Javed Akhtar speaks up on 'copying' Western films for 'Sholay', 'Zanjeer'
- By Web Desk -
- Sep 26, 2023
Veteran Indian screenwriter and lyricist, Javed Akhtar addressed the claims of his Bollywood hits ‘Zanjeer’ and ‘Sholay’ being copied from western classics.
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Recently, Indian actor Adil Hussain pointed out the similarities between the key sequences of the cult hit ‘Sholay’ and a Western classic, ‘Once Upon a Time in the West’ by iconic filmmaker, Sergio Leone.
Ha ha… Who would have thought that portions of one of the most watched/ Admired films in India will be a copy of this film below… Probably you already knew that!? .. But didn’t.. pic.twitter.com/jeIad77Gs5
— Adil hussain (@_AdilHussain) July 31, 2023
Addressing the rumours in a recently-released book, ‘Talking Life: Javed Akthar in Conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabir’, the veteran screenwriter wrote, “As I have said, we [screewriting duo Salim-Javed] were influenced by Sergio Leone. But ‘Sholay’ was not based on his epic film.”
In the excerpt from the same book, Akhtar also touched upon the claims of another of their hit with Amitabh Bachchan, ‘Zanjeer’ being inspired by ‘Dirty Harry’, directed by Don Siegel.
“It is all rubbish. No film was a remake or based on any other film,” Akhtar penned, explaining that their title came out a couple of years after ‘Dirty Harry’, and it was not possible for them in those pre-Google days to have written the screenplay, then have the film shot, edited and released in such little time.
Claiming that ‘Zanjeer’ was a brainchild of his writing partner Salim Khan, he recalled, “Later we wrote the screenplay together. Yes, ‘Dirty Harry’ was remade in Hindi, though not by us – Salim and Javed. It was called ‘Khoon Khoon’ and turned out to be a big flop.”
Although admitting that the only point of commonality between the two films was the hero profile (angry police officers), Akhtar maintained, “I think the ‘Zanjeer’ hero has more layers. Whenever some Indian film critics saw a film of ours, they assumed it had to be a copy and couldn’t believe we could think up ideas ourselves.”
“Think of the twist in ‘Don’. Vijay is planted in a gang by a police officer to expose the bad guys, then the police officer gets killed in the line of duty. Without the police officer to back up his story, Vijay has a hard time convincing the police that he is an undercover agent, even as the gang guesses he’s a plant. So, we have a situation where both the police and the gang are after Vijay’s blood. What a fantastic twist. All Salim Sahib,” he explained with an example.