While watching RGV at work shooting Sarkar Raaj, his Sarkar sequel, Raja Sen kept interrupting the Hyderabad shoot to talk movies with the director, who talked about Sarkar, Sholay and the upcoming Darling. Excerpts:

The new Mehbooba song has a very different look. It looks very surreal, with an exaggeratedly macabre background and an over-the-top Urmila in front of it. Your version of Sholay started out as a very gritty encounter drama; has it evolved into something more surreal?

Yes and no. I'm not sure surreal is the right word. I feel there is something very real and not real about the original Sholay.

There is an outlandish character like Asrani, for instance, and then there are the highly realistic characters like Jaya Bhaduri and Sanjeev Kumar. And Veeru and Jai are somewhere halfway into it. Now, the dacoits have a certain sense of realism, while Gabbar's character has a very gallery-designed effect. You won't really think a man like that can exist.

So it has a strange mixture of everything. So pretty much in the whole film, I tried to capture that ambience and atmosphere both in characters and locations -- and even shot division.

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