Mogambo Khush Hua, Amrish Puri To Mark His 87th Birthday Had He Been Alive Today

( To commemorate his 87^th birth anniversary today on 22 June 2019, we reproduce for the readers of bollyy.com this Interview of AMRISH PURI by JYOTHI VENKATESH which was taken on March 1, 1980, exactly 40 years ago) on the way from Bangalore to Melkote where on Boney Kapoor’s invitation to cover the location shooting with Amrishji who is shooting for his film Hum Paanch) No longer is Amrish Puri referred to as villain Madan Puri’s younger brother. Today he has made a significant place for himself in the industry and in fact he is being sought-after by film-makers whenever they conceive a hideous looking villainous character for their film. Though Amrish Puri strikes you at first sight as one who thinks no end of himself, he emerges as a loveable person in the end.

Amrish doesn’t hesitate to call a spade a spade. No shallow hypocrisy for him unlike most of the other diplomatic stars. When asked why he prefers the big screen to the stage, he quips,  “The stage or the theatre cannot help you earn a decent living in our country. Why, even abroad, Peter O’Toole, Lawrence Olivier and Richard Burton came to the screen only via the stage.  “Apart from the remuneration, what attracts me to the stage is the indisputable fact that you can reach a wider audience unlike the theatre which is slowly dying as an art form throughout the world. If people like Richard Burton or Peter O’Toole had not come to the screen, today no one outside London would have even come to know of their talent. Why, I have been to London several times but I have not seen their plays. I know them only as mega stars on the screen.”

Amrish prefers to work on his roles and merge with the characters. “I did Manthan, Bhumika and Nishant for Shyam Benegal without any tension at all throughout the making of these films. If only you stay at way-out locations, like Shyam usually does, you tend to become the character you play after six or seven days. If Shashi proved himself a good actor, the reason is he worked hard on the role since he was afraid that actors like Naseeruddin Shah may overshadow him. Besides Shyam is a hard task master who wouldn’t give you any discount just because you are the star producer.”

Amrish is happy as a character artiste. “I know what I am capable of. I didn’t enter the industry to become a star. What I wanted were meaty roles which can bring out the artiste in me. As a star you only face limitations and hence cannot rise above a certain level. Look at Amitabh Bachchan. He is today prostituting his professional talent instead of relaxing and being selective about his assignments. As a result you get to see the same Amitabh Bachchan in film after film, to hell with the characterization. You cannot say it is because of the feeling of insecurity that lurks behind every star in this profession. The amount of money that Amitabh has earned will be more than enough to last till his great grand children are born, for three to four generations.”

In case you start wondering whether Amrish Puri doesn’t get along with Amitabh Bachchan, he throws yet another frank bomb and hastens to add that as a co-artiste he finds Amitabh Bachchan a better actor than even Dilip Kumar. “The reason is that while Dilipsaab used to work in one film at a time without any tension in a very congenial atmosphere in those days when film-making hadn’t become a mere business proposition, Amitabh Bachchan today has multiple assignments and yet he manages to do justice to his roles, though sadly he has become a victim of his own image of an angry young man. Dilip saab hasn’t worked even in 33 films throughout his career spanning thirty three years whereas Amitabh Bachchan has more films on the floors than he can count.” Is he satisfied with the remuneration that is doled out to character artistes in the industry? I ask Amrish. “To tell you the truth, I genuinely think that I do not deserve what I get as a character artiste. At least that is the feeling I get sometimes when I think retrospectively. But then I cannot go against the system. No star today would like to tell the producer who is prepared to offer him five lakhs that he deserves only Rs 50,000 and is prepared to work only if he is paid Rs 50,000 instead of five lakhs. If a producer offers me a bigger price, tell me why should I ask him to pay me only Rs 1000 per day? I do not mean to contradict what I said just a minute before, but then if you analyze the gulf between the payment to the stars and the poor character artistes, what the latter get today for their work is just chicken feed. Star system has become worse today. But all said and done, when compared to what others in other professions get, our remunerations are certainly on the higher bracket.”

Amrish Puri says that acting is no joke. “It is a highly technical job .Creativity isn’t a kind of a store house from which you can draw your talent with a rope. You have got to get into the mood of the character that you are called upon to play. If I do a good scene in a commercial film, unfortunately I can see the result only after one or two years because you work in piece-meal style. By this time, the car in which Amrishji and I are travelling from Bangalore where I had gone to cover the International Film Festival in 1980 to Melkote where director Bapu is shooting for Boney Kapoor’s film Hum Paanch starring Naseeruddin Shah, Mithun Chakraborty, Raj Babbar, Deepti Naval and Amrish Puri  has reached the location and Anil Kapoor, who is working as the Production Controller of the film, besides acting in a few films in small roles like Ek Baar Suno, springs in front of us to welcome Amrishji and usher him to one of the tents on location where he is put up while I head towards the tent , with Mithun Chakraborty escorting me as his friend ,where I have been put up as a media person. Amrishji concludes, “My first love will always continue to be the experimental art films which I feel is the root-cause of the commercial films because they serve as a kind of feedback to know what exactly the audience needs. It is indeed sad that a person of the caliber and status as Amjad Khan has become money-minded and gone on record stating that even a bhangi (sweeper) can make art films.”

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