Lagaan was famously shot on location in the deserts of Gujarat, amid severe weather conditions and other obstacles. Plus, the filmmakers had a humongous cast and crew to take care of. It was the responsibility of one man to keep the train on track, and actor Akhilendra Mishra didn’t hold back on showering him with praise. In an interview, he said that Lagaan wouldn’t be the film that it is without the contribution of Apoorva Lakhia, who worked as an assistant to director Ashutosh Gowariker on the film. Apoorva put his Hollywood filmmaking knowledge to good use on the production, and enforced concepts such as call sheets.
Appearing on the Friday Talkies YouTube channel, Akhilendra Mishra said, “Apoorva Lakhia is a huge reason behind the success of that six-month schedule. Ashutosh Gowariker made the movie, he wrote the script. But Apoorva Lakhia’s level of control on the set was a sight to behold. I was there. He was incredible. That man kept 10,000 people on their toes. I saw it myself. Enough can’t be said about him. I was so impressed with him, I asked him his background, and he told me he’d assisted in Hollywood.”
Akhilendra said that the entire unit would get detailed call sheets, which even mentioned what every person would eat, and where they would need to be stationed until they were required on set. “You couldn’t move a muscle without being told. Even senior actors like Kulbhushan Kharbanda were told strictly, ‘Be here’. You couldn’t even take a stroll without permission. Cars would come and ferry us from makeup to the set. It was an incredible system,” he said.
In an interview with Friday Talkies, Apoorva recalled the strict rules that he introduced and enforced on the sets of Lagaan. “There were clear instructions that the bus would leave at a fixed time, with only a three-minute grace period for anyone running late. On the third day, Aamir was late. Ronit Roy was handling security, and everyone was already seated on the bus, waiting for him. Everyone was looking at me, wondering what I would do. I was nervous, but I knew I had to set an example,” Lakhia recalled. “I told the driver to leave Aamir behind, but he refused. Ronit was standing at the door of the bus, waiting for Aamir. At one point, I just kicked Ronit. He fell out, and I grabbed the driver by the neck and told him, ‘I will break your neck if you don’t start driving.’”
Recalling why the shoot was extended by 220 days, Apoorva had said, “We made a schedule of 80 days, and went on to shoot for 300. There were many reasons for it, including financial ones. Aamir had to intervene and arrange for the funds. And then, an animal died on the set, and Maneka Gandhi’s crew came to stop the shoot. We started filming during freezing cold temperatures, and continued to shoot in frightfully hot temperatures too.”
