What about Anees? Well, buzz me!

Trust you me Irsquove been among film buffs at film festivals for long enough to be this gobsmacked hosting a conversation with Anees Bazmee 63 before a live audience at the Jagran Film Festival in Mumbai mdash surrounded by such diehard fans in a parasocial relationship with a particular movie by the director Welcome 2007 listing out favourite characters lines sceneshellipThe claps donrsquot stopA woman in the hall reminisces how she had a broken leg with ldquoEk taang nakli hairdquo actor Mushtaq Khanrsquos monologue scribbled on her plaster Watching Welcome helped her recuperateAnother girl declaims at length about how the film for her was ldquotreatment for mental healthrdquo recalling the climax sequence with the entire cast inside a treehouse type structure balancing on a bamboo stickBazmee tells us a friend insisted on having him over for dinner with his dad Itrsquos when he made it there he realised the father had once been muted paralysed for two yearsStills from the absurdist comedies No Entry 2005The dad had been meaning to play Welcome on TV It took his son a month to figure this For a year after Bazmee says the father watched the movie in continuous loop before he got okayAh what The audience in the hall I count from a show of hands is still equally split between their love for Welcome and Bazmeersquos No Entry 2005ldquoOh 5050rdquo Bazmee exults The number one No Entry fan tells us he was six when he watched it in the theatre and decided to become a filmmakerWhich is rather early for picking a career mdash if not for a picture about philandering married men that at its core is a sex comedy rightMust be a generation thing I reason in my head when another 20something this time onstage similarly goes berserk reciting ldquoAloo le lordquo vegetablecart scene from a film being shot within Welcome thatrsquos also titled WelcomeWelcome 2007Whichever way you look at it Welcome mdash about literally getting married to the mob inspired by the Hugh Grant romcom Mickey Blue Eyes 1999 but altogether a leap of faith so over the top of anything to do with general intellect mdash is essentially a childrenrsquos pictureBazmee says ldquoIf you skip 30 minutes of any movie you might feel lost You can watch Welcome from any point to another or simply follow the characters Majnu Bhai Anil Kapoor Uday Shetty Nana Patekar RDX Feroz Khan Dr Ghungroo Paresh RawalhelliprdquoThatrsquos how sketchsituational comedies work I guess Also a reason why so many survive generations mdash whether Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro 1983 for one Andaz Apna Apna 1994 for another indeed Charlie Chaplin 19141961 forever while dramas other emo genres from the same eras remain largely forgottenI once asked actorproducer Aamir Khan what he thought was a good script He said one where you canrsquot help but wonder throughout ldquoWhat happens nextrdquo I asked him for its best example He saidldquoSandwich 2006rdquoSingh Is Kinng 2008Itrsquos the absurdist comedy with Govinda that Bazmee directed sandwiched between No Entry and WelcomeHear Bazmee briefly narrate its plot ldquoTherersquos Govinda in double role married to two women mdash one in village other in the city The former wife moves to the city tooldquoBoth wives have a child who look exactly like each other Village kid gets admitted to the same school as the city kid One look at each other the kids know therersquos something amisshelliprdquo And thenFew have seen Sandwich ldquoThe film couldnrsquot release as per planrdquo Bazmee sighsEverybody knows Welcome I suspect because its release coincided with the explosion of social media wherein its scenesdialogues especially starring Nana Patekar got immortalised as reels memes continuing to be shared online Perhaps this was Patekarrsquos first comedyOn his part Patekar was clear he wanted his scenes in hand at least the night before shoot Bazmee works on his own timelineHe says ldquoIrsquod write them overnight but slip the script through Nana Jirsquos door at 4 am and tell him the next day lsquoBut you were sleepingrsquordquoSomewhere in that spontaneous combustion sometimes resides the magic of the madcap mainstream Bazmee tells me he wrote David Dhawanrsquos blockbuster Aankhen 1993 over 15 days while the shoot was already booked for Hyderabad with nothing in place besides the leads Chunky Panday and GovindaTo be fair to Bazmee he had patiently narrated Welcomersquos script to Patekar over three hours mdash offering him the three minutesrsquo and thirty minutesrsquo options as wellHe spelt out the script of Singh Is Kinng 2008 to Akshay Kumar ldquoover the phone in five minutes flatrdquo the morning after he came up with it That was enough Kumar was onIn hindsight Singh Is Kinng feels like the culmination of Bazmeersquos absurdist comic trilogy No Entry Welcome thatrsquos rapidly expanded its fandom from that decadeItrsquos also my favourite of the three This is for a larger reason besides that itrsquos just funnier more sorted as an overall movieAnd thatrsquos do with the film this SikhPunjabi madness about a simpleton stuck among mafia is evidently inspired from Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai 1960 completely dark social dacoit drama produced enacted by Raj KapoorWho wouldrsquove thunk that Bazmee began his directing career assisting Raj KapoorMayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass cultureHe tweets mayankw14 Send your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper