A major cog in the wheel (even if it’s an oxymoron) in the party that’s called Pathaan are its lines. Ever since the trailer dropped, the film’s dialogues have become a hit, and even more so after the film’s release. The Telegraph chatted at length with Abbas Tyrewala, the man behind Pathaan’s winner lines.

Abbas Tyrewala

Congratulations on the humongous response to Pathaan! What’s this one week been like for you?

Because of social media, it’s pretty much impossible to miss the excitement and the joy that has erupted after the release of Pathaan. I have been bombarded with videos of people dancing in halls. There is a lovely video doing the rounds of people outside Shah Rukh’s (Khan) house... to see that pure love towards someone who has given his life to entertaining his audience, and his love for them is heartwarming....

It’s great to see people enjoying themselves in theatres again. I have watched scores of videos and at some point now I think I can say, ‘Okay, I have got a broad idea... I can now pretty much live without seeing another video like this’. But it’s really been wonderful.

The film had ‘winner’ written all over it, attaining near-blockbuster status even before release because of the huge advance sales of tickets. Did you have an inkling it would blow up so big so soon? I believe you were on the sets too..

I was on set only on the day when the Shah Rukh and Salman Khan scene was being shot, simply because both the stars had read their lines and had some suggestions. They had things like, ‘Can we take this line like that? Can we try it this way?’ I took their inputs, understood what their preferences were and did a few adaptations and added a few punchlines and one-liners in the scene.

If we go a little back, when I read War (starring Hrithik Roshan and part of the Yash Raj Films spy universe), I knew it would be a huge hit, and it absolutely was. But I also knew that War was a film where the film-making and the tautness and the rhythm of the screenplay is what was driving it. My job in War was to service the story and the screenplay and not even try and draw attention to the dialogues.

When I read Pathaan, I was again very sure that this is going to be a hit, but I was a little more excited because the brief was that it had to be much funnier, more dramatic and much more dialogue-y and a little more in-yourface than War. So I got to play with the lines a little bit more and dance with it a little more... and I knew that the dialogues in Pathaan would get a little bit more noticed than in War. So if in War, I had to stay out of the way, in Pathaan, a part of the key vision was that the dialogues had to bring people in and play a big role in the celebration of the movie. The director (Siddharth Anand) was very sure that the dialogues needed to celebrate Shah Rukh’s stardom.

Shah Rukh is known for his inherent wit and deadpan humour. Pathaan the character has a lot of Shah Rukh himself. Did you write his lines keeping his personality in mind?

Massively so! Having said that, some of the films for which I admire Shah Rukh the most have him in roles that don’t play to the legend or the classic stereotype of Shah Rukh as we know. Shah Rukh’s performance in Swades is a thing of refinement and beauty. And Chak De!(India) has him playing an extraordinary character. The best thing about him is that he can create a character for you, but he can also play Shah Rukh Khan in a way that drives audiences to the theatres.

With Pathaan, the clear brief was that this is Shah Rukh and we are projecting him as Shah Rukh, we are celebrating him as Shah Rukh and there is absolutely no interest in creating a character that is away from Shah Rukh’s personality. And this happened much before I came in with the dialogues... it was in the conception of the story, and it was written with Shah Rukh in mind all the way. By the time I came into the film, it was no longer my choice; it was my job to execute this as a Shah Rukh film because that’s the way it was conceived and written.

While Pathaan is a Shah Rukh show all the way, I also enjoyed the crackle you brought to Jim’s dialogues and the way John executed them with his trademark smirk..

There has been a lot of praise for John and his lines and the way he plays Jim. I genuinely believe that in an action film where one is talking about good vs evil, evil just doesn’t need to be evil, it needs to be loads of fun, you have to enjoy the wickedness of the antagonist because of which after all these decades, the most memorable antagonist in Hindi cinema is Gabbar Singh. When you create a truly memorable villain like a Gabbar or a Mogambo, the audience enjoys the protagonist’s journey that much more. You can create a great hero but if the one he is taking on is weak, then the film falls completely apart.

Jim has been written as such that he ultimately becomes part of the party that is Pathaan. John has not just held his own, he has been an equally important pillar to making Pathaan what it is. Jim is someone you sympathise with, he makes you laugh, frustrates you because he is so wily and he even ends up beating up Pathaan a few times. He is very sociopathic about his motives and for John, who has mostly played a nice guy, to capture all those facets... I think he has outdone himself. I hope he finds joy in doing a few more negative characters after Pathaan.

Let’s talk about the Shah Rukh-Salman scene and them popping up in the post-credits. Was it always the idea to merge real with reel and bring in that meta feel?

That meta-ness was definitely the brief and was contained in the screenplay as conceived by Siddharth and written by Shridhar (Raghavan). My job was to ensure that all the grins that Siddharth wanted out of it and all the references came through. Yes, there was very much the awareness that besides being Pathaan and Tiger, they are also Shah Rukh and Salman. We had to acknowledge that, as well as do a slight doffing of the hat to Karan Arjun. All this was very conscious and my job was to make sure it came to fruition the way it was imagined.

The post-credits, as you must have noticed, takes place in exactly the same place where they end their big action sequence. If it had to be at the end of the film, the question is that why not have the two of them, now recovered from all that action, catching up over shisha in Morocco perhaps and having that conversation? Why would they still be bloodied and bruised and popping painkillers? That’s because that bit was written with the idea to have it within the film itself at the end of that action sequence. At some point, someone had the genius idea of putting it as the postcredits scene, and that move has made that bit four times more effective. Leaving the film on this note, celebrating the decades of joy that Shah Rukh and Salman have brought to the audiences, takes it to a new level.

What do you think of the parallels drawn between this spy universe and the Avengers universe? Is it a little premature?

I don’t think so. When we have stars of this stature and films like War and Pathaan and the Tiger films that are blowing up the box office, the time is absolutely right. And why should it even be restricted to three stars? We can think of a fourth or a fifth character... who knows? The idea is to create a universe and have as many characters and stars where people can get the maximum bang for their buck. I think it’s the most exciting thing to happen to Hindi commercial cinema since Amitabh Bachchan.

Finally, why have we not got more films from the man who directed Jaane Tu... Ya Jaane Na?

Directing is a lot of work, and not the kind of work I get off on (laughs). For some people, being on set and making a film is their lifeblood; for me, it’s writing a film. Direction is a lot of hard work and suffering, which I will do only on the day I feel there is a story I really want to tell... not before that.