There’s a breather before the blitz of festival releases starts, so here’s another installment of random observations, or This & That. A lot of it from the launch event of Piyush Pandey’s book, Pandeymonium.
Very few actors can dignify a suit like Amitabh Bachchan can— at the launch of Piyush Pandey’s book, the writer was in a crumpled shirt and AB looked like he was going to collect an Oscar.
When Bachchan was praised for his legendary punctuality and other industry folk berated for their tardiness, AB gallantly came to their defence, saying that most of them are on time.
At the book launch he had to read from the foreword he has written, and he revealed that he had read the passage over and over again on his way to the venue, because he has never ceased to be nervous. “Stay nervous, stay relevant” is his mantra.
It was good to see Jaya Bachchan with him, elegantly flaunting her grey hair.
Celebs are not known to be particularly careful about what they endorse, but when Bachchan was approached to do ads for Cadbury’s chocolates after the worm scandal, he actually went to their factory and checked the packaging and then shot the film in which he spoke honestly about how the problem had happened and how the company solved it.
For the anti-polio campaign, Bachchan suggested that his angry man persona be used, and instead of requesting parents to get their infants inoculated, he angrily demanded it. Later surveys shows that many people took their kids for anti-polio drops because Amitabh Bachchan was so “naraaz.”
Now for some other bits… Kangana Ranaut’s stories are sometimes bizarre—who’d believe that she slept on the pavement when she came to Mumbai?
Irrfan is on such a high not just for the films he did but even for the one he didn’t – The Martian. It must have taken some guts to turn down Ridley Scott!
Aishwarya Rai has so often been accused of not acting, that she made up for it by overacting in her ‘comeback’ film Jazbaa.
Why didn’t someone discover Neeraj Kabi earlier?
There will be a Salman Khan overdose by the time Prem Ratan Dhan Paayo comes out.
Can starlets ever understand that talking about the charity they do, the help they offer their staff and gifts they give their friends and relatives, is in bad taste? Better to do something worthwhile and get in the news.