6 things about Kundan Shah's Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro you might not know

It has been 33 years since Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro (1983) released. But the film continues to tickle the funny bone even of people from later generations. In fact, it’s one of the rare comedies to impress both the masses and the classes. The film was the debut of Kundan Shah as a director and co-writer. He celebrates his 69th birthday today (19 October). On his big day, let’s revisit some funny and interesting anecdotes regarding him and Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro by his close friend and the film’s co-writer Sudhir Mishra. He shared these incidents at the recently concluded Lonavala International Film Festival of India (LIFFI). This is what Mishra had to say about Shah and his most celebrated film.

“I was just 22-23 when we wrote Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. Who understood cinema at that age? We wrote it and the film was a result of we not knowing. If you knew, you wouldn’t write a film like Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro. After that, because we know, we haven’t been able to write a film like that.”

“Every actor in Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro used to say that no film can be as weird as this one. On the last day of the shoot when we were shooting the Mahabharata scene, Om Puri said this is a very good script. He understood this on the last day.”

“Naseer sahab (Naseeruddin Shah) used to get so upset that he used to hit himself on the wall. He used to ask, ‘How can this phone fall down? How can it happen?’ I said, ‘It happens if you believe. It doesn’t if you don’t.’”

“In those days, very few people used to consider Kundan Shah a director. A director used to have a beard and someone who read Ritwik Ghatak and drank rum. Kundan used to write accounts, keep an umbrella and bag. People used to feel, how can he be a director of art films?”

“Kundan Shah never attempted a film like this one again. The industry and everybody knocked the madness out of him. He is the wildest mind in India and he started becoming sane. Itne pagal dimaag ko seedha kar diya.”

“Jaane Bhi Do Yaro was a big hit at the time. It ran for 56 weeks, but the industry never accepted it. He (Kundan Shah) got no work after that. He made his next film in 1992. See what they did to Kundan! If TV hadn’t come, he would have been starving after Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro.”