Dawn Images

KARACHI: The set of a courtroom provided a nice little backdrop to the music launch for the upcoming film Actor-in-Law at a hotel here on Monday evening. But the first question that the host, Ahmed Ali Butt, should have asked the organisers of the event as to why the launch started more than 90 minutes late. If they were waiting for Atif Aslam, who anyway joined the guests on stage after the show had already begun, they could’ve started after his arrival.

Replying to a question Atif Aslam said he had gone to meet Indian actor Om Puri (who is playing an important role in the film) where producer of the project Fizza Ali Meerza met him and told him about a song (Dil Dancer Ho Gaya) that music director Shani and the makers of the movie wanted him to sing. He said he found the song a bit different. He said he enjoyed ‘unique lyrics’ more than ‘unique melodies’. He said the track had certain special features which Michael Jackson used to do. He said the video of the song was interestingly shot and working with Fizza was a wonderful experience for him.

Shani said the song was special because his team had thought that it would only do it with Atif. He said it was not easy. He said Atif liked the number and that’s how things moved along.

Director of Actor-in-Law Nabeel Qureshi said when Shani composed songs he put random lyrics in them so that the singer could know about the melody. Some of the words clicked with the listener, he said.

After that a short video of the song was shown. It was liked by the audience and played one more time.

Replying to a question about his dance moves in the video, Atif Aslam said it was not possible that Michael Jackson’s name was mentioned in a song and those in the visuals didn’t dance. He said some of the steps came naturally to him. Besides, he said, people used to dance to his songs at weddings (“sub loag shadion per Michael Jackson ka dance kertey thay”).

Earlier, expressing her views on the song, actress Mehwish Hayat (the female protagonist in the film) said it was a soft, melodious and casual number with meaningful lyrics.

Answering a question, Fahad Mustafa (male protagonist) said he was lucky that he got opportunities to do a variety of films.

Talking about the benefits of writing one’s own film script, director Nabeel Qureshi said while making his first film, Na Maloom Afraad, he had thought that he would write its screenplay and ask someone else to pen the dialogue. But then, he said, writing the script himself made things easier for him because he knew the background of his characters. With regard to the music of Actor-in-Law, he said he already had brainstorming sessions with Shani while he was writing the story.

Actor Javed Sheikh, who was one of the attendees of the event, was also asked to say a few words about the film. He said working with Fizza and Nabeel in Na Maloom Afraad made him realise their potential. He said though this time round he was not part of their project, he had come to support his colleagues. He said he was recently in Mumbai, where he showed the teaser of Actor-in-Law to his friends. He said it was not easy to convince someone like Om Puri to do a film but the director-producer duo was able to do it.

In the end, Atif Aslam was asked to sing the song Dil Dancer Ho Gaya live, which he did.

Actor-in-Law will be released on Eidul Azha.

[Originally published][1] in Dawn, August 2nd, 2016