Every few years, a comment that Ben Affleck made about Armageddon’s implausible premise begins doing the rounds online. On the DVD commentary track of the film, the Oscar-winning writer-actor-filmmaker said that he raised a few concerns about the film’s plot with director Michael Bay, who wasn’t having any of it. “I asked Michael why it was easier to train oil drillers to become astronauts than it was to train astronauts to become oil drillers, and he told me to shut the f**k up,” Affleck said. “So that was the end of that talk. [Does Michael Bay voice] ‘You know, Ben, just shut up, OK? You know, this is a real plan.’ I was like, ‘You mean it’s a real plan at NASA to train oil drillers?’ And he was like, ‘Just shut your mouth!’” It seems like Aamir Khan and director Ashutosh Gowariker had a similar disagreement while working together on their Oscar-nominated film Lagaan.
In a recent interview with Just Too Filmy, Aamir said that he could never wrap his head around the fact that his character in the film, Bhuvan, was clean-shaven during a drought. “Where was he getting the water to shave?” Aamir recalled asking his director, who told him to ignore logic and not worry about such things. Aamir said, “I had big fights with Ashutosh. I told him that the entire premise of the movie is that there is no water. How is it possible that he’s shaving every day? His fellow villagers would have beaten him up.”
Aamir said that he never understood the reason behind this decision, and recalled Gowariker’s response to his concerns: “I want you to look good. I like how you’re looking, and that’s how you’ll look in the film. I don’t want to get into the logic of it.” Aamir continued, “Finally, I gave in, but I was very upset. I found a way around it. I would shave at night, and show up to set with a shadow. On the days when I forgot to shave at night, I’d get very annoyed with myself… But perhaps this was all in my mind, I don’t know if the audience even noticed it.”
Released in the year 2000, Lagaan altered the trajectory of Aamir’s career. He followed it up with the equally impactful Dil Chahta Hai, which was among the first Hindi films to tell a realistic story about contemporary characters. After the one-two punch of Lagaan and Dil Chahta Hai, Aamir said in the interview, the industry began to view him in a new light, and gave him the tag of being a ‘perfectionist’ because they couldn’t think of another label for him.