The con comedy Bunty Aur Babli (2005) was released 20 years ago, on May 27. On this special occasion, Bollywood Hungama exclusively spoke to its director Shaad Ali and among many things, he opened up about the cuts given by the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC). The film was passed with a U/A certificate.
20 Years of Bunty Aur Babli EXCLUSIVE: Shaad Ali reveals CBFC changed ‘Phoolwati’ to ‘Phoolsakhi’ to avoid resemblance to Mayawati; also shares how the original draft had a scene where the couple try to sell the Taj Mahal for scrap
Did the CBFC have reservations about the intimate scenes? Shaad Ali clarified, “They didn’t cut any intimate shot. It was barely one shot anyway. The only change they asked for was to change the name of the Tourism Minister from Phoolwati to Phoolsakhi as the former sounded very similar to Mayawati! It was during her regime that there were talks of the Taj Corridor. We were inspired by this incident and we spin a story that the Taj Mahal was going to be sold, that too by a minister.”
Shaad Ali continued, “Since the first day that I spoke to Adi (Aditya Chopra) about this film, I insisted that ‘Agar yeh film mein Taj Mahal nahin bika, toh phir yeh film banane ka koi fayda nahin hai’. It took us three months to cook up the whole track on paper. We also did a lot of research on famous conmen and con incidents. Eiffel Tower multiple times bika hai. There was a man who tried to sell the Eiffel Tower to a scrap metal dealer. In the earlier draft of Bunty Aur Babli, there was a scene where marble dealers from all over India come to Agra to pick up marble from the Taj Mahal as scrap (laughs). There was also an auction scene.”
He also explained why he showed a foreigner getting cheated saying, “We wanted to character who’s clueless about how things work. So, we had a foreigner and we showed him to be in love. His fiancé expresses the desire to marry in Taj Mahal.”
Bunty Aur Babli is a story of a couple that is cheating people across Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. In a crucial track in the second half, Bunty (Abhishek Bachchan) masquerades as a government middleman and meets a rich foreigner, Harry Epstein (J Brandon Hill), interested in buying the Taj Mahal. Babli (Rani Mukerji), meanwhile, gets employed as a typist in the office of Tourism Minister Phoolsakhi (Pratima Kazmi). While the minister is away, Babli assumes her identity, meets Harry and ‘leases’ the Taj Mahal to him for 5 years.
More Pages: Bunty Aur Babli Box Office Collection , Bunty Aur Babli Movie Review
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