It is known that the film Trishul was significantly retooled after being shot, but there are differing opinions on what happened. While one point of view, narrated in the book ‘Written by Salim-Javed’ by Diptakirti Chaudhuri, suggests that writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar basically duped producer Gulshan Rai into allowing them to film extra material, another account suggests that it was the producer who noticed that the film wasn’t up to the mark, and demanded that it be reshot. His son, filmmaker Rajiv Rai, recounted the second version of the story in a recent interview with Siddharth Kannan.
He said that his father had a knack for identifying hits, and could listen to just a few minutes of a narration and know if he should back the project or not. He’d previously worked with Bachchan, Salim-Javed, and director Yash Chopra, on the landmark film Deewaar. After watching the initial cut of Trishul, he felt that the narrative wasn’t as focused on Bachchan’s character as it should be, and felt that the movie needed to be redone.
Rajiv Rai said, “Nobody’s above making mistakes, and my father was very good at catching where Yash ji had gone off track. We reshot Trishul completely. You can ask anybody. He asked Bachchan saab, ‘Will you give me dates? Otherwise, I’m trashing the film’. He said, ‘Okay, I’ll give you the dates’. Almost half the film was reshot; I was exaggerating when I said all of it. You wouldn’t be able to do it now. It wasn’t that there was a problem with the script, but the story diverted towards Sachin instead of Amitabh Bachchan. Sachin is very lucky, he’s a very good actor and he did a great job, but scenes that Amitabh Bachchan should have had went somewhere else. When my father saw the film, he realised that it won’t work, especially after Deewaar. My father used to tell me, ‘Films are not made, they’re remade’.”
Rakhee and Amitabh Bachchan in a still from Trishul. (Photo: Express Archives)
According to the book, Salim-Javed cooked up a scheme with Yash Chopra, where they asked Gulshan Rai for a few days more, and kept increasing their requests as they ran out of time. Gulshan Rai asked, “Salim sahib, is there any way to salvage this film?” Salim Khan replied sarcastically, “One way is not to release it at all.” Gulshan Rai called up Yash Chopra later that night and complained about the writers’ “cold-blooded indifference.” The filmmaker convinced Gulshan Rai that Salim-Javed were completely invested in the project. The next day, he met them at a hotel, and they decided how best to approach the idea of reshoots with Gulshan Rai. Salim Khan recalled, “We decided to give him the news in instalments in the same way he used to pay us in instalments.”
Trishul was transformed into a commercial potboiler, and was given a major marketing push in trade magazines and periodicals. Salim-Javed’s names were positioned right next to Yash Chopra’s.
