Tezaab turns 29: Film was 5 hours long; Anil Kapoor shot till 4 days before release

Actor Chunky Panday goes down memory lane and shares five lesser known facts about N Chandra’s Tezaab starring Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor.

Madhuri Dixit dancing to the song Ek Do Teen in Tezaab is still fresh in everyone’s memory. So is the song So Gaya Yeh Jahan, featuring actors Chunky Panday and Anil Kapoor. This N Chandra directorial was an instant hit when it released in 1988. As the film completes 29 years today (November 11), Chunky shares that the film will remain one of the best things that happened in his career.

Actor Chunky Panday played Anil Kapoor’s friend in the movie Tezaab, which completed 29 years.

“We had so much fun making the film. And of course, the love and appreciation that followed after it released is something I can never forget. People still tell me about how much they liked So Gaya Yeh Jahan,” shares Chunky, who played Anil Kapoor’s friend in the film. He also remembers how he and actor Johny Lever used to practice the scenes before facing the camera. “Those sessions were very interesting,” he adds.

Going down memory lane, we asked Chunky to share a few lesser known anecdotes from the film, and he happily gets into the recall mode. Read on: 

1. Tezaab was a five-hour-long film that was edited to fit into three hours. But the producer and distributors wanted the film to be even shorter, and suggested that the song So Gaya Yeh Jahan should be dropped. However, N Chandra put his foot down and said that it’s a very heavy film and he needed to calm the audience with the soft number.

2. The film released on a Friday and the advance booking opened on Monday that week. There was a long queue [of people] who wanted to watch the movie on the first day. There was a train track near the booking counter where a movie scene was being shot, and as the news spread, people waiting for tickets rushed to see it. It was Anil Kapoor who was giving a shot for Tezaab on top of the train, and the scene was added to the film on Thursday, a day before the release.

Madhuri Dixit and Anil Kapoor in a still from Tezaab.

3. After the actors finished shooting So Gaya Yeh Jahan, they went to a nearby hotel to grab something to eat. As it was late at night and they were very hungry, they did not remove their bloody make-up. As soon as they entered the lobby, everyone panicked to see them covered in blood. The hotel staff came running to ask if they should call the doctor, and calmed down only after the situation was explained to them.

4. The composer duo Laxmikant-Pyarelal wanted to use the Marathi song Jawa Navin Popat Ha in Tezaab, but they soon found out that it had already been used in one of Chunky’s films, Paap Ki Duniya (1988) titled Main Tera Tota Tu Meri Maina. So they had to drop the idea, and the tune that was composed for the song was then sent to Javed Akhtar.

5. Javed Akhtar wrote the lyrics to Ek Do Teen within an hour. Chunky shares that the lyricist took a cue from the way Laxmikant used to compose his tunes saying ek do teen.

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