When the going gets tough, we turn to our favourite guilty pleasures. But when entertainment is concerned, is there even any guilt to what gives one pleasure? In our new series Pleasure Without Guilt, we look at pop offerings that have been dissed by the culture police but continue to endure as beacons of unadulterated pleasure.
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I can still feel holding my bladder with all my might when I heard Rani Mukerji say, "OK, we love you." She then begins swaying to the signature tune of the 'Deewangi' song, decked up in a gorgeous blue sari, before her co-star of many films, Shah Rukh Khan, joins her for a shake-a-leg.
Except here, SRK is Ok aka Om Kapoor, the protagonist of Farah Khan's 2007 blockbuster Om Shanti Om. As SRK successfully did in his three other home productions, Billu (2009), Fan (2016), and Zero (2019), he blurred the lines between the character and the star, levelling some self-deprecating potshots at his larger-than-life persona.
SRK used his goodwill in the film industry to completely milk the thin grey space between fact and fiction, reality and cinema, when he conceptualised the 'Deewangi' song in Om Shanti Om. Thirty stars buzzed in and out of the frame in the song that was inserted to celebrate superstar Om Kapoor's Best Actor victory at Filmfare Awards. I knew about the song, read the long list of names touted to pop up, and also seen glimpses of the glamour in promos.
But what I was not prepared for was downing a tall glass of cola right after the interval, which strategically led to my bladder asking to give in right when the song started. I estimated my holding time by the length of the song's audio that I had listened to on loop before the release, my imagination running wild. But the film's cut turned out to be much longer — 8.5 minutes. If Farah and SRK had a galaxy of 30 stars at their disposal, they wouldn't want to do away with them in a flash.
Till date, Om Shanti Om ends for me with this song. Not that the rest of it isn't enjoyable. It is, incredibly. But the allure of 30 stars in the same room has remained unabated. (Though they shot on separate days obviously, but here we can give due credit to Farah's husband and editor Shirish Kunder for stitching all of the bits together like a Manish Malhotra patchwork sari.)
It's not just the stars. As an entertainment reporter, I barely get starstruck. It's the stories behind them. Who can resist hooting (at least mentally) when SRK and Zayed Khan do their trademark wave-behind-the-back-of-the-head from Main Hoon Na (also a Farah Khan film) in the 'Deewangi' song? Or when SRK and Kajol do the clap-clap-nose step (for lack of a better term) from Karan Johar's 1998 film Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, where Farah served as the choreographer.
These aren't the same as SRK mimicking Dharmendra, Jeetendra, Govinda, and Mithun Chakraborty's signature steps with them. These are casting coups, which have backstories that only the ardent fans of the stars are well-versed with. They're like a wink, like a whisper, to a buff like me who can evade the nature's call for a good 10 minutes to watch them come alive. You can't blame me for thinking SRK would throw Shilpa Shetty from another building when he inches closer to her feet in the song. (Clue: Baazigar. Come on guys!)
That whole film is full of such moments, from pretend Sooraj Barjatya eavesdropping on Om mouthing the "Friendship mein no sorry, no thank you" dialogue and noting down in his diary (the dialogue is originally a part of Barjatya's directorial debut Maine Pyar Kiya) or Om Kapoor advising pretend Govinda to drop his non-famous last name Ahuja for breakout success in Bollywood.
While these were smart touches, such meta jokes seem the most fun when the actor is on board themselves.
Cameos are increasingly becoming a tool to gain eyeballs but if they are not embedded within the screenplay, they really jar.
A cameo will remain hollow without the right play of intertextuality and cross-referencing. Brad Pitt's cameo in Friends with his "I hate Rachel Green" rant thus remains a gift that keeps on giving, especially in retrospect now that we know Pitt and Jennifer Aniston's real-life marriage went downhill shortly thereafter.
Or the cornerstone of all casting coups — the reel-cum-real love triangle of Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bachchan, and Rekha in Yash Chopra's 1981 romantic film Silsila. Chopra confessed days before his death in 2012 that the original casting was Amitabh with Parveen Babi and Smita Patil. But once he managed to convince Jaya and Rekha, he did not even mind dropping the other two unceremoniously from the film. Grapevine is that the film was a deal between the Bachchan couple to have Amitabh act opposite Rekha one last time in exchange of never meeting her again.
But it's possible the three actors would've seen merit in the casting. Pulling off a casting coup is a masterstroke that can make or break a film. For instance, take into account what Juhi Chawla said on Koffee with Karan about co-starring with contemporary Madhuri Dixit in Gulaab Gang (2014): "I asked them to get out when they offered me the role of a villain, and Madhuri that of a heroine. But then I thought if I'm fighting Madhuri in the film, then it might just work."
While these are films with casting coups, when the coup is limited to a cameo, it's even more fun because it's fleeting. One such 'cameo coup' is Shah Rukh Khan's single-scene appearance alongside Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Ranbir Kapoor in Johar's 2016 directorial Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. Aishwarya was offered a role opposite SRK in the first three directorials of Johar but it never worked out. After the third one, SRK and Aiswarya stopped acting with each other after he dumped her from his home production Chalte Chalte (2003).
To see SRK pop up in Johar's directorial as Aishwarya's ex and preaching Ranbir, the new guy in town, about unrequited love is a scene written in gold. I'm sure Johar, being the mischievous matchmaker he is, would be just grinning at the scene getting unfolded before him. But he should be given credit for pulling off this casting coup, for writing this into the script, rather than just have his 'lucky charm' Kajol perform a tokenistic step in one of the songs, like she did in all his previous directorials.
For all the Johars out there, if you enjoy goodwill in the industry, and can pull some strings off, please loop in more of these cameos and casting coups. But while you do that, be mindful that what's between the lines is as rich as Ricky Gervais getting stuck in an elevator with Steve Carell in The Office, and asking him for a job. Sold.
Read more from the Pleasure Without Guilt series here.
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