Vidhu Vinod Chopra recounts challenges of shooting Parinda on low budget

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Director Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Parinda hit the screens on November 3, 1989. Recalling the time when he shot the film, he shared that fixing locations for the film, starring Jackie Shroff, Anil Kapoor, Madhuri Dixit and Nana Patekar, easy owing to the tight budget.

"Getting a location was very difficult on a tight budget and we wanted to shoot a particular scene in a very popular location in Mumbai, however, it was costing us four times the allocated budget for that scene. So, while we were returning disappointed from Antop Hill, I noticed a tank, and I pictured the scene there. It fit perfectly," Chopra said.

"It was at this tank where we shot the iconic scene with the late Tom Alter. If you pay attention to the scene, we have only used the staircase and we left the rest to the audience's imagination. In reality, the smuggler was on top of the tank. That's why we had a dialogue for Tom to cover up for the visual representation, ‘Meri basti se guzar kar, mujh tak pohochne wale tum pehle aadmi ho Kishen'."

"So, yes, the best thing about the locations of the movie is that a lot of them were very less expensive. Today when you think of it as a grand production design, it was actually the lack of budget that enabled us to shoot wherever possible for free, or for a lower price," he recalled.

Parinda, which was India's official entry in the Best Foreign Film category at the Oscars in 1990, will be aired on Sony MAX2 on November 3.