February 19, 2010 (Sampurn Wire): After a rather long sabbatical of nearly four years Mahesh Manjrekar returns to direction with the film ‘City Of Gold’. The film narrates the trials and tribulations of Mumbai mill workers during the eighties.
As if that was not a daunting task in itself, director Mahesh took his job way too seriously and went ahead to narrate and check back the dialogues of each and every member of his cast of 65 actors!
Phew! With this Mahesh gets a round of applause as this is a first in Bollywood. Making the cast of 65 characters memorize their dialogues and keeping a check on them has naturally drained Mahesh.
“I don’t believe any other film has so much importance given to all the 65 characters,” says Mahesh with an obvious pride in his efficient management, but he concedes later, “Though at times even I forgot the dialogues and used to confuse between the dialogues of actors!”
But looks like all the pains paid off as Mahesh chortles, “Directing this film helped me reduce my weight by not less than ten kilos!”
-Anil A Kanojia/ Sampurn Wire
