Comedy legend Johnny Lever lamented the status of the business and claimed that Bollywood movies no longer need his particular type of humour. In a recent interview, he proposed the theory that insecure performers insisted on being given comedic roles as well, to prevent a situation where he, Johnny, would receive all the praise. And as a result, comic relief characters were less prevalent.
In a recent interview, Johnny Lever used the example of his breakthrough movie, Baazigar, starring Shah Rukh Khan. He claimed that the movie “didn’t have a writer,” so he was forced to create all of the comedic parts on his own. And he succeeded because of his “youthful exuberance.”
Asked why he doesn’t appear in as many films as he used to anymore, he said in Hindi, “I turn down work because the writing is bad these days. You speak of Baazigar… That film had no writer, it was just me. I came up with all the punches. Those were good days, we used to work hard. But these days, we don’t have (comedy) writers. It’s like, ‘Johnny bhai will handle it’. That’s not how it works. We need a blueprint first.”
He continued, “Comedy was given respect back in the day. These days, there’s hardly any comedy in movies. Back in the day, I used to get such a positive response, my scenes would become the highlight of the movie. Sometimes, the heroes would feel threatened and my scenes would be edited. They used to watch how the audience would react to my scenes, and feel insecure. They started asking writers to come up with comedy scenes for them, as well. The writers would start distributing comedy scenes. And my roles became smaller and smaller, which is what you’re seeing now. Comedy is gone.”
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