Interview (Part 3): 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 3 of 6 part series to run each day through Saturday, Geeta and I explore some of the key characters in “Dinner With Friends”, those who surround and interface with the script’s Protagonist figure, Alia:

Scott: Let’s talk about these two male…I guess you’d call them suitors, in a way, or at least two male interests in Alia’s life. There’s Rahul. He’s a longtime friend and he’s very smitten with her. Then Varun, who you even mentioned earlier, handsome son of a working class family. How did each of these characters come into being? Do you remember how that triangle evolved for you?

Geeta: I definitely wanted to show that these were the two paths that Alia could potentially choose. Rahul is a parallel to her father. He and Alia are both rich and comfortable in the same world — he’s the easy choice. He’s going to be a doctor! Everyone assumes they’ll end up together, and that’s what everyone wants for them. Then, Varun is the stranger who rides into town. He, and his mother, are part of what makes Alia realize that there are other ways to live and experience the world. And then — I’m not sure which draft you read — by the end of the script, Alia doesn’t choose either of them. She decides to explore her own identity and find her own way.

Scott: The draft I read she doesn’t end up with either, which I thought was great.

Geeta: OK, good that’s in there.

Scott: I think it would have detracted from the main story, which is a motherdaughter story and the awareness and catharsis that she has, where she’d have just fall in with one of the guys.

Geeta: Right. Her mother’s got this entire feminist back story that ends up resonating with her, so Alia ending up with one or the other didn’t really make sense.

Scott: It would have felt inauthentic for her journey. Because Alia, she’s being this little rebellious college freshman. She invites Varun’s family to a social gathering hosted by Alia’s mom and dad.

You’ve already established this very well-heeled community of Indians who are pretty surface level, it seems like, in terms of their interest in materialistic and whatnot. Then she invites this family, which is more working class, even though they’ve got a pretty strong educational background.

The contrast between the wealthy families and Varun’s family, and the way the upper class characters make fun of Varun’s family, it’s almost like a metaphor, a variation of the caste system. I don’t know of how active that is in India now today, but was there any sort of an echo of that at all?

Geeta: There’s an echo of that, for sure. It’s mostly about exploring classism, and how those kinds of economic divisions play out in close quarters within a community.

Scott: Let’s talk about Alia’s parents and we’ll start with her father, Ranjeet, a successful surgeon.

Geeta: Yeah, mmhmm.

Scott: How would you characterize him and what’s his situation in the story as it begins?

Geeta: As the story begins, Ranjeet is complacent, happy. He’s very proud of who he is. He’s proud of where he’s come from. He didn’t come from money in India. He’s really a self-made man in a lot of ways, even though he took a loan from Sheila’s parents when they came over, because they were struggling at the time. Since he’s become a respected doctor, his ego has grown, and he has this common sexist attitude that he can get away with anything because of his status. He’s very much the patriarch.

Scott: You got him running quite a bit. I was wondering, is there any sort of metaphorical theme going on there? Like, he’s running in place or running to try and stay ahead of the truth because he’s hiding, at least, to the daughter? Is there anything there?

Geeta: Sure! [laughs] That’s great. Actually, my dad introduced us to a lot of athletics when we were growing up, so there’s a little bit of him in there. He used to run races and he’d take us to run with him, and that was a way that we bonded with him. That was the way I wanted Alia to bond with her father.

It was something outside of the house, away from the family. It was their thing. When she realizes he’s betrayed the family, she wants to run alone. It’s been tainted.

Scott: So, years from now when the movie gets made and the French critic says, “It’s very interesting that the father is running away from his…” you can just say, “Oh, yeah. Absolutely. I was totally thinking that the whole time.”

Geeta: Absolutely! I did that on purpose. [laughs]

Scott: Patriarchy is a pretty significant theme which runs through this story. Was that a conscious choice on your part to have a go at that as a dynamic, or is that just more of a reflection of the fact that it’s a natural dynamic in Indian culture?

Geeta: I definitely wanted to address it directly because it is something I saw all the time growing up. It was infuriating from the perspective of a kid who couldn’t really do anything about it — it just permeated everything we did. At that time, it was very hard to find some liberal Uncle who would go help out in the kitchen and participate in the home in a meaningful way. I just never saw it happen. There are still a lot of traditional Indians who trade in these double standards. For instance, divorce — when it happens, it’s still usually the woman who bears the brunt of the fallout, not the man. And that’s certainly something that’s part of Indian culture, but that isn’t unique to Indian culture — I know many of us can relate to that scenario in the wider world, and in other minority communities as well.

Scott: Then that leads to the mom, Sheila. I’m curious. Which character did you start with? Can you unpack it all the way back to when you had the initial inspiration for this story? Did you start with Alia?

Geeta: I started with Alia. It was Alia’s story for ages. I have early drafts where Sheila’s barely a character, let alone a driving force! I was trying to explore Alia’s character and how she’d go from being this naive kid to a more aware, active adult. I started writing this right after my first feature, and then I took a long break after the birth of my first daughter. Once she was born and I came back to the script, I found that I really sided with Sheila, and I suddenly related to her a lot more than I related to Alia.

Sheila just kept growing and growing in the story, and she became an equal to me, in my mind, with Alia and her importance in the story.

Here is a script reading from “Dinner With Friends”:

Tomorrow in Part 4, Geeta and I discuss the daughter-mother relationship which lies at the heart of “Dinner With Friends” and some movie associations with the story.

For Part 1 of the interview, go here.

Part 2, here.

Geeta is repped by Paradigm and Luber Roklin.