Salman Khan gets candid about Loveyatri and launching Aayush, others in Bollywood

Loveyatri is all set to release today. Introducing Aayush Sharma and Warina Hussain, the film is backed by Salman Khan Films. The actor, who has launched Sooraj Pancholi and Athiya Shetty in Hero, this time preferred to stay away from media for the longest time so the focus is kept on his brother-in-law’s debut.

He however got candid in an interview where he spoke about his experiences, the film and launching new faces, including Aayush, in Bollywood. Here are excerpts from the interview:

Aayush has termed your place as Galaxy Institute of Performing Arts. There are some good and some not-so-good talents.

Who are not-the-good ones. Everyone who’s come has done well for themselves. When I did Maine Pyar Kiya, from then, I did pretty okay for myself. So everybody is in a better position from where they came. Everyone wants to be one of the biggest stars but that’s destiny. Even Sohail and Arbaaz tried but they also didn’t get it. But as directors, producers – they’ve done pretty well for themselves.

What kind of guidance do you give people who come here?

Do whatever you want to do, but don’t trouble your mother.

The only thing I tell them is that don’t play any games –be very enthusiastic in what you do and be patient. Just don’t jump into anything only because you need to work. If there’s no work, it’s fine, but always do good work. Otherwise working every day but doing bad work will get you nowhere. So you might as well wait for good work to come. And work does come. Especially with web, TV, movies and different cinema, people get many chances.

You changed the movie name from Loveratri to Loveyatri, but people aren’t liking that either.

We changed it because we didn’t want to hurt sentiments. If a film worked only on titles, then only title name would be pasted outside theatres. There was nothing offensive in the title. The film is really sweet, beautiful love story, like from earlier times. That’s what we want to do. Since there’s love during a festival, hence we called it Loveratri. But some people got offended so we didn’t want to hurt the emotions of even one person. Why to do that? We’re making love story, not hate story! Bhushan makes Hate Story. We went to the censor, who had a discussion and asked us to change the title. It’s such a clean film. When we showed the movie to some people, they were harping about the fact that it’s a family, clean film. I asked them to not rub it in since nobody wants to watch a family film.

What are your memories of Garba?

Falguni Pathak. I have done a lot of shows with her. Dholi Taro was there.

Have you celebrated Navratri?

Our family is such that it doesn’t leave any festival! We just need a reason to celebrate! Even when there isn’t a festival, we still try and create something.

Viewers are comparing Dholida and Dholi Taro…

That took too much time. Even if Loveyatri is Maine Pyar Kiya, even after that, it will take 10 years to reach Dholi Taro’s level. I was quite shocked because I saw Aayush dance before. He had to go for a lot of rehearsals. And he’s competing with Tiger, Varun kind of dancers. It’s a college romance which starts during first day of this festival and ends in next year of the festival.

What was your involvement in Loveyatri music?

Abhiraj was involved in the music. They used to get me an option of 4-5 songs from the situation. Then we selected one song and that’s how everything came together. So for each song, we tried at least about 50-60 songs. Not that this looks good so it will be there. If the movie has 6 songs and none of it is good, then what’s the use? So we sourced music. Some tracks may be bigger or smaller, but they have got us a lot of good response.

How responsible do you have to be when launching someone?

It’s a very big responsibility to launch someone, and I believe you should never stop working with someone who launched you. Work keeps on coming in. You worked with someone because you saw something. Even if things didn’t work out, you still keep on working with those people. So now we’ve got our own production company, are doing television. There’s going to be lot of work for everyone. This is the reason we started television so if some people can’t get into movies but are great on TV, it’s a very steady medium. I do TV and the reach is phenomenal. It was during Dus Ka Dum that mine and Aamir’s episode got rating of 3.2, but when 4 TV girls – Sara, Pratyusha, Rajput and Ragini Khanna solely got the TRP rating of 5.8.

Rima Das’ story Village Rockstars has made it to Oscar awards. As a production house, do you’ll look ahead to funding budding directors like them who don’t get money?

I will sign her for 4 films. If she makes 4 films in 25 lakhs, then I’m set!

But that took her 4 years sir…

*Joins hands*