Welcome to Sajjanpur is my third comedy movie: Shyam Benegal
Shyam Benegal is known to be a serious film maker but he is not that serious all the time. He also enjoys comedy movie and in his long movie making career, he made few comedy movies as well. His latest movie, Welcome to Sajjanpur, is a light-hearted comedy movie. In an interview, this talented director talks about the movie.
Though Shyam Benengal has made a reputation of making serious cinema, in his entire movie making career, he made all sorts of movies including serious, romantic, nostalgic, patriotic and even comedy. So far, he made twenty six movies. Welcome to Sajjanpur is his third comedy movie. The other two comedy movies are: Charandas Chor and Mandi.
Shyam Benegal got the idea of the movie from an interesting incident of his life. In his office, one of the peons was illiterate. He asked others to write letters for him and read out the letters that came to him. Interestingly, after his marriage, his wife used to write letters containing very personal matters. Since he could not read, others read it out to him which was quite embarrassing for the poor guy. The idea of the movie came from this funny incident.
Shreyash Talpade does not have too many successful movies to his credit as lead actor. Still, Shyam Benegal chose him to play the male lead of his movie and he was very happy with his performance. Shyam Benegal liked Shreyas Talpade’s performance in Iqbal. In Welcome to Sajjanpur, his performance exceeded Shyam Benegal’s expectations. Regarding Amrita Rao, Shyam Benegal said:
I needed somebody who is fresh and has a great deal of innocence in her face. I had seen Amrita’s film Vivah and felt that she would best suit the part of Kamla.
Earlier, the movie was named Mahadev Ka Sajjanpur. It was the working title of the movie. The marketing group of UTV changed the name because it sounded better.
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