In the early 1970s, Amitabh Bachchan exploded on to the Indian silver screen as the ‘angry young man’ striking a chord with the people of the subcontinent and cementing his place as India’s finest superstar. The characters he played were immensely popular and helped him achieve the status of a Bollywood god. We remember the creators of the ‘angry young man’ and gave Bachan his identity and a lion’s share in the Indian cinema i.e. Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar popularly known as Salim-Javed.
Salim belonged to Indore and came to Bombay to become an actor. But after working in a couple of films and failing to make a mark, he took up writing. Javed belonged to a family of poets and left his father’s house to become a director but after working as a clapper-boy in some films joined Sippy Films Story Department and became good friends with Salim who was also working there. Both decided to go independent, teamed up and wrote scripts for super-hit films such as Andaaz, Seeta Aur Geeta, Haathi Mere Saathi, Yaadon Ki Baraat, Zanjeer, Deewar, Sholay, Chacha Bhatija, Trishul, Don, Kaala Pathar, Shaan, Shakti, Mr India and many others.
Both of them were responsible not only for shaping Bachchan’s career but it was Salim who introduced the superstar to legendary filmmakers such as Prakash Mehra and Manmohan Desai whose films starring Bachchan made history at the box-office.
Before the Salim-Javed era, producers used to buy film scripts for meager amounts and hush writers away from their offices without even mentioning their names in the film credits. But Salim-Javed changed it all. They fought with producers for rights of the writer and made him a superstar in every right. They were the first writers whose names were written on film posters and they charged fees at par with reigning superstars and sometimes shared 25 percent profits of films, which had succeeded owing to their brilliant scripts.
Their stories were strong, dialogues powerful and screenplays gripping. The characters of their stories were well-developed and woven into the script so beautifully that their screen presence was always electrifying. Their portrayal of villains was so mesmerising that the greatest negative roles of Indian cinema were created by Salim-Javed, including Teja in Zanjeer, Gabbar Singh in Sholay and Mogambo in Mr India. Their use of flashback in films such as Deewar and Shakti and transforming characters in one scene even impressed the writers of Slumdog Millionaire who admitted that they had taken inspiration from Salim-Javed’s unmatched work.
After writing lyrics for Yash Chopra’s Silsila (1981), Javed wanted to continue as a lyricist and wanted Salim-Javed’s brand name associated with song writing as well. But Salim was hesitant, as he knew nothing about writing songs. This ended the duo’s 12-year-old association and the Salim-Javed brand name ended in 1982.
Both carried on working separately. Salim wrote Naam (1986) for actor-producer Rajendra Kumar and the film was a super-hit but he left writing completely after that and started concentrating on his family matters. He encouraged his eldest son Salman Khan and saw him become a megastar. Salim now spends a quite life mostly at his house and Panvel farmhouse and distributes some movies in a few territories. Javed continued writing scripts for sometime but quit it for writing lyrics.
