Interview (Part 1): Geeta Malik (2016 Nicholl Winner)

My 6-part chat with the writer of the winning script “Dinner With Friends”.

Geeta Malik wrote the original screenplay “Dinner With Friends” which won a 2016 Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting. Recently I had the opportunity to chat with Geeta about her background, her award-winning script, the craft of screenwriting, and what winning the Nicholl has meant to her.

Today in Part 1 of a 6 part series to run each day through Saturday, Geeta talks about her educational background, her family’s love of movies, how she has written and directed short films as a way of giving voice to her creativity:

Scott Myers: Let’s start at the beginning. Where did you grow up and how did you find your way into film making as an interest?

Geeta Malik: I grew up in Aurora, Colorado. Most of my family are scientists — I have an uncle who’s a wonderful painter, but nobody is involved with filmmaking. That being said, my parents always enjoyed the arts, so we were definitely exposed to it in a big way, especially Hindi music and film. We watched everything, from the biggest Bollywood films to what they called the “parallel cinema” films in the 50s, 60s and 70s — smaller, more realistic films that often explored a different side of India than the mainstream stuff. So, the arts always played a role in my life, but being an artist was never portrayed as a career path. It was always, “Oh, these are hobbies while you actually make money as a scientist, an engineer, or whatever else you want to be in the hard sciences.”

I went to UC Irvine for undergrad, and I started out in electrical engineering. The way I justified this to myself was that I really like astronomy, so I naively figured I could just go work for NASA or something. But I was awful and distracted with the math and science, because I was constantly writing stories and poems in the margins of my papers and not paying attention. I’ve been writing my whole life. It was much more natural and made a lot more sense for me to do an English degree, and so I switched my major halfway through college. And then, in my last year, I took a screenwriting class with a wonderful professor. I realized writing for movies could be a potential career.

I had also written a tiny, short little play that was produced in a festival in New York, and found that I wanted to direct my own work as well — to see what was in my head directly translated to the outside world — and so I went to UCLA’s grad program for film directing.

Scott: UC Irvine has got a pretty well recognized writing program at the MFA level. Is the undergraduate strong, too?

Geeta: I think it was. I had a great time there. I took a lot of creative writing classes, and the professors were amazing. I took a class with Alice Sebold, who wrote “The Lovely Bones,” and she was fantastic. I took a class with Maile Meloy, also an amazing author, and I met Aimee Bender, who had gone through the program and who came back for a book signing. She’s one of my favorite writers.

Scott: You say you got an MFA in directing at UCLA, right?

Geeta: Right.

Scott: You took a screenwriting class. That was the first time you dabbled in screenwriting, when you were at UC Irvine?

Geeta: Yeah. That was the first time. It was the last quarter of my last year that I decided to finally look into this whole filmmaking thing. I’d already started writing plays. I wrote some plays in high school, and I knew I wanted to move to L.A. — I think it was always in the back of my head that I wanted to learn more about film. So, I enrolled in that class and I just loved it.

Scott: Let’s jump back a little bit. As a youth, your family was introducing you to various Bollywood type movies. Were you also watching other foreign films or American movies?

Geeta: Yeah. My mom especially loved foreign films. To this day, she watches more movies than I do! And we watched plenty of American films as well — I remember “Fiddler on the Roof” and “My Fair Lady” being in pretty constant rotation. And my dad, he loved goofy comedies. We grew up on Mel Brooks, “Blazing Saddles,” and “Airplane,” “Naked Gun,” “Police Squad,” all those. He also loved westerns, which is one of my favorite genres.

Scott: Are there some particular filmmakers that, as a director, that have inspired you?

Geeta: Mira Nair is always the first. She was the first to make me aware that a woman, and an Indian woman at that, could direct amazing films that dealt with our culture but that could also go mainstream. She was the first to show me that it was possible to be a film director and look the way we do. I also love Kurosawa, The Coen Brothers, Sergio Leone. Another favorite is Raj Kapoor. He was an auteur back in India, and he made these bold, audacious films, and he did it within the mainstream Bollywood fold. He used singing and dancing as tools to push the story forward, so they were seamlessly integrated into the narrative.

Scott: Where did the comedy come from? Was that just a natural instinct or was that a result of being exposed to Mel Brooks and the like?

Geeta: I think there’s some natural instinct, but being exposed to all that comedy definitely helped! My parents are immigrants — my mom grew up in Kenya, and my dad grew up in India, but both moved to London in their teens, so their formative years were really there. So we also grew up with a lot of British humor, like “Fawlty Towers” and the “Blackadder Series.” One of my uncles was a huge fan of “The Goons,” and he’d listen to the tapes of their shows with us, and tapes of Dr. Demento. My first concert was Weird Al.

Scott: You’ve got children.

Geeta: Yeah, I have two little girls, age 4 and 2.5. My husband and I were really good friends in undergrad. We’ve known each other for a really long time! We started dating right before I went to film school, and we’ve been married almost nine years now.

Scott: You’ve directed some short films. How has that been?

Geeta: I directed a bunch of short films in film school, and then a few more after I graduated. I love writing and directing, and I love being on set, so doing shorts is a great way to keep working between bigger projects. I did a feature in 2010, and right after that was finished, I got pregnant with my first daughter. I had two kids in two years, so that’s been a little crazy. It’s been a challenge to balance everything.

Scott: The kids have got you on your toes, I’m sure.

Geeta: Yeah, definitely!

Scott: I watched your most recent short film, “Shameless.” Is that right?

Geeta: Yeah, that was in 2013, between kids.

Scott: It’s great.

Geeta: Thanks.

Scott: It’s a provocative take on patriarchal culture, but it’s also a comedy. It’s funny. Those are similar dynamics that you’ve got a play in your Nicholl winning script, “Dinner with Friends.” I’m wondering, could you talk about how you, in your mind, maybe embrace both drama and comedy in your filmmaking and how that plays out as far as you being an artist?

Geeta: That’s a good question. A lot of the Indian movies that I grew up watching were known as “masala” movies. “Masala” is a Hindi word for a mixture of spices, and these films were always a mixture of genres — you got drama, comedy, singing and dancing for the price of one ticket. So now, when I sit down to write something, there are always elements of both comedy and drama there. It’s hard for me to write a straight drama without adding moments of levity, and it’s hard to me to write a pure comedy without adding higher stakes. They go hand-in-hand for me. I love satire, and I love dark comedy. I’m a very sarcastic person! Often, the voice of my main character is my own voice. It’s a way for me to comment on what’s going on around me, especially when there’s an actual issue that I’m trying to address without alienating people and sounding like a PSA.

Scott: Alia, your protagonist, she’s probably fairly well echoing your sarcastic tone?

Geeta: Yeah, that’s me at 19! And still now, a little bit.

Here is video of Geeta accepting her 2016 Nicholl Award in December of last year:

Tomorrow in Part 2, Geeta and I dig into her script Nicholl Award winning script “Dinner With Friends”.

Geeta is repped by Paradigm and Luber Roklin.