Abbas Tyrewala has worked on the screenplay and dialogue of some of the best that Bollywood has to offer, which includes Main Hoon Na, Jaane Tu Ja Jaane Na, and now he has stumped us all with his work in Pathaan. The team of MissMalini, in an exclusive interview with him, asked about his journey writing for the various strong characters in Pathaan that the audience wholeheartedly loved. Read on to find out what he had to say…
We started off the conversation by asking him about the headspace that he was in while writing for a blockbuster like Pathaan, here’s what he had to say…
When Siddharth Anand approached me shortly after War, we were in a very comfortable relationship as filmmaker and dialogue writer. We were very happy with how things had gone. We didn’t know that by the time the movie would be out, how much we as an industry, country and people would have dealt with. So at that time, we were like we made War, now we need to make an even better and bigger film with Shah Rukh Khan He told me what the story was and what the script was like, I was very sure that its an absolute winner and was glad that I was getting to do something with Shah Rukh again. We never realised how eventful the release would be when it finally happened.
We also asked him how much does a dialogue writer have to get under the skin of a character, especially when you have such strong characters like Pathaan, Jim and Rubina
Every character you do try to get into the skin of. Sometimes you are so unaware of the actor, creating the reality of the character becomes extremely paramount. Sometimes you will find me narrating the scene of an emotional moment to someone, and I will choke up because that character and that moment has become so real to me. And sometimes I will end up laughing out loud at my own line because it will be something so unexpected and a true moment is created and you can see why it is funny. In that moment, you are servicing a character without even thinking of the actor, so you are creating a person. In a movie like Pathaan, the stardom of Shahrukh was an integral part of the film. And the kind of film Pathaan is, the personality of Shahrukh is so intermingled with the character of Pathaan. So when you are getting into the skin, you are not just getting into the skin of Pathaan, but also somewhere getting into Shahrukh, and seeing how dialogue sounds on him and also Pathaan. But when it is so much a part of the conception of the movie by the filmmaker, where Shahrukh’s own persona and swag and style are such an integral part of how Pathaan is conceived, then there isn’t merit in trying not to utilise that.
When it comes to improvisations, not every dialogue writer is a fan of it. Here’s what Abbas had to say on the same. And of course we started off with asking him about the ‘Boobles’ line from Pathaan
I would rather put an ice stick into my forehead than write a line like ‘boobles’. No matter how cheeky or charming he is, I would not try it. I don’t know if it was Siddharth’s idea or Shahrukh’s idea, but I’m just glad he was cheeky enough to get away with it because that is borderline trouble. And I would like to think of myself as someone who doesn’t want trouble. They had faith in the cheeky charm of Shahrukh. I am not a big fan of improvisation, but at the same time if you’re the kind of dialogue who insists on finishing his or her work before the film is greenlit, and you never visit the set, once the filmmaker is happy you are out of the project, your job is done, then you have to trust the filmmaker on his or her instincts on what to keep and what to edit out. I would prefer if they stuck to the lines I write, which is always any writer’s preference. But they know their audience, from their years of experience, on what to keep and what not to.
Don’t we all have writing blocks? But does Abbas? Find out what he had to say...
I’ve now had enough experience, at least at the dialogue level, unless the character is badly conceived, or a scene is badly written, I will not get confused a lot. Writing has become second nature, how well I write is something you can only find out when the film comes out and the audience’s reaction. But for a reasonably conceived character, I have very little struggle associated with writing dialogue. The struggle is actually when you’re trying to turn a story into a screenplay, and deciding how in these 50 to 75 scenes, you have to tell this story spamming these many years and you have to choose these moments to tell that story and how do they flow into each other. There you can often get stuck for a long time.
And lastly, we asked him about his upcoming projects, to which he added
The only one that I have been working on for the past few months is a project that I’m doing for Disney Hotstar, which is in association with Roy Kapoor Films, it’s a thriller that I will be show running and writing, maybe directing an episode or two as well. And that is a very very exciting project because, at the time that it happened, this larger-than-life character speaking larger-than-life dialogues wasn’t a thing. When I wrote this, I wrote this to be a very dialogue-y thriller. With Pathaan, everyone has realised that with the right dialoguebaazi, people will enjoy it.
With all the dialogues from Pathaan running in my head now, here’s me leaving you with my personal favourite that got everyone in the cinema hall hooting…