khan playing Rishi Kapoor in flashback, Imtiaz said, “People just like to believe. I am from a small town, Jamshedpur. People go to the cinema to believe and enjoy. That audience don’t go in there to challenge anything. All they want is to be entertained and to be taken on a journey.”
When pointed out, how all the male protagonists have cried in Imtiaz’s films contrary to the popular belief that men don’t cry, Imtiaz said, “It is said that cinema is aspirational, we say cinema lets you do whatever you can’t do in the real life. Being a guy, I have never been able to cry, at least when I was a young man. My mother used to call me heartless as a joke. This may be because of certain aspiration that I might have had to come to that level of catharsis. I feel that most good things in life are facilitated by women. The only way one could reach that stage is because of that softness or certain love that only a woman is capable of giving I think, and I might be biased. I am very fascinated by all kinds of women, I was guilty to admit is earlier but I am old enough now to say that on a stage. I find them very beautiful, sensitive and provocative. ” Imtiaz said.
