Casting matters the most (Column: B-Town)

BY VINOD MIRANI The recent announcement of a film starring Ranbir Kapoor, Anil Kapoor, Neetu Singh and Boney Kapoor would have been hailed as a casting coup a few years ago, grabbing headlines all over print and electronic media. As such, the announcement does not excite one. If it works and is justified in the film, then that is when it will make splashes in the media.
There are casting coups and then there are casting disasters. It is strange, but casting coup often goes unnoticed while a bad casting never does. What is more, it also spells a disaster for the film and there are quite a few examples to prove that.
I don’t remember a few casting coups as such. Yes, there were many films with perfect casting and, more often, those were possible when one considered the casting of a whole film. I would site BR Chopra’s film “Waqt” (1965) as one such example and the Yash Chopra-directed “Trishul” for another. Shashi Kapoor’s Shyam Benegal-directed “Kalyug” was another.
In such films casting is important because they have a lot of characters playing pivotal roles and together make the film engrossing. Films that can be added to the list are “Kohinoor”, “Humjoli”, “Sholay”, “Silsila”, “Tridev”, “Tezaab”, “Mother India”, “Padosan”, “Angoor”, “Deewana”, and “Darr”.
One banner that took the risk and succeeded most of the time was the Rajshri Productions. My memory of this banner’s films starts with “Dosti”. Two newcomers in the cast and a new pair of music composers. The production house continued this trend of casting new faces successfully in many films. Many films followed, with one to stay in mind being “Ankhiyon Ke Jharokhon Se”, “Maine Pyar Kiya” and “Hum Aapke Hain Koun…!” Manmohan Desai’s “Amar Akbar Anthony” made the grade of a super casting because each character fitted the bill. Amitabh Bachchan carried his image forward despite playing a light comic role instead of the angry young man, Vinod Khanna played the tough cop while Rishi Kapoor played the loverboy. The rest of the cast of Pran, Jeevan, along with Parveen Babi, Neetu Singh and Shabana Azmi, completed the film’s apt casting.