‘Slumdog Millionaire’ w/ Aneesh Chaganty

Full Transcript of Technicolor Theatre podcast: Season 3, Episode 1

To kick off Season 3 of Technicolor Theatre podcast, Aditya is joined by Aneesh Chaganty, the director of the new Hulu film Run, to talk about their experiences with India, telling stories about communities other than your own, and the divisive legacy of 2008’s Slumdog Millionaire.

The episode aired on December 10, 2020 and can be found here. Full transcript below.

Aditya: Hello and welcome to Technicolor Theatre, a Mediaversity Reviews podcast about representation on film. My name is Aditya Joshi, and I could not be more thrilled that joining me today, now that he has successfully convinced a group of British tourists that the Taj Mahal is a luxury hotel, is Aneesh Chaganty. Aneesh, thanks so much for being here.

Aneesh: Thank you very much.

Aditya: Super, super excited to have you on the show. Before we dive into your work and the movie we’re going to talk about today. Would love if you could just introduce yourself to the listeners and talk a little bit about how you identify.

Aneesh: Totally. Yeah. So, my name is Aneesh Chaganty and I’m an Indian American writer and director.

Aditya: Great. So the movie we’re talking about today is Slumdog Millionaire, which has a very interesting place in the South Asian diaspora and the community. A super surprising choice. Honestly, I think I was expecting like, M. Night Shyamalan or something, so I can’t wait to dive into Slumdog and what it means to you.

But I have to say, if you’ll allow me to be a fan real quick before we do that, I’m super hyped to have you on the show. As an Indian American writer, director, podcast person, I always track everyone else Brown who’s doing amazing work. And so I’ve been tracking you honestly since Seeds [his breakout Google Glass commercial], which is one of my favorite short films that I’ve ever seen. And probably, if I can say, one of my favorite things you’ve done…

Aneesh: Wow, deep cut. It’s my favorite thing I’ve ever done too.

Aditya: Part of it for me is that I feel so emotionally connected to it. I think partially because you’re in it and you look somewhat like me and, and I think you being the star makes it feel so personal, which, which is actually a thing that I’ve noticed about a lot of your Google commercials.

So you’re not an actor, but you place yourself and the trappings and experiences of your life in that particular work. Was that an intentional choice to put yourself in a lot of your Google work?

Aneesh: First of all, that was all very well said. Thank you for the compliments. I also think Seeds is the best thing I’ve ever done. I will always be chasing the feeling of, of making it. Like that is the only thing that I’ve ever done where I truly feel like I wouldn’t change a frame of that. Sometimes I go, “Oh, I wish there was a motorcycle,” but you know, apart from that, I really, I wouldn’t change a thing about it.

But yeah, I mean, I didn’t put myself in the Google stuff because of, like some sort of creative choice and because I had options. It was all necessity, you know? So like for the Google Glass Commercial, which was all shot on Google glass, I had to be the main character, because there was no other way to see what I was shooting, you know? And so I basically I wore the same clothes, like for two weeks, a wedding ring and, and shot this thing where I was like both the actor and the director, and like acting opposite real actors sometimes and like constantly telling them, “I’m so sorry that I’m not going to be able to provide you the emotional support that you need on camera here, because I suck at this, but please try your best.”

So yeah, and then the Google stuff. I dunno… the Google things have always felt more personal to me, ironically, you know, despite the fact that that’s such a massive corporation, because the way those spots and their directives have always felt was always like the anti-Apple, you know? It wasn’t put together and clean.

It was “do it yourself.” Anytime you watch a Google commercial, it just feels so made by actual humans. I learned very quickly that like my photos and my memories and in 2018 to 2020, the way my family looked, those can end up shipping, you know?

And so I ended up like using a lot of my family photographs and stuff. And I used to work at this place called the Creative Lab and your job is to sort of look around at Google and make things for them before they ask for it.

And like, oftentimes you’re ripping from YouTube and taking other people’s photos and then when that project is approved, all you’re doing is like reshooting those photos and videos. Exactly like the originals are. And in my case, it’s like nobody wanted to reshoot it because like, A) we have the rights to all that stuff and it just looked like exactly what they would want to recreate anyways. So, it ended up being me in a lot of, in a lot of ways.

I ended up being the voice of the Google photos campaign. I think I have, I think I can do a pretty good voice acting job. And I think they realized that. So it was a lot, a lot of coincidences ended up featuring myself and my family through my early work at Google. But now obviously I’m taking a much more backseat role.

Aditya: Yeah, I kinda, I can kinda sense that obviously like early on in anyone’s filmmaking career, you’re operating out of necessity and, and it’s like, what do you have lying around? It sounds like the Creative Lab you were almost running demos for yourself of what a future film would look like… and you were just like, the demo is good enough. The demo will work as a film.

Aneesh: Exactly.

Aditya: So let’s, let’s talk a little bit about the work you’re doing now, where you’re a little bit more in the background. Mediaversity rates movies, not just on a technical level, but on how well they represent the underrepresented communities that are featured in them. So, Run and Searching both got A-’s, which is super, super good. ’Cause it’s not just, are they in it? It’s like, do they feel authentic and honest? I do feel like in these movies, they are treated with such care.

It is so interesting because the characters are not South Asian. Searching is an East Asian family and the protagonist of Run is in a wheelchair. So I’d love to know — how do you approach the responsibility that you have there for representation when it’s a group that’s not necessarily your own?

Aneesh: I mean, it’s one of those things that always nags at me. It’s just like, dude, I gotta make the Indian movie now. That’s what we’re doing at the next one. The main character is going to be Indian.

But, Searching came about so naturally it was like, we were writing the story and we’d written the story and the whole time I was really like it’s got to be an Indian, Indian characters in this movie. And like, the more that we like fleshed out the relationship between the dad and the daughter, the less I recognized that relationship in Indian families. I just didn’t see that relationship in Indian families. I couldn’t tell you a relative or someone’s relative who had that relationship, because it just didn’t feel like something that I’d seen before. But I had seen that, that similar relationship in East Asian families, I had seen that in Korean families, I’ve seen that in my Japanese family friends.

Honestly, I think like I would have loved and preferred in a way to just be like, “I’m the Brown director and I’m only making things with Brown actors in it,” but it just didn’t feel natural to the story. I think our pivot immediately was like, “Okay, we’re still making this in a way that is representative of the community that it takes place in. And like, it takes place in Silicon Valley and that community looks a certain way. The people who my family had overlooked a certain way.

And so it was immediately like, okay, this is a movie that’s all Asian American. And we got John Cho, so it’s all Korean American.

And then, and then, you know, Run happens and we had written a film that, regardless of the representational politics involved in the casting, that back then was not part of this larger cultural Munchausen movement, but just sort of on its own and was like working as a mystery before anybody knew what Munchausen was. And then it was sort of like just a no-brainer. It just felt like we were really, really moved by how much Searching affected people. The thing I love about Searching is that it does not care about being representationally forward. It doesn’t care at all, you know? Like it’s just like, okay, here’s the family. Like, here’s a story.

Run, I think is a little bit more center stage than Searching because in a lot of ways, it tackles themes that are kind of adjacent to disability itself. You know, you’re talking about the culture a little bit. We just felt we had seen the positive effects of Searching and we’re just like, we would be stupid to not try this again. And it’s so powerful to see oneself and it just never was a conversation when we wrote it, we were like, “Okay. So we’re casting somebody who is actually disabled,” and just kind of went from there.

Aditya: Yeah, of course. Well, that’s so interesting because it sounds like for you, with Searching especially, content kind of dictated form. You were like, I know what the relationship needs to be. I know what I want the father-daughter thing to look like. This probably isn’t authentic to my community. Whereas I think knowing just myself and my writing partner, and then a lot of our Indian American filmmaker friends for example, will be like, “I want to write about this relationship, and let me build a story around that.” So it’s really interesting that you kind of go the other way.

Aneesh: This is the first time somebody has said that the form followed the content in description of Searching. That is the first time — it’s always the other way around for obvious reasons.

Aditya: Yeah, well, I guess it’s form dictates content dictates form. Well, we’ll talk more about those movies I’m sure as we dive into Slumdog, but let’s talk a little bit about Slumdog.

For those who haven’t seen it, Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 film about Jamal Malik, a young orphan from the slums of Bombay who wins a Who Wants to be a Millionairestyle game show and is treated with suspicion because of his background. The movie kind of uses the backdrop of the game show and the subsequent police interrogation to show a sweeping portrait of Jamal’s life and his relationships.

The interesting thing about this movie to me is that it won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director for Danny Boyle. And kind of like Parasite, not a single member of the South Asian cast was nominated for an Oscar.

Aneesh: And unlike Parasite, mostly hated by the country and the people of the country that it actually portrayed.

Aditya: Yeah. You know, that’s kind of where I was going to go with that. What was your experience like the first time that you watched Slumdog?

Aneesh: So I’m really excited to be talking about this movie. I’ve done interview after interview talking about the importance of how M. Night Shyamalan has sort of brought me into the world of filmmaking and that’s all true.

And, in that way, I guess there’s no more important representation to me as a filmmaker. But I think as a human being, the effect of Slumdog Millionaire when it came out at the age that I was, was very, very immense.

And so first let’s start off with the cons of this movie now, because like, this is a controversial pick and I’m aware of that. First of all, it basically perpetuates just stereotype after stereotype in a lot of, lot of ways. It’s made by people who are not from this culture, almost top-down. I mean, it had a co-director who’s Indian, but like for the most part, you know, it was written by a white guy, directed by a white guy, edited by white people, shot by white people, and like, obviously with love, but it still came from another perspective.

It is not made for the people that it’s trying to show, but just sort of exploiting all of those things to like further kind of Other the sense of India and the exotic, if that makes sense.

There’s so many cons about this movie and why shouldn’t be picked, but here’s my reason for it:

I feel like I’m on like this sports draft show — here’s why I’m drafting Slumdog Millionaire. The reason that Slumdog Millionaire was, is still, I think an overall good thing is because it is, overall, still a step forward. I think that’s as much as reflective of the movie itself as it is about the context of the time that it was released in.

Like today, if you go to high school, like. If you go to any high school or middle school, the culture has totally changed from when you and I were in high school. I was in high school from 2005 to 2009, you know? There was no hot Asian guy. There was no hot Brown guy. There was no hot Asian girl and Brown girl. It was always like white people, you know?

The media that kids watch from, from a very, very young age to like the teen, the pubescent age really affects the way that you see the world and they affect your likes and your dislikes and your tastes and your proclivities and all that stuff.

When a group of people or an entire country is being fed, “Here is the image of a handsome person. Here’s the image of a brave person. Here’s the image of a courageous person. Here’s the image of a romantic lead.” And they all look the same way… like that does something to people. And that affects people’s lives.

Maybe not in a way that’s like you’re being bullied every day. That wasn’t the case with me. But in these tiny, tiny, like, microscopic shifts that end up affecting this macro experience of your life as a kid. And to me, Slumdog Millionaire was the first time that I had that, had something come out where like the Brown guy was the lead, the Brown guy got a beautiful girl in the end of the movie, the Brown guy ended up using his smarts.

And on top of it, it was an acclaimed movie. Despite this exploitation that I think you could kind of critique it on, the way people discussed it when it first came out did not feel exploitative. They genuinely loved the movie.

And I think like if you ignore all of those negative effects, the positive for me in that moment was that I wasn’t being compared to a terrorist or a 7-Eleven person. I was being compared to Jamal, you know, and that’s a cool character to be compared to. Now, if you told me that, I don’t, I don’t care as much, but back then, it meant so much to me to have that out there and out in the world and as such a major part of the culture, because it felt like for the first time that like, I was on camera in a way, and like, I belong to that. I belong to that, that thing that everybody’s talking about — I belong to that. That was like extremely important to me, despite all the negatives of that movie.

Aditya: That’s so interesting because I think I’m a little bit younger than you. And I know you were, you were heading, I think, heading off to film school, it sounds like, like right as this movie came out. I honestly had not seen it until this past weekend when you were like, we’re going to talk about Slumdog Millionaire. And I think part of the reason that I was holding off is for the last decade… when I would be like, I’m an Indian kid, I like movies, it was always, “Oh, you like movies. Have you seen Slumdog Millionaire? Great movie. Love India.” And I think for me it was almost an act of rebellion to not see it, because I think, and I’m curious if you have a relationship with Bollywood because I, to me, it didn’t feel too, too different from Bollywood movies, except it’s as if someone had seen like, kind of a random Bollywood movie about poverty and was like, “Oh, now I understand India.”

To me that’s, that’s kind of the level of representation it felt like at the time, I think just because it was all in Hindi and it was like set in India and it didn’t represent the Indian American experience in the way that, to me, something like The Namesake might’ve.

Do you have a relationship with Bollywood? Did you feel that way?

Aneesh: To be quite honest with you, I thought the worst part about Slumdog Millionaire is the dance at the end. I think because it feels so… trying to do something that like, none of the people there actually know how to embrace, you know,? You don’t just put people in a line and like, do it. There’s more to it, you know?

Like, and it’s like the “je ne sais quoi,” you know, like there’s something about it that like, that’s not an Indian person making that, you know? So I thought like a lot of the elements that they were trying to replicate from Bollywood didn’t work, but I, but one of the reasons that I appreciated that movie is that at least for my POV, there was a lot there that was trying to not be a Bollywood movie.

Like I thought, dude, the cinematography of that movie! The cinematographer, Anthony Dod Mantle, who was the DP of that film, created this brief little phase of just like, super DIY camera, where, like the frame rate is insane. And the colors are popping and like, he took that for 127 Hours. You know, like if you watch 127 Hours, it’s the same style. That’s what I saw in Slumdog Millionaire. It wasn’t going to India and we have to shoot this way. It was like, creating this really unique visual look to it.

And I loved how seriously people took it. The whole thing. It wasn’t like a joke that it was India, you know? And no one’s like making fun of the accents or anything. But, my relationship to Bollywood is almost like, it feels very separate to this movie.

I grew up watching Hindi movies and Telegu movies and sometimes a Tamil movie, but like mostly Telegu and Hindi films. So like I never, ever felt like this was an Indian movie, you know? I felt like it was an American movie. It was a Hollywood movie, and I loved it for that because that was what I wanted because I grew up in America. I wanted an American movie or a movie that Americans would talk about. Somebody who looked like me could be kissing the cute girl at the end.

Aditya: Right. That makes a ton of sense. I think I missed the whole boat by not watching it at the time and now looking back and trying to contextualize it and where I was at 13.

But, we were saying you went to film school right after this, and after this experience and kind of feeling seen for the first time in a Western movie, did that affect how your film school experience went and shape the kind of movies you wanted to make at all?

Aneesh: I’ve always liked unconventional story structure, and I think that’s another reason that I love Slumdog Millionaire. You’ve seen a lot of my work. It’s like I’ve shot on Google glass. My first short film was shot entirely in reverse. I’ve made things that are on slideshows or montages. I made Searching. Run is like, intentionally the most classic thing in the world.

But I like unconventional and the way that Slumdog Millionaire plays with structure, I think is so, so masterful. The way that it uses its framing device to kind of like shuttle us between times that aren’t even sometimes chronological, but then sometimes are.

Like I, I just thought it was so, so inventive. So like that’s another element of that movie that I always cited as something that I really want to do. And funny enough, like the movie that I’m writing now, like Slumdog from a visual standpoint is going to be such an inspiration for it. Referencing the frames again, not for what it’s showing, but for how it’s showing it.

But, I mean, I think like early on, you know, a freshman in, in film school, everyone’s favorite movies are like, “Oh, I like Oldboy or I like City of God. Everyone has like the same posters on the wall, and like, Pulp Fiction you love and all that stuff.

So like, I think Slumdog was definitely on that list. I did think that like, as I grew older, I got tired of the nods of like, “Oh, of course.” You know, like the, of course nod to when I would mention Slumdog. That’s when the negative things started coming in and the initial kind of aura had had a little bit faded. Whenever I mentioned Slumdog, people go, “Of course.”

I didn’t like that, and that became that sense of rebellion later on. It was like, I’m not going to talk about Slumdog Millionaire too much, because like, even though it means a lot to me, I don’t like the tokenism that I’m sort of like promoting in a way whenever I talk about it. And it sounds like that’s one of the exact reasons that you yourself kind of like pushed away from it too.

Aditya: Yeah, I think that’s exactly kind of why I didn’t watch it until last week.

Aneesh: Wait, it was your first time watching it?

Aditya: My first time watching it was on Sunday.

Aneesh: What’d you think?

Aditya: I thought it was good. I was expecting to hate it, I think, because of all the things that you kind of like listed off at the top, and my parents had never wanted to rewatch it, but then they came in as I was watching the movie and they were like, “Oh, Slumdog, great. Jai Ho come on yet?” And I was like, “I thought you didn’t like this movie.” And they’re like, “No, no, we liked the movie. It just is not a movie that we ever want to really rewatch because of the way that it portrays India.”

It’s kind of like an underbelly thing that if you grew up in a certain part of Mumbai, then you would have only seen kind of tangentially.

Aneesh: Dude. I feel that so much.

Like again, I hope I’m managing the tones here. Cause I do not think that this is like the gold standard of, of, of how I want other Brown kids or Brown people or us to feel, you know, but it’s important because of the timeframe that it came out. It’s not necessarily just important because if it came out today, I don’t know if I would feel the same way about it, you know? I probably wouldn’t at all, but like it’s so important, in 2008 for that movie to come out and do as well as it did. That was awesome. It does give me a sense of like fire in the sense of like, no, no, no, no. I want to present that to people. I see that they’re not taking care of it right. The right way, you know, like they’re not looking, they’re not showing this culture with love.

Like, it doesn’t feel like it’s being held in hands that know it and care for it and love it. You know, it’s just being shown. And I think like ever since Slumdog has come out — ignoring the technical aspects of that film, which I love — that’s something that I want to do so badly. And hasn’t honestly been done much. Show our world with some for fragility and some love, you know?

And I think that Slumdog really showed me that it is possible that if you do it right, like at least people will watch it. And I think that put a lot of fire in my belly.

Aditya: Yeah, I think about that a lot with all the movies that I love about our community. I think about it with Slumdog, The Namesake, The Big Sick, like all these movies. Hala that just came out last year. They all are kind of accelerating the representation of the South Asian community.

And every time that I watch a movie like that, I’m like, “sick.” Kumail’s the romantic lead. This movie is hilarious, nominated for an Oscar, but also it shows a very narrow depiction of what Indian parents can be. So like now when I make a movie, I want to make it a different version, a more nuanced version of that.

And, and I think that totally makes sense that it would be like, this is the first thing I see that I look like the people in it. Now I’m going to make something better. Told from the perspective of the people in it.

Aneesh: By the way, I’ve done — like in doing a lot of natural self-examining as you do these interviews about Run — at least I’m in the Run phase right now — It’s like, I expect there’ll be a large portion of the disabled community that looks back on Run with similar feelings, you know, where it’s just like, it is a step. It is a step forward now, but does that mean that like disabled people should be watching films made by non-disabled filmmakers, basically kind of tangentially about disability?

No, like you want to see yourself in romantic movies and action movies and things that don’t rely on that as a hook. So I think in a lot of ways, I think Run is absolutely a step forward. No question about it. But I feel it’s unfair sometimes to judge something out of the time that it was made, because the context of the time that it was made is as much of a factor about it as any of the elements of the film itself.

Aditya: For sure. I think I talk a lot to my queer friends about this. It’s like the difference between watching Moonlight and watching Brokeback Mountain. You’re like, okay, there’s such a clear gap in kind of the way that film has progressed. But in 2004 or whenever Brokeback, came out, the fact that it was an Oscar-nominated movie by an acclaimed director that showed a gay relationship at the center was a big deal. And I think at the same, you know, like you’re saying, the fact that Slumdog came out and showed Indian people, Indian Muslims, especially at the center in 2008 is like a big deal.

Aneesh: I mean, my family isn’t Muslim, but like anytime Muslims are depicted as good characters and not bad character is always a win. I think, you know, that’s just rare.

Aditya: It’s that I’m rooting for everyone Brown kind of thing. Like that’s how I feel. Every time I watch these movies, it doesn’t matter if it’s exactly me. If I see anyone, I’ll send my writing partner a post on Instagram and be like, “Squad! Look at this like Indian guy or Indian girl, like doing something cool.”

So something I had mentioned briefly, but I’m really curious about, is so obviously one of the big criticisms that you brought up earlier about Slumdog, that I think was pretty present at the time too was the way it depicted India. I think especially our parents’ generation felt a type of way about that.

What is your relationship to India and going back, and how do you feel like this movie played with the way that you already felt about India? If it did at all?

Aneesh: I go to India every year. I have, since I was a kid, and I don’t spend time in Mumbai. My family’s from Hyderabad, so I see Hyderabad. But there are similarities and I would never, ever, watch Slumdog and go like, yeah, that’s the India that I know.

You know that kind of like points to that thing of like, no, they’re not handling it the way, they’re not taking care of it the way that like we would. I’m also a step away. Like I didn’t grow up in India. Like, I’m, I’m an Indian American, you’re an Indian American. From my own kind of skirting the line as to which side I’m on, you know, like that wasn’t the world that I know, you know, but it like, as a movie itself, I think it really, really worked. Obviously people in India didn’t like it.

My India is quieter. I know the sounds of the morning and I know like the people who yell coffee and tea and like, you know, like as they’re yelling down the streets, but like, it’s like background noise. It’s not always like [makes drum noise], you know, like it’s and I think like, oftentimes like India on TV and film gets portrayed as like, maximum, you know, just like, boom, boom.

And there are totally elements to that, you know, there where it’s like overwhelming, but like so much of my Indian experience is sort of like quiet mornings and, you know, you can hear kind of like people who are selling food, and like, birds.

Aditya: Yeah. Yeah. So I lived in India for five months at the end of 2019 into 2020. and so watching this now, both because I lived in Mumbai and there was like a line in there where Dev comes back and he’s like, Bombay had turned into Mumbai and there was this, like this whole new set of things in the second half. And then also like I rode the train once or twice, and I was like, this is exactly what the train was like.

But it felt to me, a little bit, like the way Katherine Bigelow’s Detroit portrays Detroit to people who live in Detroit.

Those movies are almost like poverty and violence porn about Detroit or Oakland or Chicago and Slumdog in some ways did a little bit of that about India, but it is like a recognizable part of it. I just think it’s a part that we would never see, which is, I think, what you’re saying.

Aneesh: It’s like, dude, it’s like cocaine story in Colombia or like a human trafficking story in Mexico.

It’s just like, dude, we’re so much more than that. Like I think that’s so much of the feeling of that movie too. It’s just like, we come on the stage once and it’s just like, we get that again. You know, like it’s like, I wouldn’t have been surprised that they found a really clever way to do like a snake scene in, in Slumdog, you know, like they would have pulled it off.

That whole movie is just basically taking imagery that we already kind of associated with India and just turning it in and putting it in the wheels of a really excellent narrative.

And it’s just this constant clash of just being like, shit. Do I like it? Do I like the screenplay? And do I like the, like the, like the filmmaking style or do I like what’s being shown? It’s a conflict and that’s why it’s a controversial sort of take, I think for why it’s an important kind of representational choice.

Aditya: Yeah. Well, you know what I think surprised me is how much some of these themes still hit and like actually worked really well. I think again, I was expecting something bad and it was actually, like you said, quite good. Danny Boyle is a good director and the visuals were cool. The storytelling structure, I’m usually pretty skeptical of, like, a guy-gets-interviewed-and-talks-about-what-happened structure, but it works really well in this movie much better than like, for example, Hustlers, which I loved but I didn’t feel like we needed the Julia Stiles interaction at all.

But the one thing that really hit to me and — I’d love to know what you think about this — is that the movie reflects a pretty clear type of class insecurity, which I thought was really interesting with Anil Kapoor’s character and actually generally everyone, the way they treat Jamal, they’re just kind of like, you’re a guy from the slum. Like what do you know?

And I think it’s really indicative of the way that both in the U.S. but I mean, both in the U.S. and India, but especially in India, that like wealth and education are such signifiers of potential and value. Yeah, I’m, I’m curious whether that’s something that you latch onto, and if, I guess like a little bit how that plays into the way that you treated Kiera Allen’s character in Run, just because I think that’s another one, like the character is really counted out the whole movie and she kind of rises above that.

Aneesh: I feel like this sort of class difference is something that is really kind of a conversation that’s obviously, just from the 2000s has continually gotten larger and larger and larger to the point that a Korean movie about this can win Best Picture, you know? And it’s still going. I think the depiction of those little interactions is perfectly accurate, perfectly fine. You know, in the absence of skin color, differentiating people 100% with class, the only thing, you know, what we wear on our backs. Like it happens here except in America, like skin color is associated with that.

And on top of that, it’s not, it’s not like separated. So, you know, in India, it’s like, everyone kind of looks like everyone’s kind of shades of Brown. So like, you know, the way that we talk the way, like, I don’t know. Yeah. The way that everybody referred to him on TV, the way that the mob guy talks to all the kids, it’s so reflective of a dismissal. And that is true. That’s totally true. And I don’t feel like Slumdog really went into that, but like, in India, your example of what you talked about, like, yeah. That’s, that’s perfectly accurate.

I don’t know how I’m going to bring that answer to Run. Yeah. It wasn’t unintentional if that comparison is supposed to be made to someone like, to Kiera.

But I do think that, you know, in my conversations with Kiera about Run and when we were talking about the script and making sure that it was not in an unhealthy way being made from this like ableist agenda — which was like a word that I didn’t even know, until I learned about it — and we talked about how what she really appreciates about the movie, which I have come to like about it, is that the biggest obstacles in the movie are sort of like, are the obstacles that have been placed in front of her by able-bodied people, you know? Whether it’s the way they talk, whether it’s the way they view her. And like, in order to beat the characters of the movie, she has to weaponize her own disability, you know? And like in line, when she stops in line, they look down at her. And she’s like, “Oh my God, I’m paralyzed feel bad for me” and like wheels up to the front. And that is like weaponizing what makes you unique, in some ways to, a wider culture to like exploit that. And when she described the movie that way to me like that, I was like, wow. I love that.

Aditya: Well Run does a really great job of subverting expectations, I think, without getting too campy about it. It’s like my favorite scene in the movie, your movie, without spoiling too much, is the rooftop scene. It’s not like you went out of your way to put a ton of obstacles in front of her character.

It’s just like you, when you’re watching that, you’re like so stressed out because you know, that’s an actual thing that you, at least you think that’s an actual thing that would have to happen to that character to get from point A to point B.

Aneesh: Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And then the whole point of that movie was like we’ve seen a thousand movies that take place in contained houses before, or like in a single house, but like, why is this house different?

And the reason this house is different and this movie is different is because our lead is in a wheelchair, you know? And now suddenly the obstacles, it’s like pencils and doorknobs and window frames and, and notebooks, staircases, like these very domestic things that like, we like that like sort of able-bodied people have built into our lives to make our lives easier, are being weaponized against Kiera, which is kind of representative of just like the way that we think about the world and sort of like this very narrow-minded I guess not inclusive way of thinking about it, even though it’s not intentionally not included.

Aditya: From what I can tell you, you did a lot of work with Kiera to like, make sure that that felt really authentic and accurate. What was that like?

Aneesh: I mean, I, you know, kind of said this earlier, but like, you know, I’m an able-bodied Brown dude writing for a disabled white woman, you know, and like in a house of two women, you know? And so like the first thing that we realized is like, we just became very conscious of that, like very awkwardly conscious about it and being like, okay, so here’s the thing that we wrote, but you know, like, please take a look at it.

And like, I remember, like I worked with Kiera, we went through every line of the script, so detailed and we talked about her backstories for like hours and hours and hours. And like, I just remember constantly being like, “Is this real, would this actually happen?” And even though I was like, shit, like if she makes us change something, it’s going to take so much time.

We’re so screwed. We’re so screwed running out of time. Like every time you’d ask her that and like, we’d ask her about the room and like, would she design the room this way? Cause like I had my own ideas for the room. And when she told me about how inaccessible the whole room was, I was like, “Oh shit,” you know?

And like you gotta change everything. And it was a lot of tiny movements and changes whether it’s like tiny lines or the way that she wouldn’t let certain people come behind her because you don’t want to, like, you’re not supposed to push her without asking her because that’s like a violation of her own agency, you know?

And I think like that stuff, tiny, tiny things like that inform a lot. And like, not only for the story, but as I think me as a human being and like opening my eyes to this entirely new perspective that I had never seen before, apart from, like, the feel-bad-for-me kind of stories that were on TV.

Aditya: Right. Well, it’s the specific that makes it feel authentic, right? Again, like I can’t speak to the authenticity of the disabled point of view and, and Run. But, I think the fact that those specifics exist make me feel like it probably is honest or true to life which it sounds like you worked really hard with Kiera to get there.

I’m curious. I know that you’re, you’re on Letterboxd, and you, I’m sure you read all the Letterboxd reviews of Run. How, how has the disabled community been responding to Run? I’m curious now, based on just our whole conversation about Slumdog and the parallels you drew.

Aneesh: Yeah. I mean, to be honest with you most of the community’s response to Run has been on Twitter and has been told to me through Kiera. That’s just been very gratifying, you know, like very, very gratifying. Kiera is always sending me like, “look what this person sent me and look what this person has sent me.” Like, like this movie means so much to this person and this person and this person. And that’s very heartwarming and validating, just not as like I’m doing some sort of social good, but just as like a filmmaker that you’re able to make something that makes somebody feel that way, is awesome.

But I think we’ve had a lot of really good response from the disabled community, whether it be like disabled writers who are interviewing us or whatnot. I think to speak specifically to Letterboxd, there’s a Letterboxd user named Lucy who is very, very popular in Letterboxd as far as her reviews go. Hey Lucy — I think this is going to, like, if she hears this, this is going to blow her mind. But like she wrote an incredibly, incredibly, touching review of the film and, you know, she gave the movie four stars and she talked about, just like what it meant to her to see Kiera on screen and like, that’s invaluable, you know? Like it’s like, the review might’ve like lightly touched on in the movie in some capacities, you know, like it was just like, yeah the movie worked, but it starred Kiera. And I think like that sort of response has been very, very, very, very gratifying to receive. I was very — to be quite honest with you — very kind of nervous because like, again, I’m not from this community and like I’m a director making a movie and it’s actually funny and parallel and kind of ironic that we’re talking about Slumdog, which is, in a lot of ways, you can draw the similar parallels there. But I was very concerned. Like, is this going to feel like an exploitation by Aneesh, you know?

Thankfully people haven’t responded that way. I’m not saying people don’t feel that way. I just haven’t heard it that much, but like we have really been felt with a lot of love from the community and how much it means to have an actual disabled [wheelchair]-user play a disabled character, or a [disabled] actor play a disabled character.

Aditya: Well, it’s a thing that you said right? About Slumdog right at the beginning of the podcast. Just the fact that a Brown guy got the cute girl and the cute girl was also Brown, like meant so much to you at whatever 16, 17, however old you were. And I think I, you know, I felt the same way. Even when I watched like Harold and Kumar, I was like, look, this dude is a stoner and he’s chilling and he gets a cute girl at the end, even though he has to do some crazy stuff in Guantanamo, like dope that he, that Kal Penn, is doing things that are not related to him just being Brown. And the fact that I can see what an Indian mom looks like and, you know, an Indian family is like in The Big Sick, even if it’s not like mine, just like those things I think are so heartening and exciting.

And I know for me, and I’m sure for you too, [it’s] inspiring because you’re like, if this exists, then my thing can exist, which is, I think, such a big deal for, for these communities.

Aneesh: Absolutely. Yeah. I think the only thing that I want to see more — and this is something that I think Slumdog has done and not too many people have done since — is like, I want to see like what you said, like the Brown girl and the Brown guy together, or like just the Brown couple of, regardless of sex and gender, you know? Like I often feel like it’s like, only half of the pie so that you could get a name star or whatnot, and like, I exclude from this The Big Sick which is based on real experiences and I’m, I’m not critiquing that. But like, I think it happens with every single race, you know? Like, their love interest is the white blonde person and like, maybe this is just a personal thing, I think like we can all exist and I, and again, every single one of those projects that even does that, like, I am so grateful for, and I’m so happy that they exist.

Aditya: Right. I mean, that’s the critique, that’s one of the big critiques that people had about The Mindy Project. And I was like, guys, there’s an Indian woman on TV for seven seasons. Just enjoy it. She doesn’t have to date all the Indian men that are in Hollywood.

Aneesh: Totally, totally.

Aditya: Okay. Last couple questions here. Do you feel like Slumdog Millionaire has had a lasting legacy for the filmmaking community?

Aneesh: No. No. I feel like that’s often the curse. I mean, there’s so many movies that win Best Picture that you forget about, you know, like the movie, and I — I think like Slumdog is one of those movies to me — and Danny Boyle — like it will always be so instrumental. I find its value so apparent and it’s something that I could, will, study.

You know, it’s funny. I just updated my Letterboxd top four, and I put Slumdog on there and like, I always update my Letterboxd top four to reflect the vibe of what I’m going for with the next project, as opposed to what I like the most. And sometimes it’s up there because of the style of that movie.

But, I think it had a really strong legacy for five or six years. And I think like, its effect is a little bit, faded. And maybe that’s, maybe that’s a good thing, you know? Like the movie itself was most important to me and I think to a lot of people in 2008, when it came out and its effects and understandably are around that time.

Aditya: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I would agree. I think that when I watched it, I was no longer thinking so much about the political context in the way that I felt for like eight to 10 years after it came out. I was like, all right, good movie, solid, solid stuff here. Look how young Dev looks and how skinny. And I’m not, I love him, but he’s not good at dancing.

Aneesh: Yeah. Before he became like a serious actor.

Aditya: Yeah. But before he was like a heartthrob.

Okay. Last question. How has Slumdog influenced your work to date/how do you think it’ll continue to influence the work that you’re doing going forward?

Aneesh: Oh, well, that’s, I mean, that’s easy. I was kind of alluding to this earlier — by the way, like, Danny Boyle’s one my favorite filmmakers. Not just for Slumdog, but in general. He’s one of the few filmmakers who feels like. It’s hard to sort of cliche Danny Boyle because he’s always experimenting with his own style. Kind of like Soderbergh, you know, like I put Soderbergh and Boyle on similar levels in the sense of, they’re always trying new things like Danny Boyle, his films don’t feel like he’s shooting them so preciously, you know? Like it’s sort of like, we’re going to go here and then we’ll just go get this kind of weird thing here. I love how young and, and daring his movies feel. I love that that his movies convey so much energy and excitement in them. So like from Slumdog, for me, like that is directly something that I want to do, at least on the next film is like, I really want to capture this spontaneity and improvisational energy that Slumdog Millionaire, his camera style and colors really, really kind of like exude very effectively. That to me is where I see the most that I pull from it. And then again, on a narrative structural level, I love unconventional things. And the way that that movie plays, it had probably had one of the most creative framing devices. It’s not a conversation that flashes to the past, you know, like it is a very creative framing device and a really cool way to, to tell a story we’ve seen before.

Aditya: Can you give us a preview of what the Slumdog-inspired movie is going to be?

Aneesh: No, I wouldn’t say something inspired. Yeah, it’s Slumdog Billionaire. No, so basically like the next movie is a heist film. And it’s going to be, it’s sort of like closer to Ocean’s 11 in like the tone and the vibe. It’s not a bunch of con men at the front of it, but like, it’s going to feel. I just need to change the pace a little bit from how intense Run was, you know? Like you shoot Run and you, you don’t realize that like every day you’re making a movie, like you are in the emotional, like you’re in the emotional headspace that the characters are going through. And then you’re editing that movie and you’re still in the emotional headspace. And it’s just like, dude, this shit is so dark. Like I’m so done, you know, with this sort — this is not even me.

And there’s a way, it feels like an exercise, but, our next film is a heist film, that is set against the backdrop of the American immigration industry and, immigration, in general. So, a lot of, sort of immigrants’ stories in the films, but in the context of a heist movie.

Aditya: Very cool. I can’t wait for you to genre hop all the way to rom-com. That’ll be in three films from now.

Before I let you go, and we always ask people, if there’s anything they want to plug. Obviously you have a new movie out. Do you want to tell everyone a little bit about it?

Aneesh: Yeah. So if you haven’t garnered from this conversation, the name of the new movie that is out is called Run. It’s a film that I co-wrote with Sev Ohanian, who produced it alongside Natalie Qasabian.

I directed the film, and it stars Sarah Paulson and Kiera Allen. It is available on Hulu and it tells the very tight and taut story of a mother and a daughter, the latter who discovers an innocuous object in her mom’s shopping bag and sets off a very kind of, scary series of events in her home.

Aditya: Yeah, it’s a great movie. Everyone go watch it. There’s a feature coming out on Mediversity Reviews about it, apparently. Li who runs the website, just told me. As well as a review. So you guys get the Run triple feature.

Cool. Aneesh, thanks so much for being here.

Aneesh: I really appreciate it.

Mediaversity Reviews is a project that grades TV & films on gender, race, and LGBTQ diversity. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to join the conversation!