The Making of Mrs. Serial Killer
Farah Khan was the inspiration along with ham, masks, and a hazmat suit
‘Karna kya hai mujhe, director sahiba?’ Akshaye Khanna tightened his brow to a high-strung Farah Khan.
‘Oye, sahiba-wahiba hogi Madhuri, I’m your dictator,’ Farah yelled back at him.
‘Dick-tator!’ he punned.
‘Chal bhai, I have more balls than all of you kya!’ she said.
Aaj tak Akki ne nahi poocha kya karna hai!
Kats ki meow tak nahi nikli mere saamne!
Bada aaya acting karne, jaa haath-paer dheele kar, tere ko frame mein adjust karti hoon.’
Khanna walked away.
Farah announced into a loudspeaker to her crowd actors.
‘I want more ham, ham, not lambs, don’t be meek, jo jitna ham karega usko utna footage milega.’
An over-enthusiastic assistant released a truckload of a hundred suckling pigs into the crowd. People went berserk running helter-skelter.
‘Perfect,’ Farah exalted, instructing her DOP (director of photography) to take only close-up shots.
Amateur actors looked trapped, perplexed as they ran in circles. It was just the expression she wanted to capture.
The pigs were a brilliant idea.
She decided to make the pigs an integral part of the film. Camping in a village, she had them taken care of.
When the actors were ready to film, she’d command over a loudspeaker, ‘Lights, Camera, Ham.’
A dutiful spot boy would release the piglets on the sets and actors would deliver their lines in one take, trying to stay aground in the mad rush.
Actors had to live with pigs during the entire shooting of the film.
Farah wanted the actors to closely study the little trotters to understand their own hyperactive characters.
‘Shabana aunty carried a pig on her poorly-clothed shoulders across a stream in Paar,’ she often reminded her unsure actors of their passion towards their craft.
Having been forced to share their beds with these squealing, squelching, stinky oinkers, their speech pattern had also changed. Actors would often greet fellow actors on the sets with an oink instead of a hello.
The night the film shooting wrapped up, while actors slept in their tent beds, Farah sat by a bonfire roasting the pigs, silver-foiling their legs and scribbling with a sharpie, ‘Ham Award’.
She would present it to her wonderful actors the next morning as a parting gift.
Unit members in the bus were told they were in for a treat at breakfast. When they opened their gift packages, they were infuriated by her sinister act. They decided to avenge their roasted brothers and sisters.
Their blood curdled with vegetarianism.
At the film premiere, actors Akshay Kumar, Katrina Kaif, Akshaye Khanna stepped out in a pig mask from their limos.
Farah, who was standing on a dais to welcome them, was aghast, but not one to be upstaged by their protest, she ordered to an assistant, ‘Get me a Ham, ham,’ she began to huff and stammered, ‘Hammer, hammer!’
A man in a costume, dressed as a golden hammer, appeared before the crowd.
The actors, stunned, gave up. Nothing could rattle her. She was armed with her deadliest weapon yet, and seemed every bit bloodthirsty.
The man in the hammer suit catatonically whispered into her ear, ‘I’m ready to nail it.’
Farah was mighty pleased with her dummy husband Shirish Kunder.
A thunderous applause arose for Mrs. Serial Killer.
Disclaimer: This, not she, is a work of overactive imagination.
