Producer Kumar Mangat wants item number for daughter's film

Mumbai, May 24 (IANS) Nothing can equal the zeal of a father launching his offspring in Bollywood. While filmmaker Harry Baweja goes all out to launch his son Harman, producer Kumar Mangat isn't leaving any stone unturned for his daughter Amita.

On Thursday morning, Mangat, producer of the films "Omkara" and "U, Me Aur Hum", rushed to film two extra songs for "Haal-e-Dil". He has even requested composer Pritam Chakraborty for an instant item number.

The film is complete, post-production and editing is done. Even the music album has already been released. And yet the producer called for an extra song from the item specialist Pritam.

"Yes, we're shooting an extra song for 'Haal-e-Dil'. We all felt the film needed a peppy youthful number. The rest of the songs are all ballads," Mangat told IANS.

"So we asked Pritam to give us a number immediately. Fortunately, he obliged at such short notice, otherwise we'd have been stuck. The song is being choreographed by Ganesh Acharya with my three lead players Adhyayan Suman, Nakuul Mehta and my daughter Amita," he added.

Isn't it unusual to shoot a song after the music release?

"Well...not just the young hip item song, we're shooting another song, a love ballad featuring Amita and Adhyayan from June 1 in Leh... just two weeks ahead of release. How will these songs be censored? Oh, the rest of the film will be censored first. We can get the two songs censored later.

"Amita is my only daughter. And I know she has it in her to make it. My son is not interested in acting. He's going into direction. We've had so many fathers launching their sons, but I think this is the first occasion when a producer-father is launching his daughter.

"As a father I've to make sure I leave nothing to chance for Amita. Adding the songs to the film will, we feel, really add to the film."

Adds Pritam, "It was Bhushan Kumar of T-Series who asked for an immediate song for 'Haal-e-Dil'. Fortunately, a Bhangra song sung by Labh Janjua (of 'Soni de nakhre' fame) was with me. I had composed it for another film where the Punjabi flavour didn't fit in. Bhushan and Kumar Mangatji loved the song and I had no problems giving it to them."

But isn't this stepping into composer Vishal Bhardwaj's jurisdiction as he has composed some of the songs in the film?

"I made the producers get me a no objection certificate from Vishal before I gave them the song. And besides Vishal, there're two other music composers in 'Haal-e-Dil'. If it was just Vishal, I'd have never contributed. I respect him too much to step into his territory."

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