Almost 500 days of shoot and we didn’t have the convenience of VFX and all the technology that has developed today. Making Sholay was a long and arduous journey but it was worth it for the director. We told him to grow beard, got him in the costume, took pictures and he just felt right as a rough-and-tough guy,” he added, revealing that Khan prepared for the part by reading Abhishapth Chambal, a book on Chambal dacoits. “His face, built, personality, voice everything felt right. “I remember seeing a play of him (Khan), in which my sister was there, he was very impressive on stage,” Sippy recalled. It was Salim-Javed who suggested Khan’s name for the role. Sippy said lead stars of the film Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan and Kumar all were vying to play the role and were willing to give up on their hero image, but he had found his Gabbar in Amjad Khan, who was roped in after Danny Denzongpa had quit due to his commitment to Feroz Khan’s film Dharmatma. Sholay was also one of those rare stories, where the character of the villain Gabbar Singh was one of the biggest highlights, even during the casting process. But we didn’t expect this much (love and following). “We felt that we were making a damn good film but certainly not that 45 years later we would be talking about it. The director said they knew that they had a good film in their hands. The shoot started from Octoand the film hit the theatres on August 15, 1975. The journey of creating Sholay, including scripting and casting, took a little over two years. It took a life of its own as we discussed and moved further in the script,” he added. All the character came into place one-by-one. “The basic idea was about two young guys (Jai and Veeru) on the run, their love for adventure and how they get involved in this emotional story of Thakur. Except that the two guys (Jai and Veeru) were from the Army and Sanjeev Kumar’s role of Thakur was of an Army officer, who was changed to a cop,” Sippy told PTI. “The colour and characters came into existence later but the basic storyline was in place. Sippy said when the story came to him he stayed true to its original idea of two guys on the run and their involvement in helping Thakur to avenge the murder of his family by a dreaded dacoit terrorising his village. And as luck would have it, celebrated writer duo Salim Khan- Javed Akhtar narrated him Sholay, which had been with Manmohan Desai and “probably Prakash Mehra” but could not take off. Sholay, a cult classic about revenge and redemption, was initially set to have its key characters of Jai-Veeru and Thakur from Army background and a different ending, says director Ramesh Sippy, who never imagined the phenomenon his film would become upon its release 45 years ago.Īfter making Andaz and Seeta Aur Geeta, Sippy wanted to switch to action genre and make a film similar to Hollywood Westerns.
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