J ust some years ago, Pak-bashing was the 'in' thing in Bombay filmdom.. right from Sarfarosh to Gadar and Hero and LOC. The neighbourhood country was open- ly portrayed as a nest of villains. But there's been a shift of sorts for two reasons. One, diplomatic relations between the two countries have eased up in recent times, Second, a sizeable section of the flourishing overseas audience for Bollywood cinema comprises immigrant Pakistanis. Not surprisingly, actors today are in no mood to badmouth Pakistan. That could affect their appeal in the global market. Plus, the star personalities do not wish to get into controversies. Another refusal Such an instance had happened earlier in the case of Akshay Kumar who had report- edly refused to badmouth Pakistan in the Anil Sharma directed Ab Tumhare Hawale Watan Saathiyo. In fact, Kumar was so adamant about this that he had threatened to quit if the lines of dialogue with political connotations were not deleted from the script. It was also obvi- ous that he wasn't too pleased with a none- too-strong role assigned to him in the film which also featured Amitabh Bachchan and Bobby Deol. Yet another actor has now taken a no-pol- itics stand, according to reports from the London shoot of the film in question – Goal. Recently, the unit of the sports action film said to be derived from the Hong Kong hit Shaolin Soccer, was at the Walthamstow Stadium. The scene was picturised on John Abraham and Arshad Warsi. Arshad, who plays the part of Shaan Pathan has been thrown out of the football team captained by John Abraham who plays the part of a character called Sunny. At the stadium, a supporting actor asks, "Kya Pathan, tu football chhod ke cricket khelne lag gaya kya?" At this juncture, John was to speak dis- paraging dialogue that referred obviously to the Pakistan cricket team. John put his foot down, requesting the lines to be replaced with something that was not "hostile." "It's alright, we'll come up with some- thing else," the film's director Vivek Agnihotri is said to have assured the actor..and the scene was rewritten. Several unit sources confirmed the incident that had created tension during the day's shoot. On a denial mode Strangely, when we asked director Agni- hotri about the incident, he said, "How can there be a reference to cricket when my film is about football? There is no anti-Pak dia- logue at all," he said. We SMSed both John Abraham and Arshad Warsi but they have chosen to remain silent on the subject. No politics Over the last decade, audiences made Anil Sharma's Gadar one of the biggest block- busters ever. But with time and a thaw in the relationship with Pakistan, the bashing lost favour. This was evidenced most obviously through the rejection of Sharma's next mega-crore project Hero.. with Sunny Deol again in the lead, and also the ama- teurish depiction of terrorism. Around the same time, J P Dutta's L O C, a poor- ly assembled war movie, also bombed. Lately, Bheja Fry has been criticised for the depiction of an Indian Muslim character as a die- hard fan of the Pakistani cricket team. The film got away with that and has proved to be a success at the multiplexes. However, practically every actor – be it Amitabh Bachchan or Anil Kapoor, Akshay Kumar or John Abraham – the stricture is, no politics..and especially no Pak-bashing.. clearly because.. why antagonise any section of the audi- ence? Actors are known to fiddle around with scripts.. here's one case, when star intervention seemed to make sense. shaikh.ayaz@hindustantimes.com
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