- Om Puri was described as a generous man with a strong personality by Sudhir Mishra, who worked with the actor on the great movie Dharavi (1991).
- He added that the late actor once informed him he wouldn’t work with him again after becoming annoyed with him during a filming session.
- By coincidence, this was their final project together.
Om Puri was described as a generous man with a strong personality by Sudhir Mishra, who worked with the actor on the great movie Dharavi (1991). He added that the late actor once informed him he wouldn’t work with him again after becoming annoyed with him during a filming session. By coincidence, this was their final project together. We all desire a full house and success for our movies, says Sudhir Mishra
When he acted as a writer and assistant director on the iconic 1983 movie Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron, Sudhir Mishra and Om Puri first collaborated. When he was directing his third movie, Dharavi, which won the National Film Award for Best Feature Film in Hindi, he hired Om Puri to work for him.
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Om Puri was described as “graceful, technically faultless,” and Sudhir noted that Om Puri would adhere to every directive given to him with the utmost devotion. He was triggered by a couple things, though. Sudhir said, “Puri sahab was a tough guy often. He would lose it if you shot after 12 in the night. ‘Kya hai yaar? Chal… leave it,’ he would say. He would be angry but would say, ‘Chal ghar pe, I’ll feed you bhindi.’ My films are mostly set in night, so he would get angry!”
Recounting another incident that irritated the actor, Sudhir said, “Sometimes you go on and on, make them do difficult things. Like I had placed two cameras in separate vans on the road and asked him to run, stop at markers, then turn, then run again and repeat this four times. He would do it, but if someone is running in heat with slippers on, by the third or fourth time he is bound to get irritated. He would say, ‘Tere saath nahi karuga ab aagey, tu bohot zyada karta hai (I won’t work with you anymore, you go to extremes). He was senior also to me.”
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Om Puri, who passed away in January 2017 at the age of 66, and Sudhir did not work together again. The director explained that this was because, in order to make sure his films looked distinct from one another, he believed in casting new actors rather than reteaming with actors like Naseeruddin Shah or Om Puri. Serious Men, a satirical comedy-drama starring Nawazuddin Siddiqui and available on Netflix in October 2020, was the last movie Sudhir Mishra directed.
