Farooque Sheikh’s ‘Club 60′ re-opens in Mumbai

Farooque Shaikh’s last release, ‘Club 60′, has re-opened in a noon show at PVR, Lower Parel, and in a theatre belonging to the same chain in Delhi as a tribute to the actor who passed away last Friday in Dubai. “Given that there are three new films flagging off this week, we could only go for a limited release. It was a heart-felt decision,” says Shalu Sabbarwal, vice president, marketing.

Sanjay Tripathy, the director, points out that his film which opened with three daily shows on December 6, was in the theatres till ‘ Dhoom 3′ upstaged it. “Before word-of-mouth could spread, its two-week theatrical run was over. We’d been getting a lot of enquires which multiplied following Farooque saab’s untimely end, so I asked my distributor if he could get a theatre to agree to a limited second run as a gesture of goodwill since the home video sales are still bring negotiated,” he says.

Sanjay met Farooque for the first time for a documentary on earthquakes. He then played a sutradhar in one of Sanjay’s TV shows and one day, while returning home, he sounded the actor out on Club 60. “He liked the script and suggested Sarika’s name in the role of his wife, urging me to watch Parzania,” says Sanjay.

He recalls the actor warning him that they had to be really careful with his content-driven, performance-oriented film since they couldn’t rely on big names, familiar faces and item numbers to cover up any mistakes. “His favourite saying was, ‘Safed kapde pe daag jaldi nazar aata hai,'” says the filmmaker.

Farooque played Dr Tareeq Sheikh, a neuro-surgeon suffering from acute depression after the death of his only son. Though Sanjay insists Farooque was perfectly cast despite the fact that he was always cheerful on the sets, sharing his love for food, and sweets in particular, the actor admitted to him half-way through the film that he’d have loved to play Raghubir Yadav’s character Manu bhai.

Sanjay wanted him for his next film, ‘Escape to Nowhere’, and wanted him to go through former security chief of RAW, Amar Bhushan’s book on which it was based. “But last Saturday I woke up at 6.20 am to a missed called from Satish Shah and a message that read RIP Farooque Shaikh,” he sighs. “Club 60 has lost its most lively member.”

(Courtesy – Mumbai Mirror)