Andaz Apna Apna was originally planned with Amrish Puri playing ‘Zorambo’, an antithesis to his iconic Mogambo from Mr India, a new book says.
But the character could not make it to the big screen due to length issues of the film, according to “In A Cult of Their Own: Bollywood Beyond Box Office”.
The book, by Amborish Roychoudhury, also reveals how the iconic character of Crime Master Gogo, played by Shakti Kapoor, came into being.
The film starred Aamir Khan, Salman Khan, Raveena Tandon, Karisma Kapoor, Paresh Rawal, Viju Khote and Shahzad Khan. Upon release in 1994, the comic caper had an underwhelming show at the box office but eventually achieved a cult status.
Rajkumar Santoshi, the director of the film, had originally planned to create a Bizarro-like character for Mogambo.
Bizarro, a fictional supervillain appearing in DC comic books, is the “mirror image” of Superman.
Zorambo was the bumbling twin, who speaks and behaves the exact opposite. A perennially upset character whose pet-phrase was ‘Zorambo khush nahi hua’ opposite to that of ‘Mogambo khush hua’.
“Mogambo used to wear black, Zorambo wore white. Mogambo had white hair, Zorambo had black hair… Always serious, never smiles. Amar and Prem used to say, ‘Kisi tarah khush karo yaar isko’ (Do something to please him). It was like that,” Santoshi is quoted saying by Roychoudhury in the book.
“We had spoken to Amrish Puri and everything. But then we thought length-wise it is not working. But Crime Master Gogo was always a part of the script. He had a small part,” Santoshi adds.
But when Zorambo did not work out, Santoshi gave it a twist, according to Aamir. “(Zorambo was) kinda like Mogambo in ‘Mr. India’, asks people to jump into the boiling water and all. I forget exactly what the scene was now but basically, we meet him for the first time and he comes and stands in front of us, face to face.
“And when you cut to a wide shot you realise he is standing on a table. He is actually a dwarf,” says Aamir.
However, things did not work out and the dwarf character was cut out from the script and enter Crime Master Gogo.
Initially, Gogo was to be played by Tinnu Anand , who Aamir says was “very good and fantastic” in that character.
“Yes. In fact when it was reshot, by then Tinnu’s dates were unavailable. We got everyone’s dates but Tinnu’s. And since he was otherwise not in the film, Raj said we’ll take Shakti Kapoor,” says Aamir.
The cape-wearing Gogo went on to become so popular that his one-liners became part of public lingo, that cracks people up even now.
The book, by Rupa Publications, is a tongue-in-cheek ode to the cult Hindi movies.