When Iranian cinematography legend Amir Mokri saw Blue on Oct 9 on the ‘Clint Eastwood Recording Sound Stage No 6’ at the Warner Brothers Studios in Los Angeles, director Anthony(Tony) D’Souza, a huge self-confessed and unabashed fan of Mokri’s work played a little game with Mokri.
Tony quietly let his precious film unfold for his favorite cinematographer and waited for him to recognize the sequence that Tony had shot as per instruction from Mokri in LA. Of course Mokri immediately recognized the sequence whose shots were copied from Bad Boys 2 which Mokri had photographed.
Says Tony,
“Of course Amir recognized the shots immediately, I had seen the way actors Will Smith and Martin Lawrence zigzagged through windows and doors for a particular sequence in Bad Boys 2. I wanted to use those shots for a sequence between Sanjay Sir (Dutt) and Lara Dutta in Blue. I got in touch with Mokri and he instructed me and my cameraman on phone and email on how to go about doing the shots in a way that the camera seems to be hurling at the same speed as the characters. I think we got it right. Amir seemed to think so.”
Though Tony isn’t saying it, Mokri liked Blue enough to now to be a part of Tony’s next film, the aerial actioner with Akshay Kumar and John Abraham.
Though Tony isn’t telling, the news is Mokri would do the camerawork for that film.
— By Subhash K Jha
