Actors, you know, get to study their lines, do their parts and go home, but you got to tap into the business side as a producer ,and I imagine it's a lot to handle. Was it difficult making the leap from being in front of the camera to actually directing, writing, and producing a feature? Producing sounds like a lot of sleepless nights and a lot of stress. And that was based on a couple friends of mine that I've seen. and works at a gym. I figured he would have a couple different side hustles. where everyone kind of has like six different side hustles, I thought that was a nice characteristic to give to Sonny, since he does live in L.A. And I'd be like, what do I have to do? I'll try it but I don't want to like buy anything extra or I already use, you know, facewash and I don't need it. So, I feel like living in L.A., I've had friends and colleagues and just people that I've come in contact with that will invite me to like a makeup party or a skincare party or try this acai juice from Brazil. I thought that was cool, how you shed light on the monster of fraud, was that based on a personal experience? But something that we don't see in comedy or we don't see it films enough is pyramid schemes and how they prey on people with their Platinum level, "member of the month" BS. Because he's very layered character with a whole lot of different things going on. I loved the character, who plays Monica's roller coaster of a relationship with her brother Sonny. I thought it was amazing and asked him, "How did it come to fruition?" And then a couple years later I went to the Sundance Film Festival for the first time, and my friend Justin's film was playing there. And the question that I answered in my sketch was, well, what if one of these amazing 10-year-old spellers grew up to be a loser and just lived at home and didn't achieve anything in their life? So that was my four-page comedic sketch. If you Google spelling bee winners, you always see that they're doing really amazing stuff with their triple PhDs, working at NASA, or they're killing it on the professional Poker Tour. And I decided to have one of the themes of my sketches be a "Where are they now?" for spelling bee winners. Last year while we were on set filming, there were eight winners and seven of the eight winners were Indian American.Īnd so that idea stuck with me for a while and in 2015, I was in a UCB improv sketch writing class. And I was always really happy to see South Asian Americans winning these spelling bees. Ever since then, I started getting really into the spelling bees that were on ESPN every year. I didn't get out on some crazy five-syllable word. And honestly, I was like, you know what, I deserve this clowning because it is an easy word. So, I went to the regionals and I lost on the word "radish" and I came back to school, and all my friends were clowning me for losing on such an easy word. I went to a little private Catholic school. Ten people in your entire grade? That's a really small school! I spelled it with two D's instead of one. And I went up in the first round, and I spelled "radish" wrong. But then I went to regionals, which was really stressful. And you think that's a really big deal, but it's actually not because there were only 10 people in my grade. I think I I'll take you back to fourth grade, where I won my class spelling bee. And for me, that's how life is, you know, things are going well, and then you get hit with a ton of bricks.Ĭould you talk about what it feels like dealing with such heavy content and where the ideas came from? I thought your film was really funny and then it just got real, really really fast. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity. Read a Q&A of our conversation below to hear more about the Day's transition from acting to producing and directing and the advice she has on being productive during the COVID-19 quarantine. I recently got a chance to talk with Day about the film, which recently showed at the Bentonville Film Festival. Written, produced, directed by and starring Day, "Definition Please" follows Monica Chowdry (Day), a National Spelling Bee champ who hasn't really accomplished much in life as she deals with a sick mom and mentally ill, but fun and energetic brother as they all walk the line between South Asian and American culture, looking for meaning. "Do the Right Thing" made me and a whole generation of artists come to feel like we mattered, and "Awkward Black Girl" and "Insecure" star Sujata Day is positioning herself to do the same with her feature film debut "Definition Please." Beyond just seeing Black people in a film, Lee created world that captured our mannerisms, language and culture in a way that 7-year-old me had never seen in a movie before. Spike Lee's 1989 hit "Do the Right Thing" did it for me.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |