11 August 2010
Posted in Writers - Ajay Sahgal
"Here I am paying big money to you writers and what for? All you do is change the words.” – Samuel Goldwyn
What: Raju Mattoo is about to get married and he has the yips about the marriage that was arranged by his mother. Brother Sunil “Sonny” Mattoo has just finished Med School and has decided he doesn’t want to be a doctor. Slow death by arsenic poisoning would be preferable to telling their parents - their father, the very accomplished Dr. Arjun Mattoo and their mother, the even more accomplished Dr. Sarita Mattoo - who are due to arrive for the wedding.
Who: Raju Mattoo, a dentist, has committed to a marriage arranged by his mother to a woman he barely knows, Priyanka, an ObGyn from New Jersey. Having returned from his G-rated (censored and controlled by his mother) bachelor party in Las Vegas, he confesses his misgivings to his brother Sonny and best friend and dental practice partner Perry. He and Priyanka have not yet kicked the tires, so to speak. But much depends on this marriage, primarily for Sonny because, after finally finishing med school, he has decided that he cannot devote his life to something he hates. His live-in girlfriend Elizabeth, decidedly not Indian, fully supports his decision (actually she gives him a year). As yet, however, Sonny has not found a way to tell his parents of his decision; something that becomes more complicated when, unannounced, Drs. Arjun and Sarita Mattoo arrive on their doorstep, complete with manservant and boatloads of baggage, having cancelled their hotel in order to be closer to the family on the eve of the wedding..
Private space is invaded and nerves are beginning to shatter.
Int. Sonny & Elizabeth’s bedroom – Night.
Sarita enters without knocking.
Sarita: (Sotto, to Sonny) Why don’t you marry her? You have been together two years. Think of her reputation! (Then) You know we are sending Raju and his bride to Hawaii for a honeymoon.
Sonny: That’s very nice of you, but we –
Sarita: All expenses paid. A junior suite, ocean view. It will cost them nothing.
Sonny: You’re trying to bribe us into getting married?
Sarita: (To Elizabeth) I would happily send you and Sonny to Hawaii. Have you been there? Very nice.
Sonny: Ma, you can’t just make everyone do what you want them to...Go to sleep, please.
And no sooner to they get rid of Sarita than
Arjun enters wearing just his underwear, scratches his belly.
Arjun: So? Big day tomorrow?
Sonny: Maybe you should put something on.
Arjun: Govind is still unpacking my clothes. I’m not nude, you know. (To Elizabeth) In India there is a favorable bias toward the elders. Here, not so much.
Sonny: So… How’s Philadelphia? Same?
Arjun: Well, the Sixers are choking.
Sonny: (Herds him out) I haven’t been following… Well. It’s late, so…
As Arjun is ushered out, it is Elizabeth who points out
Elizabeth: Sonny, you’ll drive yourself crazy until they know.
Sonny: Let’s just get through the wedding. Okay? Please. I have a plan here. And it’s working. Everything in its time. Step one: Raju gets legally married to Priyanka, which gives my parents a reason to live. Step two: I write them a letter explaining that I’m not going to be a doctor. Step three: We move to Korea. Step four: I mail the letter from Korea. This is an airtight plan, baby. Airtight.
But of course complications ensue, as they do in all cases where every piece must interlock with every other. Priyanka, it turns out, also has the yips for the same “kicking the tires” reason as Raju. Though both parties have had numerous previous partners, it had been extremely important to both sets of parents that their relationship be consummated only after the ceremony – something that defied logic for both Priyanka and Raju because sexual compatibility was too great a question to leave unanswered. Aided by Elizabeth and Sonny, desperate for their own reasons that the wedding take place, Priyanka and Raju clandestinely consummate their relationship in the back seat of Sonny’s car – romantic only in the way illicit sex can be.
Of course it’s no surprise that the carefully constructed house of cards collapses. Having agreed to wear the traditional achkan and paggadi (white wedding suit and turban), Raju refuses to enter the ceremony on the traditional white horse. As Sarita berates Raju for his lack of decorum and inadequacy as a son, Raju reveals that Sonny is not the saint she paints him as he will not be continuing on to his residency.
The Priest, ever chanting, ties a garland of flowers around Raju and Priyanka’s hands, joining them.
Sarita: Something is wrong. This is not like you. Did you take pot?
Sonny: I didn’t take pot, ma.
Sarita: You are ruining your life! (To Arjun) He is ruining his life!
***
Raju: (Proud) You’ve still got one son who’s a doctor. That’s gotta feel good, right?
Arjun: You are not a doctor.
Raju: I am a doctor!
Sonny: Nothing wrong with not being a doctor.
Raju: I’m a doctor!
Sonny: Ma, it’s my life!
Sarita: Who told you that? I gave birth to you, you belong to me. And now your children will have to beg for food!
Sonny looks to Elizabeth for help.
Elizabeth: (Thumbs up) Airtight.
At a loss, impulsively, Sonny points to Raju.
Sonny: Raju and Priyanka had sex! Premaritally. How about that!?!
Priyanka gasps. The Priest keeps chanting. Raju looks at Priyanka’s father, who does not seem happy in the least.
Arjun: (Hits Raju) What?! Is this true?
Sonny: In a car, by the way.
Raju: (Re: Sonny) Sonny has pre-marital sex all the time.
Arjun: We will deal with Sunil, trust me. We’re talking about (pokes him) you. Have you no shame? Did you go to see the bride before it was allowed?
All eyes go to Raju.
Raju: (swallows) Yes.
For defiling the purity of the bride, a scandalized murmur moves through the crowd. Raju points accusingly at Priyanka, awkward since their hands are joined by the garland.
Raju: But it was her idea!
But parents (not all parents) will sometimes surprise you.
Arjun: (Makes sure Sarita’s gone) You made a good decision.
Sonny: (WHAT?) What?
Arjun: I didn’t work all these years in America so my eldest son would be miserable in his career. You should be happy in life. That is my goal.
Sonny: But you called me an idiot.
Arjun: For your mother’s benefit. If I said that I agreed with you, there would be war. No man wants war with his wife. Remember this. You might have a wife one day. (Winks at Elizabeth) Soon.
Sonny: Wow, Pop. That means a lot to me.
Arjun: You understand, publicly I must continue to condemn you.
No Meaner Place: Combining family relationship comedy with culture clash should have been a sure thing. Family sturm und drang has been the meat and potatoes of comedy and tragedy since the Greeks (and probably before), so no new ground is expected to be broken. But adding cultural differences to the mix is an always new and unexpected twist, and in this case, exploring Indian culture brings out the differences, but also highlights the similarities in the dynamic. The high educational and career expectations within Indian society, especially within the group that has immigrated to the U.S. for increased opportunity is very reminiscent of several other immigrant cultures, most notably the wave of Jewish immigrants who arrived on our shores at the end of the 19th century. Education was, of course, the primary path to success; a success that was judged by the final profession, usually medicine and sometimes legal. Relying on stereotype (and comedy is dependent upon it), achieving anything less than those two professions was deemed, if not failure, at least not success. I wonder how Max and Jennie Siegelbaum felt when their son Ben (Bugsy) went into hotel management instead of education like his brothers and sisters?
We are beginning to see actors of South Asian descent represented on the small screen, notably in the comedies “The Office” and “Parks and Recreation,” as well as in dramas such as “The Good Wife.” Are we not willing to explore our similarities and differences? There is comedy to be mined (see “Bend it Like Beckham”) and that is what we need more than ever – comedy.
Life Lessons for Writers: When they say they want something out of the box, what they really want is something that will fit into a box, is about white families with a (very limited) smattering of ethnically diverse friends and neighbors, and comes tied with a ribbon – preferably one made in New Harmony and not in New Delhi.
Conversation with the Writer:
Neely: What part of your psyche did this come from? I know your family; I’ve met your parents and they are lovely people. Who were those people in the pilot???
Ajay: Those people are direct analogs to my parents and how they have behaved and reacted to certain things in my life. I think I was supposed to be a doctor. I know that from the time I was very young I always said I was going to be a doctor and that probably wasn’t something that came out of nowhere. I was probably told. My mother’s a doctor and my dad’s an engineer. There are a lot of doctors in the family. I even went to pre-med for a couple of years in college and then failed out as a result.
Neely: You were at UCLA, weren’t you?
Ajay: Yeah. There was just a lack of interest on my part. I think that the idea that I would become a writer was not, and probably still hasn’t been accepted by my parents. And then that I didn’t marry an Indian girl was, in the beginning, going to be a problem. Now they love Kelli and everything (note: Kelli Williams, one of the stars on the David Kelley series entitled “The Practice” and currently starring in “Lie to Me.”). But back then it was not a great time – including when I told them “I think this is the girl for me.” So yeah, a lot of it comes from my life – it’s autobiographical. This is how my parents behaved. These are things my parents said. I might have brightened the colors here and there, but this is them.
Neely: Do you have any siblings?
Ajay: I have a younger brother who’s a doctor.
Neely: (laughs) How much younger?
Ajay: Two years younger.
Neely: Okay, so that made it even more difficult. Did he marry an Indian girl?
Ajay: No. He was pressured even more than I was, but his way of rebelling was that he didn’t become the kind of a doctor they approved of. He became a criminal forensic psychiatrist. He doesn’t ever deal with saving lives or curing diseases or even treating people.
Neely: So it’s nothing they can explain to the folks back home.
Ajay: They cannot. He has an M.D. but that’s about it. He’s more like a legal/behavioral psychologist than a doctor; but he’s trained in medicine.
Neely: Where does he live?
Ajay: Studio City, near me. We all live in the same area. He has a kid and a wife and we’re all close.
Neely: Well, in keeping with the autobiographical elements in the script, I can definitely see the parallels to your very accepting and level-headed wife Kelli. By the way, the hilarious scene where Elizabeth was trying to wear a sari… anything like that happen the first time Kelli tried to wear one?
Ajay: I seem to recall a time when Kelli was wearing a lot of saris, right around the time we got married and she… well let me say, they’re not easy things to assemble. So I do remember something like that, but a lot of it came out of wanting a “cute” way to introduce the girl in the pilot.
Neely: I remember Kelli wearing a particularly beautiful sari to the Golden Globes one year (possibly 1998 or ’99).
Ajay: I remember that. I remember that sari. My mother was thrilled that she was wearing a sari on TV. She called all her friends to pay extra special attention.
Neely: At that point, how long had you been married?
Ajay: We got married in ’96, so a couple of years.
Neely: Right at the start of “The Practice.”
Ajay: I think we got married and then she did the pilot.
Neely: One of the things that I recall when I asked her about the sari was how appreciative she was of it and how her mother-in-law had given it to her and how thrilled she was to be wearing it. Kelli, no doubt, was extremely accommodating to your parents.
Ajay: Yes, she was.
Neely: That must have won them over.
Ajay: Yes. No offense intended, but Kelli’s, a WASP from Bel Air and didn’t have much of a culture, so I think she dove into accepting and assimilating into our Indian/American culture. The alternative was dinner at the Bel Air Country Club and that wasn’t that interesting to her.
Neely: Well, just going back over the models for this story, I can see that there’s something endless to tap into.
Ajay: I knew a lot of Indian kids, and have come to meet even more since – American kids with Indian parents, like me. All the stories are the same. Everybody who read this, auditioned for it, or came in for it in one way or another all said the same thing, “I don’t know if I’m going to get the part, but this is my family. This is great. I never see my family on television.” I imagine that it’s an immigrant story, too. It may be about Indians, and the details may be specific to Indians, but I imagine the American kid growing up in Michigan whose parents were Hmong immigrants has the same sort of stories.
Neely: It’s the same story told in “Funny in Farsi.” It was Nastaran Dibai’s story as well as that of the original author, Firoozeh Dumas. In adapting the book, Nastaran tapped into her own Iranian immigrant stories. It’s pretty universal.
Neely: There was a similar script and produced prior to this. What was it called?
Ajay: It vacillated between “Nevermind Nirvana” and “Nirvana” and “Nearly Nirvana.” They’re all kind of generally the same thing.
Neely: It was at NBC originally. Do you see the irony in NBC picking up a comedy that takes place in an outsourced Indian tech center? Could it have interfered with your casting?
Ajay: Actually we were ahead of them. Ken Kwapis, who directed that pilot, and I had a very open relationship. We kind of faced each other going, “It’s all the same actors.” But we didn’t have actors that were testing at the same time. Our actors were maybe going to go in and test for them, but we got them first. Yes, there was competition, but I think it’s an interesting area. There’s a really funny actor named Parvesh Cheena who tested for us and didn’t get it who went into that show. I think he’s going to be a big star because he’s really funny. NBC apparently wanted to do an Indian show, but I’m not sure why; maybe because India is an ascendant culture in a way.
Neely: I was a bit confused about that show. I checked the credits for the 2nd episode on Studio System and it looks like they cut a number of the Indian actors, including Cheena. Judging by what I saw, it’s now much more heavily weighted toward the Anglo actors and less about the Indians, which is sort of strange since India, besides being an ascendant culture is huge. There are a lot of Indian/Americans here. It’s not a small population in the U.S.
Ajay: That wasn’t the case when I was a kid.
Neely: What was it like? You grew up in L.A. didn’t you?
Ajay: Yeah. There was no one. We knew every Indian family in L.A; that’s how small it was. It’s huge, it’s exploded. Now everyone kind of stays within its own group, like the Gujuratis stay with the Gujuratis and the Punjabis stay with the Punjabis. But back then it was just everybody, altogether.
Neely: What are your parents?
Ajay: My parents are Punjabis.
Neely: So, who directed the pilot this time around?
Ajay: Scott Ellis. Scott is a theater director from New York (Associate Artistic Director of the Roundabout Theatre Co.) who also directs shows like “Weeds” and “Nurse Jackie” and “30 Rock.” Come to think of it, maybe he’s a TV director who also directs theater, I don’t know. He’s a very nice guy and very good with actors. The decisions about how directors get hired for pilots are opaque and crazy. I don’t know how these guys get on a list. I would have assumed they’d talk to David Schwimmer again (the director of the last pilot), but they wanted to go with Scott and I found him really nice and really great to work with. I liked the work he had done previously.
Neely: Did he get the timing?
Ajay: Yes he did. I don’t know if you’ve watched “Nurse Jackie,” but it can be a really funny show and I think that is largely to do with him executing very precise scripts very well. So I thought that it worked.
Neely: Because, as they say, timing is everything in comedy (and in everything else).
Ajay: “Nevermind Nirvana” was a multi-camera show. Even though there are more Indian characters in shows now, especially one on the very successful multi-camera show “The Big Bang Theory,” there’s not a big tradition of Indians in this specialized field.
Neely: They’re all supposed to be doctors.
Ajay: Right! So where are you going to get them? If I was casting the part of the janitor on “Scrubs” eight years ago, I’d have end up with Neil Flynn because he was the funniest guy of the 50 guys who were funny. In my show, we didn’t have that kind of choice. We had a hard time casting it.
Neely: Did you look in England?
Ajay: We did. We got a lot of English actors auditioning. None of the men got particularly close on the guy roles; there were a couple of women that did. I suppose it’s very hard to do an American accent and concentrate on being funny.
Neely: The same thing is true for white English actors who haven’t done American before. They’re concentrating so much on their American accents that they miss the nuance.
What about the finished product? What did you think?
Ajay: To be honest, I wasn’t happy with it. I can’t point my finger in any direction. It would be very easy for me to say “This actor ruined it” or “Their notes ruined it” or the director or even myself because maybe it was the script. There’s this thing that can happen where a really good script turns into a so-so show and there’s no explanation. Sometimes the reverse is true and a so-so script turns into a really funny show with no explanation. It’s strange. I’ve spent a long time trying to figure out that math, and I’ve given up trying to figure it out. I thought that maybe there was some “magic.” If I could only tap into that well, but I can’t. I wasn’t happy with the finished product, but I still don’t know exactly why. It just didn’t turn out that funny.
Neely: I’m sorry that I didn’t get a chance to read its predecessor.
Ajay: I can send it to you. You know, this is the third time it was made.
Neely: I remember when you and David Schwimmer and a couple of other guys anted up the money on the last go round so that you could reshoot some things.
Ajay: We made the first one for NBC in a traditional way. The pilot got shot, got tested; and then they said “Let’s replace the lead. Everything else works.” The lead scored very very poorly. Easier said than done because there aren’t a lot of Indian/American actors that are funny. I had Kal Penn.
Neely: They didn’t like Kal Penn???
Ajay: No, America didn’t like Kal Penn; meaning the “testing” didn’t like Kal Penn. Kal Penn, while being very funny in the movies probably didn’t have a lot of stage experience at the time; and it was a stage show. There’s a little bit of a learning curve. Right or wrong, things get blamed on actors sometimes. Actors get fired at table readings, as if that’s the problem and not the script. We went through an exhaustive search to find someone to replace Kal Penn and we came up with a comedian. Remember, we’d already searched everywhere. Anyway, we came up with another guy, a stand up comic named Arj Barker, who ended up recurring on “Flight of the Conchords.” A very funny guy, but not an actor; he’s a stand-up. So we were shut down and then two days later I was playing the part. By this time we had spent everything but $200,000, so Schwimmer, who was directing, and everyone else, including me, kicked back our fees and we shot it in hopes of trying to sell it. We had something, but in the end the thought was that if a stand up comedian couldn’t do it, how could a writer who’s never acted do it.
Anyway, Kevin Reilly liked it sufficiently. He had always thought about it, so when he went to Fox and the circumstances were right, he said “Let’s try it again.” So, essentially, I wrote a new script; mostly the same characters with a new character added here and there. We kept a couple of the original cast members and the rest were new people because it had been six years since we had done the original. We shot it and it became like a regular pilot again. But you know the story of pilots is that they generally just stay pilots.
Neely: So there’s nothing you could think that you could redo.
Ajay: I’ve redone it so many times; I suppose I could go in and say “Let’s make some different casting choices; let’s make another director choice; let’s go back to the script draft that everyone liked.” But in performance, at table readings and run-throughs, it’s all going to get changed by the very nature of the beast. “They” demand a certain amount, no, rather they expect a certain amount of constant change. “We can beat this. We can make it better. It was funny on Tuesday; it’s not funny on Thursday – reach into your big bucket of things and put something funny in there.” For their purposes, it works sometimes. Using your example, they made “Gary Unmarried,” a script you didn’t care for, into something that was funny enough to get on the air. That churning machine is what they live by.
Neely: Let’s talk some more about the pilot development process.
Ajay: The process of making a pilot itself is like 40 people staring at a surgeon when he’s trying to do surgery, with all of them going “what if you did this.” And saying obvious things like, “Hey, we should probably not let him die.” That kind of thing. What can you do? The process is the process.
Neely: Yes, but one of the counterproductive elements in that process is that many times the least experienced development execs, the ones who’ve just been taken off an assistant’s desk, get to weigh in with equal force. Sure, they’ve read a lot of scripts in the previous few years, but they don’t have a larger context and have no history. I’m trying not to be too harsh, but that is exactly what a beginning development executive is. You have 40 people involved in the process, all of whom want to put in their two cents worth so that their bosses think that they’re really smart because they came up with something, anything…
Ajay: …that they’re engaged and they’re earning their salary. I know. It’s kind of a broken system.
Neely: But it’s especially counterproductive for funny.
Ajay: I agree.
Neely: I get the feeling that you’re not done with this story.
Ajay: If I was given the chance to make it again, I would make it again. I don’t know how, but I still think it’s worth while. I just think that it’s going to be a long time, if ever, before anyone agrees because I’ve already done it three times.
Neely: Have you given any consideration to going international? This is as much a natural for British TV as it is for Indian TV. Think of the huge potential audience on Indian TV. We always talk about thinking globally but rarely do.
Ajay: I don’t know what the economics would be and I don’t know how it would work. But the Indian TV business as I understand it, is geared toward the ladies in the villages who buy the soap and watch the…
Neely: …telenovelas.
Ajay: Exactly. I don’t know. I would love to try it but I don’t know how to get from here to there.
Neely: I think it would be worth the investigation. It really is a huge huge market. Or think about British TV. They’ve got an even larger Indian market. This would be perfect on the smaller scale that they work with – limited episodes. Two potential contacts might be Paul Lee, the new head of ABC who started BBC America and Lee Bartlett, who was just hired at Discovery Networks, and just arrived back in the States after several years heading production at ITV. I understand BBC America is interested in cross-programming, creating shows here that will work on BBC here and in Britain. British television seems like an absolute natural.
Ajay: I would have to figure out how to do it. Right now I’m in the “hangover” stage. It’s sort of like “How dead can I make this show?” So far, I’ve made it dead three times. But that is a very good idea.
Neely: There’s a show there. Maybe the U.S. is the wrong market. It may still be worth kicking this allegedly dead horse.
Ajay: You may have a point.
Neely: Let’s talk some more about your roots. Unlike me, who is first generation only on my mother’s side, you are a double first generation.
Ajay: Both of my parents came to California in the 60’s. My mother followed my father, whose work was in aerospace. In the 60s in Southern California, aerospace was a really big deal; he was an engineer, and that’s where the work was. They became citizens as soon as they were eligible. So yeah, we’re Southern Californians.
Neely: How much family do you still have in India?
Ajay: My father’s family is quite large. He had 9 brothers and sisters. My mother’s sister lives here; both of her parents, now deceased, moved here, so she doesn’t have a big family over there. But I think if I went with my family I’d have free places to stay in a few towns.
Neely: Have you been?
Ajay: The only time Kelli and I went to India was after “The Practice” pilot was shot and picked up but before it started shooting. We haven’t gone with our kids, but now our youngest is at an age where I think it would be fun to go – he’s 7. Now he’ll remember it. We didn’t want to take him when he was 3 and waste all that money and have him say “I don’t remember.”
Neely: You were a Valley boy and went to Buckley. Were you conflicted about bringing your friends home?
Ajay: No. My friends were my good friends and they knew who my parents were; it was no problem. We had to do some more intricate lying to my parents for me to get out of the house on a Saturday night and go and do the “Less than Zero” style things that we did. But we didn’t not lie to the other parents either.
Neely: As you said before, you went to UCLA.
Ajay: Like I mentioned, I failed out as a pre-med biology major. I just wasn’t interested or engaged. I went to the Dean and explained that I really wanted to be a writer and that I had started in the wrong direction and would he please give me another chance. We worked something out so that I got back in and then I was an English major in Creative Writing and did very well. It was a good change.
Neely: Any particularly inspirational teachers?
Ajay: There was a guy named Brian Moore who was a novelist, and my professor Carolyn See, the novelist and memoirist – she was great. She was highly influential and very supportive and I think she’s just fantastic. She’s just one of a kind. I mean this in the nicest way, but she was always weird, and great, and upbeat and encouraging and fought against the dominant Southern California image of writers as being there to report on a vacuous vacant land. Though I think she admired some of those people, she wasn’t going to change her approach. For her to have made the career that she has is amazing to me. Even then I knew it, but she’s still her own person.
Neely: You have to read her memoir Dreaming.
Ajay: I have it, but I haven’t yet read it. I’ve probably read some of it and then something got me away. Once I had kids, there’s been a giant gap in my reading. Now I’m back.
Neely: It’s one of the most hilariously horrific books I’ve ever read. When I put the book down, I turned to my husband and said “I’m not complaining about my mother ever again.” (I doubt whether I’ll keep that promise, but it was meaningful at the time.)
Going backwards just a bit; so it was in college that you found that you wanted to be a writer?
Ajay: Yes. Someone I knew beginning in junior high and who became a very close friend of mine in high school was Bret Ellis. He’s still one of my closest and oldest friends. Bret always knew he wanted to be a writer but what he was doing was strange and none of us really understood what it was. But he got his book published when he was 20! It opened the door for a lot of people – a lot of people who were his friends and classmates. For me it made it all possible. I couldn’t believe you could actually do that for a living. Bret was a great example that you could just do it.
Neely: How about mentors along the way? It sounds like Carolyn was one.
Ajay: Carolyn was one. She was always very supportive. Brian Moore, less so, but he was a great teacher. After I graduated as an English major, I took a year off and then went to film school at UCLA for an MFA in screenwriting. The teachers there were really good. Richard Walter, Lew Hunter, Hal Ackerman – they weren’t mentors so much, but they were people who helped. I’ve never really had mentors, but I have had some good teachers.
Neely: I just read this in an issue of “Written by” and I thought it was particularly astute. Number 88 of 101 Things I Learned in Film School by Neil Landau with Matthew Frederick was: “If you want to write, read. If you want to make films, see films.” So what are you reading right now and what have you seen recently that you liked?
Ajay: I tend to be segregated over towards kid films…
Neely: Funny thing about having kids.
Ajay: …and movies that come through the mail during screening time. That’s when I get to watch that kind of thing. So November/December is coming up and then Kelli and I can catch up on all the films that have come out. So, movies are not a great example. But I’m reading a lot. I read a book called The Girl Who Fell from the Sky by Heidi Durrow. I was on vacation recently and read Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer, and now Four Fish by Paul Greenberg which is a book I recently got on my iPad. This iPad thing, while kind of gimmicky, has increased the number of books that I read. It’s just so easy to carry around and have 10 books at once. I’m reading a book right now called The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin, but that’s because someone wants to make a TV show out of it and it’s a possible job.
Neely: The one thing that’s kept me from getting any of those devices, and certainly the iPad, is that it seems too much like a computer screen and it hurts my eyes to read on a computer screen.
Ajay: For me I’m the opposite. With the iPad I don’t have to wear my reading glasses; I can zoom in. When Kelli’s going to sleep, our biggest argument always starts with “will you turn off the light.” She has to go to bed and I want to read late; this way I can just read in bed. Also, I can take it with me and I’ve got 10 books on there so if I’m bored with one, I’m not forced to finish it, I can go to the next one.
Neely: What about directing? Still interested in doing that?
Ajay: I am. I made one film in 2000 that was a longish short.
Neely: “It’s a Shame about Ray;” I went to the screening. It seemed to be about your feelings about Kelli and agonizing over worthiness.
Ajay: It was about living your life when you can live it and not waiting around. It was a good general theme for a movie. Do it while you can do it; be what you can be when you can be it and not when it’s too late.
Neely: I loved it because I spent far too many years agonizing over whether I was worthy of my husband.
Ajay: I understand…it’s not a way to live.
Neely: You’re right, it’s counterproductive. It’s one of those things where you just have to throw your hands up and say “Okay. This is the way it is, and I don’t get it, but who cares.” But that takes a lot of time or a lot of therapy.
Ajay: Letting go of preconceived notions of how you think things are going to go opens you up to how things actually go.
Neely: Sorry for the sidetrack. And directing?
Ajay: Since then I haven’t had any opportunity. I’ve been in the grind of trying to make money to feed these private school tuitions and everything else that goes on. But yes, of course I’d love to and still have those aspirations and still write things toward that end. There was one thing that I wrote for a friend who’s a producer and if it ever gets made, I’ll be able to direct it. It’s a hard road, but it’s nothing I can pursue full time right now. I have to write three pilots this year because they’re still hiring me to write pilots, so that’s what I’m going to do until they kick me out.
Neely: How did and Kelli meet.
Ajay: We knew each other because we were all part of the same circle of friends. I think the first time I met her, she came over to pick up my then-live-in girlfriend for a girls night out. A few years later, when we were both single, I invited her to my book publication party.
Neely: I didn’t know you’d written a novel. Tell me about it.
Ajay: It’s not a very good novel; it was my first book, written when I was in my 20s. It’s called Pool and is no longer in print but you could probably find it somewhere for a penny on Amazon. It takes place on a movie set. It answers the question of what might happen if, say a huge actor like a Johnny Depp, while in the middle of filming a “Pirates of the Caribbean,” disappeared and didn’t show up to work. What machinations would take place in the movie business because this giant juggernaut is dependent on this one guy and this one guy decided that he wasn’t coming in to work that day and decided instead to go to, in this case, Vermont and hang out with some friends. Essentially they rewrite the movie, move it to Vermont and the mountain comes to Mohammed.
Neely: Actually you’re being a tad too self-deprecating. The lowest price at which it can be found is $10 and it was extremely well-reviewed. I quote The Washington Post Book world: ”A faultlessly crafted, beautifully constructed, Beckett-in-a-hot-tub, Noel-Coward-on-ludes, Hunter-Thompson-with-an-editor novel.” Have you written any more books since then?
Ajay: I’ve written a lot of short fiction and a novel, which I’m still working on but don’t think it’s publishable yet; I’ve been working on it, on and off, for 10 years. I’m also writing a work of non-fiction that’s in the experiential genre that authors do for a year. It should be done in the next couple of months.
Neely: Besides pilots, anything else? Do you have an overall?
Ajay: I wish. They don’t really make them that often anymore, and they almost always include a staffing component, which is difficult in my case since I have literally no experience working on someone else’s show. What I end up doing is I write scripts for whatever network and do it with their sister studio. Generally I pitch something that I would like to write. I’m going to pitch something today at 3:00 and if they like the idea, like me and want to work with me, well that’s kind of how it works.
Neely: I don’t want to make you late for your meeting. Thanks for taking the time today. I can’t wait to read more from you. Please say hi to the family for me.
