Weekend

Today in the weekend blog, I am writing about a film which was released in 90s and this was the film which brought audience back to theatres. In that period cinegoers were mainly watching the films by playing  the VHS cassettes, about which today’s generation may not be aware. Theatres were in bad shape as their business was down. This film as released in mid 1994 in single cinema in Mumbai, and with mouth publicity the film became so popular that on Monday  when the advance booking  used to open  for next week all the shows were fully booked in advance.Slowly other theatres in Mumbai started asking producer to release the film in their theatre, that time producer put the condition that they are ready to release the film in other theatres provided the theatre owners improve the general conditions of their theatres. So many theatres were revamped just to get this film released  in their theatre. In that era of video piracy, this was the first film whose video cassette never came out even after many months of its commercial release. As producers had put coded number on each film print, and producer had warned all that if even one video print is found in the market, then then theatre owner who has been  issued that print will be prosecuted. The film was biggest block busters of the 90s,taking inflation into consideration this film will be among top 5 biggest films of Hindi cinema business wise. I am sure that any cinegoer who is found of Hindi films must have seen this film at least once during the initial run of the film  and subsequently when film became available for TV viewing.

Today I am writing about some unknown facts about the film, which is ” Hum Aapke Hain Koun”. This film was produced by Rajshri productions and directed by Sooraj Barjatya and in the main star case were Madhuri Dixit, Salman Khan,, Mohnish Bahl, Renuka Shahane, Anupam Kher, Reema Lagoo and Aloke Nath. It had 14 songs, all were super hit, and they were composed by Raam Laxman.

1. This film was a total different film of that era, this was one of the rare film of that era which had no villains and no fighting scenes, and no conflict between good and evil. This film changed the trend of film making and after that many films came out with similar ideas.
2. This film was first offered to Aamir Khan who refused saying that there is nothing for him to do as film is basically a wedding film. Salman Khan whose first big break was in Maine Pyar Kiya, an earlier film of Sooraj Barjatya, who was going through a rough patch was brought in, and this film gave boost to his career.
3. Karan Johar, after  seeing the film said that this film has shown  what is Indian tradition, value of human relations, and many more things about culture of Indian family. This film gave me strength to enter this creative field.
4. This became one of trend setter film of that era. Famous painter Late MF Hussain was so bowled over Madhuri’s character of Indian woman that he saw this film more than 85 times in theatre in South Mumbai.
5. For this film Lata Mangeshkar sang more than 10 songs, and the song ‘ Didi Tera Dewar Deewana’ became so popular that on viewers demand Lata had to accept a special award from Filmfare, although after 1970 she had announced that she will accept no Filmfare award henceforth.
6. When the film was first premiered at Liberty, as it was very long film therefore there were 2 intervals. But afterwards when the film got released in more theatres it length was reduced by deleting 2 songs and some scenes, so that normal 4 shows can be run during those days.
7. During first few days there were many people who criticised this film being a wedding video, but later all of them were shocked by its unprecedented success.
8. During the shooting of this film Anupam Kher suffered from partial facial paralysis, and he discussed the problem with director Sooraj Barjatya. As the next shooting schedule was already fixed, a solution was found for that schedule. You remember that scene when Anupam as drunkard enacting Sholay’s water tank scene of Dharmendra, in that scene if your observe closely his facial paralysis is scene.
9.  Actually after  Maine Pyar Kiya, Sooraj wanted to make another film on which he worked for 1 year on the script of same, but then his father suggested to make a film based on the story of their earlier production ‘Nadiya Ke Paar’, which was village based film. Sooraj reworked on the script and made modern day city film. After the release of Hum Aapke Hain Koun- he again started working back on the earlier script and his next was based on this script and the film was ‘Hum Saath Saath Hain’.
10. In the song ‘Didi Tera Deewana’, the purple sari which Madhuri wore at that time costed about Rs 15 lakhs. This sari designed by Anna singh became so popular that many replicas came into market and there was huge public demand for the similar saris.
11. In the film a dog named Tuffy was shown- actually  2 dogs of same breed were used for shooting, one for outdoor schedule at Ooty and other for indoor shoot in Mumbai.
12. Juhi Chawla had shown inclination to work in this film, but Sooraj Barjatya clearly told her he has scripted the film with Madhuri in his mind and Madhuri has agreed to do this film. For the role played by Aloke Nath, Sooraj wanted Rajesh Khanna, but that time Rajesh refused because he was involved full time in politics with Congress party.

Hope you enjoyed reading this blog on one of biggest block busters of Bollywood, a trend setter film which brought the audience back to theatres .

Anil Malik

Mumbai, India

14th Jan 2020