We are not going around trees any more, now we are doing it around trains," quipped Bollywood star Salman Khan as he summed up his experience of shooting a song sequence at the Dubai metro on Friday.
For the first time, Khan was shooting a romantic honeymoon song for the film Dabangg at the Khalid Bin Walid Station in Dubai and introducing his onscreen wife Sonakshi Sinha to the beauty of a foreign country.
"The station was fascinating. Some of our airports aren't this large or like this. India is so much larger, but I think all you [Indians] are working here and nobody is working there," said Khan laughing loudly at his own joke.
It may have been as late as 10pm on Saturday and he may have been working non-stop, but Bollywood's "bad boy" was in a jolly mood as he regaled reporters about the iconic shoot.
"We wanted to keep it realistic. Very real. I play a corrupt cop from a small village in Bihar and Dubai was a perfect location, because it's a perfect blend of East and West. We are very comfortable here and the crime rate is zero. Even the Emiratis speak our language, they understand Hindi and speak English. It feels like an exotic foreign country, but you are not travelling eight hours or feeling handicapped."
Though his shoot in Dubai was honeymoon-perfect, his only gripe was that they were unable to secure a permission to shoot at the plush Atlantis hotel. "We shot at the desert, but couldn't manage to shoot at the Atlantis.
‘‘It was difficult to get permission because of a sports convention. Also, the cost of the unit staying [there] worked out to a lot of money. So we are now going to put up a set in India."
Khan also added that there was a shift in preferences. Switzerland — the perennial favourite of Bollywood filmmakers — was giving way to new locations.
"Earlier, we used to go to Switzerland, but it has started getting difficult. Some unit had a problem and we realised it was not worth it. We were supposed to do a song in Switzerland, but now we have changed the location to Mumbai. The volcano ash effect came in much later," said Khan.
Dabanng, produced by his brothers, Shohail and Arbaaz Khan, will release during Eid.
