'People ask me about my biggest action sequence; this is it, because it involved two giants of Indian cinema.'
What's a Hindi movie without damakedaar action?
Where's the fun of an Ek Tha Tiger if Salman Khan doesn't fight villains in a moving car and rescue the girl?
How good is a superhero if he doesn't walk sideways on a train like Shah Rukh Khan did in Ra.One?
Where's the thrill of watching Bang Bang if we don't see Hrithik Roshan performing action stunts in the water, bare-chested, with water droplets sliding off his golden tan?
Does a sports biopic even look authentic unless Priyanka Chopra lets her fists fly like in Mary Kom?
Executing this magic is all up to Action Director Parvez Shaikh, who has worked in blockbuster titles like Sultan, Vikram Vedha, Brahmastra Part One: Shiva, Chaava, the Tiger movies, War...
But it's a dangerous career choice, and Parvez acknowledges it.
"you do stunts and action, you will probably get hurt at some point. When a stuntman goes to work in the morning, his family always wonders if he will come back in one piece in the evening," he tells Ronjita Kulkarni/Rediff.
Which is your biggest action moment?
In Thugs of Hindostan. Aamir Khan and Amitabh Bachchan have a fight scene together -- their first and probably, last.
Aamir told me, 'Design it properly. This will never happen again in cinema.
People ask me about my biggest action sequence; this is it, because it involved two giants of Indian cinema.
What is the toughest kind of stunt for you?
More than the stunts, managing actors is tough.
Like in Thugs of Hindostan, managing both Aamir sir and Amitabh sir, making sure the action was even and looked great on screen (was challenging).
It was the same with Vikram Vedha, where Hrithik Roshan and Saif Ali Khan fight each other.
You have to balance both stars' screen presence and moves, and ensure that nobody feels overshadowed. Managing them for those five-six days of shoot was very difficult.
Stunts like jumping from buildings, car flips or explosions are our daily job, so that is easy.
Is ego a problem between actors in action scenes?
I won't call it an ego clash.
But both actors will want to look good.
One will say, 'Why did he get four punches and I get only two?' or 'I won't fall that way.'
Managing that is the real difficulty.
Actors like Shah Rukh sir or Hrithik sir don't mind getting hit... they understand that in the end, they will get to deliver the last hero punch.
What happens if an actor is miffed with the action scene?
Then we have to go to his vanity van and make him understand, show him the fight scenes, the action design.
If they don't like it, we either talk it out or change it.
What is Salman like to work with?
He mostly does the stunts himself.
For Tiger Zinda Hai, we had done a car stunt in Bangkok, where Katrina Kaif is handcuffed inside the car, and Salman has to rescue her and fight the goons in the moving car.
Then the car door flies open and bangs against an obstacle.
All those shots were done by Salman himself. Katrina did not do the scenes, we had a foreigner girl as her body double.
In Bharat, Salman did some of the maut ka kua stunts himself.
What is Shah Rukh Khan like to work with?
He's the world's biggest actor, but still the most humble.
You tell him to jump, climb, or bang something, he will say, 'Show me once' and then do it himself.
Even today, despite age and injuries, he insists on doing the stunts himself.
Many actors prefer body doubles, but not Shah Rukh sir.
It's very easy to work with him.
In Ra.One, did Shah Rukh really do those heavy-duty train stunts?
Yes. That was a real train and a real station.
We shot at Khandala station.
Shah Rukh sir ran across train tops, jumped to the next train, ran sideways on the train...
We did a few close-up shots in the studio, but the rest was on location.
We could have done them with a duplicate; he has his own VFX company and could have got it done that way too. But still, he did the action himself.
He got injured too -- he's had many injuries over the years, from Baazigar to Main Hoon Na, Fan.
In Fan, there was a chase scene where he had to run, jump from windows... His knees were already in a bad shape then -- he wore four knee caps just to walk and was in a lot of pain. And he was playing a double role in the film.
We suggested using duplicates, but he said, 'Let my knees get worse just once more, then I'll get the surgery done. But don't compromise the shot.'
Who does that?
Are injuries normal in stunts?
Yes. Minor injuries like swollen hands, twist in the ankle, glass cuts, are common.
When you do action and stunts, you will probably get hurt at some point.
When a stuntman goes to work in the morning, his family members always wonder if he will come back in one piece in the evening.
Akshay Kumar sir is the only actor in India who thought of insurance for stunt performers.
Earlier, we had no insurance or medical coverage.
He took the initiative, and for the past five-six years, he spends Rs 2 crore to Rs 4 crore (Rs 20 million to Rs 40 million) annually on insurance for all of us.
If someone gets injured or falls ill, it's covered.
If someone dies during a stunt, the family gets compensation -- some have received Rs 20 lakh.
No other hero has done this.
It's because of Akshay Kumar that 500 to 800 stuntmen and their families have benefited.
A stuntman recently died on the sets of the Tamil film, Vettuvam, when he was performing a car-toppling stunt.
I saw the video (of his tragic death).
There's a special seatbelt required, which is locked at five places. You need a special car seat, which I have got from the US. It is priced at Rs 3 lakh to 5 lakh.
There's a special helmet, priced at about Rs 2 lakh.
If you have all these precautions, 99.5 percent, you will be safe. The 0.5 percent margin is because you may get a jhatka in your neck.
The stuntman was experienced and had done stunts before.
He went over the ramp, but the speed was a bit higher. The soil where he landed stopped the vehicle abruptly, which caused the jerk. Had the landing surface been more solid, the vehicle would have moved forward and the impact would have been absorbed.
Do accidents happen often in Bollywood?
I remember two major ones.
One of my assistant's father was playing Anil Kapoor's double in a stunt, The car he was driving had to fall into a lake in Film City. The seatbelt didn't open, and he drowned.
The second was Raju, who had to do a car flip. His vehicle hit some trees and he passed away.
Even a punch can get dangerous.
In Student Of The Year, Varun Dhawan had a fight scene with Sidharth Malhotra.
Varun missed the timing during one take, and got punched on the nose. His nose started bleeding, and he was rushed to hospital. But it wasn't very serious.
Hrithik Roshan had a head injury during the water action sequence in Bang Bang.
That's a water sport that tourists do in Bangkok. Director Siddharth Anand wanted to make it an action sequence.
Hrithik sir had to do the stunt with a higher speed.
He had to go underwater and come up very fast.
When going underwater, there is a lot of pressure on the head.
In a shoot, you don't do anything just once. If too much water comes on the face and the face is not visible, you have to do another take.
Doing it repeatedly caused injuries on Hrithik sir's head.
His head was hit multiple times because of the multiple takes but during the shoot, neither Hrithik sir nor we realised how much it was affecting him.
The pain increased when he came to Bombay, and then he needed surgery.
Was this the most challenging stunt you did with Hrithik?
There was a stunt in Bang Bang when Hrithik had to swing from a bridge and go between two moving buses.
It was challenging because it was time-sensitive to a single second.
If we didn't time it properly, he would have been crushed between the two buses.
His body double was on standby, but Hrithik insisted on doing it himself.
In 2014, when we had done War, the technology was not as advanced, and somewhat dangerous. In those days, rigging and CGI was just coming in.
Now, with advancement, if things don't work out in CGI, we use VFX.
What's the most dangerous type of stunt?
Body fire is the most dangerous.
Even with all the protective gel and suits, fire can find a way in and it's hard to stop.
Underwater stunts are also very risky.
Running into glass and car stunts are safer in comparison if safety is followed.
Do actors perform their own fire stunts?
Some do. They wear a fireproof outfit and do it to a certain limit, and it is enhanced by VFX.
VFX has made action safe.
Salman performed his stunts in Bharat, Sultan and Tiger.
Salman, Shah Rukh, Hrithik, Tiger (Shroff), Vidhyut (Jammwal) do their own action.
In Laal Singh Chaddha, Aamir Khan did his own stunts during the Kargil war scenes. He fell on the rocks after the blast at least 10 times.
You may not think of Aamir as an action hero but he does all the action himself.
Which actress has impressed you with action?
No actress does action as well as Priyanka Chopra.
I did Mary Kom and a small bit of Ra.One with her.
If I ever get money to make an action film, I will sign Priyanka Chopra.
You just have to tell her to do something, and she will ace it.
It's very difficult for a woman to bang straight into something but she would do it without hesitating.
Let's go back to the beginning. How did your journey start?
I used to work as a car mechanic in a garage from 1984 to 1992.
My neighbour used to be Sham Kaushal, who is Vicky Kaushal's father. He was just starting out as an action director then. My brother asked him if there was any work for me.
Sham Kaushal said it's a dangerous job, and then explained the whole process of becoming a stuntman. He said, one needs two years of training, one needs to get a card from the stunt artists association, and there are safety rules to learn.
Masterji, as I called him, told me to train. He gave me two years, but I got ready in six months.
We had no training centres back then; no gyms or rehearsal halls. We used to practice at Juhu beach (northwest Mumbai). Because of the soft sand, we didn't need mats or pads.
How did you become an official stuntman?
To get the mandatory union card (from the Movie Stunt Artist Association), we needed Rs 5,000. Today, it costs Rs 4.5 lakh.
But in those days, I didn't have even Rs 5,000.
Somehow, I arranged it and got the card in 1992.
Masterji started taking me on shoots and taught me everything.
My first major stunt was at Mukesh Mills. I had to break through glass and fall from the second floor.
It was for the 1992 film, Janam Kundli, starring Vinod Khanna.
Didn't you feel scared?
Of course I did! I had to break through the glass and fall 40 feet.
In those days, there were no cables, harness or air bags.
You had to fall on empty television boxes. Even the mattresses weren't good.
There are two types of glass: Toughened glass and real glass.
Toughened glass is used in shoots. To break them, they use a bullet.
When you run toward the glass, before you hit it, they blast it or break it, so you don't break it yourself. But it's glass at the end of the day, and I had to fall with it.
For that stunt, the toughened glass had expired, which means the gas had leaked out. So it had turned into real glass.
When I broke through it and landed on the boxes, everyone started yelling.
They were saying, 'Careful, careful, don't get hurt.'
I'd never broken glass before, so I didn't know what to expect.
I was in the boxes when I heard a sound, then saw a faint light. Then someone removed the boxes, held my hands, and pulled me out.
They asked, 'Are you okay? Are you hurt?'
I said, 'I'm okay.'
Shamji came and hugged me and said, 'Son, go straight to Haji Ali and take blessings.'
He said the glass was real, and I could have been injured.
That was my first stunt, and back then, I didn't even know that glass could expire.
How did your action career progress?
I worked with Shamji for two years.
After that, I worked with senior action directors like the late Akbar Bakshi (who did action in films like Khiladi and Baazigar), Ravi Diwan and Ram Shetty.
Jodhaa Akbar was the last film on which I worked as a stuntman.
On the last day of that film, I told action director, Ravi Diwan, that I wanted to become a full-fledged fight master.
That was in 2007.
The same day, I got a call from Yash Raj Films.
They needed an action director for Tashan, so I joined the action team.
I have got awards for Vikram Vedha and Sultan.
Kill and Chhava have made waves.
Vicky Kaushal had insisted I handle the action for Chhava. He trusted me, and I delivered.
I did Sam Bahadur with him too.
Shah Rukh Khan was the one who really boosted your career.
Yes. We had worked together many times when I was an assistant.
His bodyguard at the time, Yasin, told him that I'd become an action director.
Shah Rukh Khan thought I was still assisting Allan Amin sir, with whom I worked with for about 10 years.
Shah Rukh sir told the late Bobby Chawla (the then CEO at Red Chillies Entertainment), 'From now on, whatever work comes for Red Chillies, give it to Parvez.'
That was a turning point.
What else do you need in this industry when you have Shah Rukh Khan's support?
What was your first official release as an action director?
Dibakar Banerjee's Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!
I had worked with him on ad films. When he heard I became an action director, he offered the film to me even though there wasn't much action in it.
After that, I did Umesh Shukla's Doonte The Jaoge.
Then, I did Ra.One, where I got to work with an international stunt director.
Shah Rukhbhai told me, work with him, learn from him, if he has any safety equipment, buy it, and you can teach him too.
I got my first award for Ra.One.
What projects are you working on now?
King, Border 2, Thama, Meghna Gulzar's Daayra, Omung Kumar's Silaa...
Photographs curated by Satish Bodas/Rediff
