<img style="float: left;" src="http://images.mid-day.com/images/images/2025/feb/Mayank-Shekhar-op_e.jpg" alt="Mayank Shekhar" width="150" height="83" />At the maiden public screening of <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/bollywood-news/article/boman-irani-family-plans-goa-party-surprises-him-at-airport-65th-birthday-23438164" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Boman Irani&rsquo;s</a> directorial debut, The Mehta Boys (2025; Amazon Prime Video), in Chicago, a lady in the audience introduced Boman to someone she felt he&rsquo;d be &ldquo;shocked&rdquo; to meet.&nbsp;
That gent was Mehraboon Irani, grandson of the father of Indian talkies, Ardeshir Irani (Alam Ara).
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Boman says, &ldquo;This was my Cinema Paradiso moment.&rdquo; He refers to Alexandra Cinema, in South Bombay, that he grew up right opposite&mdash;spending all his time watching movies, examining posters, simply hanging out with the projectionist, Lakshman, upstairs.&nbsp;
Ardeshir&rsquo;s Imperial Movietone owned Alexandra. Ardeshir&rsquo;s son used to buy wafers from <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/celebrity-life/weddings-and-relationships/article/boman-irani-zenobia-i-love-you-balloons-celebrate-40-marriage-anniversary-23473630" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Boman&rsquo;s family shop</a>, nearby. Even the gramophone record for the theatre&rsquo;s interval music, Berlin Melody, was gifted to the owners by his father.&nbsp;
This could also pass for Boman&rsquo;s Parsee heritage, given his community were really the pioneers of filmmaking in Bombay. Only, that &ldquo;you don&rsquo;t see that representation in the movies anymore; their population having also subsequently dwindled,&rdquo; he says.&nbsp;
In his own way, you realise Boman reversing some of that, right from his first film&rsquo;s curtain-raiser, as it were. The screen opens to the roaring lion of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). MGM originally owned Dhobi Talao&rsquo;s Metro Cinema.&nbsp;
This is followed by Boman&rsquo;s own production logo, Irani Movietone, &ldquo;borrowed from Wadia Movietone, Minerva Movietone; [indeed Ardeshir Irani&rsquo;s] Imperial Movietone!&rdquo;&nbsp;
Given the cinema history-buff that I know Boman is, pretty sure he got goosebumps, when he saw that intro finally play on the big screen.&nbsp;
He tells me, &ldquo;I was crying. This was at [Colaba&rsquo;s] <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/bollywood-news/article/boman-irani-birthday-munnabhai-mbbs-dilwale-most-memorable-standout-roles-23439561" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">Regal Cinema</a>, while I was observing every seat, remembering which movies I&rsquo;d watched, on each seat, and how many times!&rdquo;&nbsp;
Boman is brilliant in The Mehta Boys, both as actor, and director. As is the co-star, Avinash Tiwary, his onscreen son.&nbsp;
Boman plays a crabby old father&mdash;who was once a typewriting instructor, back in Navsari. Which actually tallies with his director-friend Rajkumar Hirani&rsquo;s dad&rsquo;s profession, from Nagpur, I point out. He agrees.&nbsp;
The Mehta Boys is a father-son relationship drama. Most maiden works are semi-autobiographical. Boman actually never met his own father, who passed away shortly before he was born.&nbsp;
What was he like? Boman never really wanted to know: &ldquo;People would say he was a good man, and that was good enough. I&rsquo;m not being cold about it. Because my mother was always there for me.&rdquo;&nbsp;
His mom would often tell him about the movies his father loved: &ldquo;Vertigo was the last he watched. She&rsquo;d talk about where they watched what, say at Strand [Cinema], or when, that is, the night <a href="https://www.mid-day.com/entertainment/bollywood-news/article/boman-irani-the-mehta-boys-premiere-chicago-south-asian-film-festival-prime-video-23385298" target="_blank" rel="none noopener">Mahatma Gandhi</a> died.&rdquo;
Growing up, one by one, Boman burnt through the entire watchlist, mainly from the 1940s, &rsquo;50s: &ldquo;Take, Francis the Talking Mule (1950). My father would laugh and laugh, watching it. I would get that movie, and do the same!&rdquo;
And then, take that scene in The Mehta Boys, with dad-son laughing non-stop to Laurel &amp; Hardy, before a TV&mdash;feels like Boman imagined his late father in the couch.&nbsp;
Isn&rsquo;t it such an interesting way to develop a relationship with a dad you never knew&mdash;through the movies he deeply loved! &ldquo;Well, I never understood it, until you made me articulate it right now,&rdquo; Boman says.&nbsp;
That said, he points out, it&rsquo;s one thing to be a movie-geek&mdash;you&rsquo;ve gotta &ldquo;graduate to learning, to write, and direct&rdquo;, in order to actively practice the art/craft.&nbsp;
Boman&rsquo;s first writing credit was for his debut film itself as an actor, i.e. Ram Madhvani&rsquo;s Let&rsquo;s Talk. Ram had brought over a script, about two characters, thrown into multiple scenarios.&nbsp;
&ldquo;Let&rsquo;s rewrite it,&rdquo; he offered. They did. Before that, Boman says, he&rsquo;d spent 14 years on stage; equal number of years as a professional photographer. Also, the same number of (overlapping) years, minding his family wafer shop.&nbsp;
This is, besides, famously starting out as a tall, young, handsome in-room-dining waiter, with a booming baritone, at Mumbai&rsquo;s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.&nbsp;
All along, Boman recalls, he wholly kept up with the movies&mdash;knowing that he&rsquo;d be an actor. Those who watched Let&rsquo;s Talk couldn&rsquo;t stop talking about Boman. He was 42, by then.&nbsp;
At 44, he delivered Hirani&rsquo;s Munnabhai MBBS. Soon thereafter, he had a second or third billing, in every other Bollywood movie&mdash;hitting 100 (films), before most with longer years at the movies.&nbsp;
Surely, he wasn&rsquo;t keeping count, when he took off to study screenwriting at New York University. Which is where he met screenwriter Alexander Dinelaris, with his script, at a coffeeshop, where passersby gave Alexander their phone to click pix with Boman, saying, &ldquo;Do you have any idea who you&rsquo;re sitting with?&rdquo;
Of course, Alexander had no idea. By then Alexander himself had barely any credits, outside of working on a &ldquo;small art-house film&rdquo;.&nbsp;
That&rsquo;s Birdman, which he picked up an Oscar for! They stayed in touch; wrote The Mehta Boys together. Boman made his directorial debut, at 65. He says, &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t like using the word, late. It was meant to be.&rdquo;&nbsp;
For a society obsessed with youthful passions and following dreams, Boman&rsquo;s the man, obviously, to ask if there is any age to go for whatever it is that you seek, professionally. Well, he is the answer; isn&rsquo;t he.
Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14 Send your feedback to &nbsp;mailbag@mid-day.com The views expressed in this column are the individual&rsquo;s and don&rsquo;t represent those of the paper. Boman Irani and Avinash Tiwary (right) in a still from The Mehta Boys
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Film acting debut at 42, directorial debut at 65… I ask the indefatigable Irani: Is there an age to fulfill your dream?

What’s it that Boman can’t do?

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What’s it that Boman can’t do?

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