Interview: Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon on “The Big Sick”

Posted on June 18, 2017 at 3:45 pm

Emily V. Gordon wants you to know that her father did not cheat on her mother. You might think that he did because in the movie Gordon wrote with her husband, Kumail Nanjiani, about their romance, movie Emily’s father, played by Ray Romano, confesses that he had an affair. But Gordon and Nanjiani explained in an interview that the overall story is true, and Nanjiani plays himself, but some elements were compressed or heightened for dramatic purposes.

This part is true: Gordon met Nanjiani when she was in grad school studying psychology and he was a stand-up comic. Very early in their relationship, she suddenly became critically ill. This is probably the only romantic comedy in history to have its female lead spend half the movie in a medically induced coma. And that’s not even the couple’s biggest obstacle. Nanjiani’s Pakistani immigrant family wants him to marry a girl from their religion and culture. Gordon’s character, Emily Gardiner in the movie, is neither. He hasn’t told her about the parade of eligible girls his mother has “dropping by” the house when he is visiting his parents. Movie Emily, played by Zoe Kazan, breaks up with Nanjiani just before she gets sick, and then he meets her parents (Romano and Holly Hunter) for the first time at the hospital. The second half of the film is a different love story, between Nanjiani and Emily’s parents. “And then we get to really, really play and create these really fun people,” she said. “My parents are lovely but it would have been a more boring movie.”

“This is obviously very, very autobiographical,” Nanjiani continued. “I would say my character is probably closer to how I was then than Emily is.” “I would say your character is pretty clueless, and you’re not as clueless,” Gordon added. “We had a lot of fun arguments like: character Kumail is a lying asshole, but the real Kumail is just a liar.” “Yes, just a liar. And clueless. Judd would ask me what I thought was going to happen, what the plan was when I was dating Emily. And I was like, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.’” Gordon, whose terrifically funny and wise book Super You: Release Your Inner Superhero reflects her training as a therapist and her insight as a writer, said, clearly not for the first time, “Not deciding is a decision. People don’t realize that not making a decision is a decision in itself.”

Nanjiani and Gordon worked on the script for three years, sending drafts to Apatow, who guided them on tempo and character. “We would write down the truth of things and then he would advise us: ‘You could really turn up the drama here, you can change the situation here and kind of make this resonate more.’ So we would show him what the truth was and then he would help us figure out ways to make it more cinematic, ways to make it more dramatic, more funny,” Nanjiani said. The biggest departure was in the portrayal of Gordon’s parents. Apatow was especially helpful in providing feedback on the story’s structure. “He was like: ‘this much will be Emily and Kumail, this much should be them separated, this much should be the hospital, this much should be the surgery.’ He just drew these lines separating each section and we took a picture of it. And then when Michael Showalter came on as director, he said, ‘Kumail in Emily’s room, that’s the center of the movie so everything has to come before come after it.’ So we moved everything around that point because that’s the point of no return. That’s when I realize that I’m in love with her and that I had made a huge mistake.”

Gordon described working with Showalter. “He’s all heart, that’s what’s great. And he wears all his emotions on his sleeve. That’s his strength in a way. He is so amazing to watch because he’s passionate and invested in the story. And he was always very open to collaboration. It wasn’t like he was ruling with an iron fist, ever. Everything felt like a collaboration. He had no ego about collaborating. That made me feel so safe and confident in giving him our story.” Nanjiani said that Showalter showed them how he was subtly using different color palettes for the different characters, even different camera movements. “And Mike is very good at guiding you between movements of the movie, with silence or just following a character for a little bit or whatever it, is he’s very, very adept at switching gears for the movie in a seamless way.” Showalter is especially gifted in casting even the smallest roles and because they shot in New York they were able to find superb performers from theater whose faces were not familiar to movie audiences.

Nanjiani said that writing the film helped him to appreciate and understand his parents’ reaction to his wanting to marry Gordon. “When people from a different culture come here you want to hold on to your own culture but you also want to be your own person. It’s a complicated thing and you do lose something going against the wishes of your parents and your culture. But ultimately it has to be a personal decision.”

Nanjiani is an experienced performer, including three seasons as Dinesh on “Silicon Valley.” But this role presented some new challenges for him, with some dramatic moments and with the difficulty of reliving some of his most painful experiences on camera.

“I hadn’t ever taken any acting classes so I started taking acting classes to sort of prepare for this. I just knew that there was this big thing coming up and it was going to be very difficult and challenging. I wanted to take some of the guesswork out of it because what I knew was comedy acting, where you can go on instinct and as long as it feels funny it works. I knew this was going to be different, especially separating the reality from the movie character and also dealing with some very painful memories. I wanted to get the tools to be able to go into different emotions because I knew that this was a very low budget movie and we had to learn work really fast. If I had to be sad in the scene knew I knew that I had to figure out how to do that like quickly.”

“And if may say,” added Gordon, “Old Kumail from the movie would not have done that. He just would have been like, ‘I’ll figure it out.’”

Originally published on Huffington Post.

The Journey

Posted on June 16, 2017 at 2:56 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including violent images and language
Profanity:	Some strong and bigoted language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking
Violence/ Scariness:	References to and depictions of historical civil unrest, violence, and murder
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	June 17, 2017

First thing, I’m going to ask you to overlook two obvious problems with this film. The first is the awful title, pretentious and overused. The second is the film’s complete distortion of the real-life facts and details in favor of a condensed and heightened portrayal that puts decades of delicate negotiations into one car ride. Let’s just agree to get past both of those for a moment and we will return to them later, I promise.

Here is the truth. Two men who were the bitterest of enemies at the center of The Troubles, one of the worst, longest, and most intractable conflicts in modern history, found a way to create an enduring peace. One was Ian Paisley (played by Timothy Spall), an evangelical Protestant minister. The other was Martin McGuinness (played by Colm Meany) a leader of the Catholics. Although they despised each other, and blamed each other for the violent attacks that led to thousands of deaths, they were statesmen enough to realize that no one would ever win if they kept fighting each other. In 2007, when the two men visited the White House to see President George W. Bush, McGuinness said, “Up until the 26 March this year, Ian Paisley and I never had a conversation about anything — not even about the weather — and now we have worked very closely together over the last seven months and there’s been no angry words between us. … This shows we are set for a new course.”

This movie imagines what the first conversation between the two men might have been, placing them in a streamlined, highly artificial, and very heightened dramatic context to have it. This is not a documentary. It is not history. It is intended to be seen by people who have very little notion of the story. So, the good news is that it is very accessible. The less good news is that it will confuse the audience into thinking that this is how it happened, so be warned.

But it is a touching, inspiring, beautifully performed and very timely story about finding common ground even under the most bitter partisan circumstances. And it is a powerful reminder that at the end of the day policy and statecraft and clashing ideologies may give rise to briefing books filled with charts and footnotes, but at the end of the day sometimes it just comes down to two people who agree to acknowledge their common humanity. “These men are anarchy,” one of the government officials says. “They are The Troubles.” But he might just as well say, “They are the answer.”

Parents should know that the theme of this film includes decades of civil unrest and murder during “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland, some graphic and disturbing images and references to sad deaths, and some strong language.

Family discussion: What was the turning point on the journey and why did it make a difference? Read up on the real relationship between Martin and Ian, which evolved over decades, not one car trip.

If you like this, try: “In the Name of the Father” and “Maeve”

Megan Leavey

Posted on June 9, 2017 at 10:26 am

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for war violence, language, suggestive material, and thematic elements
Profanity:	Some strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and drunkenness, drug references
Violence/ Scariness:	Wartime violence
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 9, 2017
Date Released to DVD:	September 11, 2017

Devastated by the loss of a close friend, fired from a dead-end job, without any sense of worth or meaning, a young rural New Yorker enlists in the Marines and learns about honor, loyalty, and purpose, and finds unconditional love, too.

What makes that familiar story less familiar in this fact-based retelling is that the Marine in question is a woman and the love story is with her partner, a German Shepard.

Kate Mara is both vulnerable and determined as Megan Leavey, who was lost until she joined the Marines and got assigned to the K-9 division of military dogs trained to sniff out bombs and guns. Leavey had two tours of duty alongside Rex until they were blown up together by a bomb. The most significant part of her recovery came from a renewed sense of purpose in fighting for the chance to give Rex a home when he could no longer work.

The film, which has some dramatic (and romantic) heightening, shows Leavey being fired by a supervisor who tells her, “You don’t connect with people very well.” Her mother (Edie Falco, terrific as always) does not want her to go into the military but has nothing else to offer. After basic training, she gets drunk with friends and is sentenced to clean up the dog kennels. That is the moment when a part of her wakes up. Instead of resisting what she does not want, for the first time there is something she does want.

The Leavey equivalent in the K-9 corps is Rex, a handsome German shepherd described by the veterinarian as “the most aggressive dog I’ve ever treated.” The woman who does not connect with people very well is a perfect match for the dog who does not connect with people very well, either.

Leavey wants to become a part of the K-9 program, but in order to qualify she has to meet some very tough standards for her skills and behavior. She makes it in and the training includes learning how to bandage a wounded dog, a powerful reminder of the risks ahead.

The story has four distinct chapters: Leavey before the Marines, her training and getting to know Rex, their deployment, and her efforts to bring him home so she can care for him in his last months. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite and star Mara wisely keep the focus on Leavey’s spirit-enlarging journey. Cowperthwaite is a documentarian (“Blackfish”) and brings a low-key naturalism to the storytelling, and Mara is excellent in revealing Leavey’s growing sense of confidence and purpose. “We were injured in Iraq,” she says, simply, compellingly. They are both wounded warriors and their best path to healing is to be together.

Parents should know that this film includes wartime violence with guns, bombs, explosions, characters injured and killed, drinking and drunkenness, strong language, sexual references and a non-explicit situation.

Family discussion: What was it about the dog corps that made Megan want to qualify to be a part of it? Why did Gunny give her a chance?

If you like this, try: “Max”

The Lost City of Z

Posted on April 20, 2017 at 5:34 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, brief strong language and some nudity
Profanity:	Brief strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Alcohol, smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Peril and violence including WWI battles and attacks by indigenous people
Diversity Issues:	Class, race, and culture issues a theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	April 21, 2017
Date Released to DVD:	July 10, 2017

From the early 19th to the early 20th century, the British Empire exemplified a spirit of adventure, devotion to duty, and confidence bordering on hubris that led to extraordinary achievements like the Oxford English Dictionary and the arrogant imposition of colonialism around the world. All of that is in this true story of Percy Fawcett, an officer in the British Army whose eight trips to South America in search of ancient ruins inspired characters in books by H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan-Doyle (The Lost World) (both friends of Fawcett’s) and in movies like “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” Basically, if the hero wears khakis as he slashes through the jungle, he owes something to Percy Fawcett.

Writer/director James Gray based the screenplay on the book by David Gann and the letters of Fawcett and his wife, and shaped the story to make it more accessible, turning eight trips into three and reflecting a more contemporary understanding of race and gender. That is notable in Nina Fawcett’s attempt to insist that she should accompany her husband on an expedition and in the treatment of the natives, who are portrayed with dignity and agency, and treated as such by Fawcett.

He also helps us understand the pressures of the era that helped to motivate Fawcett’s journeys. The unlimited opportunities of the uncharted jungle were especially compelling. In addition to giving him the chance to earn money for his family, a major discovery would allow him to return to England in triumph and overcome the disgrace his father had brought to the family name. We first see him outracing his fellow officers, showing us his skill and determination. When he has the opportunity to go to Bolivia to map the country’s boundaries — to protect the British business interests in South America — he does not want to leave his family but he is eager to escape the restrictions of Edwardian social class. “He’s rather unfortunate in his choice of ancestors,” one character sneers.

On the mapping expedition he hears about a place where there are artifacts of a prehistoric civilization and he is determined to find it and come home in triumph. He teams up with the loyal and capable Henry Costin (Robert Pattinson, unrecognizable behind a thick beard).

On his second visit, he brings along a veteran explorer, James Murray (Angus Macfadyen), who had been with Shackleton on his expedition to Antarctica, which turns out to be a very bad decision. But it is also the final proof for Fawcett that class and reputation are not determinative. On the third trip, after Fawcett’s return to military service in WWI, he brings his once-estranged son (Spider-Man Tom Holland) and reaches a new understanding and reconciliation.

Gray ably conveys the curiosity and wonder of the journeys and the passions that impel the adventurers. Pattinson’s performance is especially thoughtful and Hunnam does well, especially in an impassioned speech to the skeptics at the Royal Geographical Society and in showing us how his journeys change his views of himself and his world, perhaps inspiring us to imagine our own.

Parents should know that this film includes extended peril and violence including wartime battle scenes, sad deaths, some graphic and disturbing images, native nudity, brief strong language.

Family discussion: Why did Percy keep returning to his search? What did he learn from his experience with Murray?

If you like this, try: “The Man Who Would be King,” “The Lost World,” “Mountains of the Moon,” and the books by H. Rider Haggard and Arthur Conan-Doyle inspired by Fawcett’s adventures

Interview: Writer/Director James Gray of “The Lost City of Z”

Posted on April 12, 2017 at 3:55 pm

James Gray wrote and directed the adventure movie “The Lost City of Z,” based on Percy Fawcett, the real-life explorer who inspired fictional characters from Indiana Jones to the swashbuckling heroes of books by Arthur Conan Doyle and H. Rider Haggard. The movie stars Charlie Hunnam, Robert Pattinson, and Sienna Miller. Gray and his crew had to re-create the arduous journey through the South American rainforest; while they had better technology than Fawcett’s group, they also had to bring along all of the equipment to make the film.

In an interview, Gray talked about the directors who inspired him — and why he had to make some different choices than the ones in their classic films.

It’s 100 years after the events in the film. Tell me how you approach dealing with issues of gender and race that acknowledges the realities of its era without distracting us unnecessarily?

Wow, that’s a heavy one. How did I deal with it, well, with great difficulty and with kid gloves. It’s one of the advantages we have and it’s not about judging the characters, that’s not really what I’m saying but a more global view, a more…how do I say this? A more progressive view, a more open view hopefully of the ideas of gender, class and ethnicity that has to be part of the film. And I felt that if I could make a movie in the style of let’s say David Lean, who I revere, but bring, dare I say this, a more advanced or different approach to the politics of it — for example,”Lawrence of Arabia he has Alec Guinness playing an Arab which is absurd today.

So, I felt that that was the way that I could do something different from what Mr. Lean did. And in the case of something like an “Apocalypse Now,” as great as I think it is, and I think it is the greatest, there certainly aren’t any women in it of any importance. A Playboy playmate is pretty much the only woman in the whole movie. So, I felt that it was important that I give everybody a sort of fair shake at the narrative and that everybody’s existence would be entirely independent. So, Sienna Miller’s character has her own hopes and dreams and that the film acknowledges those desires. And the indigenous people of South America would be independent and not demand a white male European view of the world to exist. People talk about what they call the Magical Negro in movies where this African-American character has all these magical qualities throughout which is in its own way deeply racist. My ambition was to do something the opposite of that, which was that the indigenous people of Amazonia would function in a way that was entirely free from any need for the white man.

And really the approach was to try and bring a certain dignity and humanity to every single person in the movie. And so, I’ve tried to think of it in those terms.

For me one of the most intriguing characters in the film was Murray, the veteran of the Shackleton expedition to the Antarctic but a terrible problem for Fawcett.

In the book he goes on I think it’s eight trips, so I had to condense that to three. When I approached it I thought, “Okay if it’s three trips, each trip has to have a different meaning.” The first trip is about the exposure to his obsession and how the obsession settles in and what it becomes and what it starts to mean for him. The second trip with Mr. Murray would have to be about how he saw the trip in the beginning as cementing his position not only in society but in history and really it was an act of ego to bring Mr. Murray along. He was going for glory and he thought Murray would bring an incredible luster. Murray’s ethical bankruptcy is in a way Fawcett’s fault because he chose Murray to go with him. That was the price he paid for wanting that because Murray is the lie of one class’s superiority over the other. Murray is the person who’s “Oh look how much wealth I have.” He’s a man of means and prestige and yet he’s a fraud.

So, Murray was a lesson for Fawcett really that the measure of a man has nothing to do with class or rank. That was what I thought the whole trip meant. He had to learn that and the third trip was his atonement for his neglect. It became a much more spiritual experience for him because he was able to enjoy it with his son. On the third trip he could achieve a measure of transcendence because he had already been through the second trip with this person who showed him that the search for glory and class validation was a bankrupt position.

Were you able to read some of Percy’s own journals?

I sure did. In addition to the Grann book I read Exploration Fawcett which is a compilation of his journal entries along with some editorializing by his son Brian that was put out many years later. I’m sure there is some embellishment from Brian, who was anxious to validate his father’s journeys but I’m sure it still had a bunch of Percy’s actual words still in them. I tried to adhere to Fawcett’s own words in as many places as possible. That Royal Geographical Society speech that he gives, which is about a seven and a half-minute long scene in the center of the movie is almost entirely his actual words. I read his letters too, back and forth to his wife and Charlie Hunnam and Sienna Miller did too. That was actually the best window into who those people are that we could have found. And I think it was necessary work.

Did you feel in a way as you were filming in South America that you were re-experiencing some of what he experienced? Did you learn what he went through just from being there?

Probably not because I’m nothing like Fawcett. I’m a wimp and I was only there for four months and he was in it for years. He didn’t have GPS and he didn’t have a bed at night to sleep in. I had clothes with special coating so I didn’t get bitten by anything. It must’ve been unbelievably difficult and I can’t understand how he did it. I mean we were there only four months and one crew member got malaria and two people got dengue. Somehow he marched to the jungle multiple times in the eight trips he went on that’s really about 20 years’ worth of living.

What would have happened if he found the City of Z?

Perhaps if he had found it, it would have been kind of anticlimactic for him. We have a real-life example of this in Hiram Bingham, who discovered Machu Picchu but his life had to have another act. He became a Senator. And I feel like if Fawcett had found some city in the jungle he would’ve looked at it for about twenty minutes and thought, “This is totally amazing. What the hell do I do now?” So much of what it was about for him was about the need to escape.

What is it that you think drives people to become explorers, to go past what is on a map?

There are noble qualities to exploration, there really are. There is an unending curiosity, there’s a remarkable drive, there is a stunning courage but there are also darker, less noble, aspects to it. One is the need to escape confronting what it means to be a person living in this world. I think that Fawcett’s whole need for exploration was in part a need to get out, a need to get away from what was very obviously a situation that was punishing to him. The father was a terrible alcoholic and was a gambler. He destroyed not one but two family fortunes. It shamed the family. So Fawcett was trying to escape from Victorian England and the cruelty of that world that seemed so punishing. And I think part the need for exploration is just to get out.