Flashback: Between 1969 and 1994, a producer who was always inevitably struggling launched 12 films, many of which didn’t exactly set the boxoffice on fire. Fast forward to June 2011: The beleaguered producer’s son decides to buy the perpetual rights to 11 of those films for a few crore, more in a fit of nostalgia and less with commerce in mind. Such a transaction wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows in the big stakes environs of Bollywood. Except that in this case the son buying the perpetual rights is a certain Aamir Khan. The producer is the late Tahir Hussain who died last year at age 71.
Ironically, the one film whose rights are in dispute and therefore not with Khan is one in which he stars, called ‘Hum Hain Rahi Pyaar Ke’. “My father was not a top-notch producer like say Yash Chopra or Gulshan Rai. As kids, we have seen really close the lows of his films failing really close,” says a dewy-eyed Khan. Memories of those times still make the emotions well up inside Khan.
In the absence of corporate and institutional finance, almost all producers borrowed money from the market at ridiculously high interest rates. Business wasn’t Hussain’s forte; that apart, long delays in the completion of films and a string of turkeys at the box-office resulted in a Domino Effect on the Khan family.
Khan recalls his and his brother’s name being up on the school notice board for as many as six months for non-payment of fees. His mother, he adds, would make their uniforms three sizes too large so that they would last longer. “The toughest times were during `Locket’ (starring Jeetendra and Rekha, 1986), which took eight years to complete, or even earlier — ‘Khoon Ki Pukar’ (1978) which took three years. Actors troubled him with dates and there would be at least 30 calls a day from creditors calling for their money,” recalls Khan. Calling up farflung theatres across the country for collections is a vivid, if painful, memory as the figures were invariably imminently forgettable. Hussain for his part did give breaks to a lot of young talent like Reena Roy, Rakesh Roshan , Raj Babbar and Bappi Lahiri, among others.
The rough road his father traversed would explain why Khan avoided wearing the producer’s cap for years.
“It’s a thankless job because after employing an entire unit you get all the brickbats for things going wrong; and when the film becomes a hit, the creative talent gets all the credit, never the producer,” says Khan. The reality, he adds, is that if it hadn’t been for the producer, the creative talent would not have got an opportunity. Source
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