Luck and the man - Imran Khan

Luck and the man

Imran Khan on why he doesn't want to fit into his fans' cookie cutter mould and do only rom coms

You were really hopeful about Kidnap (before it released and bombed). What are your thoughts on Luck?

I have a very good feeling about this one. Because this time I have seen the film. Last time around I hadn't seen the film (Kidnap).

People were expecting very different things from you after Jaane Tu… Yaa Jaane Naa. Then came Kidnap and now Luck also seems a typical commercial potboiler. What's happening?

It is a very commercial film. Ok, let's set the record straight on Kidnap first. The film that got made was not the script. Kidnap started out as a very good script. Clearly it lost a lot in translation and clearly it turned out to be not a good film. But I want to jump to the defence of the scriptwriter here and say she (Shibani Bhatija of Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna fame) wrote a very good script. Things happen while you are making a film. You lose vision and things go wrong.

The thing with Luck is I found it an interesting balance. Of a really unusual subject and a very out there concept. It's certainly not a classic Bollywood story. At the same time, with a commercial treatment. I felt there was a chance to balance the two. You take something unconventional and make it accessible to people. Item songs are not dropped in the middle (like Kidnap). In fact, there is no song in the film. The action is cool and slick. The film has a very short running time of about 2 hours and 10 minutes.

Is there again an attempt to reach out given the fact that Jaane Tu… was largely a multiplex hit?

Luck is certainly a more massy film. To me whenever you are making a film, your motivation should be to rseach out to as wide an audience as possible. Without being unfaithful to the film. You have to really look at what your are making. Take my next film Delhi Belly for instance. It is an English language film. We could have made it in Hindi to reach a wider audience but that would not have been true to the film. So the non-English speaking audience was sacrificed to make the film correctly. Luck had the scope of being turned into something that could reach out to a larger audience without giving away whatever made it cool.

Imran Khan in Luck

Did you take into account the fact that Luck was being directed by the man (Soham) who made Kaal?

Certainly in the back of your mind it plays a little bit. You do look at it but you have to think beyond that. You think does this guy have the potential to do this well. Because ultimately if you look at it, everybody has more flops than hits. From the directors to the producers to the actors, there's no one in the industry who has more hits than flops. It's more about the guy's passion to make it and Soham was snapping at the bit to make this film. I saw that hunger and I felt that he would do it right.

Did you ever consider the fact that people want to see a solo Imran Khan film and not see you as part of a big multistarrer cast?

You know I have been hearing that now. Honestly I have not thought about it. It's not something that had entered my mind… that people want to watch an Imran Khan film and so I should do a solo film. I really just went with my gut feeling that it sounds like a cool film and I will do it.

So how much of the 130-minute screen time are you there in the film?

I am there beginning to end. The other characters come in a little later. They are also part of the same world for the next 20-odd days in the movie. But more than anything else the film is a journey of my character.

Is Luck a copy of 13 Tzameti as is the buzz?

No, but there's that one Russian roulette sequence which is 13 Tzameti. The rest of it is original. And for the love of God it is not The Condemned. What a crap movie that was!

You have known debutante Shruti Haasan for a long time…

Our families have been friends for years. I actually met Shruti for the first time when I was about 10 or something. So we have kind of grown up together. We have been friends through all of that.

And how would you rate her as an actress?

She has done surprisingly well. Honestly I was not sure whether she would be able to do the final dub of the film. But she worked hard and she did it herself. She really surprised me. I was like, oh wait, this is good. And much of it comes from her stage stuff. If you haven't seen her on stage, check her out on YouTube. She is a great live performer and that's given her a lot of confidence.

What was it like sharing space with screen legends like Danny and Mithun? Did they treat you as family, given that you are Aamir's nephew?

It was pretty cool, man! The maximum amount of my work in the film is, I think, with Danny. But I never really got a sense of family or anything because a lot of these actors were a generation before Aamir.

They tend to view Aamir as a new kid as well; so I am the nephew of the new kid (laughs)! They are from the 70s, an entirely different world.

Do you believe in luck?

Logically it makes no sense. I am very pragmatic. My brain tells me that there's nothing that I can't see. But sometimes I feel that if there were such a thing called luck, then I am a lucky person. I don't miss my flights. And even if I come late, the movie starts late. Even at a bigger level, good things happen for me. That can be coincidence or luck.

Do you want to say anything to your fans in Calcutta, mostly girls, who were shattered after Kidnap?

I would tell them… hang on, Puneet's (Malhotra) film opposite Sonam (Kapoor) is coming. As for Luck, I really don't know how much people expect you to fit into their cookie cutter mould or how much they would hold it against you if you don't. I can't allow myself to take decisions that way… that people like me in romantic comedies and I should only do rom coms. I can't say I regret Kidnap. It was part of the learning process, man. If I hadn't gone through it, I wouldn't know a lot of the things I know now. I know that I can go through an entire process without realising that I am going wrong. That's something.

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