SHOWING UP #1: ROSHAN SETHI
on being delusional & striving for more than representation
Earlier this month, I took my parents to watch A Nice Indian Boy, a sweet & funny romcom (evidently, they still make those!) about a gay Indian son bringing home his parents’ worst fear—a white man. Starring Karan Soni and Jonathan Groff, my sister and I were all in when the trailer had the latter atonally belting "Tujhe Dekha Toh,” in the middle of the street, to the former’s painfully apparent discomfort. And my parents were on board once they recognized Zarna Garg from the reels they watch.
My sister couldn’t make the screening—and was pissed we went without her—but I had such a great time that I promised her I’d rewatch it; whenever, wherever. Not only does the film engage with quote-unquote taboo subjects for a traditional Indian household (sexuality, marriage, sexism), it does so in the context of modern Indian-American upbringing, where one can (rightfully) claim to be socially progressive relative to generations past, but still have a whole checklist of issues that are, under no circumstances, up for discussion. It’s a film about loving loudly, about hearing bells in your heart and professing your devotion through choreographed song and dance—it’s Bollywood romanticism, at it’s core, tastefully tinted by the brand of equally whimsical American romanticism that seems to have gone out of style over the past two decades.
After watching the film, I felt compelled to reach out to writer-director Roshan Sethi for an interview, as well as watch the other two films he’s directed (7 Days and World’s Best). To my surprise, he responded within minutes. Through our brief yet illuminating conversation, I was able to start to get a sense of what drives Sethi and his approach to his cross-cultural art, at least at this moment in time.
On a personal note—this is the first interview I’ve done since, like, 2017, and I definitely felt super rusty. I talked too much, I lost track of the questions I had prepared, I got too excited… But it felt good to get back to doing what I got the most joy out of back when I was a “journalist” covering pop culture—speaking with artists about their art. Hopefully, next time Roshan and I have a chance to chop it up, it’ll be a little less all over the place.
Anyways, please keep reading for the first entry into this blog’s interview series, SHOWING UP, with Roshan Sethi.
Daydreamblog: I would love to start at the beginning, as far back as you’re willing to go. How you ended up here. I’ve done some research, but even before I did any reading, I could’ve guessed that you came from some sort of healthcare background, or there were healthcare professionals in your family, just because I went and watched the other two films you’ve directed and there’s a healthcare professional in every single one in a prominent role. So, maybe we could start there—the journey to get here.
Roshan Sethi: So, I actually originally wanted to be a novelist. For most of college and high school, since as long as I can remember, I wanted to write fiction. And I was writing novels and short stories and submitting them cold call to agents and being rejected, and submitting them to [literary magazines] and being rejected. So, somewhere in the process of college, I decided that writing was probably not meant for me because it didn’t feel like I was good enough at that age to hack it. And I had taken a few creative writing classes and had never been an exceptional student in any of them—two of them I had been waitlisted for, so I’d only gotten in on a borderline way anyways—so, it felt like writing was something that—even though it was something that deeply interested me—was probably not for me. I wasn’t good enough to make it. I had always simultaneously been interested in medicine—my mother’s a physician, and it had been in many ways expected of me to go to medical school. Not something I was actively resisting, but definitely was, like, in my destiny one way or another. So I went to medical school, and in my first month of medical school, heard that they were doing a show called Harvard Medical School—and I was at Harvard Medical School. It was the CW pilot, where the premise was: “What if a bunch of Harvard Medical students were hot.” They were making it in Toronto. I cold called a bunch of writers and producers—not just of that show, but of any medical show I could find—because I had conceived this sudden desire to be a medical consultant. Not based on anything—it just seemed like a way of [having] proximity to something creative while still keeping [the] medical part of me alive. A way to bridge --
Sort of melding both your worlds --
Bridge the gap, yeah. I didn’t know what a medical consultant did, but I figured I could do it. I was a month into medical school so I actually knew no medicine. I hadn’t even done [anatomy]! (laughs)
But I also figured I could figure it out—at that age I was very reckless and delusional. I still am, actually, both of those things—both my strength and my weakness—but I was really, profoundly, reckless and delusional at that age. Which doesn’t sound right for some who’s going to Harvard Medical School, but I really was. Like, I would do anything, and figure it out later. So, at the time, I cold called these people, and finally one person responded—the creator of Harvard Medical School—and said, “If you’d like to be a medical consultant, just tell me some medical stories.” So I wrote a twelve-page document of medical stories that I’d said had happened to me, but that I’d completely invented—it was a work of fiction, in other words.
I see the reckless now…
Yeah, she not only believed it, but really liked it, and was like, “Wow you’ve been through so much, you know so much,” and I ended up becoming a consultant for that show. It didn’t go to series—it was passed over in favor of Hellcats, which was an Ashely Tisdale show that was very hot at The CW at the time, and that was canceled a season later—but Amy went on to create multiple other shows and I eventually worked on Black Box, a show that was ordered straight to series at ABC, and I contributed unsolicited writing to it. I would send her scenes and she would use them. And that encouraged, finally, this desire to be a writer.
She eventually connected me to an agent and manager who represented me, and got me a job with a writing partner, the person I was writing with then, as a staff writer on a show called Code Black. I was fired from that show after 13 weeks, largely because of my personality, and was kind of floundering because I had taken an entire year off of the bridge between medical school and residency, and had nothing to show for it. And I ended up writing features as a way to survive that period of transition. And my feature business as a writer started taking off just as I went back to residency.
While I was there in that year that I was fired, I also wrote a pilot with Amy and Hailey, my then writing partner, and that pilot was ordered to series after I returned to residency. So I was a resident when The Resident was picked up. But I didn’t go back to LA to remain involved with the show. I was actually only involved for four or five episodes—again, partly because of my personality, partly because I didn’t want to leave [residency], and partly because I didn’t feel creatively that excited by The Resident at that time. Even though, I think that was… ultimately I’m not sure, if it was the right or wrong decision, it just was a decision that I made. I stuck to features, which I began writing more and more of throughout the entire course of residency, and when I finished residency, I transitioned to directing. I made 7 Days, which you’ve seen, which is a very small movie made for $150,000 with the Duplass Brothers—two people in a room talking to each other for a whole movie.
Very, very much my kind of thing, actually!
Yeah, very mumblecore!
So, there’s a lot there, but first I want to ask: what do you mean by “your personality?”
I’m very abrasive. I’m very blunt. And I have a problem with, um… I don’t know, the feedback I got on Code Black was that “he thinks he’s the smartest person in the room.” So, I’m sure there was some truth in that, in terms of how I acted. I’m much less like that now, and I’m actually, you know, at times capable of being very tender and generous. But at times I’m just very impatient and brusque, even despite my best efforts not to be those things. I feel like I go back and forth, but I ultimately have the empathy and kindness of a doctor. I just, in my worst moments, I’m very brusque and aggressive. And I definitely was when I was working on those shows, so I don’t blame them for firing me. (laughs)
Well, to put some of this in context… There is no just “I decided to go to medical school,” you know?
Yeah. (laughs)
Especially not coming from a pre-med background—it doesn’t matter if your parents are medical professionals. But that’s a transition you made in your life! I say this as someone who was pushed —not by my parents directly, but by other relatives in my family. That, like, “Hey, if you just want to be settled in life, and you’re really smart, just go be a doctor!” As if giving away thirty years of your life to have some good savings is, like, a good trade-off. I keep saying it’s the worst advice I got, but nowadays I feel bad for my uncle, the more empathetic I get, if he ever hears me say this. (laughs) But that is the worst advice to give a 17-year old. I wanted to be a novelist, I wanted to be a filmmaker, at a very young age. These are both big interests of mine. But the advice was just, “Shut up and go to med school and be a doctor for fifteen years, and then you can do whatever you want in your 40s and 50s.” I don’t know. But you’re someone who found a way to still go the creative route first!
Yeah, I did both at the same time, and my feeling is that, when they give that advice—our parents and their parents and our uncles and our aunties—it’s because they are, by and large, immigrants, and they are in survival mode.
It’s security, what they want for us.
They have known hunger in a way we never will. They have known financial poverty in a way that we never will. They have had to cling to whatever they can that feels secure. We are lucky enough to grow up the children of the survivors, and as a result, when we explore the arts, it’s so antithetical to what they did to get here, because they were willing to do anything to establish roots in this country.
So, yeah, there’s a lot of that that resonates with me. But at the same time, I think a lot of the burden I place on myself is that I’m technically an immigrant as well—like, we moved here when I was five, my sister was two—and my parents… Like, I see art in everything… I see art in every human being, and how they experience life is an art in and of itself, you know? And some people might just be the most expressionless, like, repressed, just… But even that is a way, a stoic way, of living life and of expressing what they’re comfortable with expressing. But, like, my dad wanted to be a Bollywood singer! He’s, like, winning talent shows growing up! And then he had tragedy in his life, and then opportunities in America, and then brought us here, right? So what I’ve found is, like you were saying, the immigrant experience is more of wanting the security guaranteed, you know? And feeling like it should be guaranteed with all the risks they’ve taken, or the sacrifices they’ve made, and it’s just up to one bullheaded kid to make the deck of cards crumble, you know? (laughs)
Yeah! And, I mean, these things aren’t antithetical! Being a doctor has made me a much more interesting artist. Because I’m exposed to the entire spectrum of human existence. I take care of everybody. Plumbers and CEOs. I watch people go through the worst things in their lives. I’ve told people things that [you] hopefully never have [to] in a conversation. I’ve fecally disimpacted someone who’s constipated for a week. And I understand where everything in the body is—I can point to my liver, you may not be able to. So I have this huge breadth of life experience that has made me a much, much better writer and director than I would be otherwise. And vice versa! Being a writer has made me a richer, more emotionally attuned doctor! So I don’t have any regrets about having done medicine. I think it was very stressful and psychotic to balance both at the same time, to push through residency, and to push through writing and then a directing career, but a lot of that was also a function of having been in the closet until seven years ago. So I have an extraordinary drive. And people often when they meet me comment on my ambition and the heights to which it took me.
But that ambition has such a dark underside, which is, nobody is pushing that hard and driving that hard unless they’re running from something, which I very much was. I think if I had been born straight I would be a radiologist at Kaiser. I’m not sure I would be writing anything. I would have two kids and I’d be married in a way that would maybe delight my mother, but wouldn’t, maybe, also be as rich of an existence, depending on how you define a “rich existence.”
Yeah.
All of these things are so complicated. I still practice medicine, as you probably know. I go back for nine weeks of the year, and cover call—not for financial reasons, but because my identity is so locked up in that profession.
So, yeah, that’s what I wanted to get to. Because the idea of a career and what it means to have a career is very prevalent in all three of your films. The idea of a career being something you choose. In 7 Days, the mom says he has “no hobbies by choice,” and the character reflects that! Geraldine, who did such a wonderful job, her character is the story of hiding who you are, if not from her mother, then for her mother’s sake, hiding it from the world and trying to present a front and trying to appease everyone that you can—while still holding onto whatever you can in your own private time and private space. But the flipside of the character—the character she meets, the one Karan plays, he’s fully onboard with everything that’s happening in his life! This is what he wants, this is what he’s chosen. And there’s nothing wrong with that, at all, either. It comes from similar places: wanting to make their parents happy and wanting to represent themselves in a way that makes sense to themselves. I was curious to hear where that comes from, the idea of what a career is and how that relates to your identity.
You know, a lot of what you just described was written by Karan, not by me. Karan is a direct immigrant from India, grew up in Delhi and left when he was 17 --
Yeah, his story is crazy too!
His story is crazy too. He was encouraged to go into the family business and ended up making a hard left turn into the least likely thing to succeed, which was acting. It was partly a way for him to stay in America. He was afraid of going back to India and being gay there, and leading a normal life—as he perceived it. Though I understand many gay men in India do lead a normal life, especially in the big metropolitan areas. So, yeah, these decisions between what’s expected of us and what we want to do are a big thing, among, probably, all Indian-Americans, but were certainly features of Karan’s life and my life, that we drew out in 7 Days, which we wrote together.
You weren’t involved in the writing of A Nice Indian Boy—it was a play that was adapted for the screen—but I believe you were involved in writing World’s Best?
No, so, I didn’t write World’s Best at all—that was written by Jamie King and Utkarsh Ambudkar. A Nice Indian Boy is adapted from a play, like you pointed out, and adapted into a script by Eric Randall—the play is by Madhuri Shekar. Karan and I did work on that script, just to bring features of our own life and what we’ve seen and what we’ve done into the movie, but World’s Best I would say I didn’t contribute anything writing wise.
So, what was the transition like? Did you just find that directing fit your Machiavellian ambitions better than writing? (laughs)
(Laughs) It fit my desire for control, and my effectiveness and practicality. Most writers are not effective or practical people, but I am extraordinarily efficient, and a get-things-done kinda person. And it helps me feel meaningful and purposeful when so much else doesn’t. Because the process of writing I don’t think is enough to fill up my life, unfortunately. I need to be doing something, I need to be doing something.
I was intimidated by how quick you responded to the random DM and the email from my way! I saw the response two minutes after I sent the email and I was spiraling like, “I need a day to think about it, am I even doing the right thing by reaching out for this interview, am I being too extra”—I want to be a director as well, but I’m more on the space cadet writer side of things. (laughs)
(Laughs) No, no, no. I doubt you’re a space cadet. I think directing actually forces you to make so many decisions. It's impossible to describe the multiplicity of decisions you’re forced to make in a very small amount of time, often under very stressful conditions. But the thing you have to embrace is that you will not be making perfect decisions. Sometimes it's better to make a fast imperfect decision than it is to make a slow perfect decision, and that’s something you learn very quickly. But I actually reply to all emails and DMs, usually within five minutes, because if I don’t, then I’ll just fall behind. I do the same thing in the hospital. In the hospital I’m probably getting, like, 400 or 500 emails a day and I’m replying to all of them within five minutes, because otherwise I’ll fall behind.
When I first reached out, it was just a gut feeling, but then I listened to the podcast you did with Bassam on the Doctor Hustle website, and that’s where you mentioned you take unsolicited outreach from anyone—not to, like, put this out there for you to get 3,000 more emails, but --
I respond to the majority, I would say. Some I don’t respond to. If I feel like my boundaries are up, or if I feel like I am going to be drained, then I don’t. But I’m always trying to help. Because there’s no component of service in Hollywood, but service is a big thing in medicine and I’m accustomed to it. Nobody helps anybody here—it’s horrible.
Yeah, I’m currently in an MFA program for screenwriting and I’m trying to transition out of what I’ve been doing in my 20s—I just turned 30 this past --
Oh, cool! Congratulations!
Thank you! But, like, to your point of there being no help. Having no ties to the industry is actually more rare than you realize, because so many people are in the industry because of ties.
Yes!
You just think it’s a phrase that’s said, but it really is an incestuous pool whether you're in Hollywood or Bollywood. And the idea that people don’t help unless they can get something out of it. I have nothing to give yet, but I still try. Anyone I can encourage, whether it’s family members, whether it's friends. Just even through seeing me try and fail, is something I feel is a service? I don’t know. And, also, just to go back—the purpose of art, I think, is just making the attempt, in a lot of ways. Forcing the decision. So even for a space cadet like me, it’s still the same reason I’m drawn to directing—or making music, or whatever. It’s accepting that these decisions are going to be made and they’re not going to be perfect, but they still capture something beautiful and of that moment.
Yeah.
I want to go off of the advice you give to people that reach out to you. Since none of this is a linear process, or a “career” so-to-speak, is there any spiritual advice you have for someone who wants to commit their life to something like this?
Yeah, I think just being delusional is a big part of it. Meaning, believing in yourself, even when there is no evidence, as there often will not be, that you have anything to say, or that you are capable of writing and directing. And then I think waiting for permission from people usually goes nowhere because nobody wants to help anybody. The process of filmmaking has never been more democratic, weirdly. You have places that you can upload videos, between YouTube and Instagram, you have ways to make films that look very cinematic for very cheap. Trying to find a conventional way into the industry is usually a matter of being rich and white, or a nepo baby, so I think we’re all forced to find other ways in.
Another thing I generally tend to say is not to make a short, because I don’t think there is a pipeline between shorts and directing features the way there used to be. At one point, like, a short used to be a proof of concept for a feature, or it used to be enough to get representation. I personally—and this is just my personal experience not the broad experience—don’t see that happening the same way. I see most shorts as a road to nowhere. But I do think that it’s a good idea to just make a very cheap feature, like 7 Days, which sometimes costs the same as a short. Because you can make something that’s just as confined, and if you’re going through the trouble of getting a camera and lighting it and putting it on, then someone can talk for a small or long amount of time, and the movie is not that much more expensive. So I always tell people to just make a really stripped down 7 Days-like feature.
The other thing I tell them is actually to do the opposite of what I’ve done—which is not to make overly culturally specific things. Because, right now, the industry is more racist than it’s ever been and they’re retreating rapidly from diversity. And if you label yourself as an Indian-American filmmaker who is interested in Indian-Americans from the get go, they will—because of racist reasons—be less interested in you. The smartest thing you can do, I think is—not to make movies about white people, but—to make movies that are divorced from your own specific ethnic experience. Which will result in you making movies that are not as good—because every time we make movies, they benefit from our personal lived experience. But I think it’s the only way to survive what is a very difficult moment in the industry.
You can correct me if I’m wrong, but just to put some context to what you’re saying…Because I’m sure there are people, like me, if I was a couple years younger hearing this advice, who would be kind of taken aback by it… But what you're speaking to is the practicality of breaking in—how to get your footing and play the cards you’re dealt. Right?
Yeah, my advice is how to survive a racist system. Because we’re in one of the most racist industries in America. I work in medicine, where I would never provide these calculations to anyone. There is no such thing as a “South Asian interests group” because everybody is a Patel—the hospital is ruled by the children of immigrants. They’re Indians, Asians, and Nigerians. I don’t remember the last time I saw a white doctor at Harvard. But when I go to Hollywood, the white people are in charge, and they are making decisions that are hugely problematic, all the time. So, there’s only one way to survive this brutal industry, which is to be extremely, extremely, ruthlessly practical.
Do you think there’s a space outside of the industry as we move forward into this century? Something like 7 Days for example. I know finding the right partner was crucial to making the film. I’m curious to hear how you developed your relationship with the Duplass Brothers production company, and how you even made this in the middle of COVID. Why can’t something like 7 Days be made outside of a system, even the indie system?
It can be! There’s no need, actually, to function within the system, and the industry will probably slow you down, not speed you up. The thing that’s important, the important fulcrum between you and the industry, is the film festival. Getting you to the major film festival gives you enough of a connection to the industry to move forward. And by film festivals, I really mean Sundance, South by [Southwest], Tribeca, or TIFF—I’m putting aside Cannes and Venice for the moment, because they’re their own thing and generally European leaning. But anyone can apply to those festivals. Yes, you do probably have a greater likelihood of getting in if you are somehow connected to people in the industry, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get in, and every year, movies that have no connection to the festival get in. Because it’s ultimately a much more democratic process than the process of getting into the industry.
7 Days was made with the Duplass Brothers, who know Karan personally—Mark Duplass is Karan’s mentor. I had no preexisting relationship with them. When we wrote the script—which we did in five days [and] gave to them a week later—they greenlit the movie, but asked us to put forward financing in order for them to avoid the liability of shooting during COVID, then seen as a very dangerous move. Which we happily accepted—I completely understood the legal reasons behind it.
We made 7 Days for $150,000. We fronted the first $30,000 each of physical production, and then they paid not only what we had already paid for physical production, but the cost of finishing the movie—which we wouldn’t have been able to front without them. Then the movie was cold submitted to multiple festivals—it was rejected from Sundance, it was rejected from South by. It got into Tribeca, where it eventually did sell to a distributor for $50,000 more than it was made for. And then that distributor negotiated a pay-one deal with Hulu, where most people watch it now. So, it found its life and has been watched much more widely than we ever expected to, but began under very modest circumstances.
I feel like casting has been a surprising and disarming part of the films I’ve seen of yours so far. Geraldine’s performance in 7 Days reminds me of myself and my sister; Zara’s performance in A Nice Indian Boy reminds me of my mother in a lot of, like, beautiful and uncomfortable ways. I also want to tie this back into the idea of identity. I’ve heard you speak about it, and it’s something that resonated with me because I’ve had similar thoughts about what it means to show representation on screen. Sometimes it’s just a checklist of things, like a movie just existing on the premise of being about gay people, versus it having anything to do with the actual characters inhabiting this world and their stories and their lives. All the films I’ve seen of yours so far take it for granted almost that these are first, second, third generation Desi Americans—that they’re from the diaspora, that they are as much American as they are whatever culture they come from. It’s not fantasy per say—because that is the reality and that is how I live and view my life day to day—but then, when you interact with the white world and the racist system you're speaking about, there’s an insecurity in confronting how you are seen in other people’s eyes which comes to the forefront. And I feel like that’s purposefully missing from the films you’ve made so far—not missing as in it should be there, but missing as in it’s a choice to paint these things as matter of fact. In a way that’s very cathartic, personally speaking, but it also seems like it’s a stylistic choice and a thematic choice in all these films. And I think the casting plays a lot into that. For example, the family dynamics are so well studied in A Nice Indian Boy and I guess my question is, yeah, how important is casting for you and how do you go about it? And how does that tie into what you’re trying to say about identity?
I am trying to say nothing about identity, other than that we have inner lives. There’s no way to encompass the Indian American experience or the South Asian experience, and I have never, for one second, stopped to think “is this too much of a stereotype about our culture,” or, in the opposite direction, “have I represented enough about our complexity,” because those questions are unanswerable. And, instead, I just try to do things that feel true to me, and then if they feel true to other people, then that’s great.
But as far as casting goes—that’s really all Karan! He knew Geraldine. They did a show together called Miracle Workers. She was a big get for us. And then Zarna, we both knew her from Instagram. But Karan had met her and I liked the idea of her being in the movie, [so] Karan reached out to her. Harish Patel, Karan was a fan of from the Eternals—he has a small role as Kumail’s sidekick—and he wanted to cold submit to him. Karan has a very good eye for casting and for acting, for obvious reasons—because he’s an actor. So all of that credit is due to him.
I do think we’ve gotten too caught up in the issue of representation in general, which I’m sure you’ve heard me say before, but I try not to talk about representation ever, because it implies that the only purpose of these movies is to represent us, which obviously, it isn’t. Our lives are interesting to other people, not just an exercise in being recreated on screen. But I will say that part of process of releasing this movie has made me question what I’ve always said about representation, because I have seen how much it has meant to gay Indians to see themselves on screen. And I have received so many messages [about what it means] just to have a piece of their lived experience on screen. So, I guess it does matter and [means something] to people, it just can’t be the reason it’s created.
I think part of the problem we fall into with a lot of the movies and TV shows these days is that we are in “postmodern vibes,” and we don't have plots. We have acquired a disdain for plot, especially in the art house movies, when you need a story to keep people interested. And being commercial doesn’t mean making movies about white people, being commercial means telling stories that are really robust. They’re so robust that you can repeat the plot to someone else and they will follow it. For example, Jane Austin is still being adapted 200 years later—they’ll never stop adapting Jane Austin—because she tells actual stories. They’re very robust narratives. But nobody is going to be adapting Ulysses, by James Joyce, 200 years later, because there is no plot, it’s all vibes, the way most entertainment is today. And I think that’s happened to a lot of so-called “diversity entertainment.” There is no story, it’s just people existing, and that’s a dangerous place to go if we want to continue the movement and find audiences.
Interesting.
Because there’s only so much of that that you can watch, as the average person.
Yeah, no, that’s very interesting. I’m very much drawn to, like, more abstract filmmaking—I feel like I inherently understand story and I’m not someone trying to get rid of story, but at the same time, like, what can cinema be, you know, more than what it is on paper? In a lot of ways we consider audiences very savvy when it comes to plot, so then you want to disregard plot for other aesthetic reasons, but, no, to your point --
Yeah, because the absence of plot isn’t innovation. The absence of plot is boredom. And if someone is watching all of the various postmodern devices that are used now to make cinema into a much more sensorial, and moment by moment, and consciousness-specific artform—what on Earth would make someone watch that? Because you do have to imagine, at the other end of your art, who you want to watch it. If your goal is, like, three people in the IFC theater, or the Angelika center in New York, then go for it! But if you’re trying to reach lots and lots of people, then you’re gonna have to be interesting. And we all know what’s interesting, and we all know what’s boring. But you go back and watch the great movies from the ‘50s and the ‘60s, and a lot of them are much more interesting than art today, because we are in full throttle postmodernism. And that’s the issue I have. Wait, I don’t know if you’ve seen Sinners—not to talk about Sinners --
Yeah, I have.
But Sinners combines art and commerce in a way that shows you the whole possibility of the form. There is very much a story in Sinners (laughs) but it could not be more cinematic, it could not be more artsy, it could not be more sensorial. It transports you, viscerally, to a time and place, in a way only a movie can—even a book couldn’t do that.
And still, like, maintains a spirituality to it, stuff that you leave the movie and can’t explain in words. We got to see it, my sister and my best friend, in 70mm IMAX, at Lincoln --
Yeah!
But, so, I know we only have like five minutes left on this call, and I wanted to ask you if there are, like, any other up and coming Indian artists or anything of that nature that you’re into—if you think about things in those terms. I just recently got into Payal Kapadia with All We Imagine As Light last year. There was another film called Girls Will Be Girls—these are films that ran the festival circuit. I thought Girls Will Be Girls was fantastic, and I didn’t see it talked about nearly enough last year. Anything else you’re interested in? And also, growing up, what influenced you? I think I read somewhere that you didn’t watch any TV, which I don’t know if that was a myth, or --
No, yeah, I didn’t watch any movies or TV. My mom was afraid of me becoming too white, so we just watched Bollywood. I love Khabi Kushi Khabi Guam, and everything Karan Johar --
Oh, that’s a direct line from 7 Days!
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Well, on my first date with Karan [Soni], he recapped Kal Ho Naa Ho, because I had forgotten the plot, and he made himself cry while recapping it --
(Laughs) Oh, okay, that’s the exact scene!
But we both grew up on Bollywood and recreated that scene, obviously, in 7 Days. And then, in terms of up and coming talent—I mean, Girls Will Be Girls was the first thing that sprang to mind, because I loved that movie.
I thought it was incredible!
It was beautifully made. [And here’s] a movie that obviously [has] artistic qualities and is made in a very artsy way—every frame looks like a Rembrandt—but then, on the other hand, has a robust narrative: She starts flirting with a guy, and then her mom starts flirting with the same guy. That is a story. That I can repeat to you. And then you can repeat to a million people and they’ll go, “huh…” It’s pitchable. It’s not like, just her mom and her exchanging charged glances in beautiful shots for an hour and a half. Things are happening. And the subtext of that scene where they’re both dancing with him? I’ve never seen anything like that. That’s beautiful! And it has nothing to do with being Indian. A lil’ bit, because of her relationship with losing her virginity and all of that stuff is, I guess, culturally rooted --
It’s more just conservatism --
Yeah, the conservatism. And the school, and the boys in the school, and all of that—they’re all connected in clear [and] unconscious ways. But, yeah, I just thought that was just extraordinary filmmaking and I agree it wasn’t talked about as much. I think if they had all been white, and almost the exact same story had been told, it would’ve, like, won an Oscar. Or multiple. But in India, [since] a majority of the movie [was] in English, it changed people’s ability to access it, or their perceived ability.
So, with the last couple minutes—I see daydreaming was a big part of World’s Best. Do you daydream? Do you have time to daydream in your busy schedule? And what is the importance of daydreaming to being an artist?
Yeah, I daydream all the time. And daydreaming is writing! When we do our best writing—and probably our best filmmaking too—we are tapped into unconsciousness, not our conscious brain. It comes from somewhere else. That’s why when people try to turn writing into a science—and I’m a scientist—but when they talk about this inciting incident, this tipping point, and all of this, I actually think we tend to write worse stuff—the emotion leaks out of it and the true vitality of the art leaks out of it. But when we turn our brains off, like a switch, and we allow our pure unconscious to write—as if we are in a dreamlike or trancelike state—then we produce our best stuff.
Because we are very good storytellers—we tell stories to ourselves every night when we dream, and sometimes during the day when we dream! Nobody needs to teach anybody structure. We all know it. It’s just a matter of everything that’s in the way—your perception of your ability, and everyone’s perception of how to tell a story. But we can all do it. It's amazing.
-sincerely cng