‘Stop the car, I’m not doing this film!’ When Rishi Kapoor left the director in the middle of the road after hearing the first scene

New Delhi. Bollywood’s ‘Chintu ji’ i.e. Rishi Kapoor was famous for his outspokenness and excellent acting, but there are no less stories of his discipline and punctuality in the film industry. Filmmaker David Dhawan, during a recent interview, shared an incident related to Rishi Kapoor’s working style, which can be surprising for today’s actors. Rishi Kapoor had an unbreakable rule – he did not work after 7 pm and used to get irritated by the very name of ‘night shift’.

David Dhawan told on Kapil Sharma’s show that once a director had come to narrate the script of his film to Rishi Kapoor. Rishi Kapoor was leaving for home at that time, so he asked the director to narrate the story in the car on the way. As soon as the director started the narration and mentioned the very first scene by saying that it was a night scene, Rishi Kapoor immediately lost his cool. He shouted to the driver midway, stop the car!

Rishi Kapoor bluntly told that director, I do not work in those films in which night shooting takes place. No matter what happens, I get packed at 7 o’clock. That poor director’s narration ended in the very first scene and the film got rejected right there. According to David Dhawan, Rishi Kapoor hated night shooting and preferred to work on his own terms.

Not only time, Rishi Kapoor also looked for logic behind every scene. David Dhawan says that he was a very intelligent actor. If he did not understand a scene, he would ask the director – Why should I do it this way? They did not proceed with the work until the director satisfied them. It is this discipline and candor of Rishi Kapoor, who has given classic films like ‘Amar Akbar Anthony’ and ‘Chandni’, that makes him such a star of the film world, whose absence is missed by cinema even today.